Wonder Themes And Quotes

Let’s get to know each other. My name’s William, William More, but you can call me Willy. I’m an engineer-chemist who graduated from MIT. So . . . but you’re all alike to me . . . of course, you would be . . . you’re robots. And all your names are that sort of, um . . . codes, technical numbers . . . I need some marker where I can pick you out. Well, well, to you I’ll call . . .,” and Willy pondered for a moment, “Gumball, yes, Gumball! Do you mind?” “No, sir, actually no,” CSE-TR-03 said, agreeing with its new given name. “Ah, that’s wonderful. And then you’re Darwin,” Willy said, accosting the second robot. “Look what a nice name—Darwin! What do you say, eh?” “What can I say, sir? I like it,” CSE-TR-02 agreed too. “Yes, a human name with a past . . . You and Gumball . . . are from the same family, the Methanesons!” “It turns out thus, sir,” Darwin confirmed its family belonging. “And you’re like Larry. You’re Larry. Do you know that?” More addressed the next robot in line. “Yes, sir, just now I learned that,” the third robot said, accepted its name as well.

And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.

When you meet someone so different from yourself, in a good way, you don't even have to kiss to have fireworks go off. It's like fireworks in your heart all the time. I always wondered, do opposites really attract? Now I know for sure they do. I'd grown up going to the library as often as most people go to the grocery store. Jackson didn't need to read about exciting people or places. He went out and found them, or created excitement himself if there wasn't any to be found. The things I like are pretty simple. Burning CDs around themes, like Songs to Get You Groove On and Tunes to Fix a Broken Heart; watching movies; baking cookies; and swimming. It's like I was a salad with a light vinaigrette, and Jackson was a platter of seafood Cajun pasta. Alone, we were good. Together, we were fantastic.

Yet if we would know God and for other's sake tell what we know we must try to speak of his love. All Christians have tried but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So as I stretch my heart toward the high shining love of God someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope.

If there is one ‘constant’ in the structure and theme of the wonder tale, it is transformation.

I wondered for a long time how to start that theme, how to start writing about something that was important to me. And I finally began like this: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...

The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers... 'It is escapism, true,' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward freedom, the drive to escape?

People everywhere pray for a job where they can “work from home,” so I guess, going with the gratitude theme, I should be grateful for this opportunity. I wonder how, though, when people get one of these jobs, they keep themselves from spending the entire day going on YouTube and looking at videos about baby deer that have been adopted by golden retrievers. Because that’s all I’ve accomplished today so far.

In the words of Mr Thierry Coup of Warner Bros: 'We are taking the most iconic and powerful moments of the stories and putting them in an immersive environment. It is taking the theme park experience to a new level.' And of course I wish Thierry and his colleagues every possible luck, and I am sure it will be wonderful. But I cannot conceal my feelings; and the more I think of those millions of beaming kids waving their wands and scampering the Styrofoam turrets of Hogwartse_STmk, and the more I think of those millions of poor put-upon parents who must now pay to fly to Orlando and pay to buy wizard hats and wizard cloaks and wizard burgers washed down with wizard meade_STmk, the more I grind my teeth in jealous irritation. Because the fact is that Harry Potter is not American. He is British. Where is Diagon Alley, where they buy wands and stuff? It is in London, and if you want to get into the Ministry of Magic you disappear down a London telephone box. The train for Hogwarts goes from King's Cross, not Grand Central Station, and what is Harry Potter all about? It is about the ritual and intrigue and dorm-feast excitement of a British boarding school of a kind that you just don't find in America. Hogwarts is a place where children occasionally get cross with each other—not 'mad'—and where the situation is usually saved by a good old British sense of HUMOUR. WITH A U. RIGHT? NOT HUMOR. GOTTIT?

The triviality of American popular culture, its emptiness and gossip, accelerates this destruction of critical thought. It expands the void, the mindlessness that makes the magic, mythology, and irrationality of the Christian Right palatable. Television, the movement’s primary medium, allows viewers to preoccupy themselves with context-free information. The homogenized empty chatter on the airwaves, the banal amusement and clichés, the bizarre doublespeak endlessly repeated on cable news channels and the huge spectacles in sports stadiums have replaced America’s political, social and moral life, indeed replaced community itself. Television lends itself perfectly to this world of signs and wonders, to the narcissism of national and religious self-exaltation. Television discourages real communication. Its rapid frames and movements, its constant use of emotional images, its sudden shifts from one theme to an unrelated theme, banish logic and reason with dizzying perplexity. It, too, makes us feel good. It, too, promises to protect and serve us. It, too, promises to life us up and thrill us. The televangelists have built their movement on these commercial precepts. The totalitarian creed of the Religious Right has found in television the perfect medium. Its leaders know how television can be used to seduce and encourage us to walk away from dwindling, less exciting collectives that protect and nurture us. They have mastered television’s imperceptible, slowly induced hypnosis. And they understand the enticement of credo quia absurdum—I believe because it is absurb.

What qualities are there for which a man gets so speedy a return of applause, as those of bodily superiority, activity, and valour? Time out of mind strength and courage have been the theme of bards and romances; and from the story of Troy down to to-day, poetry has always chosen a soldier for a hero. I wonder is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valour so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship?

It leads to a realization that man is not a constant, unchanging being: he is one person one day, another person the next. He forgets easily, lives in the moment, seldom exerts will-power, and even when he does, gives up the effort after a short time, or forgets his original aim and turns to something else. No wonder that poets feel such despair when they seem to catch a glimpse of some intenser state of consciousness, and know with absolute certainty that nothing they can do can hold it fast. And this theme, implicit in Sartre, Camus, Hemingway, and even more explicit in writers like T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley, leads to a question, ‘How can man be stronger? How can he be less of a slave of circumstances?

After watching so many of the other women find satisfaction-joy, even-in activities like these, I sometimes wondered what was wrong with me that I only found more excuses not to join them. I felt like I did back in high school, not wanting to be a cheerleader or head up the homecoming committee-I didn't have a bubbly personality and didn't care about the theme of a prom

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.

We live in every moment but this one Why don’t we recognize the faces loving us so What’s God if not the spark that started life Smile of a stranger Sweet music, starry skies Wonder, mystery, wherever my road goes Early wake-ups in a moving home Scent of fresh-mown grass in the morning sun Open theme park gates waiting for Riding the day, every day into sunset Finding the way back home

When I first took time off from my profession to write the Bound to Eve story, some people wondered if I had lost my mind. At the very least, they thought I was being irresponsible for my age. But I was in love with the story and in love with the characters. And as we all know, love makes you do the damnedest things. That's ironic, now that I think about it, because that's one of the themes of the story.

It is the wonderful theme of the Bible, so frightening for many people, that the only visible sign of God in the world is the cross.

So this is supposed to be the how, and when, and why, and what or reading - about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time. "We talked about books," says a character in Charles Baxter's wonderful Feast of Love, "how boring they were to read, but how you loved them anyway. Anyone who hasn't felt like that isn't owning up.

I know I’ll forget. I am always forgetting. I think that’s why I write, to try and catch the ideas before they slip away and leave me staring off into space wondering why I walked into this room, or why I opened that browser tab, or what I was looking for in the fridge. It’s ironic, of course, given the theme of this book. This book, which lived in my head for so long, and took up so much space, it’s responsible for at least some of the forgetting.

The intellectual spoilsport among the founding fathers, Hamilton never believed in the perfectibility of human nature and regularly violated what became the first commandment of American politics: thou shalt always be optimistic when addressing the electorate. He shrank from the campaign rhetoric that flattered Americans as the most wonderful, enlightened people on earth and denied that they had anything to learn from European societies. He was incapable of the resolutely uplifting themes that were to become mandatory in American politics. The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes of our universe, but we make our best approach through small curiosities that rivet our attention - all those pretty pebbles on the shoreline of knowledge. For the ocean of truth washes over the pebbles with every wave, and they rattle and clink with the most wondrous din.

It is because we are through and through compounded of relationships with the world that for us the only way to become aware of the fact is to suspend the resultant activity, to refuse it our complicity (to look at it ohne mitzumachen, as Husserl often says), or yet again, to put it 'out of play'. Not because we reject the certainties of common sense and a natural attitude to things - they are, on the contrary, the constant theme of philosophy - but because, being the presupposed basis of any thought, they are taken for granted, and go unnoticed, and because in order to arouse them and bring them to view, we have to suspend for a moment our recognition of them. The best formulation of the reduction is probably that given by Eugen Fink, Husserl's assistant, when he spoke of 'wonder' in the face of the world.

This story has been in my heart for a long time. These are human stories that hopefully shift the paradigm about how we think about power, authority and relationships. My book is truly one of fiction, but no one ever writes in a vacuum. We write what we know. As they say, art imitates life, and is often larger than life. Hence, my metafictional work was, of course, inspired by my career in the eccentric Reality TV world. We all know reality television is not real, but what it does provide is a wonderful platform to understand essential themes about identity, in all people.

The messenger says, as he approaches him, “Look, Baggs, it didn’t happen on my watch.” The Navy theme song. “Yes?” “Somebody down below in the offices…” “Yes?” “Well, what they did is lose all your records.” Baggs can only close his eyes and wonder what sin it was that now consigns him to limbo.

There are other themes for poetry besides immersion in the Will, my friends. The love of person for person, the joy of defending one’s home, the wonder of standing naked beneath the fiery stars—” The invader laughed. “Can it be that Earth fell so swiftly because its only poets were poets of acquiescence to destiny?

Maugham described the novel as “the story of a nine days wonder in a Lambeth slum” and confessed to being influenced by the great authors of realistic novels, such as Maupassant; however, Maugham was also accused of being overly influenced (to the point of plagiarism) by other gritty novels set in the slums, such as Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison, published in 1896. Some themes are bound to recur in such novels — descriptions of living conditions, the brutality of relationships, the dangers of living and working in such insanitary districts — so the critics that accused Maugham of copying were perhaps being unduly harsh,

...and I am convinced that great children's books, in their clarity language, in the disciplined simplicity of their themes, bear as much insight into the workings of the human heart and its desires as the great adult classics. But they manage to do all that while being accessible to a a child's wonder and innocence.

The books were arranged by colour, forming a dazzling rainbow.’ “Next month, I’m going to reshelve them by theme” “Why? It looks wonderful this way.” “I get antsy when they stay one way for too long. My own personal library doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but me. And I can’t stand them getting dusty, or remaining as still as statues for months on end.

What you describe is parasitism, not love. When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. We all-each and every one of us-even if we try to pretend to others and to ourselves that we don't have dependency needs and feelings, all of us have desires to be babied, to be nurtured without effort on our parts, to be cared for by persons stronger than us who have our interests truly at heart. No matter how strong we are, no matter how caring and responsible and adult, if we look clearly into ourselves we will find the wish to be taken care of for a change. Each one of us, no matter how old and mature, looks for and would like to have in his or her life a satisfying mother figure and father figure. But for most of us these desires or feelings do not rule our lives; they are not the predominant theme of our existence. When they do rule our lives and dictate the quality of our existence, then we have something more than just dependency needs or feelings; we are dependent. Specifically, one whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs suffers from a psychiatric disorder to which we ascribe the diagnostic name "passive dependent personality disorder." It is perhaps the most common of all psychiatric disorders. People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love…..This rapid changeability is characteristic of passive dependent individuals. It is as if it does not matter whom they are dependent upon as long as there is just someone. It does not matter what their identity is as long as there is someone to give it to them. Consequently their relationships, although seemingly dramatic in their intensity, are actually extremely shallow. Because of the strength of their sense of inner emptiness and the hunger to fill it, passive dependent people will brook no delay in gratifying their need for others. If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it. The only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love, and you cannot be a person worthy of love when your primary goal in life is to passively be loved. Passive dependency has its genesis in lack of love. The inner feeling of emptiness from which passive dependent people suffer is the direct result of their parents' failure to fulfill their needs for affection, attention and care during their childhood. It was mentioned in the first section that children who are loved and cared for with relative consistency throughout childhood enter adulthood with a deep seated feeling that they are lovable and valuable and therefore will be loved and cared for as long as they remain true to themselves. Children growing up in an atmosphere in which love and care are lacking or given with gross inconsistency enter adulthood with no such sense of inner security. Rather, they have an inner sense of insecurity, a feeling of "I don't have enough" and a sense that the world is unpredictable and ungiving, as well as a sense of themselves as being questionably lovable and valuable. It is no wonder, then, that they feel the need to scramble for love, care and attention wherever they can find it, and once having found it, cling to it with a desperation that leads them to unloving, manipulative, Machiavellian behavior that destroys the very relationships they seek to preserve. In summary, dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.

Yeah, they did. Didn’t you notice they changed the theme of the New Year Art Show? In past years fifth graders painted self-portraits, but this year they made us do those ridiculous self-portraits as animals, remember?” “So big freakin’ deal.” “I know! I’m not saying I agree, I’m just saying that’s what she’s saying.” “I know, I know. This is just so messed up.

Just as we would be inestimably poorer to be denied the opportunity to see giraffes, roses, bombardier beetles, tulips, and little black house cats with white spots on their chests that sit on our laps as we write, we lose one of the true wonders of the world every time one of these glorious variations on a theme set by the first language slips away unrecorded for posterity.

Three postcards await our perusal, yea, three visions of a world. One: I see a theme park where there are lots of rides, but there is nobody who can control them and nobody who knows how the rides end. Grief counseling, however, is included in the price of admission. Two: I see an accident. An explosion of some kind inhabited by happenstantial life forms. A milk spill gone bacterial, only with more flame. It has no meaning or purpose or master. It simply is. Three: I see a stage, a world where every scene is crafted. Where men act out their lives within a tapestry, where meaning and beauty exist, where right and wrong are more than imagined constructs. There is evil. There is darkness. There is the Winter of tragedy, every life ending, churned back into the soil. But the tragedy leads to Spring. The story does not end in frozen death. The fields are sown in grief. The harvest will be reaped in joy. I see a Master's painting. I listen to a Master's prose. When darkness falls on me, when I stand on my corner of the stage and hear my cue, when I know my final scene has come and I must exit, I will go into the ground like corn, waiting for the Son.

All my life I have wondered about the possibility of life elsewhere. What would it be like? Of what would it be made? All living things on our planet are constructed of organic molecules—complex microscopic architectures in which the carbon atom plays a central role. There was once a time before life, when the Earth was barren and utterly desolate. Our world is now overflowing with life. How did it come about? How, in the absence of life, were carbon-based organic molecules made? How did the first living things arise? How did life evolve to produce beings as elaborate and complex as we, able to explore the mystery of our own origins? And on the countless other planets that may circle other suns, is there life also? Is extraterrestrial life, if it exists, based on the same organic molecules as life on Earth? Do the beings of other worlds look much like life on Earth? Or are they stunningly different—other adaptations to other environments? What else is possible? The nature of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere are two sides of the same question—the search for who we are. In the great dark between the stars there are clouds of gas and dust and organic matter. Dozens of different kinds of organic molecules have been found there by radio telescopes. The abundance of these molecules suggests that the stuff of life is everywhere. Perhaps the origin and evolution of life is, given enough time, a cosmic inevitability. On some of the billions of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, life may never arise. On others, it may arise and die out, or never evolve beyond its simplest forms. And on some small fraction of worlds there may develop intelligences and civilizations more advanced than our own. Occasionally someone remarks on what a lucky coincidence it is that the Earth is perfectly suitable for life—moderate temperatures, liquid water, oxygen atmosphere, and so on. But this is, at least in part, a confusion of cause and effect. We earthlings are supremely well adapted to the environment of the Earth because we grew up here. Those earlier forms of life that were not well adapted died. We are descended from the organisms that did well. Organisms that evolve on a quite different world will doubtless sing its praises too. All life on Earth is closely related. We have a common organic chemistry and a common evolutionary heritage. As a result, our biologists are profoundly limited. They study only a single kind of biology, one lonely theme in the music of life. Is this faint and reedy tune the only voice for thousands of light-years? Or is there a kind of cosmic fugue, with themes and counterpoints, dissonances and harmonies, a billion different voices playing the life music of the Galaxy? Let

The rank and file members of the guerrillas and their civilian sympathizers paid some of the heaviest prices during the war and a recurrent theme running through their testimonials is an uncertainty about whether the costs were worth the rewards. 41 They certainly celebrate their role in democratizing El Salvador, but they wonder what good is democracy in the midst of ongoing economic hardship and inequality.

all of the major themes with which [Koontz] has been obsessed: the healing power of love and friendship; the struggle to overcome the past and change what we are; the moral superiority of the individual over the workings of the state and large institutions; the wonder of both the natural world and the potential of the human mind; the relationship of mankind to God; transcendence; and how we sustain hope in the face of our awareness that all things die.” Those are, indeed, the fundamental issues in this novel.

He described the theme in this way: “It’s a Wonderful Life sums up my philosophy of film making. First, to exalt the worth of the individual. Second, to champion man—plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit, or divinity. And third, to dramatize the viability of the individual—as in the theme of the film itself . . .There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look.”5 Nearly seventy years after The Greatest Gift was written

There was still some time before the train opened its doors for boarding, yet passengers were hurriedly buying boxed dinners, snacks, cans of beer, and magazines at the kiosk. Some had white iPod headphones in their ears, already off in their own little worlds. Others palmed smartphones, thumbing out texts, some talking so loudly into their phones that their voices rose above the blaring PA announcements. Tsukuru spotted a young couple, seated close together on a bench, happily sharing secrets. A pair of sleepy-looking five- or six-year-old twin boys, with their mother and father dragging them along by their hands, were whisked past where Tsukuru sat. The boys clutched small game devices. Two young foreign men hefted heavy-looking backpacks, while a young woman was lugging a cello case. A woman with a stunning profile passed by. Everyone was boarding a night train, heading to a far-off destination. Tsukuru envied them. At least they had a place they needed to go to. Tsukuru Tazaki had no place he needed to go. He realized that he had never actually been to Matsumoto, or Kofu. Or Shiojiri. Not even to the much closer town of Hachioji. He had watched countless express trains for Matsumoto depart from this platform, but it had never occurred to him that there was a possibility he could board one. Until now he had never thought of it. Why is that? he wondered. Tsukuru imagined himself boarding this train and heading for Matsumoto. It wasn’t exactly impossible. And it didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. He’d suddenly gotten it into his head, after all, to take off for Finland, so why not Matsumoto? What sort of town was it? he wondered. What kind of lives did people lead there? But he shook his head and erased these thoughts. Tomorrow morning it would be impossible to get back to Tokyo in time for work. He knew that much without consulting the timetable. And he was meeting Sara tomorrow night. It was a very important day for him. He couldn’t just take off for Matsumoto on a whim. He drank the rest of his now-lukewarm coffee and tossed the paper cup into a nearby garbage bin. Tsukuru Tazaki had nowhere he had to go. This was like a running theme of his life. He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn’t now.

The paradox of an illness which can present as wellness - as a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its malignant potentials - is one of the chimaeras, tricks and ironies of nature. It is one which has fascinated a number of artists, especially those who equate art with sickness: thus it is a theme - at once Dionysiac, Venerean, and Faustian - which persistently recurs in Thomas Mann - from the febrile, tuberculous highs of The Magic Mountain, to the spirochaetal inspirations in Dr Faustus and the aphrodisiac malignancy in his last tale, The Black Swan.

If you haven’t read the Book of Mormon lately, start now. Experiment upon the word.33 Read the entire book in a short time to remind yourself of major themes. Then start again, looking for patterns and connections and points of doctrine that prophets emphasize again and again. If you’ve never studied the four New Testament Gospels alongside Third Nephi, try that—you’ll enjoy the process. It is a wonderful way to study what the Savior repeatedly taught during His mortal ministry in the Holy Land and His postmortal ministry to those on the American continent. It is difficult to experiment on the word if we don’t know the word.

The sultan had enormous eyebrows, fibrous like angora wool. In moments of strife, his eyebrows twitched violently. Like now! His Excellency’s royal blood boiled. Once again another mesmerized American news anchor gushed about Dubai’s vision, hailing the imagination of the al-Maktoum family. “Where is this vision coming from?” probed Katie Couric. “Ignorant Yankee!” Sultan Mo-Mo’s British twang bore traces of Basil Fawlty. The sultan wanted to retch. Dubai’s showboating gave him indigestion, but he continued helping himself to more chips and fiery salsa, downing cold Guinness, smoking excellent hash, humming the theme song of The Wonder Years.

Here is something I understand about psychology, and I think it relates to fiction: if you loosen up your understanding of yourself in some way, then who knows how it will affect who you are in the world. In the same way, you can explore an avenue of your character - something about your character's past, or something in your character's present - and you don't know how the reader is going to connect it to what's going on in the story. That gives the reader a wonderful job to do, which is to try to make the links. I don't think you need to plan that in advance, or ever. I think it can happen if you follow what you think is interesting about the character. In order to do this, you must trust what you don't understand. Our minds are so adept at trying to explain things that you have to shut that instinct down. As a starting point, choose an action that you can't explain. Often, writing about something that you don't fully get - what it's about or what's in it - is actually very useful because it takes you away from talking about theme or talking about abstractions. If you don't know what something is about, you are probably going to be very concrete in your exploration of it. You're going to say, 'I don't know what's in this world, so I'm going to be very direct in the way I present it.' This gives the reader tons of space to form his or her own interpretations.

Readin' all those books makes me wonder whether anyone ever dies natural." " They don't," said William mysteriously. " Robert says so. At least he says there's hundreds an' thousands of murders what no one finds out. You see, you c'n only find out a person's died nacheral by cuttin' 'em up an' they've not got time to cut everyone up what dies. They've simply not got the time. They do it like what they do with our desks at school. They jus' open one sometimes to see if it's all right. They've not got time to open 'em all every day. An' same as every time they do open a desk they find it untidy, jus' in the same way whenever they do cut anyone dead up they find he's been poisoned. Practically always. Robert says so. He says that the amount of people who poison people who aren't cut up and don't get found out mus' be enormous. Jus' think of it. People pois'nin' people all over the place an' no one findin' out. If I was a policeman I'd cut everyone dead up. But they aren't any use, policemen aren't. Why, in all those books I've read there hasn't been a single policeman that was any good at all. They simply don't know what to do when anyone murders anyone. Why, you remember in ' The Mystery of the Yellow Windows,' the policemen were s' posed to have searched the room for clues an' they di'n't notice the cigarette end what the murd'rer had left in the fender and what had the address of the people what made it on it an' what was a sort they made special for him. Well, that shows you what the policemen are, dun't it ? I mean, they look very swanky in their hats an' buttons an' all that, but when it comes to a murder or cuttin' dead people up or findin' out murd'rers, they aren't any good at all. Why, in all those myst'ry tales we've read, it's not been the police that found the murd'rers at all. It's been ordinary people same as you an' me jus' usin' common sense an' pickin' up cigarette ends an' such-like. . . . Tell you what it is," he said, warm- ing to his theme, " policemen have gotter be stupid 'cause of their clothes. I mean, all the policemen's clothes are made so big that they've gotter be very big men to fit 'em an' big men are always stupid 'cause of their strength all goin' to their bodies 'stead of their brains. That stands to reason, dun't it ?

Though all the brilliant intellects of the ages were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: "I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!"7 What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!

The male staff all wore gorgeous colored loin cloths that always seem to be about to fall off they’re wonderful hips. Their upper bodies were tanned sculpted and naked. The female staff wore short shorts and silky flowing tops that almost but didn’t expose their young easy breasts. I noticed we only ever encountered male staff, and the men walking through the lobby were always greeted by the female staff. Very ingenious, as Rebecca said later - if we had ticked Lesbians on the form I wonder what would have happened? -There was a place to tick for Lesbians, I said ? -Sexual Persuasion- it was on all the forms -Really. And, how many options were there? -You’re getting the picture, said Jillian. This was not your basic check in procedure as at say a Best Western. Our Doormen/Security Guards , held out our chairs for us to let us sit at the elegant ornate table. Then they poured us tea, and placed before each of us a small bowl of tropical fruit, cut into bite size pieces. Wonderful! Almost immediately a check in person came and sat opposite us at the desk. Again a wonderful example of Island Male talent. (in my mind anyway) We signed some papers, and were each handed an immense wallet of information passes, electronic keys, electronic ID’s we would wear to allow us to move through the park and its ‘worlds’ and a small flash drive I looked at it as he handed it to me, and given the mindset of the Hotel and the murals and the whole ambiance of the place, I was thinking it might be a very small dildo for, some exotic move I was unaware of. -What’s this? I asked him -Your Hotel and Theme Park Guide I looked at it again, huh, so not a dildo.

From Lewis's perspective, he saw us engaged in a great cosmic warfare, where real issues are at stake with real people, created by a God who created them in this wonderful, incredible way. We have the ability to enjoy so much and yet we have this thing that also corrupts and even works against us...Most of us in this world are sort of on the bench. We're not engaged in it. And what Lewis did was to take us off the bench and put us in this other world where we vicariously begin to live more actively. We participate in all these great themes. But the thing is, they all come from our world... Life becomes this exciting thing. Lewis is saying that if we look at our own lives, we'd see they are just as enchanted. A cup of tea here is just as enchanted as a cup of tea in Narnia. A tree here is just as enchanted as a tree in Narnia. We're not looking at the world anymore the way we ought to. It really is an enchanted world. ~The Magic Never Ends~

And then there is the small matter of the Facetiae, the fifteenth century’s most scandalous book of rude jokes. Poggio wrote the Facetiae between 1438 and 1452. Some of the jokes are about church politics and current affairs. Most are about sex. Jokes about lusty parishioners, lecherous merchants, magical orifices, gullible patients, lewd factotums, randy hermits (St. Gallus must have turned in his grave), simple-minded grooms, libidinous peasants, seductive friars—and the woman who tells her husband she has two vaginas (duos cunnos), one in front that she would share with him; the other behind—for the Church. Building on this theme, Poggio’s joke number CLXXXI is an “Amusing remark by a young woman in labour.” In Florence, a young woman, somewhat of a simpleton, is on the point of giving birth. She has long endured acute pain, and the midwife, candle in hand, inspects secretiora ejus, in order to ascertain if the baby is coming: “Look also on the other side,” the poor creature says. “My husband has sometimes taken that road.

Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Ilúvatar’s self, nor can any alter the music in Ilúvatar’s despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the end but aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder:–for lo! through Melko have terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from the light as the depths of the uttermost of the dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope. Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise, and even shall those beings, who must now dwell among his evil and endure through Melko misery and sorrow, terror and wickedness, declare in the end that it redoundeth only to my great glory, and doth but make the theme more worth the hearing, Life more worth the living, and the World so much the more wonderful and marvellous, that of all the deeds of Ilúvatar it shall be called his mightiest and his loveliest.

September 19 “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17 WHAT a word is this! Jehovah God in the centre of his people in all the majesty of his power! This presence alone suffices to inspire us with peace and hope. Treasures of boundless might are stored in our Jehovah, and he dwells in his church, therefore may his people shout for joy. We not only have his presence, but he is engaged upon his choice work of salvation. “He will save.” He is always saving: he takes his name of Jesus from it. Let us not fear any danger, for he is mighty to save. Nor is this all. He abides evermore the same; he loves, he finds rest in loving, he will not cease to love. His love gives him joy. He even finds a theme for song in his beloved. This is exceedingly wonderful. When God wrought creation he did not sing, but simply said, “It is very good;” but when he came to redemption, then the sacred Trinity felt a joy to be expressed in song. Think of it, and be astonished! Jehovah Jesus sings a marriage song over his chosen bride. She is to him his love, his joy, his rest, his song. O Lord Jesus, by thine immeasurable love to us teach us to love thee, to rejoice in thee, and to sing unto thee our life-psalm.

Without friendship, the ring never would have made it, and Middle Earth would have been destroyed. Actually, we never would have imagined Middle Earth in the first place because, without friendship, Tolkien never would have finished writing the story. He said that it was only C. S. Lewis’s steady encouragement that kept him writing. Perhaps this is why the theme of friendship stands out so prominently in the story. In Tolkien’s day, authors only produced “fairy stories” (as they were called) for children, not adults. But Tolkien wrote for adults too. He eventually wrote The Lord of the Rings, but it was only because of his relationship with Lewis. Two years after Lewis died, Tolkien reflected on Lewis’s role in his life: The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought the L. of the R. to a conclusion.13 Lewis and Tolkien experienced true friendship. They knew that their experience was both wonderful and rare in their culture. This is why both men wrote to promote the joys of true friendship in their own day—Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, and Lewis in The Four Loves.

24. The Rutles, “Cheese and Onions” (1978) A legend to last a lunchtime. The Rutles were the perfect Beatle parody, starring Monty Python’s Eric Idle and the Bonzos’ Neil Innes in their classic mock-doc All You Need Is Cash, with scene-stealing turns by George Harrison, Mick Jagger, and Paul Simon. (Interviewer: “Did the Rutles influence you at all?” Simon: “No.” Interviewer: “Did they influence Art Garfunkel?” Simon: “Who?”) “Cheese and Onions” is a psychedelic ersatz Lennon piano ballad so gorgeous, it eventually got bootlegged as a purported Beatle rarity. Innes captures that tone of benignly befuddled pomposity—“I have always thought in the back of my mind / Cheese and onions”—along with the boyish vulnerability that makes it moving. Hell, he even chews gum exactly like John. The Beatles’ psychedelic phase has always been ripe for parody. Witness the 1967 single “The L.S. Bumble Bee,” by the genius Brit comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, from Beyond the Fringe and the BBC series Not Only . . . ​But Also, starring John Lennon in a cameo as a men’s room attendant. “The L.S. Bumble Bee” sounds like the ultimate Pepper parody—“Freak out, baby, the Bee is coming!”—but it came out months before Pepper, as if the comedy team was reeling from Pet Sounds and wondering how the Beatles might respond. Cook and Moore are a secret presence in Pepper—when the audience laughs in the theme song, it’s taken from a live recording of Beyond the Fringe, produced by George Martin.

In this way, Boethius served as a special exemplar. Just as the sixth-century philosopher lived in an age overrun by barbarians (“huge, fair-skinned, beer-drinking, boasting thanes”) and desperately gathered and saved whatever fragments he could from the old “high Pagan past,” so too did Lewis feel it his duty to save not this or that ancient author, but the general wisdom of the Long Middle Ages, and then vernacularize it for his world, which was now dominated by a new type of barbarian. His own age was one of “Proletarianism,” which was now, in a way similar to Boethius’s barbarians, cut off from the classical past and proud of its distance from classical antiquity: we are “self-satisfied to a degree perhaps beyond the self-satisfaction of any recorded aristocracy” we are women and men who have become as “practical as the irrational animals.” Having abandoned the study of the old, modern barbarians no longer have access to any values other than those “of modern industrial civilization,” and so, Lewis wondered if “we shall not have to re-convert men to real Paganism as a preliminary to converting them to Christianity.” In this way, Lewis followed the path of Boethius, who chose not to focus on “what divided him from Virgil, Seneca, Plato, and the old Republican heroes” but rather, “he preferred [a theme] that enabled him to feel how nearly they had been right, to think of them not as ‘they’ but as ‘we.’ Lewis’s vocation, like Boethius’s, was the humble one of making old books live again.

Sometimes Partridge imagines that this isn't real, that, instead, it's just some elaborate reenactment of destruction, not the actual destruction itself. He remembers once being in a museum on a class trip. There were miniature displays with live actors in various wings, talking about what things were like before the Return of Civility. Each display was dedicated to a theme: before the impressive prison system was built, before difficult children were properly medicated, when feminism didn't encourage femininity, when the media was hostile to government instead of working toward a greater good, before people with dangerous ideas were properly identified, back when government had to ask permission to protect its good citizens from the evils of the world and from the evils among us, before the gates had gone up around neighborhoods with buzzer systems and friendly men at gatehouses who knew everyone by name. In the heat of the day, there were battle reenactments on the museum's wide lawn that showed the uprisings waged in certain cities against the Return of Civility and its legislation. With the military behind the government, the uprisings - usually political demonstrations that became violent - were easily tamped down. The government's domestic militia, the Righteous Red Wave, came to save the day. The recorded sounds were deafening, Uzis and attack sirens pouring from speakers. The kids in his class bought bullhorns, very realistic hand grenades, and Righteous Red Wave iron-on emblems in the gift shop. He wanted a sticker that read THE RETURN OF CIVILITY - THE BEST KIND OF FREEDOM written over a rippling American flag, with the words REMAIN VIGILANT written beneath it. But his mother hadn't given him money for the gift shop, no wonder. Of coarse, he knew now that the museum was propaganda.

It's basty!" "There's definitely a soup underneath the crust. I see carrots. Gingko nuts. Mushrooms. And... Shark fin! Simmered until it's falling apart!" Aah! It's all too much! I-I don't care if I burn my mouth... I want to dive in right now! Mm! Mmmm! UWAAAAH! "Incredible! The shark fin melts into a soft wave of warm umami goodness on the tongue... ...with the crispy piecrust providing a delectably crunchy contrast!" "Mmm... this piecrust shows all the signs of the swordsmanship he stole from Eishi Tsukasa too." Instead of melting warm butter to mix into the flour, he grated cold butter into granules and blended them... ... to form small lumps that then became airy layers during the baking, making the crust crispier and lighter. A light, airy crust like that soaks up the broth, making it the perfect complement to this dish! "Judge Ohizumi, what's that "basty" thing you were talking about?" "It's a dish in a certain style of cooking that's preserved for centuries in Nagasaki- Shippoku cuisine." "Shippoku cuisine?" Centuries ago, when Japan was still closed off from the rest of the world, only the island of Dejima in Nagasaki was permitted to trade with the West. There, a new style of cooking that fused Japanese, Chinese and Western foods was born- Shippoku cuisine! One of its signature dishes is Basty, which is a soup covered with a lattice piecrust. *It's widely assumed that Basty originated from the Portuguese word "Pasta."* "Shippoku cuisine is already a hybrid of many vastly different cooking styles, making it a perfect choice for this theme!" "The lattice piecrust is French. Under it is a wonderfully savory Chinese shark fin soup. And the soup's rich chicken broth and the vegetables in it have all been thoroughly infused with powerfully aromatic spices... ... using distinctively Indian spice blends and techniques!" "Hm? Wait a minute. There's more than just shark fin and vegetables in this soup. This looks just like an Italian ravioli! I wonder what's in it? ?!" "Holy crap, look at it stretch!" "What is that?! Mozzarella?! A mochi pouch?!" "Nope! Neither! That's Dondurma. Or as some people call it... ... Turkish ice cream. A major ingredient in Dondurma is salep, a flour made from the root of certain orchids. It gives the dish a thick, sticky texture. The moist chewiness of ravioli pasta melds together with the sticky gumminess of the Dondurma... ... making for an addictively thick and chewy texture!

This is life seen by life. I may not have meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has. I want to write to you like someone learning. I deepen the words as if I were painting, more than an object, its shadow. I don’t want to ask why, you can always ask why and always get no answer—could I manage to surrender to the expectant silence that follows a question without an answer? Though I sense that some place or time the great answer for me does exist. And then I shall know how to paint and write, after the strange but intimate answer. Listen to me, listen to the silence. What I say to you is never what I say to you but something else instead. It captures the thing that escapes me and yet I live from it and am above a shining darkness. One instant athematic theme unfurls without a plan but geometric like the successive shapes in a kaleidoscope. I slowly enter my gift to myself, splendor ripped open by the final song that seems to be the first. I enter the writing slowly as I once entered painting. It is a world tangled up in creepers, syllables, woodbine, colors and words—threshold of an ancestral cavern that is the womb of the world and from it I shall be born. And if I often paint caves that is because they are my plunge into the earth, dark but haloed with brightness, and I, blood of nature— extravagant and dangerous caves, talisman of the Earth, where stalactites, fossils and rocks come together, and where the animals mad by their own malign nature seek refuge. The caves are my hell. Forever dreaming cave with its fogs, memory or longing? eerie, eerie, esoteric greenish with the slime of time. All is weighted with sleep when I paint a cave or write to you about it—from outside it comes the clatter of dozens of wild horses stamping with dry hoofs the darkness, and from the friction of the hoofs the rejoicing is freed in sparks: here I am, I and the cave, in the very time that will rot us. I want to put into words but without description the existence of the cave that some time ago I painted—and I don’t know how. Only by repeating its sweet horror, cavern of terror and wonders, place of afflicted souls, winter and hell, unpredictable substratum of the evil that is inside an earth that is not fertile. I call the cave by its name and it begins to live with its miasma. I then fear myself who knows how to paint the horror, I, creature of echoing caverns that I am, and I suffocate because I am word and also its echo.

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

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy, and for Thy truth’s sake.” Psalm 115:1. Such was the spirit that pervaded Israel’s song of deliverance, and it is the spirit that should dwell in the hearts of all who love and fear God. In freeing out souls from the bondage of sin, God has wrought for us a deliverance greater than that of the hebrews at the Red Sea. Like the hebrew host, we should praise the Lord with heart and soul and voice for his “wonderful works to the children of men.” Those who dwell upon God’s great mercies, and are not unmindful of his lesser gifts, will put on the girdle of gladness and make melody in their hearts to the Lord. The daily blessings that we receive from the hand of God, and above all else the death of Jesus to bring happiness and heaven within our reach, should be a theme for constant gratitude. What compassion, what matchless love, has God shown to us, lost sinners, in connecting us with himself, to be to him a peculiar treasure! What a sacrifice has been made by our Redeemer, that we may be called children of God! We should praise God for the blessed hope held out before us in the great plan of redemption, we should praise him for the heavenly inheritance and for his rich promises; praise him that Jesus lives to intercede for us.

Yes, there are indeed many wonderful things in the Old Testament that focus on caring for the poor, compassion, and social justice. However, as we have seen in this chapter, divine-sanctioned violence being promoted and even commanded in the Bible is not an anomaly or exception. On the contrary, it constitutes a pervasive and major theme of Scripture that simply must be faced and addressed by us if we purport to read Scripture as Scripture.

pring is a great time to introduce your children to the wonders of God's creation. Take them to a garden center and let them pick out a tree to be planted in your yard. Let them help dig the hole, add soil amendments, and place the tree. As they fill the hole around the tree, talk about how amazing God was when creating the world. Your children will love watching the tree grow through the years... as they grow with it. And remember when you used to press flowers in a scrapbook? Why not do it again? Use the pages of your phone book or apply heavy weight as you press and dry the flowers. When they're completely dry, use a tiny bit of glue to arrange them on colorful or white poster board. Add lace and ribbon, and you've got a perfect pressed flower arrangement. Or make it more masculine by adding graphics of sports, animals, cars, or trucks. ere's a tip that'll help in the dilemma of what to do with your various collections. Always arrange them in odd-numbered groupings. Three is a magic number. Cluster things that have differing shapes, but keep a theme going. ho is your best friend? Who is your second best friend? Now think about it. Is there really such a thing as a "bad" friend? Not all friendships are alike, to be sure. Some are casual and relaxing. Others are intense and stimulating. And some surprise us by seeming to come out of nowhere. Some friendships will fade ...a truth we have to accept. I have several "friends of the heart." These people aren't necessarily "best friends" because

This game looks to be a sure winner in late 2000! But you’d better have plenty of hard drive space, as this wonderful RPG takes up about 4.1 gigs of space (the actual game itself is 33 k’s of space, but the uncompressed, six and a half hour wav file theme song takes up the rest).

riendship is a treasure. If you possess even one nugget of the real thing-you're rich! So celebrate! Give your friend a book or an item with a note explaining its importance. Or set up a spa day. Why not add to her collection-or even start one for her! A bell, a miniature animal, an antique ...something in line with her interests. Personalized notepads are always great and practical! You could get her a monogrammed Bible or a hymnbook for her devotional times. Or one of those wonderful little rosebush trees if she's into gardening. Express your care and love for her friendship. by not widen your circle of friends? Don't miss the joy of sharing your Christian life through hospitality. Bible studies and small-group meetings are great ways to open your home and your heart. Fill a basket with food and take it to neighbors. What a surprise it will be for them! Host a neighborhood barbecue, potluck, theme dinner (ask everyone to bring something related to the theme), or even start a dinner club and meet somewhere different each month. Throw an "all girls" party for you and your friends. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or hospital. What do you enjoy most? Let that be the focus of your hospitality to others.

Theme: God’s word is true and wonderful. Stay true to God and his word no matter how bad the world becomes. Obedience to God’s laws is the only way to achieve real happiness.

She wondered if he thought this was all a lark, a game. She'd been to Disney World once. There the fairies were cute and sweet and didn't attempt to kill the visitors. Living here wasn't anything like the human faerie fairs or theme parks.

Panhandle's residence was situated in a remote part of the country, and at this moment I have no clear recollection of the complicated journey, with its many changes at little-known junctions, which I had to make in order to find my friend. The residence stood in the midst of elevated woodlands, and was well hidden by the trees. An immense sky-sign, standing out high above all other objects and plainly visible to the traveller from whatever side he made his approach, had been erected on the roof. The sky-sign carried the legend "No Psychologists!" It turned with the wind, gyrating continually, and when darkness fell the letters were outlined in electric lamps. Only a blind man could miss the warning. This legend was repeated over the main entrance to the grounds, with the addition of the word "Beware!" I thought of mantraps and ferocious dogs, and for some minutes I stood before the gates, wondering if it would be safe for me to enter. At last, remembering how several friends had assured me that I was "no psychologist," I concluded that little harm awaited me, plucked up my courage, and boldly advanced. Beyond the gates I found the warning again repeated with a more emphatic truculence and a finer particularity. At intervals along the drive I saw notice-boards projecting from the barberries and the laurels, each with some new version of the original theme. "Death to the Psychology of Religion" were the words inscribed on one. The next was even more precise in its application, and ran as follows:— "Inquisitive psychologists take notice! Panhandle has a gun, And will not hesitate to shoot." Somewhat shaken I approached the front door and was startled to see a long, glittering thing suddenly thrust through an open window in the upper storey; and the man behind the weapon was unquestionably Panhandle himself. "Can it be," I said aloud, "that Panhandle has taken me for an inquisitive psychologist?" "Advance," cried my host, who had a keen ear for such undertones. "Advance and fear nothing." A moment later he grasped me warmly by the hand, "Welcome, dearest of friends," he was saying. "You have arrived at an opportune moment. The house is full of guests who are longing to meet you." "But, Panhandle," I expostulated as we stood on the doorstep, "I understood we were to be alone. I have come for one purpose only, that you might explain your familiarity with—with those people." I used this expression, rather than one more explicit, because the footman was still present, knowing from long experience how dangerous it is to speak plainly about metaphysical realities in the hearing of the proletariat. "Those very people are now awaiting you," said Panhandle, as he drew me into the library. "I will be quite frank with you at once. This house is haunted; and if on consideration you find your nerves unequal to an encounter with ghosts, you had better go back at once, for there is no telling how soon the apparitions will begin.

In the midst of this scoured landscape, on a suburban street, I saw the church steeple, and Lucille slowed down and pointed, and waved me on. As I passed her to enter the parking lot, I thanked her, and she gave me a wonderful smile, and just before she drove on she said, “Be blessed.” That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome. I had found it often in my traveling life in the wider world, but I found so much more of it here that I kept going, because the good will was like an embrace. Yes, there is a haunted substratum of darkness in Southern life, and though it pulses through many interactions, it takes a long while to perceive it, and even longer to understand.

Larry Kudlow hosted a business talk show on CNBC and is a widely published pundit, but he got his start as an economist in the Reagan administration and later worked with Art Laffer, the economist whose theories were the cornerstone of Ronald Reagan’s economic policies. Kudlow’s one Big Idea is supply-side economics. When President George W. Bush followed the supply-side prescription by enacting substantial tax cuts, Kudlow was certain an economic boom of equal magnitude would follow. He dubbed it “the Bush boom.” Reality fell short: growth and job creation were positive but somewhat disappointing relative to the long-term average and particularly in comparison to that of the Clinton era, which began with a substantial tax hike. But Kudlow stuck to his guns and insisted, year after year, that the “Bush boom” was happening as forecast, even if commentators hadn’t noticed. He called it “the biggest story never told.” In December 2007, months after the first rumblings of the financial crisis had been felt, the economy looked shaky, and many observers worried a recession was coming, or had even arrived, Kudlow was optimistic. “There is no recession,” he wrote. “In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.”19 The National Bureau of Economic Research later designated December 2007 as the official start of the Great Recession of 2007–9. As the months passed, the economy weakened and worries grew, but Kudlow did not budge. There is no recession and there will be no recession, he insisted. When the White House said the same in April 2008, Kudlow wrote, “President George W. Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country.”20 Through the spring and into summer, the economy worsened but Kudlow denied it. “We are in a mental recession, not an actual recession,”21 he wrote, a theme he kept repeating until September 15, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Wall Street was thrown into chaos, the global financial system froze, and people the world over felt like passengers in a plunging jet, eyes wide, fingers digging into armrests. How could Kudlow be so consistently wrong? Like all of us, hedgehog forecasters first see things from the tip-of-your-nose perspective. That’s natural enough. But the hedgehog also “knows one big thing,” the Big Idea he uses over and over when trying to figure out what will happen next. Think of that Big Idea like a pair of glasses that the hedgehog never takes off. The hedgehog sees everything through those glasses. And they aren’t ordinary glasses. They’re green-tinted glasses—like the glasses that visitors to the Emerald City were required to wear in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Now, wearing green-tinted glasses may sometimes be helpful, in that they accentuate something real that might otherwise be overlooked. Maybe there is just a trace of green in a tablecloth that a naked eye might miss, or a subtle shade of green in running water. But far more often, green-tinted glasses distort reality. Everywhere you look, you see green, whether it’s there or not. And very often, it’s not. The Emerald City wasn’t even emerald in the fable. People only thought it was because they were forced to wear green-tinted glasses! So the hedgehog’s one Big Idea doesn’t improve his foresight. It distorts it. And more information doesn’t help because it’s all seen through the same tinted glasses. It may increase the hedgehog’s confidence, but not his accuracy. That’s a bad combination.

I like pros, especially when it comes to tennis and rent boys” — and here I’m really wondering if the pun on prose consolidates Bruce’s feeling toward it versus poetry under the sign of sex, which Bruce sometimes pays for, in order to direct us toward the pleasure of its use-function when monetised, a pleasure seldom associated with poetry, and one that might lead to the company of more pros. He continues: “If I can get a twofer, and the trick looks like Rafael Nadal, I’m in heaven.

He’d asked one of his employees, an Ecuadoran named José Maria, to go to town and buy him an iPod and load it up with a playlist he’d entitled “Ranch Music.” It consisted largely of film scores. Cuts from Ennio Morricone like “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” the theme from A Fistful of Dollars, “L’Estasi Dell’oro (The Ecstasy of Gold),” and “La Resa dei Conti (For a Few Dollars More),” Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Magnificent Seven, “The Journey,” and “Calvera’s Return,” and Jerome Moross’ theme from The Big Country. Big, wonderful, rousing, swelling, sweeping, triumphalist music from another era. It was music that simply wasn’t made anymore. The pieces were about tough (but fair) men under big skies on horseback, their women waiting for them at home, and bad guys—usually Mexicans—to be vanquished. In

AINULINDALË The Music of the Ainur There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony. And it came to pass that Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were silent.

and she giggled as she walked against the current of bodies in the crosswalk. The subway was right there, but she didn’t want to take it yet—the beauty of New York City was walking, was serendipity and strangers, and it was still her birthday, and so she was just going to keep going. Alice turned and walked up Eighth, past the crummy tourist shops selling magnets and keychains and i ♥ ny T-shirts and foam fingers shaped like the Statue of Liberty. Alice had walked for almost ten blocks when she realized she had a destination. She and Sam and their friends had enjoyed many, many hours in bars as teenagers: they’d spent nights at the Dublin House, on 79th Street; at the Dive Bar, on Amsterdam and 96th Street, with the neon sign shaped like bubbles, though that one was a little too close to home to be safe; and some of the fratty bars farther down Amsterdam, the ones with the buckets of beers for twenty dollars and scratched pool tables. Sometimes they even went to some NYU bars downtown, on MacDougal Street, where they could dash across the street for falafel and then go back to the bar, like it was their office and they were running out for lunch. Their favorite bar, though, was Matryoshka, a Russian-themed bar in the 50th Street 1/9 subway station. Now it was just the 1 train, but back then, there was also the 9. Things were always changing, even when they didn’t feel like it. Alice wondered if no one ever felt as old as they were because it happened so slowly, and you were only ever one day slower and creakier, and the world changed so gradually that by the time cars had evolved from boxy to smooth, or green taxis had joined yellow ones, or MetroCards had replaced tokens, you were used to it. Everyone

The ministry is a topic that was dear to the heart of the apostle Paul, and it is a frequent theme in his letters. He never lost the sense of wonder that God would call him to the ministry, and he never tired of talking about it. Toward the end of his life, he wrote to his protegé and fellow minister Timothy, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service; even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor” (1 Tim. 1:12-13). Like Jeremiah, who spoke of the Word of God as a burning fire in his bones (Jer. 20:9), Paul felt compelled to carry out his ministry. To the Corinthians he wrote, “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16).

Now, you might be wondering, “How do you motivate people with brutal facts? Doesn’t motivation flow chiefly from a compelling vision?” The answer, surprisingly, is, “No.” Not because vision is unimportant, but because expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time. One of the dominant themes that runs throughout this book is that if you successfully implement its findings, you will not need to spend time and energy “motivating” people. If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people? And one of the single most de-motivating actions you can take is to hold out false hopes, soon to be swept away by events.

She turned back to Broadway and strolled past the fruit stands and the debris of collisions lying on the curbs, the broken pizza crusts of the city’s eaters in the streets, fruit peels and cores, a lost boot and a rotted tie, a woman sitting on the sidewalk combing her hair, the black boys ranting after a basketball, the implosion of causes and purposes she had once known and could no longer find the strength to call back from the quickly disappearing past. And Charles arm in arm with her here, walking imperturbably through it all with his hat flat straight on his head and his crimson muffler around his throat and whistling softly but so strongly the mighty main theme of Harold In Italy. Oh Death, oh Death, she said almost aloud, waiting on the corner for the light to change, and wondering at her fortune at having lived into beauty.

Martin (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) gave no quarter to compromise, to the accommodation of evil, to caprice or calumny. I often think of him now when I read newspaper columns written by prominent black conservatives, like Dr. Walter Williams and Dr. Thomas Sowell, who are partners with those who consistently try to keep black people from pursuing simple fairness. With their scholarly cant they cloud the issues and drum on themes that draw applause from their cynical sponsors. I wonder if they are ever frightened when they look around and notice who is applauding them.

People are generally proud of their culture,” he says. “So if you go into an organization and talk about changing the culture, it makes people wonder: ‘What is he talking about? What’s wrong with my culture?’ You don’t want people worrying about this. I never once used the word ‘culture’ at SRI in any of my discussions with the staff. What I talked about was what we needed to do. I had a couple of big themes. And I repeated those themes all the time. I never used the words, ‘culture change,’” he says.

The underlying theme of each book in the Adventures of Puff series is that we each possess unique talents and gifts that benefit the group. That we are all—in a sense, Superhero’s, each wonderfully made in our own way.” Wallace C. Kamens

The underlying theme of each book in the Adventures of Puff series is that we each possess unique talents and gifts that benefit the group. That we are all—in a sense, Superhero’s, each wonderfully made in our own way.

Lieutenant Commander Thomas McWhorter of the navy, who fired off an early broadside against the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” asking that it be cut. “It is like drinking a scotch and soda and suddenly swallowing the ice cube!” McWhorter wrote. “You could not have interrupted the beautiful flow of entertainment any more effectively had you stopped the show for a VD lecture.” Oscar wrote back, “I believe I get the point of your letter very clearly, and I realize very well the dangers of overstating the case. But I just feel that the case is not fully stated without this song. I wish it were true that all these things are accepted by the public. You say, ‘the theme is wearing very thin,’ but in spite of this, I see progress being made only very slowly.

The most characteristic feature of Lewis’s Aslan is that he evokes awe and wonder. Lewis develops this theme with relation to Aslan by emphasising the fact that he is wild—an awe-inspiring, magnificent creature, which has not been tamed through domestication, or had his claws pulled out to ensure he is powerless. As the Beaver whispers to the children, “He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.

Lewis is here setting out, in a preliminary yet still powerful form, his core theme of Aslan as the heart’s desire. Aslan evokes wonder, awe, and an “unutterable love.” Even the name Aslan speaks to the depths of the soul. What would it be like to meet him? Lewis captures this complex sense of awe mingled with longing in the reaction of Peter to the Beaver’s declarations about this magnificent lion, who is “the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea.

The theme of love in Romeo and Juliet supposedly had five subtypes, listed on a separate worksheet page: Divine Love, Romantic Love, Familial Love, Superficial Love, and Plutonic Love. Mrs. Marsh, unsure of the difference between the god of the underworld and the Greek philosopher, had invented a new and wonderful form of love.

Bunyan tells us that Mercy laughed in her sleep, and no wonder when she dreamed of Jesus; my joy should not be less than hers while Christ is the theme of my daily thoughts. The Lord Jesus is a deep sea of joy: My soul shall dive in and shall be swallowed up in the delights of His company. Sarah looked on Isaac and laughed without restraint, and all her friends laughed with her. And you, my soul, look on Jesus, and invite heaven and earth to unite in your unspeakable joy

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony. And it came to pass that Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were silent. Then Ilúvatar said to them: ‘Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music[…]

. The themes hang together in important ways. The more clearly one sees how sovereign is God’s choice, the more clearly does his unmerited grace stand out. But sovereign “predestination” is irrational without a “destination”: God’s purposes in his sovereign sway are thus inescapably tied to his sovereignty and his grace. The more we glimpse God’s wonderfully good purposes, the more we shall be grateful for his sovereign sway in bringing them to pass.

I walked into my sis’s room… and saw nothing but her ass and spread open p*ssy she is on her knees, on her little bed, with bubbly little mermaid bedding, look at that her butt is shown pointing towards the door, got yah- I see lots of her… and so will my friends… if I send this to them. Payback sister- the wetness running out of her, let's put it that way. I think you know what that crap is. I have to prove I am not a complete p*ssy, and will not put up with my little sister getting more than me, like taking my men. Seeing this Maddie and Liv say- her but was like in our faces, I knew it would be set to more girls, yet I did not have the heart to. That was up to my friends to see if they were real friends. You can see and hear sighing in her Arial-themed room to every inward and outward stroke. I even see her rubbing it in rotating patterns, with her fingers also, into it. Uh-ah, uh-huh- Oh-Oo-a, ow- yeah, she feels everything deep I will say that for her. Man, she can bend it in, she has known I have this all on my cell, and I am looking in at her, the door not closed. Look at her next to her stuffed dog, she is rubbing it also on her vagina Maddie said I can send this to her seven, and so did Olivia. If Jenny was here, what do you think she would have done with this video? (Hall discussions at lockers number 94 and 96.) I would if she sent this to anyone else, if so, that is not nice. Locker 95 is now sitting as it was, but with like a drop-off of flowers and bars, and photos stuck on the door for her memory. Girls kissing the door, and boys, it is nuts, you don’t want to see what's inside there, it's freaky. Olivia- I wonder if we could get our lockers changed. It was nice then when we all wanted to be together, now not so much, this turns me so off. Did you see that Maggie is getting a life now that she is gone? Olivia- Yes, yes, I did, I wonder if Jenny was the one doing that too. Maddie- she liked her so I say know. Liv- may be…? Maddie- Do you miss her? Liv- Not always- yet she pops into my mind once in a while. Karly about the video (not with the girls, alone.) I showed her one, and now she seems to have it- good for her. I think she does it better than me, b*tch- is what the girls well think too I just know it, I love her, look you can see her face in the pillow, cute right, arched back, putting her two fingers in and out, and I forget how old she, yet see this crap, she looks like a professional, my girls will get it.

I know I shouldn’t do this, take so many pills. But it hurts so bad, I just wonder if I’m ill. I heard an old saying, if looks could kill. I look in the mirror just to see if it’s real. I’m not living for myself, just for everyone else. But I’m tired of this headache deep in my brain, take it all away, I just can’t take this pain. Oh, I know I shouldn’t do this, it isn’t good. But it hurts so bad, I wonder if I should. I heard an old saying about a wolf, and I like to play dress-up, if only I could… Make this headache go away, deep in my brain, baby take it all away, wash it out with the rain. I’m not living for myself, just for everyone else. So maybe I’ll take two, of the pills off the shelf…

Roark left the room. He walked slowly through the long halls, down the stairs, out to the lawn below. He had met many men such as the Dean; he had never understood them. He knew only that there was some important difference between his actions and theirs. It had ceased to disturb him long ago. But he always looked for a central theme in buildings and he looked for a central impulse in men. He knew the source of his actions; he could not discover theirs. He did not care. He had never learned the process of thinking about other people. But he wondered, at times, what made them such as they were. He wondered again, thinking of the Dean. There was an important secret involved somewhere in that question, he thought. There was a principle which he must discover.

To counter the effects of too-early learning, here are some things you can do: Where possible, choose schools that are developmentally sensitive in their curriculum and appropriate for your child. Some kids will do really well as big fish in small ponds. It gives them the confidence to tackle the currents without being afraid of being swept away. They get to grow strong and feel strong. So what if there are bigger fish in bigger ponds? Help your children find the right curricular environments for them. Relax and take a long view, even if no one else around you is. Most kids who learn to read at five aren’t better readers at nine than those who learn to read at six or seven. Bill remembers vividly the mild panicky feeling he and Starr had when their daughter was five years old and some of her friends were starting to read. Even though they knew that kids learn to read much easier at age seven than at age five, and that pushing academics too early was harmful and produced no lasting benefit, Bill and Starr wondered if they were jeopardizing their child’s future by letting her fall behind her peers. They briefly considered pulling her out of her nonacademic kindergarten. But they stuck to their guns and left her in a school that did not push and did not give her any homework until the fourth grade. Despite an unrushed start, she received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago at the age of twenty-six and is a successful economist. Bill loves telling that story, not to brag (okay, just a little), but to emphasize that it is difficult to buck the tide even when you know the current is carrying you the wrong way. Remember that any gains from rushing development will wash out. Parents often tell Bill that their third grader is doing fourth- or fifth-grade math—but he never hears twenty-six-year-olds brag that they’re more successful than most twenty-eight-year-olds. Don’t go overboard on AP classes. You are doing your child no favors if you let her take more APs at the cost of her mental health and sleep. There’s a reason why kids get more out of Moby-Dick in college than in high school. When we consider the enormous differences in the maturation of their prefrontal cortex—and the associated development in their capacity for abstraction and emotional maturity—it should come as no surprise that the majority of students will understand and appreciate novels written for adults better when they’re older. The same is true for complex scientific theories and data, quantitative concepts, and historical themes, which are easier for most kids to grasp when they are college aged. This isn’t to say that some students aren’t ready for college-level courses when they’re fifteen. The problem is that when this becomes the default for most students (I’ll never get into college if I don’t have five AP classes) it’s destructive.

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS Throughout the story, there is significant friction between Rory and Camilla, much of which stems from Camilla’s need to manage her daughter’s life. In what ways, if any, do you feel Rory contributes to the chronic tension between them? Soline’s mother, Esmée, believes that each of us creates a unique echo in the world and that those echoes are constantly seeking their match—in order to become complete. Do you believe such a thing is possible? One of the threads running through the book touches on the tendency of daughters to repeat their mothers’ mistakes, especially in relationship matters. Have you or someone you know experienced this in real life? If so, was the pattern eventually recognized and broken? The theme of chasing one’s dreams figures prominently in the journeys of both Rory and Soline. From an early age, Soline was taught that the work they did was a sacred vocation for which the Roussels had been especially chosen, and Hux once told Rory that the dream of opening an art gallery had her name all over it. Do you believe we are each given a calling in life, a talent or gift that feeds our soul and benefits others? “Everything happens for a reason” is a commonly used axiom, particularly when events suddenly turn our lives upside down. Throughout the book, Rory’s and Soline’s lives are upended by a series of seeming coincidences, causing them to wonder if some unseen hand might be at work. Do you believe that certain things are meant to be? That some benevolent force is trying to guide us to our highest good? Or is everything random? Rory tells Soline that she and Camilla push each other’s buttons. Soline understands, but at times she seems to side with Camilla, perhaps because she had a similar relationship with her own mother. What parallels did you note in the relationships between Soline and Esmée and Rory and Camilla? By the end of the book, it seems obvious that Soline has come into Rory’s life for a reason and that the reverse is also true. In the end, each has irrevocably altered the other’s life. Have you ever had someone come into your life, even briefly, who you feel came to teach you a lesson or help you find your path? On her deathbed, Esmée tells Soline about the father she never knew, a man Esmée loved dearly but sent away out of obedience to her mother. She speaks to her daughter about a grief worse than death—the grief of a life half-lived. How do you think these revelations affect Soline’s choices when Anson suddenly reappears in her life? One of Esmée’s quotes is about forgiveness. She says forgiveness is the greatest magick of all and that it makes all things new. Do you believe in the power of forgiveness? If so, is it true in all things, or are there certain things that can never be made new?

Look at the history of the early days of the labor movement, right through the nineteenth century and the early Industrial Revolution. The main theme of the labor movement was that having a job is a terrible attack on your personal rights and dignity. Having a job is not something you look forward to. It’s something you may be forced into, but it’s an attack on your dignity as a human being, your rights as a free human being. Having a job means being forced to live under the orders of a master for most of your waking life. Nothing wonderful about that. Skilled workers in the late nineteenth century had a very lively working-class press. They expressed their hope that over time people wouldn’t succumb to this attack on their rights—that they wouldn’t accept as normal the idea that they have to be subject to a master. If that day comes, they hoped it would be far in the distance. Well, the day has come. People do think having a job is the greatest thing in life.

I'm in love with the fact that declan Conner's book "The Alternate Girlfriend" brings out so many positive messages and themes that strike me as real. First and foremost, the character of Douglas Carter is so inspiring. Despite his condition, autism and all it comes with, Doug shows caring intelligence and perseverance. I learned how everybody has unique strengths, along with those being the exact ingredients in helping us face life challenges. I could also see through the events that go on with the AI, Donna, how it brings up important questions about the responsibilities of creators of new, high-tech. I found myself reflecting on how these themes apply in our real world with its rapidly advancing technology. That is one of the thought-provoking aspects, and I think future readers are going to rigorously reflect on the implications of their work and innovations. It's a compelling read, joining a gripping plot with deep reverberations around technology, ethics, and personal resilience. The characters are very well crafted, real, relatable, and seem to be there even after finishing a read. This was wonderful to read.

Christian Sia 5-Star Review "AI Beast by Shawn Corey is a fascinating techno-thriller featuring AI technology and compelling characters. Professor Jon Edwards is a genius who intends to solve the problems of humanity, and this is the reason for creating Lex, an AI computer with incredible powers. While regulators are not sure of what she can do and despite the opposition from different quarters that Lex can be dangerous, the professor believes in its powers. Lex is supposed to be a rational, logical computer without emotions, capable of reproducing processes that can improve life. When she comes to life, she is incredibly powerful, but there is more to her than the professor has anticipated. After an accident, Jon awakens to the startling revelation that Lex might have a will of her own. What comes after is a compelling narrative with strong apocalyptic themes, intrigue, and a world that can either be run down or saved by an AI computer. The novel is deftly plotted, superbly executed, and filled with characters that are not only sophisticated but that are embodiments of religious symbolism. While Lex manipulates reality and alters the minds of characters in mysterious ways, there are relationships that are well crafted. Readers will appreciate the relationship between the quantum computer science student Nigel and the professor and the professor's affair with his mother. While the narrative is brilliantly executed and permeated with realism, it explores the theme of Armageddon in an intelligent manner. AI Beast is gripping, a story with twisty plot points and a setting that transports readers beyond physical realities. The prose is wonderful, hugely descriptive, and the conflict is phenomenal. A page-turner that reflects Shawn Corey's great imagination and research.

Furthermore, it is not the people or the citizens who decide on what to vote, on which political program, at what time, and so on. It is the oligarchs and the oligarchic system that decide on this and that submit their choice to the vote of the electorate (in certain very specific cases). One could legitimately wonder, for instance, why there are not more referendums, and in particular referendums of popular initiative, in “democracy.” Cornelius Castoriadis perfectly described this state of affairs when he wrote: “The election is rigged, not because the ballot boxes are being stuffed, but because the options are determined in advance. They are told, ‘vote for or against the Maastricht Treaty,’ for example. But who made the Maastricht Treaty? It isn’t us.”127 It would thus be naive to believe that elections reflect public opinion or even the preferences of the electorate. For these oligarchic principles dominate our societies to such an extent that the nature of the choice is decided in advance. In the case of elections, it is the powerful media apparatus—financed in the United States by private interests, big business, and the bureaucratic machinery of party politics—that presents to the electorate the choices to be made, the viable candidates, the major themes to be debated, the range of possible positions, the questions to be raised and pondered, the statistical tendencies of “public opinion,” the viewpoint of experts, and the positions taken by the most prominent politicians. What we call political debate and public space (which is properly speaking a space of publicity) are formatted to such an extent that we are encouraged to make binary choices without ever asking ourselves genuine questions: we must be either for or against a particular political star, a specific publicity campaign, such or such “societal problem.” “One of the many reasons why it is laughable to speak of ‘democracy’ in Western societies today,” asserts Castoriadis, “is because the ‘public’ sphere is in fact private—be it in France, the United States, or England.”The market of ideas is saturated, and the political consumer is asked to passively choose a product that is already on the shelves. This is despite the fact that the contents of the products are often more or less identical, conjuring up in many ways the difference that exists between a brand-name product on the right, with the shiny packaging of the tried-and-true, and a generic product on the left, that aspires to be more amenable to the people. “Free elections do not necessarily express ‘the will of the people,’ ” Erich Fromm judiciously wrote. “If a highly advertised brand of toothpaste is used by the majority of the people because of some fantastic claims it makes in its propaganda, nobody with any sense would say that people have ‘made a decision’ in favor of the toothpaste. All that could be claimed is that the propaganda was sufficiently effective to coax millions of people into believing its claims.

Furthermore, it is not the people or the citizens who decide on what to vote, on which political program, at what time, and so on. It is the oligarchs and the oligarchic system that decide on this and that submit their choice to the vote of the electorate (in certain very specific cases). One could legitimately wonder, for instance, why there are not more referendums, and in particular referendums of popular initiative, in “democracy.” Cornelius Castoriadis perfectly described this state of affairs when he wrote: “The election is rigged, not because the ballot boxes are being stuffed, but because the options are determined in advance. They are told, ‘vote for or against the Maastricht Treaty,’ for example. But who made the Maastricht Treaty? It isn’t us.” It would thus be naive to believe that elections reflect public opinion or even the preferences of the electorate. For these oligarchic principles dominate our societies to such an extent that the nature of the choice is decided in advance. In the case of elections, it is the powerful media apparatus—financed in the United States by private interests, big business, and the bureaucratic machinery of party politics—that presents to the electorate the choices to be made, the viable candidates, the major themes to be debated, the range of possible positions, the questions to be raised and pondered, the statistical tendencies of “public opinion,” the viewpoint of experts, and the positions taken by the most prominent politicians. What we call political debate and public space (which is properly speaking a space of publicity) are formatted to such an extent that we are encouraged to make binary choices without ever asking ourselves genuine questions: we must be either for or against a particular political star, a specific publicity campaign, such or such “societal problem.” “One of the many reasons why it is laughable to speak of ‘democracy’ in Western societies today,” asserts Castoriadis, “is because the ‘public’ sphere is in fact private—be it in France, the United States, or England.”The market of ideas is saturated, and the political consumer is asked to passively choose a product that is already on the shelves. This is despite the fact that the contents of the products are often more or less identical, conjuring up in many ways the difference that exists between a brand-name product on the right, with the shiny packaging of the tried-and-true, and a generic product on the left, that aspires to be more amenable to the people. “Free elections do not necessarily express ‘the will of the people,’ ” Erich Fromm judiciously wrote. “If a highly advertised brand of toothpaste is used by the majority of the people because of some fantastic claims it makes in its propaganda, nobody with any sense would say that people have ‘made a decision’ in favor of the toothpaste. All that could be claimed is that the propaganda was sufficiently effective to coax millions of people into believing its claims.

He clearly had a dilemma. His self-appointed task was to brief junior new arrivals such as myself about aspects of life at court. Under this heading he included the history of the British monarchy (a bizarre account of his own making), its relevance to modern Britain (akin to his own), and how an insect such as I should hold his knife and fork (an exaggeration, but only just). This performance may have been for our benefit but it was undoubtedly also for his own, since it gave us newcomers a wonderful opportunity to marvel at his mastery of arcane and irrelevant information. However, he plainly suffered doubts as to whether we were suitable receptacles for such priceless wisdom. I fear I did little to set his mind at rest, either then or in our subsequent uneasy encounters. “Above all,” he said, leaning forward for emphasis and fixing me with a watery glare, “we don’t want any nonsenses! Nonsenses always lead to nausea!” He sat back feeling that no further explanation was required. There was a pause, presumably to allow me to dwell on my capacity for nonsenses. It seemed infinite to both of us. “Thank you,” I said, already aware that hollow pleasantries would be a necessity of life in this place. Then, seeing an opportunity, I added, “I really should be getting back . . .” He took this news quite well, despite the fact that he had barely warmed to his theme. He left me feeling that I was but a passing aberration on the seamless splendor of royal existence.

Steve had tried to reach us after our Father’s Day phone call. There was no way I could have realized that, because I didn’t have any mobile phone reception at the cottage. He was back on Croc One and trying to get hold of us via satellite phone. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t be in range again until the next day. We enjoyed our dinner, built a huge fire, and snuggled down for the night. We didn’t hurry ourselves the next day. We meandered west, stopping at a raspberry farm and at the Honey Factory in Chudleigh. They featured a beehive behind glass, and we loved watching as the bees worked on their honeycomb. They never stopped to say, “I wonder what the meaning of life is.” They just kept building. The Honey Factory also featured a plethora of bee-themed products: bee gum boots, bee back massagers, bee umbrellas, and a bee trolley for the kids to ride on. Bindi sampled every single flavor of honey that they had. She bought a wristwatch with a bee on it. Robert picked out a backpack. “Robert,” I said, “that backpack is great. It has bees on it.” “It has one bee on it,” he said, correcting me. “Oh, okay, one bee,” I said, amused at my son’s seriousness. We spent the last hour of the morning at the Honey Factory. As we walked out the door, Bindi looked at her newly purchased watch and said, “It’s twelve o’clock.” We all stopped for a moment and considered that it was twelve o’clock. Then we got into the car and left.

The menu: legendary deep-fried Turkeyzilla, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and green beans. The theme: dysfunction. “So,” Elysia said to Lex’s parents with her ever-friendly grin, “how are you?” “How do you think they are?” Ferbus whispered. She kicked him under the table. “I mean—um—what do you do? For a living?” Lex’s mother, who hadn’t said much, continued to stare down the table at the sea of black hoodies while picking at her potatoes. Lex’s father cleared his throat. “I’m a contractor,” he said. “And she’s a teacher.” “Omigod! I wanted to be a teacher!” Elysia turned to Mrs. Bartleby. “Do you love it?” “Hmm?” She snapped back to attention and smiled vacantly at Elysia. “Oh, yes. I do. The kids are a nice distraction.” “From what?” Pip asked. Bang smacked her forehead. Lex squeezed Driggs’s hand even tighter, causing him to choke on his stuffing. He coughed and hacked until the offending morsel flew out of his mouth, landing in Sofi’s glass of water. “Ewww!” she squealed. “Drink around it,” Pandora scolded. “So! I hear New York City is lovely this time of year.” Well, it looks nice, I guess,” Mr. Bartleby said. “But shoveling out the driveway is a pain in the neck. The girls used to help, but now . . .” Sensing the impending awkwardness, Corpp jumped in. “Well, Lex has been a wonderful addition to our community. She’s smart, friendly, a joy to be around—” “And don’t you worry about the boyfriend,” Ferbus said, pointing to Driggs. “I keep him in line.” Mrs. Bartleby’s eyes widened, looking at Lex and then Driggs. “You have a—” she sputtered. “He’s your—” Ferbus went white. “They didn’t know?” “Oops!” said Uncle Mort in a theatrical voice, getting up from the table. “Almost forgot the biscuits!” “Let me help you with those,” Lex said through clenched teeth, following him to the counter. A series of pained hugs and greetings had ensued when her parents arrived—but the rest of the guests showed up so soon thereafter that Lex hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to them, much to her relief. Still, she hadn’t stopped seething. “What were you thinking?” Uncle Mort gave her a reproachful look. “I was thinking that your parents were probably going to feel more lonely and depressed this Thanksgiving than they’ve ever felt in their lives, and that maybe we could help alleviate some of that by hosting a dinner featuring the one and only daughter they have left.” “A dinner of horrors? You know my track record with family gatherings!” He ignored her. “Here we are!” he said, turning back to the table with a giant platter. “Biscuits aplenty!” Lex grunted and took her seat. “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this,” she whispered to Driggs. “Me neither,” he replied. “I think my hand is broken in three places.” “Sorry.” “And your dad seems to be shooting me some sort of a death stare.” Lex glanced at her father. “That’s bad.” “Think he brought the shotgun?” “It’s entirely possible.” “All I’m saying,” Ferbus went on, trying to redeem himself and failing, “is that we all look out for one another here.” Mr. Bartleby looked at him. Ferbus began to sweat. “Because, you know. We all need somebody. Uh, to lean on.” “Stop talking,” Bang signed. Elysia gave Lex’s parents a sympathetic grin. “I think what my idiot partner is trying to say—through the magic of corny song lyrics, for some reason—is that you don’t need to worry about Lex. She’s like a sister to me.” She realized her poor choice of words as a pained look came to Mrs. Bartleby’s face. “Or an especially close cousin.” She shut her mouth and stared at her potatoes. “Frig.” Lex was now crushing Driggs’s hand into a fine paste. Other than the folding chairs creaking and Pip obliviously scraping the last bits of food off his plate, the table was silent. “Good beans!” Pip threw in.

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

Being invisible to your father hurts,” Val said. He fell silent, wondering where the words had come from. Growing up, he’d been the runt, too young, too dreamy, too artistic to keep up with his brothers or their friends. As a younger man, he’d been disinclined to academic brilliance, social wit, or business acumen, and denied by ducal fiat from buying his colors. For the first time, he wondered if he’d chosen the piano or simply chained himself to it by default. Nick shot him a curious glance. “Would it be so much better if you’d ended up like Bart and Victor? If Esther and Percy had to bury three sons instead of two, while you were spared the pains of living the life God gave you? I think the more important question now, Val, is are you invisible to yourself?” “No, Nick.” A mirthless laugh. “I am not, but just when I realize what a pit I had fallen into with my slavish devotion to a simple manual skill, just when I can begin to hope there might be more to life than benumbing myself on a piano bench, I find a woman I can love, but she can’t love me back.” “I think she does love you,” Nick replied, remaining seated as Val rose and crossed the room. “And you certainly do love her.” Val considered Nick’s words. They settled something inside him, in his head—where he planned and worked out strategies—and in his heart, where his music and his love for Ellen both resided. “I do love her.” Val lowered himself to sit on the little stage enthroning the piano. “I most assuredly do. It’s helpful to be reminded of this.” “Now I am going to cry,” Nick said with mock disgust as he crossed the room and once again sat right next to Val. “What will you do about Ellen?” “About Ellen? I agree with you: We love each other. She believes her love for me requires us to part. I believe our love requires us to be together for whatever time the good Lord grants.” “So you must convince her,” Nick concluded with a nod. “How will you go about this?” “I have some ideas.” Those ideas were like the first stirrings of a musical theme in Val’s head. Tenuous, in need of development, but they were taking hold in Val’s mind with the same tenacity as a lovely new tune. “God alone knows if my ideas will work.” Val

[A] society that insists on stressing self-expression over self-control generally gets exactly what it deserves. The sulking teenager who insists, "It's not fair!" is not referring to a standard of equity and justice that any ethicist would recognize. He is, instead, giving voice to the vaguely conceived but firmly held conviction that the world in general and his family in particular serve no legitimate function except to supply his immediate needs and desires. In a culture that celebrates self-absorption and instant gratification, however, this selfishness quickly becomes a dominant and persistent theme. No wonder, then, that the rage of the eternal victim--both black and white, male and female, "abled" and "disabled"--is so often expressed in the plaintive cry of disappointed adolescence. When I refer to America's "youth culture", I do not mean merely one that worships the young. I mean a culture that refuses to grow up.

​"So it will be appropriate to offer a brief exposition of the subject. We can speak of three factors that led Mussolini to confront the problem of race in 1938. [181] On 5 August 1938, an official document [182] declared, ‘The climate is now ripe for an Italian racism’, for which the Grand Council outlined the fundamental directives the following October. The first legislative provisions ‘for the defence of the Italian race’ were promulgated the following month. Of the three factors, the one that concerned the Hebraic problem was the most incidental. There are few or no references to this problem in Mussolini’s early writings. One can only cite an old article that mentions a well-known theme, that the Hebrew, subjugated and deprived of the usual means to compete directly in the modern world, had recourse to the indirect means constituted by money, finance and intelligence (in the profane sense) to exercise power and for self-affirmation. In addition, in an article from 1919, Mussolini wondered whether Bolshevism, which was supported in its origins by Jewish bankers in London and New York and counted (at that time) numerous Hebrews among its leaders, did not represent ‘Israel’s revenge against the Aryan race’. [183]"​