Wrong Assigned Quotes

What's wrong with me? ... I might seem like the ideal student: homework always in early, every extra credit and extra curricular I can get my hands on, the good girl and the high achiever. But I realized something just now: it's not ambition, not entirely. It's fear. Because I don't know who I am when I'm not working, when I'm not focused on or totally consumed by a task. Who am I between the projects and the assignments, when there's nothing to do? I haven't found her yet and it scares me. Maybe that's why, for my senior capstone project this year, I decided to solve a murder.

Feelings, emotions - they are neither right nor wrong. They cannot be assigned a value. Feelings *are*. By labeling a feeling wrong, you force yourself to ignore that feeling. And what you most need is to feel it, let it burn through you, then get on with life.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.

When animals make a stupid mistake, you laugh at them. A cat misjudges a leap. A dog looks overly quizzical about a simple object. These are funny things. But when a person doesn’t understand something, if they miscalculate and hit the brakes too late, blame is assigned. They are stupid. They are wrong. Teachers and cops are there to sort it out, with a trail of paperwork to illustrate the stupidity. The faults. The evidence and incidents of these things. We have entire systems in place to help decide who is what.

If you think everything is someone else's fault, you'd be wrong. If you think everything is your fault, you're also wrong. Assigning blame can keep you stuck in the problem. Move on to solutions.

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.- But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.- Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms, fortuitous concurrence of things; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.- Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.- See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.

Brookfield High School. How may I direct your call? No, sir, this is not a waste- disposal unit, I'm afraid you have the wrong number.

The greatest tragedy in life is not death but life without a purpose—life with the wrong priorities. Life’s greatest challenge is in knowing what to do. The greatest mistake in life is to be busy but not effective. Life’s greatest failure is to be successful in the wrong assignment. Success in life is measured by the effective use of one’s time.

Regret and pangs of conscience are feelings we assign to others to make the world seem a little more fair, to even things out a little and provide consolation. In reality, those who do wrong to us never think about us as much as we think about them, and that is the ultimate irony: their deeds live inside us, festering, while they live out in the world, plucking peaches off trees, biting juicily into them, their minds on things lovely and sweet.

K-12 teachers. Many work in classrooms for as many as thirty-five hours a week; on top of that they must assign, read, and comment on homework, prepare and grade exams, and develop next week’s lesson plans.

Trans” may work well enough as shorthand, but the quickly developing mainstream narrative it evokes (“born in the wrong body,” necessitating an orthopedic pilgrimage between two fixed destinations) is useless for some—but partially, or even profoundly, useful for others? That for some, “transitioning” may mean leaving one gender entirely behind, while for others—like Harry, who is happy to identify as a butch on T—it doesn’t? I’m not on my way anywhere, Harry sometimes tells inquirers. How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don’t want any of it. How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irresolution is OK—desirable, even (e.g., “gender hackers”)—whereas for others, or for others at some times, it stays a source of conflict or grief? How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality—or anything else, really—is to listen to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours?

There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash or cleaning your room - and that was to have your face buried in a book. Like churches during the Middle Ages, books conferred instant sanctuary. Once you entered one, you couldn't be disturbed. They didn't give you immunity from prosecution if you'd done something wrong - just a temporary reprieve. But we quickly learned you had to both look and be completely engrossed - just flipping pages didn't count.

So your final assignment is a simple one but it’s going to take forever: be happy. No matter what it takes. No matter how embarrassing it might be sometimes, no matter who or what you might have to forgive, no matter how hideous the color of the hat that makes you smile, be happy.

When animals make a stupid mistake, you laugh at them. A cat misjudges a leap. A dog looks overly quizzical about a simple object. These are funny things. But when a person doesn’t understand something, if they miscalculate and hit the brakes too late, blame is assigned. They are stupid. They are wrong. Teachers and cops are there to sort it out, with a trail of paperwork to illustrate the stupidity. The faults. The evidence and incidents of these things. We have entire systems in place to help decide who is what. Sometimes the systems don’t work. Families spend their weekend afternoons at animal shelters, even when they’re not looking for a pet. They come to see the unwanted and unloved. The cats and dogs who don’t understand why they are these things. They are petted and combed, walked and fed, cooed over and kissed. Then they go back in their cages and sometimes tears are shed. Fuzzy faces peering through bars can be unbearable for many. Change the face to a human one and the reaction changes. The reason why is because people should know better. But our logic is skewed in this respect. A dog that bites is a dead dog. First day at the shelter and I already saw one put to sleep, which in itself is a misleading phrase. Sleep implies that you have the option of waking up. Once their bodies pass unconsciousness to something deeper where systems start to fail, they revolt a little bit, put up a fight on a molecular level. They kick. They cry. They don’t want to go. And this happens because their jaws closed over a human hand, ever so briefly. Maybe even just the once. But people, they get chances. They get the benefit of the doubt. Even though they have the higher logic functioning and they knew when they did it THEY KNEW it was a bad thing.

Religion is a subject which, if the believers used the same "reasoning" to address problems at work as they use to defend their beliefs, they'd soon find themselves unemployed. And if they found their child applying that kind of "reasoning" on a homework assignment they'd wonder what the hell was the wrong with their child.

That doesn’t sound invisible to me.” “I’m saying it wrong, then.” Lydia searched for a better way to explain. “She was always holding herself back. She was cocaptain, not captain. She could’ve dated the quarterback, but she dated his brother instead. She could’ve been top in her class, but she’d purposefully turn in a paper late or miss an assignment so she’d fall closer to the middle. She would know about Mauna Kea, but she would say Everest because winning would bring too much attention.

As usual, Junko thought about Jack London's 'To Build a Fire.' It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn't read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man's fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn't explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction. The teacher ridiculed her view. 'Death is really what he wanted? That's a new one for me! And strange! Quite 'original,' I'd have to say.' He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed. But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?

It felt petty and wrong, like I was assigning blame to something I was supposed to be grateful for.

He said that he felt like he’d “gotten off at the wrong stop,” as if there’s a bus traveling through space and time that randomly opens its doors and drops souls off to live through whatever time they’re assigned. I don’t believe we’re all fit for the time we’re assigned. It’s a weird world we live in, and until time travel exists we’ve all got to make the most of where we land.

I come to the conclusion that letters—even good letters—are often concerned with the straws and pebbles of daily life, a realm which, rightly or wrongly, seems traditionally assigned to women.

Boy everyone in this country is running around yammering about their fucking rights. "I have a right, you have no right, we have a right." Folks I hate to spoil your fun, but... there's no such thing as rights. They're imaginary. We made 'em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocio, Mother Goose, shit like that. Rights are an idea. They're just imaginary. They're a cute idea. Cute. But that's all. Cute...and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, "where do they come from?" People say, "They come from God. They're God given rights." Awww fuck, here we go again...here we go again. The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, "It came from God." Anything we can't describe must have come from God. Personally folks, I believe that if your rights came from God, he would've given you the right for some food every day, and he would've given you the right to a roof over your head. GOD would've been looking out for ya. You know that. He wouldn't have been worried making sure you have a gun so you can get drunk on Sunday night and kill your girlfriend's parents. But let's say it's true. Let's say that God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights? The Bill of Rights of this country has 10 stipulations. OK...10 rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week, because we've had to ammend the bill of rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things, like...SLAVERY. Just fuckin' slipped his mind. But let's say...let's say God gave us the original 10. He gave the british 13. The british Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Sweedish have only 6, and some people in the world have no rights at all. What kind of a fuckin' god damn god given deal is that!?...NO RIGHTS AT ALL!? Why would God give different people in different countries a different numbers of different rights? Boredom? Amusement? Bad arithmetic? Do we find out at long last after all this time that God is weak in math skills? Doesn't sound like divine planning to me. Sounds more like human planning . Sounds more like one group trying to control another group. In other words...business as usual in America. Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you're at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, i want to type in, "Japanese-Americans 1942" and you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights. Alright. You know about it. In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter. Yeup, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn't give a fuck about them. the government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. it simply doesn't give a fuck about you. It's interested in it's own power. That's the only thing...keeping it, and expanding wherever possible. Personally when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true: either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all.

I want to apologize to you, Nikki. Not just, ‘hey, sorry,’ but really. Apologize.” He paused, either to let her absorb it or to find his way, then he went on, “This is all still new to both of us. You and I came to each other with full lives, past baggage, careers, the works. Both of us. And this trip of mine, this was the first time since we got together that you’re seeing what my real work is like. I have the advantage of having gone on ride-along, so you—I get your life, inside and out. Me, I’m an investigative journalist. If I’m doing it right, I’m spending big stretches of time in places nobody else has the balls to go and under conditions most reporters wouldn’t put up with. That explains why I fell off the radar on my story. I told you I might before I left. But it’s no excuse for not calling you when I got in the clear. The only explanation I can give may sound flimsy, but it’s the truth. When I come off assignment, I have a routine. I sleep like the dead and write like the devil, in seclusion. It’s the way I’ve always done it. For years. But now—I realize something’s different now. I’m not the only one involved. “Now, if I could take back the past twenty-four hours, I would, but I can’t. What I can do, though, is say when I look at you now and see the hurt in you—the hurt I caused by being insensitive—I see pain I never want to bring to you again.” He let that sit there, then said, “Nikki, I apologize. I was wrong. And I am sorry.

Those of us who have been violated or around violence or cruelty—and really those of us who have simply grown up in a racist, sexist, homophobic world—knew how far we could go, how loud we could get, how big we could become, how much space or attention we could occupy. We learned the price we had to pay for our bigness, our desire, and our ambition. We were practiced at the dance. We cherished the walls of our confines because they gave definition to our lives, boundaries. We wrongly believed this was safety, protection. We made sure someone was assigned to bring us down a notch, remind us who we really are, hold the truth of our badness.

So yeah, you were part of the job. Don't get me wrong, Mercer, I like you. You're smart, fluent in sarcasm, and, Bad Dog incident aside, pretty kick-ass at magic. And it's not like you're hard to look at." "Be still my beating heart." "But to answer your question, no part of the Archer Cross you knew at Hecate exists. That day in the cellar, I kissed you back because it was my job to stay close to you. If that's where you wanted to take things, then that's where I was going to go. I kissed you because I had to. Not exactly the hardest assignment I've ever had, but an assignment nonetheless." I stood there absorbing his words like blows, my heart aching. But it wasn't what he said that made me feel like I'd been punched in the chest. It's that I knew he was lying. That speech came out way too quickly and way too smooth, almost like he'd been practicing it in his head. The same way I'd been practing what I'd say to him if I ever saw him again. I couldn't even begin to handle that right now, so instead I just said, "Okay,then. Yay for honesty. Now that we're done with the confessional part of the evening, why don't you tell me why we're here." There was another pause, then he started walking again. I followed, leaves crunching under my feet. "Like I said, Hacte Hall has always made The Eye nervous." "Why? Are they allergic to plaid?" I thought he might laugh, but instead, he said, "Think about it,Mercer.One place where Prodigium round up their most powerful members? Don't tell me that's not suspicious." That had never occurred to me. I'd always just thought of all us at Hecate as giant screwups, but in a way, Archer was right. We'd all been sentenced to Hex Hall because of spells that were powerful and dangerous. I thought of Cal saying I created "too big." Wasn't that what just about everyone at Hecate had done? Still, the idea that the place I'd called home for nearly a year was actually some evil farm for powerful Prodigium was unsettling to say the least.

Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn't like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days. Eventually, I realized that I didn't believe there was such a being. It didn't seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist. As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn't believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn't broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don't. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.) But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more - a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself. The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of the wonderfully plainspoken words of Richard Feynman who felt it was better not to know than to know something that was wrong.

It’s important to assign blame to the perpetrators. Nothing is gained if we close our eyes to wrong, if we give someone a pass, if we dismiss accountability.

What starts as a small disagreement about an unimportant issue becomes a fight over wrongly assigned intentions and hurt feelings.

Maybe Zimbardo wasn’t wrong, after all, given the proper instructions or rules, we slipped into our own assigned roles in society without even questioning the morality of what we do.

Great leaders understand the importance of assigning the right people to the right positions. If you put the wrong person in the wrong place, no matter how talented or earnest they are, they will never reach the peak of their potential. Their strengths will be underutilized and they may never measure up to your expectations. Reassign to get the best out of others and the situation.

Plato, Socrates’ most celebrated student, assigned a high role to demons: “No human nature invested with supreme power is able to order human affairs,” he said, “and not overflow with insolence and wrong …

. . .If you ever, ever feel like you’re nothing you’re perfect to me. You’re so mean When you talk about yourself, you are wrong Change the voices in your head Make them like you instead. . . excerpted from “Perfect” by Pink

There is no right or wrong; there is no one truth, there are lots of truths. And you girls should translate the world into as many different languages as possible. If you see the world in just one language, your world becomes too small.

She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and "goes in"--to use an expression of Alfred's--for Woman's mission, Woman's rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. "Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!" I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, "but don't overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it." However, I digress.

Like, okay. Do you know any straight, male-assigned men who kind of get it? Like, they try to be feminist, but they acknowledge that it is a complicated, maybe impossible thing for a man to be a feminist, so they're respectful of women, and give space, stand back, whatever. And it would be totally great except that it leads to them never doing anything? Like they just stand back, and, say there are some books that need to be shelved, the windows are all dirty, there are boxes that need to go outside, and some kid threw up somewhere. You will start, say, carrying the boxes outside, and then when that's done, you start mopping up the puke, and he is just standing there, so you're like, What the fuck! Are you going to move these books or clean a window? And they're like, Oh, okay, totally, in this very enlightened way that gives you space to fucking do everything, except they need you to show them how to clean a window, because they don't want to do it wrong? That kind of guy. I will admit: it's more complicated than that, right, I shouldn't be mean. Straight dudes have it kind of rough if they don't want to shake out their male privilege all over the place. But really? You don't know how to make a bed? You don't know how to fucking cook the onions and garlic before you throw in all the other vegetables?

People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquillity. And by tranquillity I mean a kind of harmony. So keep getting away from it all—like that. Renew yourself. But keep it brief and basic. A quick visit should be enough to ward off all < . . . > and send you back ready to face what awaits you. What’s there to complain about? People’s misbehavior? But take into consideration: • that rational beings exist for one another; • that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience; • that no one does the wrong thing deliberately; • and the number of people who have feuded and envied and hated and fought and died and been buried. . . . and keep your mouth shut. Or are you complaining about the things the world assigns you? But consider the two options: Providence or atoms. And all the arguments for seeing the world as a city. Or is it your body? Keep in mind that when the mind detaches itself and realizes its own nature, it no longer has anything to do with ordinary life—the rough and the smooth, either one. And remember all you’ve been taught—and accepted—about pain and pleasure. Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us—how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space—and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are. So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self. Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two: i. That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions. ii. That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. “The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.

I always start my class with a coloring assignment using crayons to color three pages from a variety of coloring pages pinned to the wall. Pick 3. Color them densely, trying to get as much of the crayon on the paper as possible. Students find it frustrating because crayons are surprisingly hard to work with, but they usually have some fun doing it. Until...when the finished pages were pinned to the wall, all of the pages were colored just the way I assigned— but all the joy was gone. Something went wrong. What was it? This: I told them to color hard in order to do it right. And go straight to using force— thinking I was showing them a short-cut—— this took away the way of coloring they would have found on their own. By telling them just how to do it, I took the playing-around away, the gradual figuring out that brings something alive to this activity, makes it worth-while, and is transferable to other activities. I realize now the best results came when I gave no instructions except, “spend time on this assignment.” That was 3 years ago. Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

There was something liberating and terrifying about the first day on a new job. In any new assignment, Bobbie had always had the unsettling feeling that she was in over her head, that she wouldn’t know how to do any of the things they would ask her to do, that she would dress wrong or say the wrong thing, or that everyone would hate her. But no matter how strong that feeling was, it was overshadowed by the sense that with a new job came the chance to totally recreate herself in whatever image she chose, that—at least for a little while—her options were infinite.

Parent and Teacher Actions: 1. Ask children what their role models would do. Children feel free to take initiative when they look at problems through the eyes of originals. Ask children what they would like to improve in their family or school. Then have them identify a real person or fictional character they admire for being unusually creative and inventive. What would that person do in this situation? 2. Link good behaviors to moral character. Many parents and teachers praise helpful actions, but children are more generous when they’re commended for being helpful people—it becomes part of their identity. If you see a child do something good, try saying, “You’re a good person because you ___.” Children are also more ethical when they’re asked to be moral people—they want to earn the identity. If you want a child to share a toy, instead of asking, “Will you share?” ask, “Will you be a sharer?” 3. Explain how bad behaviors have consequences for others. When children misbehave, help them see how their actions hurt other people. “How do you think this made her feel?” As they consider the negative impact on others, children begin to feel empathy and guilt, which strengthens their motivation to right the wrong—and to avoid the action in the future. 4. Emphasize values over rules. Rules set limits that teach children to adopt a fixed view of the world. Values encourage children to internalize principles for themselves. When you talk about standards, like the parents of the Holocaust rescuers, describe why certain ideals matter to you and ask children why they’re important. 5. Create novel niches for children to pursue. Just as laterborns sought out more original niches when conventional ones were closed to them, there are ways to help children carve out niches. One of my favorite techniques is the Jigsaw Classroom: bring students together for a group project, and assign each of them a unique part. For example, when writing a book report on Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, one student worked on her childhood, another on her teenage years, and a third on her role in the women’s movement. Research shows that this reduces prejudice—children learn to value each other’s distinctive strengths. It can also give them the space to consider original ideas instead of falling victim to groupthink. To further enhance the opportunity for novel thinking, ask children to consider a different frame of reference. How would Roosevelt’s childhood have been different if she grew up in China? What battles would she have chosen to fight there?

Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People magazine). Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. 'Hello, hello,' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. 'Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…' He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: 'Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.' 'I don't either,' Bunny would say brokenly. 'Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.' He would resume pacing. 'Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it.' 'Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word.' 'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.' 'Is it in the dictionary?' 'Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean' – he made a picture frame with his hands – 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?' And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. 'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously. 'Thanks, thanks.' 'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?' 'Oh, Donne,' Bunny had said scoffingly. 'I don't want to drag him into this.' Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really,' he said, glancing over the first page. 'Say, what's wrong with this type?' 'Triple-spaced it,' said Bunny proudly. 'These lines are about an inch apart.' 'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?' Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. 'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.' We wondered if he would fail.

The mind is more comfortable in reckoning probabilities in terms of the relative frequency of remembered or imagined events. That can make recent and memorable events - a plane crash, a shark attack, an anthrax infection - loom larger on one's worry list than more frequent and boring events, such as the car crashes and ladder falls that get printed beneath the fold on page B14. And it can lead risk experts to speak one language and ordinary people to hear another. In hearings for a proposed nuclear waste site, an expert might present a fault tree that lays out the conceivable sequences of events by which radioactivity might escape. For example, erosion, cracks in the bedrock, accidental drilling, or improper sealing might cause the release of radioactivity into groundwater. In turn, groundwater movement, volcanic activity, or an impact of a large meteorite might cause the release of radioactive wastes into the biosphere. Each train of events can be assigned a probability, and the aggregate probability of an accident from all the causes can be estimated. When people hear these analyses, however, the are not reassured but become more fearful than ever. They hadn't realized there are so many ways for something to go wrong! They mentally tabulate the number of disaster scenarios, rather than mentally aggregating the probabilities of the disaster scenarios.

There’s no point in pointing a finger. Leaders don’t shirk responsibility. They accept it, even if they’re not at fault, because they know how much can be learned in the process. We’re all human; we all make mistakes. What if instead of assigning the blame for something that went wrong, you accept the responsibility for what you can do to make it right?

But most soldiers who have experienced combat understand that armchair quarterbacking is shallow and often misguided. It’s easy to second-guess decisions based on their ramifications, and then to assign blame. Considerably harder is accepting that in combat, things can and will often go wrong not because of bad decisions, but despite even the best decisions.

You’ll start to understand that having self-doubt is human. Irrational fears are, too. There’s no part of this that’s weird or strange or wrong. It’s simply nature. But if we want to step beyond it, we have to reach beyond it and start choosing. Choosing what we consume, how we structure our days, and what we give our time to. What we assign value and meaning to, and how much.

Rookie agent Melody Ganz spoke up. Ganz was on temporary assignment to Bravo after her gorgeous legs caught Kelli Randleman’s attention early on in the Copeland investigation. Although basically straight, Melody had experimented a little in college and saw nothing wrong with switch-hitting if it got her out of the Bureau’s dreadful backwater office in Jacksonville, South Carolina.

It’s important to assign blame to the perpetrators. Nothing is gained if we close our eyes to wrong, if we give someone a pass, if we dismiss accountability. But as my fellow survivors taught me, you can live to avenge the past, or you can live to enrich the present. You can live in the prison of the past, or you can let the past be the springboard that helps you reach the life you want now.

I know people who simply cannot remain in simple spaces. There is always this push to be identified with a swanky address. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with being identified with luxurious spaces and ritzy places, I would like to tell the world, that what is in front of you does not matter; it is what you see when you look in front of you that matters. We cannot find magic in spaces and places; but we can find magic within our own eyes, when we look out at absolutely anything that is before us. And this is not even about assigning value to what is not valuable. But this is about holding magic within yourself, within your own eyes, because, they may be able to take you out of the magic but they should never be able to take the magic out of you. You must be the magic. You.

When the CERN teams reported a 'five-sigma' result for the Higgs boson, corresponding to a P-value of around 1 in 3.5 million, the BBC reported the conclusion correctly, saying this meant 'about a one-on-3.5 million chance that the signal they see would appear if there were no Higgs particle.' But nearly every other outlet got the meaning of this P-value wrong. For example, Forbes Magazine reported, 'The chances are less than 1 in a million that it is not the Higgs boson,' a clear example of the prosecutor's fallacy. The Independent was typical in claiming that 'there is less than a one in a million chance that their results are a statistical fluke.' This may not be blatantly mistaken as Forbes, but it is still assigning the small probability to 'their results are a statistical fluke', which is logically the same as saying this is the probability of the null hypothesis being tested.

How are you enjoying Thorne Abbey?" Cal took a long sip of orange juice before replying. "It's great." I don't think it was possible for Cal to sound less enthusiastic, but either Lara didn't pick up on it, or she didn't care, because she sounded awfully perky as she said, "Well, I'm sure the two of you are welcoming the chance to spend some time together." Cal and I both stared at her. I tried to will her to stop talking, but apparently that power wasn't in my repertoire. Lara flashed us a conspiratorial grin. "Nothing makes me happier than seeing an arrangement that's a real love match." All the awkwardness that had vanished between me and Cal yesterday seemed to swoop back into the room with an audible whoosh. I dared a quick look in his direction, but Cal, as usual, was doing his whole Stoic Man thing. His expression didn't even waver. But then I noticed his hand tightening around his glass. "Cal and I aren't...we don't...there's not any, um, love," I finally said. "We're friends." Lara frowned, confused. "Oh. I'm sorry." She turned to Cal, eyebrows raised. "I just assumed that was the reason you turned down the position with the Council." Cal shook his head,and I think he was about to say something, but I beat him to it. "What position with the Council?" "It was nothing," he said. Lara gave a delicate snort before saying to me, "After his term at Hecate ended, Mr. Callahan was offered a position as the Council's chief bodyguard. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you initially accept the assignment?" she asked Cal. It was the closest I'd ever seen Cal to angry. Of course, on him, that meant that his brow furrowed a little. "I did, but-" he started to say. "But then you heard Sophie was coming to Hecate, and you decided to stay," Lara finished, and her lips twisted in the triumphant smile I'd seen on Mrs. Casnoff's face dozens of times. I stood there, frozen in place, as she turned back to me and said, "Mr. Callahan gave up a chance to travel the world with the council so that he could be little more than a janitor on Graymalkin Island. For you.

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking The tendency to think in extremes like “always” and “never” without considering nuanced degrees between. “My boyfriend broke up with me; I always ruin my relationships.” 2. Overgeneralization The tendency to make broad assumptions based on limited specifics. “If one person thinks I’m stupid, everyone will.” 3. Mental Filter The tendency to focus on small negative details to the exclusion of the big picture. “My A+ average doesn’t matter; I got a C on an assignment.” 4. Disqualifying the Positive The tendency to dismiss positive aspects of an experience for irrational reasons. “If my friend compliments me, she is probably just saying it out of pity.” 5. Jumping to Conclusions The tendency to make unfounded, negative assumptions, often in the form of attempted mind reading or fortune telling. “If my romantic interest doesn’t text me today, he must not be interested.” 6. Catastrophizing The tendency to magnify or minimize certain details of an experience, painting it as worse or more severe than it is. “If my wife leaves me, then I will never be able to recover from my misery.” 7. Emotional Reasoning The tendency to take one’s emotions as evidence of objective truth. “If I feel offended by someone else’s remark, then he must have wronged me.” 8. Should Statements The tendency to apply rigid rules to how one “should” or “must” behave. “My friend criticized my attitude, and that is something that friends should never do.” 9. Labeling The tendency to describe oneself in the form of absolute labels. “If I make a calculation error, it makes me a total idiot.” 10. Personalization The tendency to attribute negative outcomes to oneself without evidence. “If my wife is in a bad mood, then I must have done something to upset her.

Adventures are not predictable and moderately exciting, with predetermined outcomes. Adventures are things going wrong: situations you don't expect, friends who betray you, equipment that fails when you most need it, enemies who are stronger and even smarter than you, and the possibility--no, the certainty, at times--that you will be injured or die. And it is for the real adventures--the ones where your knowledge, your skills, and your strength of character are necessary to complete your assigned mission--that the carefully designed training adventures here in the Academy prepare you.

Besides a fascinating story, the John/Joan/David Reimer case highlights several issues of prime importance about sex and gender that can be applied to questions surrounding sexual orientation. First, the body of evidence collected over several decades from adults who underwent unnecessary and wrong gender assignment and sex reassignment surgeries teaches us that trying to match gender to genitals should not be a standard. Gender and genitals do not necessarily align. Gender is an innate trait established within the fetal brain. Furthermore, the attempt to change what is natural and inborn in a person has devastating effects on lives.

Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism." "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is." "I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing. "Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it." "Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word." "Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe." "Is it in the dictionary?" "Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean" — he made a picture frame with his hands — "the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?" And so it would go on, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. "This is a nice paper, Bun — ," Charles said cautiously. "Thanks, thanks." "But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?" "Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this." Henry had refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?" "Tripled spaced it," said Bunny proudly. "These lines are about an inch apart." "Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?" Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. "Looks kind of like a menu," he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.

My lover is dead. And they think I killed him. I'm running rogue. Hell bent on both revenge and redemption. Whatever it takes, I'm going to finish a job that began nine months ago. An unauthorized assignment that turned horribly, devastatingly wrong. My miscalculation. My fault. My heart left shattered into incomplete pieces which will never wholly fit back together again. But first I have to outsmart my former organization and the hired killer they've sent after me; a ghost from my past who knows my every move, who’s been inside my head, my heart, my dreams and memories: Jaxson. I'm the traitor, Kylie. The rogue mercenary, Jaxon's newest assignment. And this is our love story.

Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one you walked in with untenable. Perhaps–I’m just suggesting an offhand possibility–you could change to thinking of me as The Sagacious Old Mentor, a kind of Machiavellian Nestor, say, and yourself as The Ingenuous But Promising Young Protégé, a young Alexander, who someday will put all these teachings into practice and far outshine the master. Do you get the idea? Or–this is repugnant, but it could be used as a last resort–The Silently Indignant Young Man, who tolerates the ravings of a Senile Crank but who will leave this house unsullied by them. I call this repugnant because if you ever used it you’d cut yourself off from much that you haven’t learned yet. “It’s extremely important that you learn to assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don’t think there’s anything behind them: ego means I, and I means ego, and the ego by definition is a mask. Where there’s no ego–this is you on the bench–there’s no I. If you sometimes have the feeling that your mask is insincere–impossible word!–it’s only because one of your masks is incompatible with another. You mustn’t put on two at a time. There’s a source of conflict, and conflict between masks, like absence of masks, is a source of immobility. The more sharply you can dramatize your situation, and define your own role and everybody else’s role, the safer you’ll be. It doesn’t matter in Mythotherapy for paralytics whether your role is major or minor, as long as it’s clearly conceived, but in the nature of things it’ll normally be major. Now say something.

It jars me. I remain in control but groping, grappling, wrestling with how to think of it. Here's one way. All those years, all those Labours, I'm living a completely socialist existence. The Labours have to be done and that is that. The Labours tell me when to go to bed, what to eat, what to wear, who to kill and what next. Then I come up from hell, Labours done and they say, Magic! Two o'clock today you are a capitalist! Figure it out! I find no assistance only degradation. I know no rules. I am assigned a therapist who tells me I'm fine. I watch myself become debased, hateful, resentful, mean, I yell all the time. You think psychopathy has nothing to do with the capitalist system? You're wrong. Capitalism farts cruelty like gas from a lawnmower.

That was certainly a case of snowballing momentum. Who would've thought he'd succeed being that far behind?" "True. This particular assignment was designed to test one major skill... the ability to expect the unexpected. How well the student could envision exactly what sort of dish would be necessary... ... for a buffet-style hotel breakfast was the key to success. But there is another skill... one of the most important for a chef to have in a kitchen, where anything can go wrong without warning... the ability to respond and adapt to any situation at will. Soma handicapped himself with his choice of dish, but by adapting to the situation, he overcame that deficit brilliantly." "He's a little rough around the edges, but he seems like a promising talent.

Computational models of the mind would make sense if what a computer actually does could be characterized as an elementary version of what the mind does, or at least as something remotely like thinking. In fact, though, there is not even a useful analogy to be drawn here. A computer does not even really compute. We compute, using it as a tool. We can set a program in motion to calculate the square root of pi, but the stream of digits that will appear on the screen will have mathematical content only because of our intentions, and because we—not the computer—are running algorithms. The computer, in itself, as an object or a series of physical events, does not contain or produce any symbols at all; its operations are not determined by any semantic content but only by binary sequences that mean nothing in themselves. The visible figures that appear on the computer’s screen are only the electronic traces of sets of binary correlates, and they serve as symbols only when we represent them as such, and assign them intelligible significances. The computer could just as well be programmed so that it would respond to the request for the square root of pi with the result “Rupert Bear”; nor would it be wrong to do so, because an ensemble of merely material components and purely physical events can be neither wrong nor right about anything—in fact, it cannot be about anything at all. Software no more “thinks” than a minute hand knows the time or the printed word “pelican” knows what a pelican is. We might just as well liken the mind to an abacus, a typewriter, or a library. No computer has ever used language, or responded to a question, or assigned a meaning to anything. No computer has ever so much as added two numbers together, let alone entertained a thought, and none ever will. The only intelligence or consciousness or even illusion of consciousness in the whole computational process is situated, quite incommutably, in us; everything seemingly analogous to our minds in our machines is reducible, when analyzed correctly, only back to our own minds once again, and we end where we began, immersed in the same mystery as ever. We believe otherwise only when, like Narcissus bent above the waters, we look down at our creations and, captivated by what we see reflected in them, imagine that another gaze has met our own.

Issib wasn't thrilled to see him. I'm busy and don't need interruptions." "This is the household library," said Nafai. "This is where we always come to do research." "See? You're interrupting already." "Look, I didn't say anything, I just came in here, and you started picking at me the second I walked in the door." "I was hoping you'd walk back out." "I can't. Mother sent me here." Nafai walked over behind Issib, who was floating comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place. The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old. "What language is that?" Nafai asked pointing, to one. Issib signed. "I'm so glad you're not interrupting me." "What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?" "Very good. It's Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It's dead now." "I read Vijati, you know." "I don't." "Oh, so you're specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?" "I'm not learning these languages, I'm researching lost words." "If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost." "Words that used to have meanings, but that died out or survived only in idiomatic expressions. Like 'dancing bear.' What's a bear, do you know?" "I don't know. I always thought it was some kind of graceful bird." "Wrong. It's an ancient mammal. Known only on Earth, I think, and not brought here. Or it died out soon. It was bigger than a man, very powerful. A predator." "And it danced?" "The expression used to mean something absurdly clumsy. Like a dog walking on its hind legs." "And now it means the opposite. That's weird. How could it change?" "Because there aren't any bears. THe meaning used to be obvious, because everybody knew a bear and how clumsy it would look, dancing. But when the bears were gone, the meaning could go anywhere. Now we use it for a person who's extremely deft in getting out of an embarrassing social situation. It's the only case that we use the word bear anymore. And you see a lot of people misspelling it, too." "Great stuff. You doing a linguistics project?" "No." "What's this for, then?" "Me." "Just collection old idioms?" "Lost words." "Like bear? The word isn't lost, Issya. It's the bears that are gone." "Very good, Nyef. You get full credit for the assignment. Go away now.

You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing—beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code—what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work. Of course we would all like to “believe” in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, things have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.

Stay unfit for leadership While we may not have a science of leadership, we have developed a finely honed science of non-leadership. It is embodied in the training of women we have seen so far. Train girls to feel unsafe, live in fear, stay at home, shrink, judge themselves and their bodies, make girls feel wrong, inferior, immoral and dirty; don’t let girls speak, reason, question, have an opinion, argue, debate; teach them modesty, to wait and follow; make girls suppress their emotions, seek only approval, always please others perfectly, especially men, never say no, avoid conflict, never negotiate, and never initiate action, and then bundle all this behaviour and spray it with morality. This training would make anyone unfit for leadership. No wonder only 5 per cent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. Studies show that confidence matters more than competence in influencing and selling ideas to others. And women are less likely to ask for a big job or assignment; it is risky and immodest to shine or want to shine.

Obama’s claims about teachers and CEOs gets to a broader puzzle about how a capitalist society assigns rewards. At first glance, it seems that there is no relationship between merit and reward. Athletes and entertainers, who provide services much less indispensable than teachers and doctors, earn vastly more than either of those two professions. Earlier I mentioned the example of the parking lot guy who parks all the cars and makes money for the resort, yet he gets a pittance of that money. From his point of view, there is no relationship between work and reward. He does the work, and “they” get the profits. This is pretty much how workers feel in a variety of occupations. They are the “makers” and their bosses are the “takers.” In a truly fair and merit-based society, they should get more and the bosses should get less. These arguments are, whether their proponents recognize it or not, anchored in Karl Marx’s notion of “surplus value.” Marx is largely discredited today, because Communism proved a failure, and Marx’s prophecies proved dead wrong.

In recent years, however, a few historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fulfill the functions that the concept of development-by-accumulation assigns to them. As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation? Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by the accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions. Simultaneously, these same historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the “scientific” component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors had readily labeled “error” and “superstition.” The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more that product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today.

Knocking on a massive carved door minutes later, the sigils on it shouting to those literate enough to ‘Stay away or else!’ he received a nice surprise when the door swung open. Well, hello there. Reaching only his shoulder, with a wild mop of black hair, bright brown eyes and a rounded body made for worship – by his tongue – Remy wondered if he could convince the servant girl to come around the corner with him for a quickie before he met with this Ysabel person. Then she opened her luscious mouth. “If you’re done gawking, you might want to step back before I smash your nose with the door when I shut it.” Someone got up without sex today. He could fix that. “Hello beautiful, I actually have business with the occupant of this suite. I’m here to meet with Ysabel, the witch.” “Really.” Her tone said what she thought of his claim and her brown gaze looked him up and down, then dismissed him. “I don’t think so.” The door slammed shut in his face. What. The. Fuck. Remy pounded on the door. It immediately opened. The ebony haired vixen, her arms crossed under her bountiful tits, smirked. “Back already. What’s wrong? Did I hurt your feelings?” “Listen woman, I don’t know what crawled up your ass and turned you into an uptight bitch, but I’m here to see Ysabel, so get the fuck out of my way before I put you over my knee and –” “And what? Spank me?” Her eyes actually sparked with challenge, the minx. “I’d like to see you try. But, before you do, just so you know, my name is Ysabel. The witch.” Aaaaah, shit. Never one to admit defeat, he let a slow simmering smile spread across his face. It worked on demonesses, damned souls, human women, and even gay men, but apparently, it had no effect on scowling witches. Too bad. “It’s your lucky day. Lucifer has informed me that you’re my next assignment.” “Not by choice. And what are you supposed to do exactly? I need a tracker, not a gigolo. What happened? Did your gig as a pole dancer not work out? Equipment too small?” She dropped her gaze to his groin and sneered. A sudden, irrational urge possessed him to drop his pants, flip her over and show her there was nothing wrong with the size of his cock. He abstained, but couldn’t prevent himself from taunting her, eyeing her up and down in the same dismissive manner. “Anytime you want to measure my dick, you let me know. Naked.” “Pig.” “No, demon. Really, get your terminology straight, would you? After Lucifer’s warning, I expected someone older and badder.” To his credit he didn’t drop to the ground, but the pain in his balls did require he bend over to cup them gently which in turn meant he got the door in the face. Again. -Ysabel & Remy

The following falsifications to be deleted from the proposed language: The IS of identity. You are an animal. You are a body. Now whatever you may be you are not an “animal,” you are not a “body,” because these are verbal labels. The IS of iden­tity always carries the implication of that and nothing else, and it also carries the assignment of permanent condition. To stay that way. All name calling presupposes the IS of identity. This concept is unnecessary in a hieroglyphic language like ancient Egyptian and in fact frequently omitted. No need to say the sun IS in the sky, sun in sky suffices. The verb to be can easily be omitted from any language and the followers of Count Korgybski have done this, eliminating the verb to be in English. However, it is difficult to tidy up the English language by arbitrary exclusion of concepts which remain in force so long as the unchanged language is spoken. The definite article THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, THE wrong. If there is another, then THAT universe, THAT way is no longer THE universe, THE way. The defi­ nite article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take its place. The whole concept of EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and replaced by juxtaposi­tion, by AND.

Before I walked into the door, the room got shades darker as a cloud did a summersault in front of the sun. I turned my head up to the sky and saw Gauss in the glass smirking down at me. In that moment I was reminded of a story about Gauss. 
 When he was in the fifth grade, his teacher wanted some quiet, so he asked his class to add up all the numbers from 1-100. Thinking he had plenty of time to relax, he was shocked that within minutes Gauss had an answer. Gauss had cleverly noticed that the numbers 1 and 100 added up to 101, and 2 and 99 also added up to 101 and on down until you hit 50 and 51. So there are 50 pairs of 101, and a simple multiplication problem by Gauss left his teacher perplexed.
 The recollection of this story reminded me about my own fifth grade experience. Thor was the volunteer at my school for the “Math Superstar” program. After each assignment, stars of various colors signifying degrees of excellence were stuck on all the papers handed in. Like the Olympics, gold was the highest honor. 
 Wendy, the girl who sat next to me, was baffled that no matter how many wrong answers I got (usually all of them), I consistently had gold stars on my papers. She thought Thor was showing a personal bias towards me, but the truth is that I knew where he kept his boxes of stars, so I simply awarded myself what I thought I deserved. Hey, Gauss, how’s that for clever?

We have so little in common, but we were both avid readers growing up. I read almost nonstop when I was little, and it saved me in school. I hated classes, hated teachers. They always wanted me to do things I didn't want to do. But because I was a reader, they knew I wasn't stupid, just different. They cut me slack. It got me through. Reading couldn't help me make friends, though. I never got the hang of it. I would talk to kids, and over the years a handful of them even seemed to like me enough to ask to come over, but after that first visit to the house they never lasted. Ma told me what I did wrong but I could never manage to do it right. 'Act interested in what they say,' she said, but they never said anything interesting. 'Don't talk too much,' she said, but it never seemed like too much to me. So it wasn't like people threw tomatoes at me, or dipped my pigtails in inkwells, or stood up to move their desks away from mine, but I never really managed to make friends that I could keep. And I got used to it. I got used to a lot of things. Writing extra papers to make up for falling short in class participation. Volunteering to do the planning and the typing up whenever we had group work assigned, because I knew I could never really work right with a group. And the coping always worked. Up until three years into college, where despite Ma's repeated demands to try harder, I stalled. Every semester since, I was always still trying to finish that last Oral Communications class, which I had repeatedly failed. This semester I only made it six weeks in before it became obvious I wouldn't pass. I think we'd both finally given up.

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair. Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed? Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with? And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read. And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period. What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then? Give them all board erasers to clean. What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey? And who the hell do you condemn, just who? Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?

THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP Part II If you are one among guests At the table of one greater than you, Take what he gives as it is set before you; Look at what is before you, Don’t shoot many glances at him, Molesting him offends the ka. Don’t speak to him until he summons, One does not know what may displease; Speak when he has addressed you, Then your words will please the heart. The nobleman, when he is behind food, Behaves as his ka commands him; He will give to him whom he favors, It is the custom when night has come. It is the ka that makes his hands reach out, The great man gives to the chosen man; Thus eating is under the counsel of god, A fool is who complains of it. If you are a man of trust, Sent by one great man to another, Adhere to the nature of him who sent you. Give his message as he said it. Guard against reviling speech, Which embroils one great with another; Keep to the truth, don't exceed it, But an outburst should not be repeated. Do not malign anyone, Great or small, the ka abhors it. If you plow and there’s growth in the field, And god lets it prosper in your hand, Do not boast at your neighbors’ side, One has great respect for the silent man: Man of character is man of wealth. If he robs he is like a crocodile in court. Don’t impose on one who is childless, Neither decry nor boast of it; There is many a father who has grief, And a mother of children less content than another; It is the lonely whom god fosters, While the family man prays for a follower. If you are poor, serve a man of worth, That all your conduct may be well with the god. Do not recall if he once was poor, Don’t be arrogant toward him For knowing his former state; Respect him for what has accrued to him. For wealth does not come by itself. It is their law for him whom they love, His gain, he gathered it himself ; It is the god who makes him worthy And protects him while he sleeps. Follow your heart as long as you live, Do no more than is required, Do not shorten the time of “follow-the-heart,” Trimming its moment offends the ka Don’t waste time on daily cares Beyond providing for your household; When wealth has come, follow your heart, Wealth does no good if one is glum! If you are a man of worth And produce a son by the grace of god, If he is straight, takes after you, Takes good care of your possessions. Do for him all that is good, He is your son, your ka begot him, Don’t withdraw your heart from him. But an offspring can make trouble: If he strays, neglects your counsel, Disobeys all that is said, His mouth spouting evil speech, Punish him for all his talk They hate him who crosses you, His guilt was fated in the womb; He whom they guide can not go wrong, Whom they make boatless can not cross. If you are in the antechamber, Stand and sit as fits your rank Which was assigned you the first day. Do not trespass — you will be turned back, Keen is the face to him who enters announced, Spacious the seat of him who has been called. The antechamber has a rule, All behavior is by measure; It is the god who gives advancement, He who uses elbows is not helped. If you are among the people, Gain supporters through being trusted The trusted man who does not vent his belly’s speech, He will himself become a leader, A man of means — what is he like ? Your name is good, you are not maligned, Your body is sleek, your face benign, One praises you without your knowing. He whose heart obeys his belly Puts contempt of himself in place of love, His heart is bald, his body unanointed; The great-hearted is god-given, He who obeys his belly belongs to the enemy.

To be honest? I'd thought myself above them. What a nasty little counter-culture snob I was. There they were, doing their fucking best, trying to have a life, trying to bring up their children decently, struggling to make the payments on the little house, wondering where their youth had gone, where love had gone, what was to become of them and all I could do was be a snotty, judgmental cow. But it was no good. I couldn't be like them. I'd seen too much, done too much that was outside anything they knew. I wasn't better than them, but I was different. We had no point of contact other than work. Even then, they disapproved of my attitude, my ways of dealing with the clients. Many's the time I'd ground my teeth as Andrea or Fran had taken the piss out of some hapless, useless, illiterate get they were assigned to; being funny at the expense of their stupidity, their complete inability to deal with straight society. Sure, I knew it was partly a defence mechanism; they did it because it was laugh or scream, and we were always told it wasn't good to let the clients get too close. But all too often - not always, but enough times to make me seethe with irritation - there was an ingrained, self-serving elitism in there too. Who'd see it better than me? They sealed themselves up in their white-collar world like chrysalides and waited for some kind of reward for being good girls and boys, for playing the game, being a bit of a cut above the messy rest - a reward that didn't exist, would never come and that they would only realise was a lie when it was far too late. Now I would be one of the Others, the clients, the ones who stood outside in the cold and, shivering, looked in at the lighted windows of reason and middle-class respectability. I would be another colossal fuck-up, another dinner party story. But my sin was all the greater because I'd wilfully defected from the right side to the hopelessly, eternally wrong side. I was not only a screw-up, I was a traitor.

Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience. I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent." "That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman. "That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them. I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling. Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement. "We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door. "We're making an orange cake, not chocolate." "Chocolate is so much better." "Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that." "It's just a cake." "It's never just a cake, Lizzy." I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent. I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.

But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County Council in the three short months of the summer of 1987. (p18) The key to resolving the puzzle of Cleveland was the children. What had actually happened to them? Had they been abused - or had the paediatricians and social workers (as public opinion held) been over-zealous and plain wrong? Curiously — particularly given its high profile, year-long sittings and £5 million cost — this was the one central issue never addressed by the Butler-Sloss judicial testimony and sifting of internal evidence, the inquiry's remit did not require it to answer the main question. Ten years after the crisis, my colleagues and I set about reconstructing the records of the 121 children at its heart to determine exactly what had happened to them... (p19) Eventually, though, we did assemble the data given to the Butler-Sloss Inquiry. This divided into two categories: the confidential material, presented in camera, and the transcripts of public sessions of the hearings. Putting the two together we assembled our own database on the children each identified only by the code-letters assigned to them by Butler-Sloss. When it was finished, this database told a startlingly different story from the public myth. In every case there was some prima fade evidence to suggest the possibility of abuse. Far from the media fiction of parents taking their children to Middlesbrough General Hospital for a tummy ache or a sore thumb and suddenly being presented with a diagnosis of child sexual abuse, the true story was of families known to social services for months or years, histories of physical and sexual abuse of siblings and of prior discussions with parents about these concerns. In several of the cases the children themselves had made detailed disclosures of abuse; many of the pre-verbal children displayed severe emotional or behavioural symptoms consistent with sexual abuse. There were even some families in which a convicted sex offender had moved in with mother and children. (p20)

But come on—tell me the proposal story, anyway.” She raised an eyebrow. “Really?” “Really. Just keep in mind that I’m a guy, which means I’m genetically predisposed to think that whatever mushy romantic tale you’re about to tell me is highly cheesy.” Rylann laughed. “I’ll keep it simple, then.” She rested her drink on the table. “Well, you already heard how Kyle picked me up at the courthouse after my trial. He said he wanted to surprise me with a vacation because I’d been working so hard, but that we needed to drive to Champaign first to meet with his former mentor, the head of the U of I Department of Computer Sciences, to discuss some project Kyle was working on for a client.” She held up a sparkly hand, nearly blinding Cade and probably half of the other Starbucks patrons. “In hindsight, yes, that sounds a little fishy, but what do I know about all this network security stuff? He had his laptop out, there was some talk about malicious payloads and Trojan horse attacks—it all sounded legitimate enough at the time.” “Remind me, while I’m acting U.S. attorney, not to assign you to any cybercrime cases.” “Anyhow. . . we get to Champaign, which as it so happens, is where Kyle and I first met ten years ago. And the limo turns onto the street where I used to live while in law school, and Kyle asks the driver to pull over because he wants to see the place for old time’s sake. So we get out of the limo, and he’s making this big speech about the night we met and how he walked me home on the very sidewalk we were standing on—I’ll fast-forward here in light of your aversion to the mushy stuff—and I’m laughing to myself because, well, we’re standing on the wrong side of the street. So naturally, I point that out, and he tells me that nope, I’m wrong, because he remembers everything about that night, so to prove my point I walk across the street to show him and”—she paused here— “and I see a jewelry box, sitting on the sidewalk, in the exact spot where we had our first kiss. Then I turn around and see Kyle down on one knee.” She waved her hand, her eyes a little misty. “So there you go. The whole mushy, cheesy tale. Gag away.” Cade picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. “That was actually pretty smooth.” Rylann grinned. “I know. Former cyber-menace to society or not, that man is a keeper

Now, using her limited artistic skills, she drew a picture of the earth and colored the ocean blue and the land green. “Who can tell me where we come from?” The assignment had come to Amisha after she and Ravi had a discussion with the boys about karma and the universe’s determination of their place. Jay had asked, in his innocence, what crime Ravi had committed in his previous life to be born an untouchable in this one. Amisha started to scold, but Ravi had assured her it was fine, and yet neither had the answer as to why one was born into his station in life. “God?” one student answered. “Evolution. We came from apes,” another answered. “And how do we live our life?” Amisha saw their confusion and tried to explain. “Once we are born, are we still controlled by the person or event that made us? Are we puppets?” The students shook their heads no. “Then how do we make our decisions?” “Our hearts.” Neema’s answer was tentative, sounding more like a question. Amisha nodded her approval, offering encouragement. “Our gut,” a boy in the front added. “What feels right.” “Our soul?” Amisha asked the boy. At his nod, she said, “Excellent—all of you.” Amisha made sure the class was focused before continuing. “The heart and soul work on emotions. They don’t always stop to think about what is right or wrong, only what they want and need. So where do they get their direction?” “From the brain.” The answer came from the back of the room. “Correct. Our minds guide us toward what is acceptable for us to create, protect, or destroy. And where does the brain get its intellect?” Amisha searched the room for an answer. At first the class was quiet, the children glancing at one another to see if anyone had the answer. Finally, a student near the front answered, “From what we learn or have been taught. By knowledge?” “Excellent. But even with our brains, heart, and soul guiding us, can we do anything we want? Do we have the freedom to make our own choices?” When the class murmured no, she asked, “Why not?” “Our parents,” a student threw out, making everyone laugh. “The Raj,” a girl in the front whispered. “Rules,” Neema said. Thrilled that the students were interested, Amisha said, “I want all of you to write about creating something you want, destroying something you don’t need, and protecting what is vital. But you must explain how your heart, your soul, and your mind feel about each event.

The wedding rehearsal itself was uneventful until Father Johnson decided it was time to show Marlboro Man and me the proper way to walk to the marriage altar. Evidently, all of Father Johnson’s theological studies and work was destined to culminate in whether or not Marlboro Man and I approached the altar in the perfectly correct and proper way, because he was intent on driving the point home. “At this point,” Father Johnson instructed, “you’ll start to turn and Ree will take your arm.” He lightly pushed Marlboro Man in the proper direction, and the two of us began walking forward. “Nope, nope, nope,” Father Johnson said authoritatively. “Come back, come back.” Marlboro Man’s college friends snickered. “Oh…what did we do wrong?” I asked Father Johnson humbly. Maybe he’d discovered the truth about the collages. He showed us again. Marlboro Man was to turn and begin walking, then wait for me briefly. Then, as I took his arm, he was to lead me to the altar. Wait. Wasn’t that what we just did? We tried again, and Father Johnson corrected us…again. “Nope, nope, nope,” he said, pulling us both by the arm until we were back in our starting position. Marlboro Man’s friends chuckled. My stomach growled. And Marlboro Man kept quietly restrained, despite the fact that he was being repeatedly corrected by his fiancée’s interim minister for something that arguably wasn’t all that relevant to the commitment we were making to spend the rest of our lives together. We went through no fewer than seven more takes, and with each redo I began to realize that this was Father Johnson’s final test for us. Forget the collage assignment--that was small potatoes. Whether we could keep our cool and take instruction when a nice steak dinner and drinks awaited us at the country club was Father Johnson’s real decider of whether or not Marlboro Man and I were mature, composed, and levelheaded enough to proceed with the wedding. And while I knew Marlboro Man would grit his teeth and bear it, I wasn’t entirely sure I could. But I didn’t have to. On the beginning of the eighth run, just after Father Johnson gave us another “Nope. You’re not getting it right, kids…” Mike’s loud voice echoed throughout the wood-and-marble sanctuary. “Oh, c-c-c-c-come on, Father Johnson!” The chuckles turned into laughter. And out of the corner of my eye I saw Tony giving Mike a subtle high five. Thank goodness for Mike. He was hungry. He wanted to get on to the party.

In other words, you'll pretend to be someone else in order to snag a husband." "Oh, for heaven's sake," she said defensively, "it's no different than what half the women in society do to catch a man. I don't want to waste my time in pointless flirtation when a little knowledge will improve my aim on the targets." He flashed her a condescending smile. "What is it?" she snapped. "Only you would approach courtship as a marksman approaches a shooting match." He licked the tip of his pencil. "So who are these hapless targets?" "The Earl of Devonmont, the Duke of Lyons, and Fernandez Valdez, the Viscount de Basto." His jaw dropped. "Are you insane?" "I know they're rather beyond my reach, but they seem to like my company-" "I daresay they do!" He strode up to her, strangely angry. "The earl is a rakehell with a notorious reputation for trying to get beneath the skirts of every woman he meets. The duke's father was mad, and it's said to run in his family, which is why most women steer clear of him. And Basto is a Portuguese idiot who's too old for you and clearly trawling for some sweet young thing to nurse him in his declining years." "How can you say such things? The only one you know personally is Lord Devonmont, and you barely know even him." "I don't have to. Their reputations tell me they're utterly unacceptable." Unacceptable? Three of the most eligible bachelors in London? Mr. Pinter was mad, not her. "Lord Devonmont is Gabe's wife's cousin. The duke of Gabe's best friend, whom I've known since childhood, and the viscount...well..." "Is an oily sort, from what I hear," he snapped. "No, he isn't. He's very pleasant to talk to." Really, this was the most ridiculous conversation. "Who the devil do you think I should marry, anyway?" That seemed to take him aback. He glanced away. "I don't know," he muttered. "But no...That is, you shouldn't..." He tugged at his cravat. "They're wrong for you, that's all." She'd flustered Mr. Pinter. How astonishing! He was never flustered. It made him look vulnerable and much less...stiff. She rather liked that. But she'd like it even better if she understood what had provoked it. "Why do you care whom I choose, as long as you're paid? I'm wiling to pay extra to ensure that you find out everything I want to know." Once more he turned into Proud Pinter. "It isn't a matter of payment, madam. I choose my own assignments, and this one isn't to my taste. Good day," Turning on his heel, he headed for the door. Oh, dear, she hadn't meant to run him off entirely.

Utilitarianism does not teach that people should strive only after sensuous pleasure (though it recognizes that most or at least many people behave in this way). Neither does it indulge in judgments of value. By its recognition that social cooperation is for the immense majority a means for attaining ali their ends, it dispels the notion that society, the state, the nation, or any other social entity is an ultimate end and that individual men are the slaves of that entity. It rejects the philosophies of universalism, collectivism, and totalitarianism. In this sense it is meaningful to call utilitarianism a philosophy of individualism. The collectivist doctrine fails to recognize that social cooperation is for man a means for the attainment of ali his ends. It assumes that irreconcilable conflict prevails between the interests of the collective and those of individuais, and in this conflict it sides unconditionally with the collective entity. The collective alone has real existence; the individuais' existence is conditioned by that of the collective. The collective is perfect and can do no wrong. Individuais are wretched and refractory; their obstinacy must be curbed by the authority to which God or nature has entrusted the conduct of society's affairs. The powers that be, says the Apostle Paul, are ordained of God. They are ordained by nature or by the superhuman factor that directs the course of ali cosmic events, says the atheist collectivist. Two questions immediately arise. First: If it were true that the interests of the collective and those of individuais are implacably opposed to one another, how could society function? One may assume that the individuais would be prevented by force of arms from resorting to open rebellion. But it cannot be assumed that their active cooperation could be secured by mere compulsion. A system of production in which the only incentive to work is the fear of punishment cannot last. It was this fact that made slavery disappear as a system of managing production. Second: If the collective is not a means by which individuais may achieve their ends, if the collective's flowering requires sacrifices by the individuais which are not outweighed by advantages derived from social cooperation, what prompts the advocate of collectivism to assign to the concerns of the collective precedence over the personal wishes of the individuais? Can any argument be advanced for such exaltation of the collective but personal judgments of value? Of course, everybodys judgments of value are personal. If a man assigns a higher value to the concerns of a collective than to his other concerns, and acts accordingly, that is his affair. So long as the collectivist philosophers proceed in this way, no objection can be raised. But they argue differently. They elevate their personal judgments of value to the dignity of an absolute standard of value. They urge other people to stop valuing according to their own will and to adopt unconditionally the precepts to which collectivism has assigned absolute eternal validity.

Assigning best people to the project (“If they’re easy to give up, they’re the wrong people.”)

The Disruption Machine What the gospel of innovation gets wrong. by Jill Lepore In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps—college students and new graduates—to do what little was left of the work of the employees they’d laid off. This was in Cambridge, near M.I.T. I’d type users’ manuals, save them onto 5.25-inch floppy disks, and send them to a line printer that yammered like a set of prank-shop chatter teeth, but, by the time the last perforated page coiled out of it, the equipment whose functions those manuals explained had been discontinued. We’d work a month here, a week there. There wasn’t much to do. Mainly, we sat at our desks and wrote wishy-washy poems on keyboards manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, left one another sly messages on pink While You Were Out sticky notes, swapped paperback novels—Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, that kind of thing—and, during lunch hour, had assignations in empty, unlocked offices. At Polaroid, I once found a Bantam Books edition of “Steppenwolf” in a clogged sink in an employees’ bathroom, floating like a raft. “In his heart he was not a man, but a wolf of the steppes,” it said on the bloated cover. The rest was unreadable.

When humans are born, we assign them to be either male or female based on their external genitalia. Based on that assignment, we raise them to be either men or women, which are essentially the polar opposite options of personality, occupations, dress, behavior, and demeanor. “As they grow up, we constantly curb their behavior if they don’t fit within the extremely limited options they are given based on their gender assignment and place an incredible amount of social pressure on them to embody every aspect of that identity. If they question their identity, we silence them. If they act in ways that conflict with their assigned identity, we ridicule them. If they don’t align with one of the two options available, we stigmatize them. And if they decide we assigned them the wrong identity, we question their mental health.

Each object inside the forest was adorned in vibrant lush, green dresses and auburn, brown suits as each tree trunk, branch and blade of grass stood to attention, positioned in the exact spot they'd been assigned to almost as if they seemed to wait for whatever might or might not actually happen next.

You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing — beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code — what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work.

Do you want to assign blame or do you want to go to school? Use your head. Nobody ever got anywhere by defying fathers and husbands. If they say you have done wrong, you have.

In 1968, elementary school teacher Jane Elliott conducted a famous experiment with her students in the days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She divided the class by eye color. The brown-eyed children were told they were better. They were the “in-group.” The blue-eyed children were told they were less than the brown-eyed children—hence becoming the “out-group.” Suddenly, former classmates who had once played happily side by side were taunting and torturing one another on the playground. Lest we assign greater morality to the “out-group,” the blue-eyed children were just as quick to attack the brown-eyed children once the roles were reversed.6 Since Elliott’s experiment, researchers have conducted thousands of studies to understand the in-group/out-group response. Now, with fMRI scans, these researchers can actually see which parts of our brains fire up when perceiving a member of an out-group. In a phenomenon called the out-group homogeneity effect, we are more likely to see members of our groups as unique and individually motivated—and more likely to see a member of the out-group as the same as everyone else in that group. When we encounter this out-group member, our amygdala—the part of our brain that processes anger and fear—is more likely to become active. The more we perceive this person outside our group as a threat, the more willing we are to treat them badly.

I had to find a way to get out from under this black cloud, this major time-out that God had assigned me to for whatever wrongs I’d committed.

Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one

Quest assignments are never wrong.

Are Class Captains and School Prefects managers or leaders? Schools miss it when they assign a student to discipline other students. Class captains and school prefects are leaders not managers. A Leader is on A MISSION not on A DUTY. And being a leader goes beyond expecting compliance from others, which is what managers do. If your school assigns prefect to enforce compliance in any way you are doing it all wrong. For one, seeking compliance from anyone is complicated and it comes with a position that "demands" respect and thus you are putting such children at a risk of being hated by their peers. Prefect should be examples not authority figures, plus they should be trained to act like leaders should, if you also don't train them, you are doing it too wrong. Here are some of those "things" you should train your prefect: 1. Active listening 2. How to help their peers and other students find meaning in learning 3. How to make others students wellbeing and safety their priority. 4. How to inspire others and lead by example. Charity begins from school too. Your prefects can learn people skills that can guarantee their future right from your school. Your prefects should be assets to your school because of what they can learn to do now to become better in future not because of what they can do for your school now, which obviously is very little.

for teams to flag problems that they see. On a monthly basis, bring people together to review them and figure out which ones are worth solving. 9. Stop assigning devil’s advocates and start unearthing them. Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong, but they’re only effective if they’re authentic and consistent. Instead of assigning people to play the devil’s advocate, find people who genuinely hold minority opinions, and invite them to present their views. To identify these people, try appointing an information manager—make someone responsible for seeking out team members individually before meetings to find out what they know. 10. Welcome criticism. It’s hard to encourage dissent if you don’t practice what you preach. When Ray Dalio received an email criticizing his performance in an important meeting, copying it to the entire company sent a clear message that he welcomed negative feedback. By inviting employees to criticize you publicly, you can set the tone for people to communicate more openly even when their ideas are unpopular.