The essential quality that an entity needs, if it is to become an effective gene vehicle, is this. It must have an impartial exit channel into the future, for all the genes inside it. This is true of an individual wolf. The channel is the thin stream...
How did you know? That she wasn't the one for him?" Now he's staring at his hands, slowing rubbing them together. "They just didn't have that . . . natural magic. You know? It never seemed easy." My voice grows tiny. "Do you think things have to be e...
While a battle still entirely political was preparing in this same place which had already seen so many revolutionary events, while the youth, the secret associations, the schools in the name of principles, and the middle class in the name of interes...
As I have explained in earlier chapters, abusiveness has little to do with psychological problems and everything to do with values and beliefs. Where do a boy’s values about partner relationships come from? The sources are many. The most important ...
Before I go to sleep tonight; I will speak a nice prayer, I will let my worries leave my mind as silence fills the air. If I have a bed; to curl between the sheets, I am an inch more blessed; than the man, on the street. If I have a love to cuddle; i...
Why didn't Jacob simply refuse to go along with this bold, obvious swindle? Again, Robert Alter's insights are invaluable. When Jacob asks, 'Why have you DECEIVED me?' the Hebrew word is the same one used in chapter 27 to describe what Jacob did to I...
The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offe...
Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the extraordinary difficulty he had found in translating the Bible into Eskimo. It was useless to talk of corn or wine to a people who did not know even what they meant, so he had to use equivalen...
Shaykha Sultana al-Zubaydiyya Shaykha Sultana al-Zubaydiyya, famous scholar and saint, was the dauther of 'Ali al-Zubaydi, a man belonging to the martial Zubaydi clan of the tribe of Bani Haritha, itself an offshoot of the major tribe of Kinda, one o...
I flip through the book, one of his top three, without question, to the last horrifying chapter: ‘A Stronger Loving World'. To the only panel he's circled. Oscar-who never defaced a book in his life-circled one panel three times in the same emphati...
Oh God how subtle he would have to be, how cunning... No paragraph, no phrase even of the thousands the book must contain could strike a discordant note, be less than fully imagined, an entire novel's worth of thought would have to be expended on eac...
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no...
Chapter 8 - The Rescue Team: "Timbroke Hall was completely dark. A creaking shutter opened and closed to the rhythm of a howling, north wind. It bore a cold reminder of the harsh winter coming quickly this year. The children crept up the rock stairs ...
CHAPTER VI Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One's Own Arms And Ability LET no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, wa...
Ritual abuse diagnosis research – excerpt from a chapter in: Lacter, E. & Lehman, K. (2008).Guidelines to Differential Diagnosis between Schizophrenia and Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Traumatic Stress. In J.R. Noblitt & P. Perskin(Eds.), Ritual Abuse ...
(2002) In Rome, month upon month, I struggled with how to structure the book about my father (He already had the water, he just had to discover jars). At one point I laid each chapter out on the terrazzo floor, eighty-three in all, arranged them like...
My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. ...
How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatr...
Telling me I’m pretty is nice and all, but if you really want to make my day, tell me I inspired you to read a book. Say you picked up a novel I’ve raved about and that you fell in love with it, too. Or tell me the time we spent reading aloud tog...
Anyway. I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math i...
Izzi: Remember Moses Morales? Tom Verde: Who? Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about. Tom Verde: From your trip. Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it. Tom Verde: Izzi... ...