21
" Unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life are common themes in the American culture today.
Folks sometimes mistake my meaning when I say, “You have the freedom of choice and the ability to create your best life”, because they all too often rush to drop everything that is weighing them down. They quit the job, ditch the unhappy marriage, cut out negative friends and family, get out of Dodge, etc. I do not advocate such hastiness; in fact, I believe that rash decision-making leads to more problems further down the road. Another unsatisfying job manifests; another unhappy relationship results. These people want a new environment, yet the same negative energy always seems to occupy it.
This is because transformation is all about the internal shift, not the external. Any blame placed on outside sources for our unhappiness will forever perpetuate that unhappiness. Pointing the finger is giving away your power of choice and the ability to create our best life. We choose: “That person is making me unhappy” vs. “I make myself happy.”
When you are in unhappy times of lack and feelings of separation – great! Sit there and be with it. Find ways to be content with little. Find ways to be happy with your Self. As we reflect on the lives of mystics past and present, it is not the things they possess or the relationships they share that bring them enlightenment – their light is within. The same light can bring us unwavering happiness (joy).
Love, Peace, Joy – these three things all come from within and have an unwavering flame – life source – that is not dependent on the conditions of the outside world. This knowing is the power and wisdom that the mystics teach us that we are all capable of achieving.
When I say, “You have the freedom of choice and the ability to create your best life”, I am not referring to external conditions; I am referring to the choice you have to look inward and discover the ability to transform the lead of the soul into gold.
Transformation is an inner journey of the soul. Why? Because, as we mentioned above, wherever we go, ourselves go with us. Thus, quitting the job, dumping relationships, etc. will not make us happy because we have forgotten the key factor that makes or breaks our happiness: ourselves.
When we find, create, and maintain peace, joy, and love within ourselves, we then gain the ability to embrace the external world with the same emotions, perspective, and vibration. This ability is a form of enlightenment. It is the modern man’s enlightenment that transforms an unsatisfying life into one of fulfillment. "
― Alaric Hutchinson , Living Peace: Essential Teachings for Enriching Life
23
" Due to the various pragmatic obstacles, it is rare for a mission-critical analysis to be done in the “fully Bayesian” manner, i.e., without the use of tried-and-true frequentist tools at the various stages. Philosophy and beauty aside, the reliability and efficiency of the underlying computations required by the Bayesian framework are the main practical issues. A central technical issue at the heart of this is that it is much easier to do optimization (reliably and efficiently) in high dimensions than it is to do integration in high dimensions. Thus the workhorse machine learning methods, while there are ongoing efforts to adapt them to Bayesian framework, are almost all rooted in frequentist methods. A work-around is to perform MAP inference, which is optimization based.Most users of Bayesian estimation methods, in practice, are likely to use a mix of Bayesian and frequentist tools. The reverse is also true—frequentist data analysts, even if they stay formally within the frequentist framework, are often influenced by “Bayesian thinking,” referring to “priors” and “posteriors.” The most advisable position is probably to know both paradigms well, in order to make informed judgments about which tools to apply in which situations. "
24
" That this is really the case was made plain to me by the questions asked me, mostly by young men, about my Canterbury play, The Zeal of Thy House. The action of the play involves a dramatic presentation of a few fundamental Christian dogmas— in particular, the application to human affairs of the doctrine of the Incarnation. That the Church believed Christ to be in any real sense God, or that the eternal word was supposed to be associated in any way with the word of creation; that Christ was held to be at the same time man in any real sense of the word; that the doctrine of the Trinity could be considered to have any relation to fact or any bearing on psychological truth; that the Church considered pride to be sinful, or indeed took notice of any sin beyond the more disreputable sins of the flesh—all these things were looked upon as astonishing and revolutionary novelties, imported into the faith by the feverish imagination of a playwright. I protested in vain against this flattering tribute to my powers of invention, referring my inquirers to the creeds, to the gospels, and to the offices of the Church; I insisted that if my play were dramatic it was so, not in spite of the dogma, but because of it—that, in short, the dogma was the drama. The explanation was, however, not well received; it was felt that if there were anything attractive in Christian philosophy I must have put it there myself. "
― Dorothy L. Sayers , Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine
26
" People who mock incidents in history such as 9/11 or the Holocaust, referring to it all as a hoax or stirring up crazy conspiracy theories about it, should really stop and think about their words first, both because it shows flaws in logic and rationality to deny the obvious, and because to play pretend with incidents which killed innocent people, well, that's just like laughing in the face of tragedy. It's as if to say, " no, it's not horrible enough that these people were killed, oh no, we have to drag on these incidents by indulging in melodramatic fantasies!" In essence this means that those who lost loved ones not only have to live with these losses forever, they also have to live with the people who deny that any of it ever happened. It does no good to forget history or to deny it. All it does is desensitize people; it tells them that it's all just a game, which then risks the possibility of nobody taking it seriously enough to prevent something similar from happening again. "
33
" This book is a work of fiction.
Actually, it is a work of fiction within a fiction, as the main characters, though real persons in a fictional world, are being depicted in a book which other fictional characters in the same world are reading. Any reference to historical events-- rather, historical events non-Marridonian, and also non-Sesternese-- real people—rather, people in our realm, not the persons I was referring to in the previous line-- or real places—places that are not Marridon, Sesterna, and any place on the Two Continents-- are used fictitiously, because this is a work of fiction, and is a fiction within a fiction, as was previously stated. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination—referring to the ultimate author, not the fictitious author who has written the book within the book-- and any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, living, dead, or otherwise, is entirely coincidental, but any resemblance to actual persons or places in the Two Continents is intentional. Absolutely no parts of this book, text or art, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, whether electronically or mechanically, including photocopying—
“By Myrellenos, are we here in the disclaimer again? This is the third time, I believe. And there are still no cups out. Where is the teapot?”
“Here, boss.”
“Oh, there is tea in this story? I might be more inclined to stay and hear this one. The others were dreadful slow. I must have some tea, if I am going to be made to sit and listen to a whole book. I am not Bartleby, who can sit at his desk and flump over his tomes until he moulders.”
“He’s gonna hear you, boss.”
“I should say not, Rannig. He is too busy with doing the edits. He found a mistake in one of the other books about us and demanded he perform the editing this time around. The author was very good to let him do as he likes. He is missing tea, however.”
--audio recording, data retrieval, cloud storage, torrent, or streaming service. If you do decide to ignore this disclaimer and print or share this book illegally, I will have Bartleby come to your house with a sample from the Marridonian legal extracts, and he will read them to you until you promise never to do anything illegal again. "
― Michelle Franklin , The Ship's Crew: A Marridon Novella
36
" The missile crisis " was the most dangerous moment in human history," Arthur Schlesinger commented in October 2002 at a conference in Havana on the fortieth anniversary of the crisis, attended by a number of those who witnessed it from within as it unfolded. Desision-makers at the time undoubtedly understood that the fate of the world was in their hands. Nevertheless, attendees at the conference may have been shocked by some of the revelations. They were informed that in October 1962 the world was " one word away" from nuclear war. " A guy named Arkhipov saved the world," said Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive in Washington, which helped organize the event. He was referring to Vasil Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed toredoes in October 27, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when te submarines were under attack bu US destroyers, A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading a major war. Pg 74, Penguin Publication "
