Script:
I wake with a shake, not from being shaken by another, but from the vigorous tremors coursing through my body. I turn, lean over the side of the bed, hang my head above a bucket, and retch, but only spit comes out. My stomach has already emptied itself too many times. I lie back down and wait for the next episode. When I hiccup, my chest fills with pain. I rub it, hoping to massage the pain away. Another hiccup comes, and this time it feels like fiery rivers are raging through my chest, culminating in a burst of agony. I sit up with a scream. I can't do this much longer. I hold my breath, hoping this old remedy will help. I try to stifle the cry as another hiccup ignites more pain. By 2 a.m., the pain has become unbearable. I lean over to the other side of the bed and knock on the wall, hard enough to alert Billy and Anne, my hosts. They picked me up at the airport before I set out on this 272-mile, end-to-end hike on Vermont's Long Trail. They housed and fed me and even hiked with me to the Massachusetts-Vermont border, the southern terminus and official start of the trail. Now, two days later, I'm back in their home. My first day on the trail, dehydration hit hard, leaving me sick. Today, a relentless rainstorm soaked me through, leaving not a single dry stitch. Just 14 miles into my trek, I got a text from Billy offering to pick me up at a trailhead on Route 9 so I could dry off and recover before heading back out the next day. I gratefully accepted his offer. Something's wrong. I can't breathe, I say as they enter the guest room. Billy puts his hand on my chest. He's not a doctor, but something tells me he knows what he's doing. Earlier today, it was Billy who inspected my water filter and discovered that I was missing the gasket seal that prevents contaminated water from seeping through. Beaver waste! I was drinking beaver waste! On my first day, I wasn't drinking enough water. By the time I reached a camp, a headache had set in, only to worsen as the evening wore on. Desperate to rehydrate, I drank two liters of water last night and then three more today. But unknowingly, I hadn't properly filtered the water I drew from the nearby stream, running through a beaver dam. The water had looked clear, and I'd assumed my filter was working. Now I realize that contaminated water is most likely the source of the pain I'm experiencing.
Tags:
amusing
fun
geeky
humorous
Script:
Every comic book hero has some Achilles heel, and Ant-Man's was only a millimeter big. There are certain obvious drawbacks for a hero who is the size of an ant. For example, just as Superman is susceptible to kryptonite, Ant-Man has to be ever vigilant against the more common hazard of being stepped on. In addition, his stride being only a few millimeters, he requires thousands of steps to cover the same distance he could walk in one step while normal height. The time required for him to walk a few feet would therefore increase correspondingly. No doubt this was his motivation for frequently hitching rides atop carpenter ants. The fact that he could ride on top of an ant without crushing it indicated that Ant-Man's mass decreased along with his size, implying that his density remained constant as he shrank. Remember that density is the mass of an object divided by its volume. If the volume decreases by a factor of 1,000 and the mass is reduced by an identical factor, the ratio, and hence the object's density, is unchanged. Pym made good use of his reduced mass and constructed a spring-loaded catapult that could shoot him across town. Of course, as we've discussed at length in Chapter 3, it's not the journey but the stopping that is problematic. In order to avoid a messy finale to his trajectory, Pym called upon his special rapport with ants and used his cybernetic helmet to instruct hundreds of them to form a living airbag to cushion his landing. Ant-Man's kinetic energy would be distributed among the many, many ants so that no one insect would suffer overmuch for its participation in breaking his fall. If Ant-Man is such a lightweight that he could be propelled across several city blocks by a coiled spring and not harm the ants that stopped his motion, then how is Ant-Man able to punch his way out of a vacuum cleaner bag, as thrillingly rendered in Tales to Astonish No. 37, or swing a crook overhead using a nylon lariat in the very next issue? As explained in Tales to Astonish No. 38, Henry Pym retained all the strength of a normal human, even when ant-sized. Not to nitpick, but the average normal-sized human, not to mention the average biochemist, would be hard-pressed to be able to swing a full-grown man overhead, even using a practically unbreakable nylon lasso. But leaving that issue aside, what does it mean to say that Ant-Man has the strength of a normal-sized person, such that he can break a vacuum bag, but only the mass of an ant, such that he is easily sucked up by the vacuum cleaner in the first place? Perhaps the more basic question is, why do you have the strength that you do, such that you can easily lift a 20-pound object but struggle with one weighing 200 pounds and cannot possibly lift 2,000 pounds? Our strength comes from our muscles and skeletal structure that make up a series of interconnected levers. It turns out that these levers are not that well-suited to lifting things.
Tags:
academic
legal
court
lawyer
attorney
Script:
Once the court decides that an agency has violated the law, the plaintiff is clearly entitled to some form of relief, if only in order directing the agency to give further consideration to the issue before acting. It has sometimes been argued that a court should withhold any remedy from the plaintiff if granting relief would be unreasonable. The Supreme Court has clearly rejected that position. In TVA v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 1978, the court authorized an injunction against the completion of a multi-million dollar dam because the dam would threaten an endangered species of fish known as the snail darter. The court found that completion of the dam would violate the Endangered Species Act. Having reached this conclusion, the court held that it had no choice but to issue an injunction against completion of the dam. An enormous amount of money had already been spent on the dam, and little work remained to be done, but the court held that these factors were simply irrelevant. In passing the statute, Congress had weighed the importance of saving endangered species against other government policies and had found the policy of saving endangered species to be paramount. The court held that it was not its function to reassess a congressional balancing of these policies. Courts do retain some discretion, however. In a later case, Weinberger v. Romero-Barcello, 456 U.S. 305, 1982, the court held that a statutory violation need not always lead to an injunction against the activity. The violation in question was the Navy's failure to get a permit under the Clean Water Act before a training exercise. The permit was technically required because munitions would fall in the water, but the lower court found that no harm to the coastal waters would in fact result. Under the circumstances, the court held that ordering the Navy to apply for a permit was a sufficient remedy. Remedial discretion was also an issue in Amoco Production Company v. Village of Gamble, Alaska, 480 U.S. 531, 1987. Gamble involved a grant of oil and gas leases covering tracks offshore of Alaska. The environmental effects on Alaskan lands allegedly required the use of special procedures designed to protect the interests of Alaskan natives. The court found Weinberger controlling because only a procedural violation, rather than an actual environmental injury, was present. If an actual environmental injury had been present, however, the result would probably have been different. As the court said, Environmental injury, by its nature, can seldom be adequately remedied by money damages and is often permanent or at least of long duration, i.e., irreparable. If such injury is sufficiently likely, therefore, the balance of harms will usually favor the issuance of an injunction to protect the environment. The court stressed that injury to the environment was unlikely in Gamble and that the countervailing interest in oil exploration was itself the goal of another federal statute.
Tags:
conversational
Script:
Maybe you're one of those rare people who actually likes their job, but perhaps you want to figure out how to build different revenue streams, diversify your portfolio, create a legacy opportunity for your family, or give yourself an exit strategy should the day ever come that you don't like your job anymore. Or, although this may be hard to imagine, maybe you want to prepare yourself for the day when your current employer doesn't want you anymore. Then what? If your salary is your only source of income, you're one step away from poverty. Warren Buffett Let's be honest here. You probably didn't stumble upon this book by accident. There was something about franchising that attracted your attention. Maybe you heard a little bit about franchising before, but have been scared off by stories of high investment costs. Let me guess, you don't have $3 million under your mattress, do you? But what if we told you that you didn't need that? What if we told you that franchising doesn't take millions of dollars? What if we told you that it can be more attainable than buying a starter home? What if we told you that you don't even have to own a franchise in an industry you know something about? What if we told you that you could become a franchise owner and keep your current job? If someone told you all of that, would you want to learn more? If so, that is what we are going to do in this book. Dispel the myths and properly educate you on franchise ownership to determine whether this is the right path for you. Frankly, what is the worst that could happen? Worst case scenario, you listen to a book and learn something new. That is not going to kill you. But maybe, just maybe, you listen to this book and realize that franchise ownership is attainable for you. And perhaps you will even discover how to make that dream a reality. Let me guess, when you hear the word franchising, you probably think of the Golden Arches. McDonald's and its big-name fellows like Taco Bell and Burger King might be the quintessential examples of franchises, but they are far from representative of the franchising world as a whole. Unfortunately, many people don't realize just how diverse and accessible franchising really is. It's no wonder why. After all, to become a McDonald's franchisee, you will need a minimum of $500,000 in liquid assets. Plus, the company reports that the initial investment cost can be as high as $2.3 million. To start at Taco Bell, you will need up to $2.9 million as an initial investment. Hold on a second. Perhaps the most common myth about franchising is that it is all fast food and all uber-expensive. But as you are about to find out,
Tags:
enthusiastic
authoritative
Script:
Enrico Fermi had just sat down for a meal. It was the summer of 1950, and the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who had worked on the Manhattan Project, was joined by a few colleagues to discuss the possibility of intelligent life on other planets. He then asked a simple question, where is everybody? If the cosmos were indeed filled with advanced alien civilizations, Fermi posited, then surely detectable evidence of that life would be scattered across the universe. Given the breadth of human history, one might expect the question had been asked before, but during Fermi's era, one that coincided with revolutions in nuclear power and physics, and thus offered new and unprecedented potential for advanced space travel, the question somehow seemed more urgent. The Fermi Paradox, as it later became known, has since been roundly debated across research labs and universities, given the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life and a sheer lack of evidence. So much so, that an organization dedicated to the search for intelligent life, better known by its acronym SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, sought to elaborate on that observation. Fermi grasped that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire galaxy. Within a few tens of millions of years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. So what Fermi immediately recognized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the galaxy with their presence. But looking around, we don't see any obvious evidence of a galactic empire or a united federation of planets. Enter Frank Drake. In 1961, the Harvard-trained radio astronomer, who would later serve as chairman of the SETI Institute's board of directors, devised a probability formula that employed estimates for several variables, including the rate of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy, as well as the ratio of stars to planets within the so-called habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. It also included an estimate of the fraction of those planets where intelligent life could develop, capable of producing discernible communications, not to mention the length of time those civilizations would need to send their signals out into the cosmos.
Script:
It was thus a considerable surprise to Jackson when, after Roosevelt had won the presidency in the 1932 election and moved to Washington, two of the cadre of lawyers who accompanied Roosevelt offered Jackson a position at the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the Treasury Department, arguing tax cases, an area Jackson had not concentrated on in his Jamestown practice. Jackson was so ambivalent about the prospect of moving to Washington and becoming affiliated with the Roosevelt administration that he originally agreed to accept the position only if he could do so on a part-time basis, retaining his Jamestown law practice. Yet, within a few short years, Jackson had become an integral figure in the administration, litigating several key cases before the Supreme Court and serving first as Solicitor General and then as Attorney General of the United States. Starting in 1938, he was on Roosevelt's short list of potential appointees to the Supreme Court, eventually being appointed in July 1941. His rise from Internal Revenue through the Justice Department to the Court was meteoric. When he was named an Associate Justice, he had just turned 50. Supreme Court Justice was not, however, the last position Jackson held, nor the one he thought the most satisfying or consequential. He found being Solicitor General the most satisfying, and he found his work as the Chief American Prosecutor of Nazi War Criminals at the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 and 1946 the most consequential. Although he abundantly possessed the skills to be a Supreme Court Justice, his ability to analyze legal issues and to craft opinions was extraordinary. He was less suited to being on a court that made decisions collectively. Jackson was not as fulfilled on the court as one might have expected, and exploring why will be a central inquiry of this book. Jackson's personality was complex and layered, making it difficult to fathom. He was a devoted father and affectionate husband, yet several who worked closely with him assumed that he carried on a long-term affair with his secretary, Elsie Douglas. When, in October 1954, he died of a heart attack in Elsie Douglas' apartment, his closest colleague on the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter, tried to cover up the location of his death for fear it could create a scandal.
Tags:
compassionate
understanding
genuine
Script:
Everyone has a unique nervous system. In fact, the infinite variability in how humans' brains work has given rise to the popular term neurodivergence. ADHD fits into this concept. ADHD can look different in everyone. One person may be able to sit still but not focus. Another may have very little trouble sitting still but constantly speak without thinking. And yet another may not be able to sit still for any length of time, while also having problems keeping focused on a task. Such is the nature of ADHD, and one of the reasons many people have a difficult time believing this condition exists. In this chapter, we list the primary symptoms of ADHD and discuss how these symptoms often give rise to others. We also examine how gender, age, race, and sexual orientation create special issues for people with ADHD. Picturing the Primary Symptoms of ADHD ADHD has three primary symptoms – inattention and or distractibility, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. These symptoms don't all have to be present for you to have ADHD, and if you do have one or more of them, they may not be present all the time. Chapter 5 explains how this inconsistency works. The following sections explore these symptoms and many of the ways in which they manifest in people with ADHD. Inattention and or distractibility. Inattention means you have a hard time focusing on something. Distractibility means your attention is easily pulled from one thing to another. Inattention is at the core of ADHD, and it isn't as simple as never being able to focus. Nothing about this condition is as clear-cut as that. Inattention is more accurately a problem in being able to control or regulate how and when you focus on something. Regulation is a key word for people with ADHD. Check out Chapter 2 for more about regulation. We much prefer thinking about attention as variable or inconsistent. This point is where distractibility comes in. External and internal stimuli pull on people with ADHD much harder than on people without it. As a result, people with ADHD have a hard time staying focused on one thing. A key thing to know about this symptom is that it can look different in almost everyone, and it can change from day to day in each person. But even with such variability, a few basic characteristics of inattention and distractibility occur in people with ADHD.
Tags:
historical
housing
architecture
Script:
Our nation's cities are, by and large, the work of immigrant and working-class people who scraped together funds and built a small home for themselves, sometimes with an extra unit or two for rental income. The result of this work is often discordant, messy, and, for anyone who has tried to navigate a vehicle through the winding streets of central Boston or renovate an old Victorian house, poorly suited to contemporary times. However, it has also resulted in rich and vibrant neighborhoods that are today some of the most beloved in the entire country. Yet, although the simple houses and apartment buildings that compose our communities have played a monumental role in shaping our nation's cities, the average person knows very little about them. This book is an attempt to tell the story of these buildings and, through them, tell the broader story of the American city. In nearly every town and city across the United States, there is an old house that has been preserved for posterity as a historic artifact and open for the public to visit. In Brownville, Nebraska, population 142, the former home of a Civil War-era captain sits on broad, manicured grounds with a heavily ornamented facade resembling a dollhouse. In Los Angeles, ornate Victorian homes have been rescued from demolition and transported to a slender lot on the shoulder of the Pasadena Freeway. Men costumed in top hats and women in giant hoop dresses walk the grounds. In both settings, the formal rooms are decorated with period decor. Details like a ragdoll on a child's bed or an enormous wood cauldron in the kitchen are meant to give a window into how people here once lived. It is this type of structure that forms the popular conception of housing in the United States. However, the reality is that most Americans were not wealthy enough to live in lavish and expansive homes, or even ones designed by a trained architect. In rural areas, they were built by the inhabitants themselves, with the assistance of a few neighbors, using local materials and simple construction methods adapted from ancient practices. These homes, with their thatch roofs and mud or stone facades sheltering one to three multipurpose rooms, often looked like natural outcroppings of the landscape. In cities, communities of local builders took on the job of constructing housing. These urban homes, like their rural counterparts, were based on ancient floor plans and composed of multipurpose rooms. They were often built at a modest and affordable scale, created livable and hospitable interior spaces with access to light and open space, and were flexibly designed to adapt to social and demographic trends. Such buildings are largely the product of immigrants who financed, developed, and lived in them. It is not the gingerbread mansions of tourist brochure lore, but these common, everyday houses that represent our nation's most enduring architectural achievement. However, urban housing also represents the nation's deep inequity, where black people and other people of color were, and continue to be, left off the ladder of economic opportunity.
