The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, "My god -- what are these people doing to themselves?
AV: Yes, and I often joke with Rufus when he comes home that I'm not sure he would actually be able to find our child in a line-up amongst other babies.
But I think, actually, the alternative is to grasp the nettle of the word "atheism" itself, precisely because it is a taboo word, carrying frissons of hysterical phobia.
And what happens when people try to assemble themselves back into life, because of our taboos around suicide, we're not sure what to say, and so quite often we say nothing.
考えてみてください 一日の中で 会う人 会う人に 向かう方角を 言わなきゃいけないんです
So imagine as you're walking around your day, every person you greet, you have to report your heading direction.
So language can have big effects, like we saw with space and time, where people can lay out space and time in completely different coordinate frames from each other.
We're talking a 900-page book that is as weird as it is compelling, and featuring a climactic scene in which a horde of tiny people emerge from the mouth of a sleeping girl and cause a German Shepherd to explode.
And tomorrow you're going to fake it, you're going to make yourself powerful, and, you know -- (Applause) And you're going to go into the classroom, and you are going to give the best comment ever."
If a soldier sees his friend blown up, his brain goes into such high alarm that he can't actually put the experience into words, so he just feels the horror over and over again.
I'm not the only kid who grew up this way, surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones, as if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called, and we got called them all.
And then every day, smart, interesting twentysomethings like you or like your sons and daughters come into my office and say things like this: "I know my boyfriend's no good for me, but this relationship doesn't count. I'm just killing time."
As it turns out, he kind of cribbed that from the philosopher Immanuel Kant who a hundred years earlier had come up with this idea of question propagation, that every answer begets more questions.
If you're sentenced to a jail term in Santa Barbara, California, you should know that if you don't like the standard accommodations, you can buy a prison cell upgrade.
I'm talking about mindful eating: learning to understand your body's signals so that you eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full, because a lot of weight gain boils down to eating when you're not hungry.
My colleague Ed Bertschinger, who heads up the physics department at MIT, has this to say about instant feedback: He indicated that instant feedback turns teaching moments into learning outcomes.
My husband is offended when I say this -- although I have explained to him that what we do in private usually takes less than four minutes -- (Laughter) -- so he shouldn't take it personally.
Even though they look different on the outside, inside, they're all the same, and from time to time they would gather at a sacred cave deep inside the forest to celebrate their unity.
All sorts of people: your family, your friends, your business partners, they all have opinions on which path you should take: "And let me tell you, go through this pipe."
This is true for so many reasons, but first and foremost, I say this because once upon a time, my voice was stolen from me, and feminism helped me to get my voice back.
I am a bad feminist, I am a good woman, I am trying to become better in how I think, and what I say, and what I do, without abandoning everything that makes me human.
(Applause) It's a good thing to know that the bill passed, but let me tell you this: There are countries where 18 is the legal marriage age, but don't we hear cries of women and girls every day?
Now we see some problems with the Syrian situation, as the Syrian situation evolved into also a major security crisis, but the truth is that for a large period, all borders in the Middle East were open.
Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn't take a toll on their memories.
I cannot tell you how many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most, the number one most important skill that you could develop.
And so as soon as I published that, I got a lot of response from people saying, "Thank you for giving voice to something I had felt all my life but there was no word for that."
People who support me and all other trans people wholeheartedly are often so scared to say to wrong thing, so embarrassed to not know what they think they should, that they never ask.
They make chemical words, they recognize those words, and they turn on group behaviors that are only successful when all of the cells participate in unison.
Talk about getting by with nothing. (Laughter) And this, in many ways -- (Applause) -- is a symbol of the resilience of the Inuit people and of all indigenous people around the world.
(Laughter) Before I crack into my rant, which I'm sure you're waiting for -- (Laughter) I need to say one thing, and it's so important in, hopefully, the magic that happens and unfolds in the next three months.
And Dr. Kean went on to tell me, he said, "In my experience, unless repeatedly told otherwise, and even if given a modicum of support, if left to their own devices, a child will achieve."
But these people, they tend to tell you that not only can they communicate with the dead -- "Hi, there" -- but they can hear the dead as well, and they can relay this information back to the living.
The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, "My god -- what are these people doing to themselves? 