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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9900 | Are too-easy car loans the next subprime disaster?
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In a word, no. Wall Street-traded debt securities of all kinds are fuel for the next sub-prime financial disaster. The first three segments of this program all have the same thing in common: securitized debt bubbles. Whether in housing, health care, car loans, student loans; whether initiated by Democrats or Republicans, each for their own agenda, costs pumped up by investors, which are not allowed to come down and are instead bailed out with taxpayer money after collapsing (coupled with monetary policy that rewards moral hazard) is a formula for more financial disaster. Wages will forever be chasing runaway prices caused by debt bubbles if nothing is done to change the motivation to speculate in the financial industries, and people will continue to take on debt because they can't afford current prices. If sub-prime is no longer the threat that it was in '07, it's only because investors have bought up huge segments of the housing market and now mean to securitize that; namely, with CDO's packed with rental obligations and inflated property prices backed by Fannie and Freddie. Financial leaders (like Larry Summers) insist that rescinding Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with the '07 mortgage meltdown. If that's true, then why are they so reluctant to reinstate it? Forget nitpicking around with the Volcker Rule---reinstate Glass-Steagall and separate Wall Street from Main Street permanently.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9910 | Documentation Center
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Temperature Control in a Heat Exchanger
This example shows how to design feedback and feedforward compensators to regulate the temperature of a chemical reactor through a heat exchanger.
Heat Exchanger Process
A chemical reactor called "stirring tank" is depicted below. The top inlet delivers liquid to be mixed in the tank. The tank liquid must be maintained at a constant temperature by varying the amount of steam supplied to the heat exchanger (bottom pipe) via its control valve. Variations in the temperature of the inlet flow are the main source of disturbances in this process.
Figure 1: Stirring Reactor with Heat Exchanger.
Using Measured Data to Model The Heat Exchanger Dynamics
To derive a first-order-plus-deadtime model of the heat exchanger characteristics, inject a step disturbance in valve voltage V and record the effect on the tank temperature T over time. The measured response in normalized units is shown below:
title('Measured response to step change in steam valve voltage');
The values t1 and t2 are the times where the response attains 28.3% and 63.2% of its final value. You can use these values to estimate the time constant tau and dead time theta for the heat exchanger:
t1 = 21.8; t2 = 36.0;
tau = 3/2 * ( t2 - t1 )
theta = t2 - tau
tau =
theta =
Verify these calculations by comparing the first-order-plus-deadtime response with the measured response:
s = tf('s');
Gp = exp(-theta*s)/(1+tau*s)
Gp =
exp(-14.7*s) * ----------
21.3 s + 1
Continuous-time transfer function.
hold on, step(Gp), hold off
title('Experimental vs. simulated response to step change');
The model response and the experimental data are in good agreement. A similar bump test experiment could be conducted to estimate the first-order response to a step disturbance in inflow temperature. Equipped with models for the heat exchanger and inflow disturbance, we are ready to design the control algorithm.
Feedback Control
A block diagram representation of the open-loop process is shown below.
Figure 2: Open-Loop Process.
The transfer function
$$ G_p(s) = {e^{-14.7 s} \over 21.3s+1} $$
models how a change in the voltage V driving the steam valve opening affects the tank temperature T, while the transfer function
$$ G_d(s) = {e^{-35 s} \over 25s+1} $$
models how a change d in inflow temperature affects T. To regulate the tank temperature T around a given setpoint Tsp, we can use the following feedback architecture to control the valve opening (voltage V):
Figure 3: Feedback Control.
In this configuration, the proportional-integral (PI) controller
$$ C(s) = K_c (1 + {1 \over \tau_c s} ) $$
calculates the voltage V based on the gap Tsp-T between the desired and measured temperatures. You can use the ITAE formulas to pick adequate values for the controller parameters:
$$ K_c = 0.859 (\theta / \tau)^{-0.977} , \;\;\; \tau_c = ( \theta / \tau )^{0.680} \tau / 0.674 $$
Kc = 0.859 * (theta / tau)^(-0.977)
tauc = ( tau / 0.674 ) * ( theta / tau )^0.680
C = Kc * (1 + 1/(tauc*s));
Kc =
tauc =
To see how well the ITAE controller performs, close the feedback loop and simulate the response to a set point change:
Tfb = feedback(ss(Gp*C),1);
step(Tfb), grid on
title('Response to step change in temperature setpoint T_{sp}')
ylabel('Tank temperature')
The response is fairly fast with some overshoot. Looking at the stability margins confirms that the gain margin is weak:
margin(Gp*C), grid
Reducing the proportional gain Kc strengthens stability at the expense of performance:
C1 = 0.9 * (1 + 1/(tauc*s)); % reduce Kc from 1.23 to 0.9
margin(Gp*C1), grid
step(Tfb,'b', feedback(ss(Gp*C1),1),'r')
legend('Kc = 1.23','Kc = 0.9')
Feedforward Control
Recall that changes in inflow temperature are the main source of temperature fluctuations in the tank. To reject such disturbances, an alternative to feedback control is the feedforward architecture shown below:
Figure 4: Feedforward Control.
In this configuration, the feedforward controller F uses measurements of the inflow temperature to adjust the steam valve opening (voltage V). Feedforward control thus anticipates and preempts the effect of inflow temperature changes.
Straightforward calculation shows that the overall transfer from temperature disturbance d to tank temperature T is
$$ T = (G_p F + G_d) d $$
Perfect disturbance rejection requires
$$ G_p F + G_d = 0 \rightarrow F = -{G_d \over G_p} = - {21.3s+1 \over 25s+1} e^{-20.3 s}$$
In reality, modeling inaccuracies prevent exact disturbance rejection, but feedforward control will help minimize temperature fluctuations due to inflow disturbances. To get a better sense of how the feedforward scheme would perform, increase the ideal feedforward delay by 5 seconds and simulate the response to a step change in inflow temperature:
Gd = exp(-35*s)/(25*s+1);
F = -(21.3*s+1)/(25*s+1) * exp(-25*s);
Tff = Gp * ss(F) + Gd; % d->T transfer with feedforward control
step(Tff), grid
title('Effect of a step disturbance in inflow temperature')
ylabel('Tank temperature')
Combined Feedforward-Feedback Control
Feedback control is good for setpoint tracking in general, while feedforward control can help with rejection of measured disturbances. Next we look at the benefits of combining both schemes. The corresponding control architecture is shown below:
Figure 5: Feedforward-Feedback Control.
Use connect to build the corresponding closed-loop model from Tsp,d to T. First name the input and output channels of each block, then let connect automatically wire the diagram:
Gd.u = 'd'; Gd.y = 'Td';
Gp.u = 'V'; Gp.y = 'Tp';
F.u = 'd'; F.y = 'Vf';
C.u = 'e'; C.y = 'Vc';
Sum1 = sumblk('e = Tsp - T');
Sum2 = sumblk('V = Vf + Vc');
Sum3 = sumblk('T = Tp + Td');
Tffb = connect(Gp,Gd,C,F,Sum1,Sum2,Sum3,{'Tsp','d'},'T');
To compare the closed-loop responses with and without feedforward control, calculate the corresponding closed-loop transfer function for the feedback-only configuration:
C.u = 'e'; C.y = 'V';
Tfb = connect(Gp,Gd,C,Sum1,Sum3,{'Tsp','d'},'T');
Now compare the two designs:
step(Tfb,'b',Tffb,'r--'), grid
title('Closed-loop response to setpoint and disturbance step change')
ylabel('Tank temperature')
legend('Feedback only','Feedforward + feedback')
The two designs have identical performance for setpoint tracking, but the addition of feedforward control is clearly beneficial for disturbance rejection. This is also visible on the closed-loop Bode plot
legend('Feedback only','Feedforward + feedback','Location','SouthEast')
Interactive Simulation
To gain additional insight and interactively tune the feedforward and feedback gains, use the companion GUI and Simulink® model. Click on the link below to launch the GUI.
Open the Heat Exchanger model and GUIOpen the Heat Exchanger model and GUI
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how to run program in matlab?
Asked by aisha on 17 Sep 2013
i am finding problem while i run program , window shows a message that data file is not found whereas file is present in the directory.
No tags are associated with this question.
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5 Answers
Answer by Image Analyst on 17 Sep 2013
Accepted answer
Did you construct the full file name (folder plus base file name plus extension) with the fullfile() function, or did you just use the base filename and extension and hope that somehow the file was luckily on your search path?
Image Analyst
Answer by Jan Simon on 17 Sep 2013
Please take the time and read your question again. Then check, whether a meaning answer is possible based on the provided information. All we know, is that you expect a file at a certain location but any program shows an error message, that the file is not there. I'm convinced, and you could be it also, that the file is not there, because computers to not cheat or lie in such situations. This means, that your expectation is wrong.
If you show us, which code you use, where the file is, which program you call and explain why you assume, that the file is there, we have a chance to post a meaningful answer.
Image Analyst took his experience with answering questions for many years to guess more details.
Jan Simon
Answer by aisha on 17 Sep 2013
I am using program developed by someone and in the program folder i have files names like data.m, data.out etc. when i run the code, software gives some highlighted errors with message of "fix" and for some error just "details".
Image Analyst on 19 Sep 2013
yfm is null - no rows. But if that's the case then why does it say you have 565 columns? That's a weird one - you might want to ask the Mathworks about that. You might try
[rows, columns] = size(yfm);
for i = 1 : columns
aisha on 20 Sep 2013
If I send you complete code along data file can you help me where is the problem, why results are not published??
Image Analyst on 20 Sep 2013
I may or may not have time for that. No need to "send" the file - just attach it via the paper clip icon above the edit box when you enter a new comment.
Answer by aisha on 17 Sep 2013
I am using matlab program from following link:
Answer by aisha on 18 Sep 2013
when I run the above mentioned program, out put is not complete. some errors are shown with fix or detail message. how to fix these errors?
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Modulation tutorial
Simple illustration of the Jacobian determinant as a geometric scaling factor
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This graphical tutorial is intended to help neuro-imaging researchers from non-mathematical backgrounds to understand the so-called "modulation" process in voxel-based morphometry. This preserves volume (locally and globally) in spatially normalised (warped) images by multiplying the original probabilistic segmentation values by the determinant of the Jacobian matrix of the geometric warp at each voxel.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9916 | Documentation Center
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Time Series Regression IV: Spurious Regression
This example considers trending variables, spurious regression, and methods of accommodation in multiple linear regression models. It is the fourth in a series of examples on time series regression, following the presentation in previous examples.
Predictors that trend over time are sometimes viewed with suspicion in multiple linear regression (MLR) models. Individually, however, they need not affect ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. In particular, there is no need to linearize and detrend each predictor. If response values are well-described by a linear combination of the predictors, an MLR model is still applicable, and classical linear model (CLM) assumptions are not violated.
If, however, a trending predictor is paired with a trending response, there is the possibility of spurious regression, where $t$ -statistics and overall measures of fit become misleadingly "significant." That is, the statistical significance of relationships in the model do not accurately reflect the causal significance of relationships in the data-generating process (DGP).
To investigate, we begin by loading relevant data from the previous example on "Influential Observations," and continue the analysis of the credit default model presented there:
load Data_TSReg3
One way that mutual trends arise in a predictor and a response is when both variables are correlated with a causally prior confounding variable outside of the model. The omitted variable (OV) becomes a part of the innovations process, and the model becomes implicitly restricted, expressing a false relationship that would not exist if the OV were included in the specification. Correlation between the OV and model predictors violates the CLM assumption of strict exogeneity.
When a model fails to account for a confounding variable, the result is omitted variable bias, where coefficients of specified predictors over-account for the variation in the response, shifting estimated values away from those in the DGP. Estimates are also inconsistent, since the source of the bias does not disappear with increasing sample size. Violations of strict exogeneity help model predictors track correlated changes in the innovations, producing overoptimistically small confidence intervals on the coefficients and a false sense of goodness of fit.
To avoid underspecification, it is tempting to pad out an explanatory model with control variables representing a multitude of economic factors with only tenuous connections to the response. By this method, the likelihood of OV bias would seem to be reduced. However, if irrelevant predictors are included in the model, the variance of coefficient estimates increases, and so does the chance of false inferences about predictor significance. Even if relevant predictors are included, if they do not account for all of the OVs, then the bias and inefficiency of coefficient estimates may increase or decrease, depending, among other things, on correlations between included and excluded variables [1]. This last point is usually lost in textbook treatments of OV bias, which typically compare an underspecified model to a practically unachievable fully-specified model.
Without experimental designs for acquiring data, and the ability to use random sampling to minimize the effects of misspecification, econometricians must be very careful about choosing model predictors. The certainty of underspecification and the uncertain logic of control variables makes the role of relevant theory especially important in model specification. Examples in this series on "Predictor Selection" and "Residual Diagnostics" describe the process in terms of cycles of diagnostics and respecification. The goal is to converge to an acceptable set of coefficient estimates, paired with a series of residuals from which all relevant specification information has been distilled.
In the case of the credit default model introduced in the example on "Linear Models," confounding variables are certainly possible. The candidate predictors are somewhat ad hoc, rather than the result of any fundamental accounting of the causes of credit default. Moreover, the predictors are proxies, dependent on other series outside of the model. Without further analysis of potentially relevant economic factors, evidence of confounding must be found in an analysis of model residuals.
Detrending is a common preprocessing step in econometrics, with different possible goals. Often, economic series are detrended in an attempt to isolate a stationary component amenable to ARMA analysis or spectral techniques. Just as often, series are detrended so that they can be compared on a common scale, as with per capita normalizations to remove the effect of population growth. In regression settings, detrending may be used to minimize spurious correlations.
A plot of the credit default data (see the example on "Linear Models") shows that the predictor BBB and the response IGD are both trending. It might be hoped that trends could be removed by deleting a few atypical observations from the data. For example, the trend in the response seems mostly due to the single influential observation in 2001:
hold on
hold off
ylabel('Response Level')
title('{\bf Response}')
axis tight
grid on
Alternatively, variable transformations are used to remove trends. This may improve the statistical properties of a regression model, but it complicates analysis and interpretation. Any transformation alters the economic meaning of a variable, favoring the predictive power of a model over explanatory simplicity.
The manner of trend-removal depends on the type of trend. One type of trend is produced by a trend-stationary (TS) process, which is the sum of a deterministic trend and a stationary process. TS variables, once identified, are often linearized with a power or log transformation, then detrended by regressing on time. The detrend function, used above, removes the least-squares line from the data. This transformation often has the side effect of regularizing influential observations.
Stochastic Trends
Not all trends are TS, however. Difference stationary (DS) processes, also known as integrated or unit root processes, may exhibit stochastic trends, without a TS decomposition. When a DS predictor is paired with a DS response, problems of spurious regression appear [2]. This is true even if the series are generated independently from one another, without any confounding. The problem is complicated by the fact that not all DS series are trending.
Consider the following regressions between DS random walks with various degrees of drift. The coefficient of determination ( $R^2$ ) is computed in repeated realizations, and the distribution displayed. For comparison, the distribution for regressions between random vectors (without an autoregressive dependence) is also displayed:
T = 100;
numSims = 1000;
drifts = [0 0.1 0.2 0.3];
numModels = length(drifts);
Steps = randn(T,2,numSims);
% Regression between two random walks:
ResRW = zeros(numSims,T,numModels);
RSqRW = zeros(numSims,numModels);
for d = 1:numModels
for s = 1:numSims
Y = zeros(T,2);
for t = 2:T
Y(t,:) = drifts(d) + Y(t-1,:) + Steps(t,:,s);
% The compact regression formulation:
% MRW =,1),Y(:,2));
% ResRW(s,:,d) = MRW.Residuals.Raw';
% RSqRW(s,d) = MRW.Rsquared.Ordinary;
% is replaced by the following for
% efficiency in repeated simulation:
X = [ones(size(Y(:,1))),Y(:,1)];
y = Y(:,2);
Coeff = X\y;
yHat = X*Coeff;
res = y-yHat;
yBar = mean(y);
regRes = yHat-yBar;
SSR = regRes'*regRes;
SSE = res'*res;
SST = SSR+SSE;
RSq = 1-SSE/SST;
ResRW(s,:,d) = res';
RSqRW(s,d) = RSq;
% Plot R-squared distributions:
CMap = get(gcf,'ColorMap');
Colors = CMap(linspace(1,64,numModels),:);
legend(strcat({'Drift = '},num2str(drifts','%-2.1f')),'Location','North');
xlabel('{\it R}^2')
ylabel('Number of Simulations')
title('{\bf Regression Between Two Independent Random Walks}')
clear RsqRW
% Regression between two random vectors:
RSqR = zeros(numSims,1);
for s = 1:numSims
% The compact regression formulation:
% MR =,1,s),Steps(:,2,s));
% RSqR(s) = MR.Rsquared.Ordinary;
% is replaced by the following for
% efficiency in repeated simulation:
X = [ones(size(Steps(:,1,s))),Steps(:,1,s)];
y = Steps(:,2,s);
Coeff = X\y;
yHat = X*Coeff;
res = y-yHat;
yBar = mean(y);
regRes = yHat-yBar;
SSR = regRes'*regRes;
SSE = res'*res;
SST = SSR+SSE;
RSq = 1-SSE/SST;
RSqR(s) = RSq;
% Plot R-squared distribution:
set(get(gca,'Children'),'FaceColor',[.8 .8 1])
xlabel('{\it R}^2')
ylabel('Number of Simulations')
title('{\bf Regression Between Two Independent Random Vectors}')
clear RSqR
The $R^2$ for the random-walk regressions becomes more significant as the drift coefficient increases. Even with zero drift, random-walk regressions are more significant than regressions between random vectors, where $R^2$ values fall almost exclusively below 0.1.
Spurious regressions are often accompanied by signs of autocorrelation in the residuals, which can serve as a diagnostic clue. The following shows the distribution of autocorrelation functions (ACF) for the residual series in each of the random-walk regressions above:
numLags = 20;
ACFResRW = zeros(numSims,numLags+1,numModels);
for s = 1:numSims
for d = 1:numModels
ACFResRW(s,:,d) = autocorr(ResRW(s,:,d));
clear ResRW
% Plot ACF distributions:
hold on
hold off
ylabel('Sample Autocorrelation')
title('{\bf Residual ACF Distributions}')
grid on
clear ACFResRW
Colors correspond to drift values in the bar plot above. The plot shows extended, significant residual autocorrelation for the majority of simulations. Diagnostics related to residual autocorrelation are discussed further in the example on "Residual Diagnostics."
The simulations above lead to the conclusion that, trending or not, all regression variables should be tested for integration. It is then usually advised that DS variables be detrended by differencing, rather than regressing on time, to achieve a stationary mean.
The distinction between TS and DS series has been widely studied (for example, in [3]), particularly the effects of underdifferencing (treating DS series as TS) and overdifferencing (treating TS series as DS). If one trend type is treated as the other, with inappropriate preprocessing to achieve stationarity, regression results become unreliable, and the resulting models generally have poor forecasting ability, regardless of the in-sample fit.
Econometrics Toolbox™ has several tests for the presence or absence of integration: adftest, pptest, kpsstest, and lmctest. For example, the augmented Dickey-Fuller test, adftest, looks for statistical evidence against a null of integration. With default settings, tests on both IGD and BBB fail to reject the null in favor of a trend-stationary alternative:
IGD = y0;
BBB = X0(:,2);
h1IGD =
pValue1IGD =
h1BBB =
pValue1BBB =
h0IGD =
pValue0IGD =
h0BBB =
pValue0BBB =
What is needed for preprocessing is a systematic application of these tests to all of the variables in a regression, and their differences. The utility function i10test automates the required series of tests. The following performs paired ADF/KPSS tests on all of the model variables and their first differences:
I.names = {'model'};
I.vals = {'TS'};
S.names = {'trend'};
S.vals = {true};
warning(s) % Restore warning state
Test Results
I(1) I(0)
AGE 1 0
0.0069 0.1000
D1AGE 1 0
0.0010 0.1000
BBB 0 1
0.6976 0.0100
D1BBB 1 0
0.0249 0.1000
CPF 0 0
0.2474 0.1000
D1CPF 1 0
0.0064 0.1000
SPR 0 1
0.2563 0.0238
D1SPR 1 0
0.0032 0.1000
IGD 0 0
0.1401 0.1000
D1IGD 1 0
0.0028 0.1000
For comparison with the original regression in the example on "Linear Models," we replace BBB, SPR, CPF, and IGD with their first differences, D1BBB, D1SPR, D1CPF, and D1IGD. We leave AGE undifferenced:
D1X0 = diff(X0);
D1y0 = diff(y0);
respNameD1 = {'D1IGD'};
Original regression with undifferenced data:
M0 =
Linear regression model:
IGD ~ 1 + AGE + BBB + CPF + SPR
Estimated Coefficients:
Estimate SE tStat pValue
_________ _________ _______ _________
(Intercept) -0.22741 0.098565 -2.3072 0.034747
AGE 0.016781 0.0091845 1.8271 0.086402
BBB 0.0042728 0.0026757 1.5969 0.12985
CPF -0.014888 0.0038077 -3.91 0.0012473
SPR 0.045488 0.033996 1.338 0.1996
Number of observations: 21, Error degrees of freedom: 16
Root Mean Squared Error: 0.0763
R-squared: 0.621, Adjusted R-Squared 0.526
Regression with differenced data:
MD1 =,D1y0,'VarNames',[predNamesD1,respNameD1])
MD1 =
Linear regression model:
D1IGD ~ 1 + AGE + D1BBB + D1CPF + D1SPR
Estimated Coefficients:
Estimate SE tStat pValue
_________ _________ ________ _________
(Intercept) -0.089492 0.10843 -0.82535 0.4221
AGE 0.015193 0.012574 1.2083 0.24564
D1BBB -0.023538 0.020066 -1.173 0.25909
D1CPF -0.015707 0.0046294 -3.393 0.0040152
D1SPR -0.03663 0.04017 -0.91187 0.37626
Number of observations: 20, Error degrees of freedom: 15
Root Mean Squared Error: 0.106
R-squared: 0.49, Adjusted R-Squared 0.354
The differenced data increases the standard errors on all coefficient estimates, as well as the overall RMSE. This may be the price of correcting a spurious regression. The sign and the size of the coefficient estimate for the undifferenced predictor, AGE, shows little change. Even after differencing, CPF has pronounced significance among the predictors. Accepting the revised model depends on practical considerations like explanatory simplicity and forecast performance, evaluated in the example on "Forecasting."
Because of the possibility of spurious regression, it is usually advised that variables in time series regressions be detrended, as necessary, to achieve stationarity before estimation. There are trade-offs, however, between working with variables that retain their original economic meaning and transformed variables that improve the statistical characteristics of OLS estimation. The trade-off may be difficult to evaluate, since the degree of "spuriousness" in the original regression cannot be measured directly. The methods discussed in this example will likely improve the forecasting abilities of resulting models, but may do so at the expense of explanatory simplicity.
[1] Clarke, K. A. "The Phantom Menace: Omitted Variable Bias in Econometric Research." Conflict Management and Peace Science. Vol. 22, 2005, pp. 341-352.
[3] Nelson, C. R., and C. I. Plosser. "Trends Versus Random Walks in Macroeconomic Time Series: Some Evidence and Implications." Journal of Monetary Economics. Vol. 10, 1982, pp. 139-162.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9920 | Regardless of the weather, ear health is ongoing concern for many parents. While ear infections might be more common in the winter months, they can also occur in warmer weather, or residual issues might cause problems throughout the year.
Swimmer's ear is a common problem that can occur at any age.
Dr. Kirby J. Scott of Central ENT Consultants, P.C. in Hagerstown offered the following information about ear issues and treatments.
Swimmer's ear, or otitis externa, occurs in hotter months
Requires three things to happen:
* presence of skin and debris
* warmth
* moisture
The chances of developing swimmer's ear can be reduced
* by the use of a hairdryer to dry the ears after swimming
* Careful cleaning with the use of cotton swabs
If swimmer's ear does happen, it can be treated with ear drops provided by a prescription
Diseases of the ear:
• Acute otitis media, the most common ear infection (earache). Parts of the middle ear are infected and swollen and fluid is trapped behind the eardrum. This causes pain in the ear.
• Otitis media with effusion sometimes happens after an ear infection has run its course and fluid stays trapped behind the eardrum.
• Chronic otitis media with effusion happens when fluid remains in the middle ear for a long time or returns over and over again, even though there is no infection.
Presence of a foreign body or sensation
This is most common when objects get stuck in the ears. Scott noted carpet fibers or sofa fabric, pencil erasers, Styrofoam. Just about anything that can be inserted into the ear might be. These foreign objects need to be removed in order to prevent infection.
Both recurrent acute otitis and chronic otitis can cause hearing loss
* Recurrent means the issue can be completely resolved with treatment
* Chronic means fluid is present for three or more months |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9958 | You Me and Dupree (2006): in the Bedroom
Uploaded on November 10, 2011 by AnyClip
The clip in the bedroom from You Me and Dupree (2006) with Matt Dillon
What do you hear? What do you say?
So, let me get this straight. I mean, he hijacks our answering machine.
"Carl and Molly, press two. " Okay?
And then he decides, "Hey, I'm sleeping on the couch,
"and I'm gonna order HBO."
I mean, I don't know, Carl. Am I wrong here?
Molly, what do you want me to do, whack the guy?
Look, I told Dupree not to change anything without asking,
and I gave him a pair of pajamas.
Dupree's gonna get the hang of this.
He's never truly been domesticated. He's like the ape-man of Borneo.
Oh, so we're the lucky ones who get to housebreak him?
No, you know what I mean, honey.
I'm over it.
I finished my thank-you notes today.
Do you need help with your half? No, no, no, I...
Candlesticks, bread maker, Crock-Pot. I got them covered.
It's my final offer.
No, I got them covered.
Sorry to interrupt. Oh!
Damn it, Dupree! What is this? This is an emergency.
I'm sorry. The downstairs crapper, it's on the fritz again.
What do you mean, "It's on the fritz"?
I don't know. It's on the fritz.
Please tell me he's joking.
We might need some matches.
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You, Me And Dupree, In The Bedroom, Matt Dillon, AnyClip, Entertainment
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9960 | User Score
Mixed or average reviews- based on 70 Ratings
User score distribution:
1. Positive: 35 out of 70
2. Negative: 21 out of 70
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1. Jun 17, 2013
Just meh.. Highlights: combat, spent time with Aria. Other than that, this DLC is just boring and wastes of time. It is such a shame, because Aria is so badass and the whole retake omega has so much potential to be good. Once again Bioware masterfully destroys an epic character and story, they really lost their mind.
2. Mar 9, 2013
Omega is an okay addition to the franchise's list of DLC, and is quite long, but it's length is due to long corridor shooter combat, with little story or choice. There are a couple of moments that are really good, and give you the *illusion* of choice, but for 1200 MSP, I just can't recommend it to many people.
3. Mar 6, 2013
4. Mar 3, 2013
It'll probably go down in the game design lexicon as the ME3 Curse: potential without follow-through, results without conclusion. It was the bane of the release reception of ME3 overall, DLCs, and, yep, now Omega. Veterans of Mass Effect 2 remember Omega, the Mass Effect Mos Eisley, the seedy underbelly of the universe run by an asari crimelord. (Yep, that's Mos Eisley!) Unlike many of the locations from Mass Effect, Omega fell off the radar on Mass Effect 3 and sat on the sidelines as a mere mention until the DLC came out, this DLC. So let's take a look at it. First, you get to see a lot more of Omega this time, and the people responsible for level design deserve accolades as they've built levels that are engaging, convey the sense of depth and rundown nature of the place, and do not feel like they were copied and pasted from other levels in the game. There's a lot of originality to be seen. Scriptwriting is bang on, and Carrie-Ann Moss does a very good job with it. A new character is introduced, one which will grab your attention. New foes are encountered, including a new villain (when do you have a DLC without one?) that should at least get a nod for being a well-written and very well-acted villain in the gameplay pantheon. You'll run into some old...well, not friends, but people you knew on Omega. All these are very positive elements. The main problem with Omega (the DLC, not the station) is that it's so short. We're talking about maybe six hours of gameplay, and that's if you're taking the time to sniff every rose. My first playthrough clocked just shy of four. The new fighting enemy is somewhat lame, unfortunately; a good villain deserves good cannon fodder. It's also a problem that you do not get to make any choices. The possibilities exist for the player to have drastic input on the trajectory of the plot, but it's not implemented. (Hey, it's the ME3 Curse! Three possible endings, but no differences allowed! Cheap shot, but true.) Truth told, the only thing knocking points off my rating, though, is the lack of gameplay for price charged. For what they're billing for this DLC, it's too short by at least half. Even so, a well-earned 7 for a good, but short, addition to Mass Effect 3. Expand
5. Jan 12, 2013
6. Dec 27, 2012
7. Dec 13, 2012
8. Dec 2, 2012
9. Nov 28, 2012
10. Nov 28, 2012
11. Nov 28, 2012
12. Nov 28, 2012
Price: 1200MSP/£10/$15
Omega was one of my favourite locations in Mass Effect 2. It
13. Nov 28, 2012
A person's like or dislike of Omega hinges on one thing: whether they think a multiple hour romp focusing primarily on one character in the Mass Effect series is interesting enough to warrant a 15 dollar pricetag. If you hate Aria, you'll likely hate this DLC. There's no hub to return to, no new squadmates - only temporary ones - and a completely self-contained story. However, it excels at focusing on one thing and magnifying it with precision: Aria's no holds barred attitude and desperate race for revenge in a grueling ground war that takes you into the bowels of Omega for the grittiest DLC experience ME has to offer. Expand
14. Nov 28, 2012
Mixed or average reviews - based on 17 Critics
Critic score distribution:
1. Positive: 4 out of 17
2. Negative: 2 out of 17
1. Jan 16, 2013
2. Dec 17, 2012
3. Dec 14, 2012 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9963 | Mixed or average reviews - based on 33 Critics What's this?
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Generally favorable reviews- based on 78 Ratings
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• Starring: , ,
• Summary: Longtime (and now thirtysomething) couple Burt and Verona are going to have a baby. The pregnancy progresses smoothly, but six months in, the pair is put off and put out by the cavalierly delivered news from Burt’s parents Jerry and Gloria that the eccentric elder Farlanders are moving out of Colorado – thereby eliminating the expectant couple’s main reason for living there. So, where, and among whom of those closest to them, might Burt and Verona best put down roots to raise their impending bundle of joy? The couple embarks on an ambitious itinerary to visit friends and family, and to evaluate cities. (Focus Features) Collapse
Score distribution:
1. Positive: 19 out of 33
2. Negative: 3 out of 33
1. Reviewed by: Perry Seibert
Like "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine," Away We Go is a small film, the kind of gem that's easy to crush with hype or overpraise. But, the fact is that few movies deal with feelings this profound with as much restraint as Mendes and his crew display here.
2. 83
Though Away We Go lacks the screwball unpredictability of something like "Flirting With Disaster," it compensates with a unexpected depth of feeling, a novelist’s (or memoirist’s) sense of detail, and a panoramic view of what home means.
3. 75
Some episodes are funnier than others, but they're all underscored by a pervasive melancholy.
4. Glib and charming in roughly equal measure.
6. See it for the performances – they are delights from the leads on down to the characters in the episodic vignettes. But the film’s vision of Gen-Y nesting is liable to leave you up a tree.
7. 30
It's in these vignettes that Away We Go begins to feel less like an authentic exploration of identity than a condemnation of the very community the couple pretends to crave. No one, it turns out, is good enough for Burt and Verona.
See all 33 Critic Reviews
Score distribution:
1. Positive: 20 out of 31
2. Negative: 10 out of 31
1. WinstonL
Nov 12, 2009
Krasinski and Rudolph are on my Oscar-watch.
2. carries
Jun 6, 2009
2 hours of sweet, true fun.
3. jazmina
Oct 4, 2009
4. PaulA
Jun 22, 2009
5. PatrickG
Jun 25, 2009
6. AndrewE
Dec 30, 2009
7. RichR.
Jun 28, 2009
See all 31 User Reviews |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9964 | Overwhelming dislike - based on 5 Critics
Critic score distribution:
1. Positive: 0 out of 5
2. Negative: 4 out of 5
1. May not offer anything new, but it has terrific vitality.
2. A pair of decent performances does not a movie make, however, as Mazur and Giovinazzo are surrounded by fourth-tier actors (Ventresca and Steven Bauer) and spotty directing of a mediocre script.
3. 20
Opens the floodgates of cartoonish villainy and pitiful sentiment.
4. The movie's all flash and formula, as original as the letter A, especially when it collapses in a dung heap of gunfire and corpses.
5. 10
A euphemism for the right of anyone to make movies just as awful as those of big studios.
There are no user reviews yet. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9965 | What a Pleasure - Beach Fossils
What a Pleasure Image
Generally favorable reviews - based on 7 Critics What's this?
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• Summary: The EP from the Brooklyn band is a follow-up to its well-received 2008 self-titled debut.
Score distribution:
1. Positive: 4 out of 7
2. Negative: 0 out of 7
1. Mar 15, 2011
It'll be interesting to see where Beach Fossils go from here, because What a Pleasure is the type of release that shows they're talented, but still have a little work to do fully capitalize on it.
2. Apr 27, 2011
What A Pleasure drips with what so many second-outings lack: promise. If this EP is an indicator, what comes next from these dudes will merit anticipation.
3. Mar 15, 2011
While their debut showed a lot of promise, Beach Fossils still haven't really set themselves apart from every other band practicing the same pleasant murmurs of personality.
4. Mar 15, 2011
5. Apr 5, 2011
Now, that's not to say that this process is completely cynical, or that What a Pleasure isn't, well, pleasurable. The problem is that the nostalgia it evokes doesn't seem to be a by-product of an aesthetic objective, but a goal in and of itself.
6. 60
Overall, What a Pleasure is essentially the Beach Fossils sound with the fuzz and some of the reverb stripped away. As expected from a transitional release, it's not a drastic shift, nor is it any better or worse, but it changes things just enough to keep the EP from being overly familiar.
7. while the 7 or so songs on What A Pleasure have different names, it never really feels like anything ends or begins. It just kind of is, much in the same way that after listening to Beach Fossils, you know something happened but you can't remember why it did so or what it meant.
Score distribution:
1. Positive: 0 out of
2. Mixed: 0 out of
3. Negative: 0 out of |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9968 | 2 posts tagged with SetPixel. (View popular tags)
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Better art through computing
posted by LinusMines on Nov 26, 2004 - 7 comments
This is fabulous. SHOCKWAVE / FLASH... Setpixel shows you great stuff, explains the mechanics AND lets you download the source files... Who could ask for more. (the start demo buttons are at the bottom of the text column.)
posted by Spoon on Feb 18, 2002 - 5 comments
Page: 1 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/9970 | MetaFilter posts tagged with vintage and fashion Posts tagged with 'vintage' and 'fashion' at MetaFilter. Fri, 19 Jul 2013 04:59:17 -0800 Fri, 19 Jul 2013 04:59:17 -0800 en-us 60 Back To The Buzz The <a href="">Charlotte</a> <a href="">Hornets</a> <a href="">are</a> <a href="">back</a>! This may <a href="">signal</a> a <a href="">return</a> to the <a href="">iconic</a> <a href="">teal and purple</a> color scheme <a href="">made</a> so <a href="">popular</a> by <a href="">Starter</a> <a href="">jackets</a>. ,2013:site.130150 Fri, 19 Jul 2013 04:59:17 -0800 90s basketball charlotte charlottehornets fashion jacket nba retro starter vintage reenum "Do we need to produce billions of new garments a year?" <a href="">Should You Feel Guilty About Wearing Vintage Fur?</a> <a href="">The Vintage Fur Debate: Glamour Without The Guilt?</a> <a href="">Ethical Fur? We're Kidding Ourselves</a> WSPA: <a href="">Does 'ethical' or 'green' fur exist? No.</a> The main article mentions <a href="">Rachel Poliquin</a>, who has <a href="">written</a> about <a href="">taxidermy</a> and whose book <a href="">The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy And Cultures Of Longing</a> was reviewed in the <a href="">LARB</a> <blockquote>The power of these material traces and the desire to preserve and touch them animates the lifeless menageries of Rachel Poliquin’s beautiful new study, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing. The book tracks the history of whole animal and animal specimen preservation, particularly taxidermy, which refers to the stretching and mounting of the skins of vertebrates, from the seventeenth-century European explorers to the present, with a heavy focus on Victorian practitioners and collectors. From a technical perspective alone, this history is fascinating; it begins with piles of feathers preserved in spirits, smoke-dried in ovens, and inexpertly stuck together in approximations of natural forms, and ends with slowly freezedried “perpetual pets,” lifelike inhabitants of a particularly uncanny valley. A fascinating section describes the innovation of wet clay placed under skins of animals for precision molding and a feeling of fullness, vibrancy, and weight.</blockquote> <a href="">Coats for Cubs</a> is a program to repurpose fur products to create environments for injured and orphaned animals.,2013:site.129955 Fri, 12 Jul 2013 20:30:25 -0800 animalrights coture ethics fashion fauxfur fur furrier hautecoture highfashion hunting peta preservation taxidermy vintage the man of twists and turns Armed With Antique Clothes and a Bike <a href="">Dressing:</a> "It is a gift, and the way God expresses herself through me. I’m so grateful for this art form because I don’t have to invite you to my studio to see my painting. You get to see it on me. I get to wear it, live it, be it". Collector's Weekly profiles Tziporah Salamon.,2013:site.128981 Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:15:42 -0800 clothes clothing fashion nyc style vintage goo BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS <a href="">Spend an hour tooling around 1920s-Era NYC via the magic of video</a>,2012:site.121717 Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:55:51 -0800 1920s ANARCHISTS bombing cars color democraticconvention dieselpunk DIRIGIBLE driving fashion FDNY football gothamist history Manhattan newsreels NewYork NYC parade parties retro road roaring20s skyscrapers video vintage Wallstreet youtube zeppelins The Whelk Photographs of antique and vintage clothing from Europe and America <a href="">Old Rags</a> is a collection of photographs of beautiful antique, historic and vintage clothing from Europe and North America.<a href=""> A feast of fashion history images</a> from the 17th century to the 1920’s with <a href="">a brief FAQ page here</a>.,2012:site.113389 Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:14:49 -0800 America clothing Europe fashion history vintage nickyskye Vintage Black Glamour <a href="">Vintage Black Glamour:</a> an underexplored avenue of 20th century beauty and style.,2011:site.108895 Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:53:51 -0800 africanamerican beauty black fashion glamour style vintage hermitosis Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth <a href="">Style Like U</a> features an <a href="">exhaustive video archive</a> of people talking about their clothes and history and what personal style means to them and the power of self transformation. <a href="">Ilona Royce Smithkin</a> - "Thank God I'm not young anymore" <a href="">Kevin Stewart -</a> "I lived at Danceateria" <a href="">Dominique Brown</a> - "I kept falling deeper in love with the 40s" <a href="">Michele Savoia</a> - "My father, I used to shine his shoes and put on his pinkie ring." <a href=""> MilDred Gerestant</a> - "She helped me put on my facial hair and I felt like I was giving birth to myself as a man" <a href="">Ty McBride</a> - I'm a giant Aryan viking, my fashion icon is Tom Of Finland." <a href="">Shien Lee</a> - "When you wear a certain style, you enter into a new community" <a href="">World Famous *BOB*</a> - "I didn't know a strong, powerful glamorous women until I met a man." <a href="">Emily Leonard</a> - "I never felt like I was allowed to like clothes.",2011:site.106494 Sun, 14 Aug 2011 12:36:54 -0800 art clothes creation Documentary fashion gender history identity image interview Performance persona Sexuality Society style video vimeo vintage The Whelk Homage to hair From bouffants du jour and shampoo secrets of the stars to yesteryear's 'dos and you-know-you-want-it accessories, if it's about hair, you'll find it at the always entertaining <a href="">Hair Hall of Fame</a>.,2011:site.104698 Sun, 19 Jun 2011 14:28:44 -0800 advertising fashion hair hairdos hairstyles style vintage madamjujujive Of Another Fashion <a href="">Of Another Fashion</a>: <i>An alternative archive of the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color.</i>,2011:site.101189 Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:40:49 -0800 american clothing fashion history ofanotherfashion photographs vintage womenofcolor lalex Sixties Seventies The miniskirts, hotpants, bellbottoms, boots, sunglasses, and hairdos of the <a href="">Sixties Seventies</a> as worn by the famous and anonymous beauties of the time. <small>(some images NSFW)</small>,2011:site.99144 Sun, 02 Jan 2011 20:02:52 -0800 60s 70s beauty bellbottom boots clothes fashion glamour hairstyles hotpants miniskirt photography retro style sunglasses vintage Joe Beese Button du Jour <a href="">Button du Jour.</a> A charming semi-daily imaginary vignette featuring food, fashion, music, and an exotic location -- all inspired by a beautiful button.,2010:site.88830 Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:51:04 -0800 blogs britex buttondujour buttons fabric fashion music notions recipe sanfrancisco vintage ottereroticist Party Like It's 1939! Sartorial inspiration for anachronistic atavists: <a href="">Rhiannon</a>, <a href="">The Black Apple</a>,<a href=""> Johanni</a>, <a href="">Solanah</a>, <a href="">Casey Brown</a>, <a href="">Strawberry Lemonade</a>, <a href="">Fleur de Guerre</a>, <a href="">The Freelancer</a>, and <a href="">Elinkan</a>.,2009:site.84487 Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:58:01 -0800 anachronism fashion girlzone retro style throwback vintage Juliet Banana The Brotherhood of the Very Expensive Pants <a href="">"It's like I used to enjoy firecrackers, but now it takes dynamite to get me high."</a> Brit Eaton takes Outside magazine on a safari for vintage clothing in the wild west. <small>(<a href="">via</a>)</small>,2009:site.78482 Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:02:44 -0800 clothes clothing cowboy denim ebay fashion frontier style vintage west 1f2frfbf Sartorial swoonage Gentlemen, are you searching for that special something to wear to the Paris Court Ball? Ladies, do you long to don a pelisse and kid shoes for your next round of afternoon calls? <a href="">Vintage Textile</a> can help. Their "greatest hits" galleries: <a href="">Early</a> <a href="">Victorian</a> <a href="">Edwardian</a> <a href="">1920s</a> <a href="">1930s-50s</a> <a href="">Designer, 1960-now</a>,2008:site.75884 Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:44:27 -0800 colonial designer edwardian fashion flapper gallery velvet victorian vintage chihiro eye-opening curiosities "Of all the various types of optical objects known to exist, far and away the most magnificent and attractive are the <a href="">optical fans</a>." These sly spying devices, now <a href="">rare collector curiosities</a>, were once a more discreet and chic alternative for spying on your neighbors in fashionable gatherings than <a href="">opera glasses</a>, <a href="">spyglasses</a>, or <a href="">jealousy glasses</a>.,2008:site.68845 Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:07:06 -0800 antiques curiosities devices fans fashion optical spying vintage madamjujujive Old Clothes Puzzled about what to get the history buff, throwback or Luddite on your holiday shopping list? Explore the sutler's wares in the world of historic reproduction clothing! Strut your eighteenth-century style with <a href="">Jas. Townsend & Son</a>, or dress for the Lewis & Clark expedition with <a href="">Smoke & Fire</a>. <a href=""></a> provides the finest in <a href="">Mexican War</a> and <a href="">Cavalry/Indian War</a> apparel, as well as fashion to end all wars in the<a href="">WWI collection.</a> Don't forget the ladies (and weak-minded gents) left at home - <a href="">Blockade Runner</a> offers fine Civil War civvies. Do you fear mussing up your delicate threads with dirty, fussy warmaking? <a href="">History in the Making</a> can dress you for a <a href="">hearty constitutional across the moors</a>, a <a href="">picnic by the riverbank</a>, or a bracing <a href="">seal hunt</a>. For the distaff side, <a href="">Edwardian gowns</a> are always in good taste, or for you modern Millies, why not some <a href="">Gibson Girl, flapper, or swing-kitten</a> apparel, or perhaps a dapper <a href="<a href=">WAC</a> uniform? And remember, a lady's physique is incomplete without the proper <a href="">Period Corset</a> underneath it all. Gentlemen, you'll need a tailored <a href="">vintage shirt</a> and a <a href="">collar</a>. Finish it with appropriate <a href="">shoes</a> and a <a href="">sharp hat</a> or <a href="">fetching bonnet</a>. Need more inspiration? Start with the <a href="">The Costumer's Manifesto</a>, and happy hunting in the halls of history.,2007:site.67356 Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:20:42 -0800 clothing costume fashion historic history militaria reenactor reproduction vintage Miko A History of Social Dance in America <a href="">"While we live, let us LIVE."</a> <a href="">A History of Social Dance in America</a>, complete with <a href="">vintage cheat sheets</a>, a look at the <a href="">perils of crinoline</a> and lots of other <a href="">period</a> <a href="">detail</a>. Naturally, there were those who <a href="">objected</a> to this <a href="">scandalous</a> <a href="">practice</a>. See also the Library of Congress' <a href="">An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals 1490-1920</a>, especially <a href="">here</a> and <a href="">here</a>. <small><i>[via <a href="">BibliOdyssey</a>]</i></small>,2007:site.65033 Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:03:13 -0800 dance dancing fashion history vintage mediareport retro style: fab fashions from the 60s and 70s From <a href="">hair styles</a> and <a href="">hotpants</a> to <a href="">bellbottoms</a> and <a href="">boots</a>, this site has amassed a massive <a href="">fashion photo collection</a> of groovy celebrities and swingin' stars from the '60s and '70s.,2007:site.64544 Sun, 09 Sep 2007 06:15:24 -0800 1960s 1970s 60s 70s celebrities fashion hair photos popculture retro seventies sixties style vintage madamjujujive But is that jacket worth $6000? Today is the last day of <a href="">Fashion</a> <a href="">Week</a> in New York. Fall 2006 collections have ranged from <a href="">th</a><a a href="">e</a> <a href="">s</a><a href="">u</a><a href="">b</a><a href="">l</a><a href="">im</a><a href="">e</a> to the <a href="">r</a><a href="">eg</a><a href="">re</a><a href="">t</a><a href="">t</a><a href="">a</a><a href="">b</a><a href="">l</a><a href="">e</a>. Check out the <a href="">list of reviews</a>, or peruse <a href="">runway videos</a>. Long for the good ol' days of fashion? <a href="">Am</a><a href="">az</a><a href="">in</a><a href="">g</a> <a href="">vin</a><a href="">ta</a><a href="">ge</a> <a href="">pi</a><a href="">ec</a><a href="">es</a> at <a href=""></a> will satisfy your style cravings.,2006:site.49057 Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:23:03 -0800 fall fall2006 fashion frock newyork readytowear runway style. vintage Alison 'Teddy, don't worry, now mommy's here....' <a href="">Teddy Girls</a>,2006:site.48949 Tue, 07 Feb 2006 04:49:34 -0800 1950s england fashion photographs photos vintage anastasiav |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10003 | Acheron Design
Acheron Design is an independent game development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded by Lewis Strudwick and Athol Birtley in 2004.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10005 | Splash (Macintosh)
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100 point score based on reviews from various critics.
5 point score based on user ratings.
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Splash is an arcade game with color-matching elements. The player controls a fish juggling falling balls by spitting a jet of water up a series of ramps. The game ends if the balls hit the pond. Matching adjacent balls of the same color makes them disappear.
Some special spheres contain a power-up. The ones with a plus sign give bonus points. Spheres with a bomb explode all other balls of the same color. Balls with a propeller helix give points and increase in weight with time while being juggled. Spheres with a flame icon destroy all balls on the screen. Water-speed balls increase the power of the water spray for a short period of time. Snowflake spheres freeze in place all balls.
There are no Macintosh screenshots for this game.
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Macs Black (77847) added Splash (Macintosh) on Jan 23, 2008
Other platforms contributed by Macs Black (77847) |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10033 | 2001 Honda GL1800 Gold Wing
Transcontinental meditations on the land yacht that zigs
There isn't much to do between Oklahoma and New Mexico at 6:54 a.m. A tiny computer maintains forward progress, inhaling exactly 80 miles of Interstate 40 West each hour. The pyrotechnics inside six fuel-injected cylinders are all but imperceptible at 3400 revs in top cog. The fairing whittles a stiff, North Texas headwind down to light gusts around the elbows--and a digital cockpit readout is the only tangible evidence of the edgy, 40-degree air outside. Full tank of gas. Emmylou Harris on the CD player; between Boulder and Birmingham, she says. Life is good.
Welcome to Monday morning, day four of our nearly transcontinental get-acquainted session with Honda's 2001 Gold Wing. The plan going in was simple: ride from the GL's Marysville, Ohio, home (and location of the bike's press launch) to ours in Los Angeles. It is here, right in the middle of said proceedings, that I-40 narcosis kicks in. Sort of a four-lane rapture of the deep. The mind floats ahead, taking various exits on a freeway all its own. Is there really a Helium Museum in Amarillo? Does Elvis know they transplanted the Cadillac Ranch? Then, splat! An ill-fated bumblebee free-associates us all the way back to Arkansas.
It's hard to tell with him splattered on the windshield like that, but look closer and everything comes together. Although he cruised comfortably at up to seven mph mere seconds ago, Bombus Terrestis--Mr. Bumblebee to you--is ostensibly too fat to fly. Too bad nobody told him. We're just happy nobody told Honda that an 898-pound, two-wheeled luxury liner with cruise control, six-disc CD changer, reverse gear and 141 liters of luggage space can't carve up a 200-mile slice of sportbike heaven through the Ozarks. And at speeds that would make Daisy Duke wet her cutoffs.
Alas, we digress. That was Day Three.
Day OnE begins suitably at the crack of noon, loading our pearl-blue GL1800 with enough foul-weather paraphernalia to survive 2800 miles of anything the Weather Channel can spit out. First impressions? Popping the trunk lid from across the lot with a button on the key fob is astoundingly convenient when your hands are full--even if it does scare the hell out of the janitorial staff. And you can lock everything with another button when you're done, and even honk the horn. That really scares 'em. Still, anybody who's ever packed a GL1500 will find less room to stuff stuff in the 1800's bags. (Mental note: Look for motels with a washer/dryer.)
OK, so it's pricey ($17,499; $18,499 with ABS), and its nifty pop-up compartment in the trunk floor--which houses the optional six-disc CD changer--eats five liters of cargo room; still, the CD player contributes immeasurably more to cross-country bliss than wool socks, Powerbars or whatever else you might cram in there. Take a stroll around the grounds and take in the architecture. The 2001 Wing is outwardly smaller than its immediate predecessor, with a fluid, organic silhouette that makes the straight-laced GL1500 look like an extra from American Gothic. From hand controls and switchgear to the Acuraesque dash layout, everything you push, pull, turn or read is intuitive, displaying Honda's characteristically excellent attention to ergonomic detail. Loading a half-dozen CDs, the 25-watt Panasonic audio system pumps anything from Ludwig van Beethoven to Stevie Ray Vaughn with enough accurate punch to shame some home systems and wake up the neighbors. Although sound quality deteriorates as you approach freeway speeds, the only vehicles with higher fidelity have four wheels and a roof. To anyone climbing off a sportbike, the GL1800 cockpit initially impersonates an F-18's, but don't panic. Audio controls are equally common-sensical, as are those for the CB, cruise control, rear suspension and headlight angle. Now get on the thing.
Although Honda's published saddle height for the 1800 remains at the GL1500's 29.1 inches, once you're aboard, the new bike's seat accommodates a broader range of riders. Miss Five-foot-five gets a firm footing at a stop, and Mr. Six-foot-four has abundant legroom on the road. Still, the riding position is arguably sit-up-and-beg; riders are right up against the bar ends, not bad for shorter folks, but a touch cramped for those taller than average.
If the GL1800 feels lighter than the previous six, it's because it is. At 898 pounds complete with a full 6.6-gallon fuel payload and eight pounds of optional ABS braking hardware, the 1800 is still 13 pounds lighter than our 1999 GL1500SE. Reduced frontal area contributes to the improved aerodynamics and that smaller feel. However, most of the perceived compactness comes from moving the rider two inches closer to the steering axis (which somewhat explains the close-cropped riding position). Every aspect of riding the motorcycle thus becomes more direct, more exact, and for us at least, much more fun than anything with a Gold Wing badge has ever been.
Turn the key and a wiry version of the illustrious Gold Wing Eagle materializes in the cockpit's central LCD display in what Honda calls the "opening ceremony." That little number goes from cute to annoying to switched off before we leave the lot. The engine boots up with the instant precision associated with Honda fuel injection, settling into an edgier rendition of the familiar GL idle. Honda's flat six has always been receptive, but this one wants to go. Now. Slipping into traffic, that responsiveness--especially right off idle--triggers a twinge of driveline lash in low gear; the softish fork amplifies any unsmooth throttle antics during takeoffs and slower riding. Shifting during slower speed work felt a touch notchy, too, though things smoothed nicely once the miles added up. Once under way, you know you're aboard a Gold Wing; the gear-whine of the flat-six engine, the seemingly unalterable straight-line stability, the calmness behind the fairing.
From there, the experience is all new: no more disconnected, high-anxiety Steamboat Willie urban choreography. The 1800 turns when and where it's told, with a direct--dare we say sporty--feel. New suspension bits are tuned to match. With the single rear shock set to the 15th of 25 electrically adjustable spring-preload positions (via a push-button system that includes a two-position memory), the ride is a bit taught relative to the GL1500's anesthetized feel. With an even 100 foot-pounds of torque on tap at a mere 2250 rpm, the big six yanks harder down low than even Suzuki's Hayabusa (which manages 99.0 foot-pounds at its 6750 rpm peak). The two-wheel Torque King GL finally peaks with an imposing 109.9 foot-pounds at 4250 rpm. That sort of grunt lets it pull smoothly from 35 mph to an indicated 135 in top gear. But enough of this. That's Interstate 71. This is the throttle. Twist it, and traffic shrinks into the rear-view mirrors at a heady clip.
Armed with 85 horsepower at 5000 rpm, the GL1500 had respectable acceleration--for a cruise ship. Respectable enough to cover the quarter-mile in 13.52 seconds at 96.1 mph. Making 104.1 horses at 5500 rpm, the GL1800 is way faster. Jumping from 0-60 in 4.4 seconds, the 1800 knocks back a quarter-mile in 12.78 seconds at 103.3 mph. That's still a half-heartbeat behind the 12.76-second/100.8-mph best of Honda's own Valkyrie Interstate. But how about some truly meaningful perspective? Our 2001 GL is quicker to 60 and through the quarter-mile than a Lamborghini Diablo VT. As that sinks in, please observe a moment of silence to contemplate the emotional aftershocks of having your $286,000 Italian ego extension slain by a touring bike. Sure enough.
Following I-71 through the heart of Cincinnati, the 1800's triple-digit torque becomes quite the practical advantage. Merely opening the throttle at 70 mph dispatches the somnambulistic Camrys, impudent A4 Audis and all manner of mobile interstate chicanes at a rate the GL1500 would need one, maybe two downshifts to match. Against the clock, the GL1800 squirts from 60-80 mph in 5.9 seconds in its overdrive fifth gear, vs. 7.1 seconds for the GL1500. Seconds blur into minutes, then hours. Soon you're nodding off to a regrettable Madonna video in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and awakening to a battalion of Future Farmers of America forming up in the motel parking lot.
Day two is winding down as the Wing rolls into the Shell station in Union City, Tennessee, just east of the Mississippi River and the Missouri state line. With 208.8 miles on the first of its two LCD tripmeters, the 1800 swallows 5.2 gallons of unleaded. Maintain that 40-mpg performance and the low-fuel light wakes up at 228; 36 miles past that and you're a pedestrian. Stiff headwinds and a restless throttle hand dropped our average for the trip to 36 mpg; one mpg better than our last GL1500 test rig, but still a plenty-safe 230 miles between fill-ups.
Cutting west, the little toe of Missouri pointing south into Arkansas is a desolate extremity. Sad little ramshackle houses set in gray fields of shorn cotton. Not even the radio can find anything cheerful. Snapping the throttle open hard to reel in some happier scenery triggers a subtle pinging in the engine room. Despite its two 3-D digital fuel-injection maps and a 3-D digital ignition map, 87-octane unleaded provokes indigestion. Best switch to the midgrade stuff. Chasing a blustery sunset into the Ozarks, the day ends in Hardy, Arkansas, with a carefully chilled liquid refreshment on the banks of the Spring River.
Day Three starts early on roads so perfect you don't deserve to know where they are. OK, if you're in the neighborhood, don't miss U.S. Route 62 between Harrison and Yellville. Just behave yourselves or we'll hear about it. Who needs the Alps when you have this? No bumps, no holes, no herds of maladroit soccer moms in lumbering SUVs--just miles of arcing, sweeping, diving pavement. The kind of roads that usually makes us take the Gold Wing name in vain and pine for an F4. Know what? No more. There's no CD changer in an F4.
Turn up the David Lindley and hang on, baby. Acceleration is suitably linear for a motorcycle of this stature, but once the tach needle crosses 4000, things happen fast. The corner that was there is here, and much quicker than it ever would have been on the 1500. Thankfully, the new bike's brakes are more equal to the task. A year ago, this type of corner entrance speed would make one large, GL1500SE-sized hole in a highland forest on the Ozark Plateau. Now? Working with the antidive system, Honda's new syncopated braking arrangement slows the half-ton-plus bike/rider combination strongly and predictably. No drama. No excess chassis pitch. No worries. Should you be unlucky enough to cross something slick on the brakes, the ABS simply takes care of it. Why only 20 percent of 2001 Gold Wing production will be ABS-equipped is beyond us. We wouldn't own one without it.
Now, where were we? Oh yeah--turn! Push on the bar to initiate the new trajectory and your orders are executed--immediately. There's a direct line of communication between pullback bars and contact patches. With shock preload bumped to 20, the bike develops a mild allergy to square-edged pavement scars. Beyond that, the fork and shock manage the Wing's ample mass beautifully at a sporty clip. The new aluminum skeleton and single-sided swingarm suffer none of the midcorner monkey motion that plagued the old bike's steel bones. It just carves dutifully around the corner until the pegs drag, carves deeper until those big crash bars drag. Carve deeper than that and you'll find out why they're called crash bars. Relatively squatty Bridgestone radials (130/70R18 front, 180/60R16 rear) help tighten up the new GL's handling equation also. Presumably to preserve some of that trademark plushness, our carefully prepped test bike (and at least one other we checked) was delivered with 32 psi up front and 36 psi in the rear instead of the 36/41 combination prescribed by the label inside the trunk lid.
However, since the lower pressures did more to improve straight-line plushness than twisty-road behavior or tire life, we pumped 'em up and had no rubber related complaints on wet pavement or dry.
So maybe you go to the Ozarks. And maybe you wonder why it's so green. Because it rains!--in this case, from clouds the color of perfect coals in some great celestial barbecue. Set to the lowest of its four click-stopped positions, the new windscreen is just low enough for a six-foot-three incher to peer over, which helps immeasurably in the wet. A little rain sneaks around the sides of the fairing; otherwise, weather protection is first-rate.
The 1800's Starship Enterprise headlight array throws a perfect swath of light from shoulder to shoulder of this meandering two-lane. Cornering lights do a miraculous job of illuminating bits of wet, curvy roadside you won't see on other bikes. A handy dial in the cockpit controls a motorized aiming system that lets you raise or lower the beam to match any situation. No motorcycle on the planet lights up the pavement after dark like this new GL.
Fayetteville, Arkansas, arrives just in time to avoid a thorough drenching. Which is more than we can say for the surly little waiter with our tacos al carbon y un cerveza por favor. Touring is a beautiful thing, but it enforces certain compromises. Say, for instance, you burn an entire day milling down footpegs against the tastiest roads in the Ozarks, take a long lunch and cover maybe 232 miles. That would leave you roughly 1568 miles and four states from home. Time to face the music and the I-40. That's when you thank God and Masa Aoki for traditional Gold Wing virtues.
It's Day Four and Oklahoma is for cruise control. Touring often inspires such profundity, which in turn inspires Oklahomans to write nasty letters. Still, somewhere between Hydro and Elk City, it's nice to let that little silicon chip lock the speedo needle on 80 mph and listen to the weatherband's virtual Stephen Hawking foretell atmospheric unpleasantries yet to come. Thankfully the Wing offers other electronic diversions to the transcontinental tourist. Punch up the ambient air temperature, then have the radio hunt up the dozen strongest AM and FM stations. Fine-tune the bass, treble and ambient functions to match the new U2 CD; discuss foreign policy with fascist truckers on the CB--it's all good. The best compliment we can pay the seat is that we never thought about it in nearly 2800 miles. Not even on the mind-numbing Day Five drone from Amarillo to Flagstaff. Allied with the revamped ergonomic package, there's more lower back and thigh support, and better overall weight distribution. The new fairing strikes a laudable balance between aerodynamic efficiency and wind protection.
Still, anybody taller than six-foot-two will feel a smattering of turbulence just above the helmet. And more wind sneaks around the side of the cockpit relative to last year's GL1500. While we like the bike's suspension, irredeemable fans of the old magic carpet ride may deem it a bit too taut.
In a perfect world, the new Wing would do 350 miles on a tank of gas. Its saddlebags would always latch the first time instead of requiring a determined thwack to stop the insistent blinking of the cockpit display from mocking your incompetence. The cruise control would grab the requisite speed on uphills and downhills more quickly. Maybe the dash display should include a GPS readout. And the cockpit could be roomier for larger folks. But for that stuff we can wait for 2002. Maybe.
Just as the first 1500/6 was in 1988, the new 1800 is just far enough ahead of its time to bother certain less-progressive segments of motorcycling society. Sporting traditionalists will recoil at a Honda motorcycle with almost as many part numbers as a Honda Civic, and deem it the harbinger of a mini-van apocalypse. Good Sam tourists in sack cloth and ashes will whimper on about Honda abandoning the multitudes in pin-encrusted vests and "Hi, My Name Is" badges who made the Gold Wing what it is in order to court the performance-addled Lexus set. We say that kind of talk encourages random drug testing.
We also say the 2001 Gold Wing does just what its ancestors have done for 25 years, and better than anything else: define and redefine the art of luxury motorcycle travel. Before the GL1800, sporting performance enforced an uncomfortable minimalism on the motorcycle traveler, while luxury motorcycles displayed a distressing resemblance to Mom's '70 Chrysler New Yorker. Honda has changed all that. The fact that it has done it for a base price of $17,499--$100 less than a 2000 GL1500 SE--leaves us with only one bit of bad. If you're not already in line to put a 2001 Gold Wing in your garage, it may already be too late.
Details, details...
·Key-fob luggage latch release a real treat
·Big, wide-set mirrors let you check your six
·Huge taillights make sure you're seen
·You'll peel paint with those high beams
·CD player's location will collect dirt and moisture; gotta unpack, too
·How about adjustable ergos, Honda?
Honda GL1800 Gold Wing
$18,499 (w/ABS)
Warranty36 months, unlimited miles
Colorsblack, blue, red, yellow
Typeliquid-cooled opposed-six
Valve arrangementsohc, 12v
Bore x stroke74.0 x 71.0mm
Compression ratio9.8:1
Carburetionfuel injection
Transmission5-speed (plus reverse)
Final driveshaft
Frametwin-spar aluminum alloy
Weight898 lb. (wet) 858 lb. (fuel tank empty)
Fuel capacity6.6 gal. (25L)
Suspension, front 45mm fork for spring preloadSuspension, rear single shock adjustable for spring preload
Brake, frontdual three-piston caliper, 296mm disc
Brake, rearthree-piston caliper, 316mm disc
Tire, front130/70R18 Bridgestone G707
Tire, rear180/60R16 Bridgestone G704
Corrected 1/4-mile*12.78 sec. @ 103.3 mph
0-60 mph4.44 sec.
0-100 mph13.27 sec.
Top-gear roll-on, 60-80 mph5.90 sec.
Power to weight ratio**10.25 lb/hp
Fuel mileage (low/high/average)30/40/36
Cruising range (exc. reserve)205 miles
CD changer capacity6 discs
Honda Gold wing
Engine10Massive torque, smooth delivery
Drivetrain8Slightly sharp clutch takeup, all else OK
Handling9Most sporting dresser ever
Braking10Phenomenal power, feedback; ABS, too!
Ride8Not cush but totally in (new) character
Ergonomics7Tight for tall ones; fine for everyone else
Features10What doesn't it have besides a roof?
Refinement8Ride and fuel-injection could be improved
Value8Pay a lot, get a lot, but it'll last forever
Fun Factor8Higher than you'd think by lookin' at it
Verdict: Honda successfully balances the contradictory needs of long-haul touring and big-bike sportiness in a package that resets the standards in the luxo-touring category.
Off the Record
Age: 52
Height: 5 ft. 10 in.
Weight: 210 lb.
Inseam: 32 in.
Someone took your GL and you need to ride 400 miles tonight. What to do? Take the Cessna Centurion.
Since the GL1100s, the Gold Wings have been one of motorcycling's marvels. Honda has consistently managed to make them behave like much more compact machines, and the new Wing Lite stretches the envelope even further. Now you get all the gadgetry and conveniences with even less compromise in handling and manageability. And then there is that added power. This is actually the class where strong power makes the most sense, because tourers are the ones most likely to need to launch past a line of trucks crawling up a hill.
My major complaint is that the seat and handlebar are too close together. I really wanted to slide back a couple of inches, especially when the long tillerlike bars were turned to full lock--putting my hand in my ribs. I hope that someone makes shorter handlebars.
I have some minor gripes, like more buffeting with the windshield lowered and not quite as excellent sound quality, but most of the details turn out to be useful.
I'd want ABS with such strong linked brakes, which make it hard for me to get the precise braking I want at each wheel during hard stops on dicey surfaces. That is the only area where BMW's 1200 surpasses this bike, in my opinion. But then I liked the GL1500 better than the Beemer too. Now there is no contest. No recount needed here. The GL1800 is the undisputed King Tourer. --Art Friedman
Age: 48
Height: 5 ft. 10 in.
Weight: 185 lb.
Inseam: 31 in.
Someone took your GL and you need to ride 400 miles tonight. What to do? Hop on the ST1100.
How to tell if you're driving a car: If your backside is nestled in a formed bucket seat that promises hours of comfortable support, you could be driving a car. If your instrument array includes an LCD that informs you of everything from radio tuning to whether a trunk lid is unlatched, you could be driving a car. If you have individually adjustable vent outlets to control temperature around your legs and upper body, you could be driving a car. If opening the throttle calls up impressive thrust all across the rev range, you could be driving a car. If wind roar barely increases as the speedometer needle sweeps into triple digits, you could be driving a car.
But, if you lean the right way in turns, into them, graceful as an airplane, instead of out of them, in the crude manner of four-wheelers, then you're definitely riding the Wing. --Kevin Smith
Age: 30
Height: 5 ft. 4 in.
Weight: 145 lb.
Inseam: 28 in.
Someone took your GL and you need to ride 400 miles tonight. What to do? Can we have a virtual meeting? Being vertically challenged, I've always been a bit intimidated while riding large, luxo-touring rigs like the Gold Wing. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself able to touch the ground with both feet when aboard the GL. Combined with the bike's narrow saddle (the front part, anyway) and lowish seat height, this meant I was able to ride the Wing with confidence. Out on the road the Wing was impressive, with great handling (for a 898-pound motor cycle), smooth power delivery, greenhouselike wind and weather protection, and had a better sound system than my car. Now if I could only learn to split lanes on the thing! --Garrett Kai
Age: 37
Height: 5 ft. 10 in.
Weight: 200 lb.
Inseam: 32 in.
Someone took your GL and you need to ride 400 miles tonight. What to do? Top off the R/GS and I'm gone.
Amid the preintroduction hype was floated this hot-air balloon: The new Gold Wing is so good, so sporty, that Honda may as well kill the ST1100 now and get it over with. Yeah, right. I'll admit that the GL1800 impresses with its grace under way and irresistible torque, and that it's vastly more tolerant of aggressive riding than the previous six-banger Wing, but it's still very much a Gold Wing. That means stuff, lots of stuff.
Most of it works: big, legible instruments and a surprisingly good still-air pocket (particularly in light of the smaller fairing), and an engine that harbors just a bit of rowdiness. Some of it doesn't: the nagging warning system that insists a saddlebag lid is open when it's not (once you've slammed it good and hard a couple of times to actually get it closed) and a riding position that literally pains me. Maybe that's how I know I'm not ready to get off of sport-tourers just yet. --Marc Cook
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10054 | KeithMiller en MRC's Top 10 Most Obnoxiously Liberal Today Show Quotes <div class="field field-type-nodereference field-field-source"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> By</div> <a href="/author/geoffrey-dickens">Geoffrey Dickens</a> </div> </div> </div> <div style="float: right;"><img src="" border="0" /></div> <p>This week the <em>Today </em>show is celebrating 60 years of being on the air, and for over 20 of those years the MRC has been documenting the NBC morning show's liberal agenda. From past anchors like Bryant Gumbel blaming "right wing" talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing and Katie Couric trashing Ronald Reagan as an "airhead," up through current anchor Matt Lauer wondering how Barack Obama would "manage the expectations" of being called "The Messiah," </p><p><a href="" target="_blank">read more</a></p> Media Reality Check News Analysis Division BarackObama BillClinton BryantGumbel EdRabel FidelCastro GeorgeW.Bush HillaryClinton KatieCouric KeithMiller MariaShriver MattLauer MeredithVieira RonaldReagan ScottSimon Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:08:00 +0000 38821 at |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10068 | Lung Tien Chuan - TemeraireWiki
Lung Tien Chuan
From TemeraireWiki
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Character Profile
Name: Lung Tien Chuan
Date of Birth: January 1805
Breed: Celestial
Captain: Prince Mianning
National Loyalty: China
Appearance: Black with blue eyes; identical to Temeraire
Special Abilities: Divine Wind
Status: Deceased
Lung Tien Chuan was the eldest son of Lung Tien Qian, and companion to Prince Mianning, the future Daoguang Emperor of China. At birth, Chuan's twin brother, Lung Tien Xiang was sent to the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, while still in his egg, to prevent future competition to the Imperial Throne.
Chuan later met his brother (now named "Temeraire") when Prince Yongxing, companion to his cousin Lung Tien Lien travelled to Britain; whose navy had captured Xiang's egg from a French ship, to demand his return to China. Unknown to Chuan, Yongxing was plotting to have both the Jiaqing Emperor and Prince Mianning murdered, and establish the Prince's younger brother Miankai as Emperor with Temeraire as his companion, while he ruled as regent.
Sometime around 1811 or 1812, Chuan was poisoned and killed by a faction at court that opposed Prince Mianning's reign.
Relation to other Celestials
Two Imperials
Grandfather(Lung Tien Xian?)(M)
Lung Tien Qian(F) Lung Tien Chu(M)
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Lung Tien Zhi? (M)
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10126 | The Great Debate - self-guided activity
This activity is free and has curriculum links appropriate for KS4 and post-16 pupils.
Pre-visit information and curriculum links PDF (127.4 KB)
Introduce your pupils to the historic debate surrounding Darwin's theory of evolution with this self-guided version of our popular Great Debate workshop for schools.
In small groups, pupils will use exhibits to collect evidence and prepare presentations about the views of key characters in the debate. Pupils can deliver their presentations either in our galleries or back at school.
Please note that the self-guided Great Debate activity is not scheduled for dates when the guided Great Debate workshop is on.
For available dates, please contact the schools booking team on +44 (0)20 7942 5555.
To book, call the schools booking team on +44 (0)20 7942 5555.
A comprehensive information pack will be posted to you prior to your visit along with confirmation of your booking. The booking team will organise for student information and recording sheets to be available for you to pick up on the day of your visit.
Preparation and follow-up
Use the evolution pages below to support classroom learning before and after your Great Debate experience. These pages can also be used independently to reinforce understanding of how natural selection works.
• What is evolution?
What is evolution?
Evolution can loosely be defined as genetic change over time, but there is much more to it than that.
• What is the evidence?
What is the evidence?
Both fossils from long ago and organisms alive today provide evidence for evolution and help us to better understand how the process works.
• Bust of Charles Darwin at the Museum
How did evolutionary theory develop?
Like many new ideas, the theory of evolution was not immediately accepted by everyone when it was proposed. Discover who was for and against the theory and why. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10147 | View Single Post
Old 04-21-04, 07:13 PM #44
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 563
Originally Posted by RobHague
Id have it because the day i sold my 5800 Ultra on ebay was a sad day indeed and i regreted it and defended it (the NV30) often in here. I couldnt belive i saw one being given away i thought it said 6800 at first... wonder if BFG are selling any of these last stocks of the nv30 off
BFG has some refurb ones for sale.. link is on their site for like $225 shipped.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10180 | What is the best language course or software? Compare
Visiting the Homeland
by Krishna Rao
Home to thousands of languages, India was a fascinating place to visit when I was a child. On a trip to my grandparents’ estate in the rural south, I enjoyed the experience of crossing a linguistic boundary.
The journey started upon our arrival to Mumbai, the administrative capital of the State of Maharashtra. From there, my family took a bus headed southwest to the Dharwad region of Karnataka State where my grandparents lived.
The bustle of the city dissipated as we passed mile after mile of rice paddy. Slowly, the bus departed the coastal plain and began to scale the treacherous switchback roads of the Western Ghat Mountains.
At some point along the journey, we neared the Karnataka border. My father reminded me to proudly speak Kannada, for we were approaching our homeland. He had developed a strong sense of pride in Kannada as a child, having faced occasional prejudice for being a Dravidian language speaker while growing up in Mumbai. During his day, Mumbai was not the diverse metropolis it is now.
Local Marathis had grown concerned when migrant South Indians began to threaten their jobs. They rallied behind their common language, and formed pro-Marathi political parties.
The Marathi Language, spoken in Maharashtra, belongs to the Indo-European family, while Kannada, spoken in Karnataka, is Dravidian. (I was always stupefied that Marathi belongs to a language family that reaches Europe, yet it is unrelated to its next- door neighbor, Kannada).
When the bus stopped at the border towns, I saw the gradual transition from one language to the other. Pure Marathi became interspersed with Kannada, slowly becoming more corrupted before finally fading away. Dudh, the Marathi word for milk, (related to the word Dairy) changed to the Kannada Hal. Characteristic Indo-European numerals, eka, don, tin, (one, two, three) were replaced by ondu, eradu, muru. The tongue-twisting sounds of agglutinative Kannada ousted the quick Marathi words.
Kannada script became more visible in road signs and billboards. The letters of Kannada are derived from the ancient Brahmi script. It has a very distinct curved appearance, which was well-suited for carving on traditional banana-leaf paper. Marathi’s Devanagari script is also derived from Brahmi, although it developed a more angular appearance suited for writing on cut tree-bark paper.
As the bus travelled from town to town, I could almost see the southernmost Devanagari grow dull and the northernmost Kannada sharpen.
Kolhapur, the last outpost in Indo- European territory, sported a bilingual welcome sign. The next stop on the road was Bellary, Karnataka. By the time we reached my grandparents’ house in Dharwad, even the bus driver’s radio had switched to a Kannada broadcast.
The most interesting part of the journey is that the transition was extremely subtle. The culture remained uniform. The change from one language to the other was gradual and fluid.
Mass migrations caused by the recent economic boom have changed the demographic on both sides of the linguistic barrier. Nowadays, Mumbai is a cultural melting pot. In some parts, the population is majority South Indian. But in the distant borderlands, one village still looks exactly like the next, and the rhythm of daily life is unchanged.
Information about Marathi and Kannada
About the writer
Krishna Rao lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey, enjoys traveling, and has an interest in historical linguistics.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10223 | From OpenWetWare
Revision as of 23:17, 27 March 2009 by JCAnderson (Talk | contribs)
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Download DeepView
Download a File
Selecting and Displaying
Now hit <Enter>. This will hide all groups except those selected. You are looking at residues 4 through 16 of the protein. Notice that a checkmark (on Windows, a checkmark looks like the letter v) has appeared in the "show" column next to the selected residues in the control panel, indicating that they are on display. There are checks also in the "side" column, which means that side chains are shown. A side chain is shown only if the rest of the residue is shown, so you only see the side chains of displayed residues in the graphics window.
Now, let's center the view and play with it. There are different mouse modes that controls what happens to the display when you click or drag in the graphics window:
Click the button for "Scale and center visible groups". For now on, I'll just refer to this as "centering the view". Notice that after centering, the model rotates about the center of the groups on display. Centering the view with this button just does the action--it doesn't change the mouse mode. The next three buttons are different. Go ahead and click on one of them and then click and drag on the screen. This is how you manually zoom in and out, spin the image around, and shift it left and right. Play with that a bit and then re-center the view.
Now let's play with the Control Panel some more. Click the check in the side column next to MET12, to hide the side chain. Click the same space again to replace the check and display the MET12 sidechain. Try the same thing in the show, label (text labels), and surface (dotted van der Waals surface) columns, and look at the effects. Now remove the checks from the label and surface columns.
Again select and display residues 4-16 with side chains.
You can also turn on a whole column-worth of settings at once. To do this for just the selected groups, you click the header word at the top of a column in the Control Panel. Let's do this for "ribn". With residues 4-16 still selected, click on the word "ribn". You should get a little alpha helix showing up. Try spinning the image around, re-centering it to get it all on the screen, and playing with the other mouse controls. Since the view is in 3D, but you are viewing it in 2D, it will often help to wiggle the view around with your mouse to help orient you to what is above and behind your view.
You can also turn on or off an entire column-worth of settings for the entire model with shift-clicks. To remove the labels, surface, and ribbon, hold down the shift key and click any checkmark in the label column (not the word label). Repeat for the surface and ribn columns. When you click on a checkmark while holding down shift, your action removes all checkmarks, and DeepView makes the corresponding changes in the display. You can also turn the whole column on by shift-clicking on an unchecked position in the column. So, you can toggle the view to be all-on or all-off by using shift-click for a particular column of settings.
Again, display residues 4-22 (all with check in the show column, but with only residues 4-16 selected (red). Notice the + and - symbols above the Control Panel column headings. These act as buttons to turn the column function (show, side, label, and so forth) on or off, but only for the selected groups. Click on them and see for yourself.
There are also two narrow columns to the left of the group column. The first column is blank when the current model contains only one protein chain. Usually, you'll get some letters. For 1HEW.pdb, you should see "A"s by each group. These refer to the biopolymer chain. If there were multiple subunits in the file, or perhaps a DNA in there, there will be multiple chain labels for each biopolymer present. If you click on one of these chain labels, you select the entire chain.
The second column contains groups of the letters h or s. Groups labeled h comprise alpha helices, while groups labeled s comprise strands of beta sheet. Click on any h. You have selected the entire helix containing the residue you chose. Center the view to zoom in on the helix. Now find a different helix in the Control Panel list. Hold down ctrl and click any h in your chosen helix. You have added the second helix to the display (without selecting it). Center the view again to see what you did.
Select Menu Basics
The DeepView Select menu provides other commands for selecting.
"Select > All" selects all groups in the model
"Select > Secondary Structure > Helices" selects all the alpha-helical regions of the model
"Select > Seconday Structure > Strands" selects all the strands of beta sheets.
Another useful one is "select > visible groups". This one will select all the groups that are currently visible on the screen.
You can also select everything other than those currently selected with the "Select > Inverse Selection" choice.
There are lots of other selection methods available from this menu, and we'll visit some of them later. You can do things such as selecting all the tryptophan residues, or all the hydrophobic residues.
Colors can reveal structural, chemical, and comparative features vividly, and can help you to keep your bearings during complex operations.
Select, display, and center the complete model, without side chains. Checkmarks should only appear in the "show" column.
You can color groups manually using the Control Panel, or using various options within the "Color >" menu. Let's start with the color menu. When opening up a file for the first time, it is very useful to color the chains to get a feeling for what different biopolymer chains are present in the model and how they are oriented. You'd do this by "Select > all" (or hitting <ctrl-A>) and then selecting "Color > Chain". For lysozyme this isn't very interesting since there is only one chain, but for multiple chains they'd all turn different colors.
You can also color things by various biochemical properties from the color menu:
"Color > Secondary Structure" colors helical residues red, beta sheet residues (strands) yellow, and all others gray.
"Color > Secondary Structure Succession" colors helices and strands, but with this command, color reflects the order of each structural element in the overall sequence of residues. DeepView colors the first element of secondary structure violet, the last one red, and the ones in between with colors of the visible spectrum that lie between violet (400 nm) and red (700 nm). The result is that it is easy to follow the chain through the protein -- elements of secondary structure are colored from the N-terminal to the C-terminal end in the order violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.
You can also color things manually from the Control Panel.
In Deepview, you can indivually color the backbone, sidechain, surface, label, or ribbon of the groups. The color for the group is indicated by the colored box within the "col" column. To the right of the "col" column is a little triangular button. You use this button to toggle between what aspect of the group the color refers to. To change which aspect you are currently coloring, click on the little triangle and choose which one you want to color. Just like with the "show", "side", and so forth columns, the "col" column operates on the currently-selected residues when you click on the word "col". You can also individually control the color a particular group by clicking on the color box itself within the "col" column.
Let's give it a try by coloring just the backbone. Select all and choose "Color > Chain". Use you mouse to select residues 5-16, hit enter, and center the view. Click on "side" so that the sidechains are also visible. Now, click on the color type selection triangle and select "backbone." Now click on the word "col" to bring up the color menu. Click on one of the green squares, then click OK.
Now let's color one of the sidechains. Click on the color type selection triangle and choose sidechain. Click on the colored square next to MET12 and then click on an orange square and select OK. You should now have something like this:
As a last step, let's make a nice visually-clear view of the whole of the protein that let's us see the fold and lights up the bound inhibitor. Then we'll pretty it up with a a higher-resolution rendering, then save a PNG file of the current view.
First of all, let's show just the ribbon and make it green. Select All, then highlight just the "ribn" column--all others should be unchecked. Center the view. Click the color type selection triangle and select "ribbon". Click "col", a green box, then OK. You should have a nice green ribbon of the entire protein now.
Page down in Control Panel and select the 3 NAG groups. Click "show" and "side" to light them up. Right now, they are appearing as yellow residues on my screen, but I'd like to have them with CPK coloring (oxygens in red, nitrogen in blue, etc.) To do this, slick on the color type selection triangle and choose "backbone + side." click "col". Now, DON'T click on a color, just click on OK. This will set it to CPK coloring.
Now use the mouse mode button for rotating and your mouse to spin the model into an orientation that puts the ligand in a visually-appealing position.
Finally, let's improve the resolution. From the "Display >" menu, select "Render in 3D". If you want to get fancy, you can pretty it up even more with the preferences and lighting options. Let's just leave it as is for now and save a png. Go under "File > Save > Image...". Give it a filename and click save. Here's what I got:
What's left?
There are many other things you can do to view PDB files with DeepView. I've only shown you the basics here. We'll cover a few more things that we'll get into in the next tutorial at various spots. DeepView also has all sorts of tools for modeling (changing the sequence of the model) and comparing two models. I won't get into that stuff at all. If you want to learn the full scope of the program, I recommend you follow the complete tutorial at
Download the PDB file 2PIA.pdb, open it up into DeepView. Select and display a single slpha helix. Display the ribbon for this alpha helix and color it green. Display the sidechains and color them yellow. Center the view, output a png file, and submit your file for grading.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10224 |
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Second DNA Extraction and Purification of the Three new samples of G.tigrina 9/23/11
• Three more extractions were completed. Due to a poor DNA yield from the first extraction, it was decided to alter the amounts of planarian used. The first two samples (Gt. 2-1, Gt. 2-2) each contained half of one planarian. The third sample (Gt.3) contained two planarians. We were not sure if the low yield of DNA from the first extraction (Gt.1) was due to having too high of a concentration (too high of a concentration of DNA would overload the mini column in the kit producing an overall lower yield) or too low of a concentration of DNA which is why we halved our initial amount as well as doubled our initial amount of planaria. The DNA extraction was performed using the QIAGEN DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit and the same procedure was used as the first extraction with a couple of minor changes. First, 2µl yeast tRNA was added along with the 200µl Buffer AL, mixed, and incubated at 56 degrees Celsius for ten minutes. The adding of the yeast tRNA will help with the amplification later during PCR. The incubation allowed for the activation of the yeast tRNA. Finally, the last change made during the DNA extraction was made after the addition of buffer AE. After the addition of the buffer AE, the sample was incubated at 65 degrees Celsius for five minutes.
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Woman with computer
Photo: Thinkstock/Ryan McVay
Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms and more—Alexandra Samuel shares how online technology can turn from a distraction into a tool that helps you stay focused on your goals and inspired about your life.
The Internet has a terrible way of distracting a girl: You sit down to search job postings, and you end up in a chat room with some guy in Thailand who wants to know how you refinished your floors.
When I posted my long-term goals online in December 2004, it was a way of procrastinating the immediate goal of getting a job:
• Be invited to a gay wedding.
• Hire our first fabulous employee.
• Meet Stephen Sondheim.
• Never use the word "synergy."
It doesn't have to be that way. Instead of yielding to the siren song of online distraction, you can use your computer to connect to your goals—and to find the inspiration to achieve them.
That's exactly the point of 43 Things, the website I used to record my goals. It asks a simple question, "What do you want to do with your life?" and gives you a quick way to record up to 43 answers. Five years after recording my initial goals, I've crossed almost two dozen off my list...including some big ones, like "start a company that lasts longer than two years," "create a writing group" and "potty-train my son."
I'd love to tell you that 43 Things is the tooth fairy of the Internet: Stick your to-do under a virtual pillow and wake up to a giant check mark. But no, I had to do the hard work of finding clients, fellow writers and rubber bedsheets. What 43 Things supplied was the focus, advice and support to help me do it.
How to plug into inspiration on the Web
PAGE 1 of 4
Published on April 21, 2010 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10235 |
Permalink for comment 296445
by mat69 on Wed 16th Jan 2008 23:47 UTC
Member since:
I can't afford to download all the necessary dev-tools atm, but I still want to play around a little bit with KDE 4.0.
So is there a distribution on a CD/DVD (I could download that at another place) that contains all necessary developement files to compile kde4 programs, plasmoids etc.?
I tried the openSuses 10.3 live Cd and the kubuntu one allready.
Thanks in advance.
Edited 2008-01-16 23:59 UTC
Reply Score: 2 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10236 |
Permalink for comment 404354
RE[3]: Yawn...
by kap1 on Sat 16th Jan 2010 13:43 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Yawn..."
Member since:
Silverlight has plenty of features that Flash could never will never have. Flash and Java are yesterday's technology. Silverlight and .Net are tomorrow's technology.
huh? .Net and Silverlight are just a rehash of old technologies. Essentially just a Java clone better in some cases worse in others.
Edited 2010-01-16 13:49 UTC
Reply Parent Score: 5 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10237 |
Permalink for comment 531489
RE[2]: What to say?
by leech on Sat 18th Aug 2012 16:36 UTC in reply to "RE: What to say?"
Member since:
Agreed whole heartily. You remember the days when you could actually BUY software and not License it? Oh.. .memories...
Reply Parent Score: 4 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10238 | Linked by martini on Tue 23rd Oct 2012 22:02 UTC
Permalink for comment 539896
RE[2]: iPad killar
by earksiinni on Wed 24th Oct 2012 14:49 UTC in reply to "RE: iPad killar"
Member since:
My point is that Wayland is irrelevant. It has been cited so often as the solution to _____, but in a world where Android is the biggest consumer Linux distro, the problems that Wayland is meant to solve have already been circumnavigated. NB: not solved, but circumnavigated. Wayland is indeed solving problems, but I doubt the solutions' meaningfulness at this point.
Moreover, because other parts of the Linux desktop ecosystem are broken--er, ahem, I mean "free and decentralized"--once those technical problems are solved by Wayland you still won't be any closer to "Year of Linux on the Desktop" (which is an irrelevant dream at this point anyway, as I've noted) because what you'll actually get is "One Year of Ubuntu PPA's and Unofficial Slackbuild Packages".
Regarding trolling or stupid, hints for next time: "killar", "WP7.5", "teh".
Edited 2012-10-24 14:52 UTC
Reply Parent Score: 2 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10239 |
Thread beginning with comment 463880
To view parent comment, click here.
RE[2]: Thunderbold licensing?
by Carewolf on Thu 24th Feb 2011 21:31 UTC in reply to "RE: Thunderbold licensing?"
Member since:
I don't think exporting PCI-express over a copper-line several meters is in the category of something you "just do". In fact it is probably the one of most difficult parts of all the technologies involved.
Then there is ofcourse the question of whether they have added something on top of PCI-express to secure it. It would suck if ThunderBolt like FireWire before it provides unrestricted access to read and write physical memory. Business laptops should be the last place you would want hotpluggable security holes.
Reply Parent Score: 3 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10240 | 56668 : dit.cms menus/simple/index.php path Parameter Remote File Inclusion
Printer | http://osvdb.org/56668 | Email This | Edit Vulnerability
6 916 over 4 years ago almost 4 years ago 3 times 100%
Disclosure Date
dit.cms contains a flaw that may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands. The issue is due to the menus/simple/index.php script not properly sanitizing user input supplied to the 'path' parameter. This may allow an attacker to include a file from from the targeted host or an arbitrary remote host that contains commands which will be executed by the vulnerable script with the same privileges as the web server.
Location: Remote / Network Access
Attack Type: Input Manipulation
Impact: Loss of Confidentiality, Loss of Integrity
Solution: Solution Unknown
Exploit: Exploit Public
Disclosure: Third-party Verified, Uncoordinated Disclosure
OSVDB: Web Related
CVSSv2 Score
CVSSv2 Base Score = 9.3
Source: nvd.nist.gov | Generated: 2009-08-17 | Disagree?
Access_vector_2 Access_complexity_1 Authentication_2 Confidentiality_impact_2 Integrity_impact_2 Availability_impact_2
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10284 | #!D:\perl\bin\perl use strict; my ($Reg, $Host, $Key, $Value); use Win32::TieRegistry ( TiedRef => \$Reg, ArrayValues => 1, Delimiter => '/', ':REG_' ); # Asking for machine name and info to be added to the sys env var print "What host would you like to connect to? "; chomp($Host = ); print "What name would you like for the Sys Environment Variable? "; chomp($Key = ); print "What value would you like to assign to this variable? "; chomp($Value = ); # this is the system environment variable area done on the registry my $SysEnv= $Reg->Connect("$Host", "LMachine/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Environment/") or die "Can't connect to $Host 's registry or can't open Registry key, Session Manager/Environment: $^E +\n"; # create a new value and set it's data $SysEnv->{"/$Key"} = "$Value"; |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10302 |
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It was 1971, and death was changing shape. For centuries it had been feared, reviled, or simply swept under the rug. But now it was being celebrated.
Lieutenant William Calley was on trial for murdering 102 Vietnamese civilians in cold blood at My Lai, and the fan letters were pouring in—10,000 of them by February. Legislators from Jimmy Carter to George Wallace condemned Calley’s conviction, and more than 200,000 copies of “The Battle Hymn of William Calley” were sold. At the same time, Charles Manson’s trial was prompting adoring testimony from his lovers and acolytes; “Charlie was a father who knew that it is good to make love, and makes love with love, but not with evil and guilt,” gushed Squeaky Fromme.
In a study of near-death experiences in Omega magazine, Dr. Russell Noyes Jr. reported that they were a lot like the mystical states of consciousness brought on by LSD and recommended that scientists should study people on drugs if they wanted to know more about what it was like to die.
Detroit, which boasted the country’s highest murder rate, also boasted no fewer than four extremely loud bands with screaming guitars and wild stage shows, and at least one of these was taking plenty of LSD, immersed in thoughts of death. When that band, Funkadelic, released its third album, Maggot Brain, in July, it captured the mood of the era perfectly—not just druggy, but toxic.
Check out the cover. A woman’s head is poking out of the dirt, but she’s not dirty. She’s screaming—or is she laughing?—mouth wide open, eyes shut tight, afro glistening, teeth gleaming and perfect. The dirt looks good too—some straw, some pebbles, but nothing crawling. The rest of her body is invisible—buried.
Inside the album’s gatefold, under an 11-inch image of a maggot, is a long screed about fear lifted from the Satan-worshipping Process-Church of the Final Judgement, which ends as follows:
On the right is a blurry, faded photograph of the band, black men mostly in their early 20s, posed casually in front of a crumbling brick wall. On the back cover, in place of the beautiful black woman’s screaming head, is a shining clean skull with its eye sockets aglow.
Now put the record on.
It opens with an emotionally draining guitar solo called “Maggot Brain’. According to some accounts, the title was a phrase Clinton came up with after his brother died and nobody knew; maggots were crawling out of his skull when he was finally found. Before the song’s recording, Clinton told Hazel to imagine his mother had just died. The result, in Chuck Eddy’s words, is “10 weaving and swelling minutes of . . . disorder that may well express the saddest emotion I’ve ever heard wrenched from a mere musical instrument.”
The album ends with another 10-minute guitar excursion, a burning hot prefiguring of what Miles Davis would do on Agharta, called “Wars of Armageddon.” In between it asks if you can “get to” the fact that you’re really dead (“I once had a life, or rather it had me”) (in “Can You Get to That”), pleas for peace with screamed lyrics like “You know that hate is gonna keep on multiplying and you know that man is gonna keep right on dying” (in “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks”), and, in the fiercest song on the record, “Super Stupid,” tells a story about someone who mistakes heroin for cocaine and kicks the bucket.
Maggot Brain is one of the loudest, darkest, most intense records ever made. The funk is undeniable—“Hit It and Quit It” is the apotheosis of everything funk was about, and “Super Stupid” takes it to the point of no return—but so is the madness and anger, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that Eddie Hazel’s guitar seems to personify. Ronald “Stozo” Edwards, who would later provide cover art for P-Funk albums, testifies, “Niggas have always been scared of Funkadelic…. That Maggot Brain album was the scariest shit I had ever heard.”
Yet underlying it all is a madcap sort of humor, exemplified by the end of “Wars of Armageddon,” where over piercing shrieks a voice intones, “More power to the people, more pussy to the power, more pussy to the people, more power to the pussy.” As George Clinton, Funkadelic’s producer and mastermind, says, “I didn’t never want to be pretentious about shit, so I would always make sure I was being funny.”
Maggot Brain is no concept album; it’s simply a collection of seven songs, some short, some very long. But as a whole, it opens up a vision of the world completely unlike that suggested by any previous record—a world of darkness, death, and destruction that actually seems like a terrific place to be.
Another record from the period, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, a loud, slow, record which had gone to number one on the UK charts and number 12 in the U.S. in late 1970, had also centered around death. But as the title suggested, Sabbath feared death as intrinsically evil; their view of the universe was Manichaean; good and evil were not mixed.
But for Funkadelic, death was to be celebrated. With its biting, defiant, overwhelmingly funky music, Funkadelic welcomed death as one of its motley crew. You can hear this in “Eulogy and Light,” from the band’s previous record, Free Your Mind . . . And Your Ass Will Follow: Over the song “Open Your Eyes” played backwards, Clinton yells a twisted version of the Lord’s Prayer and 23rd Psalm, culminating in a dramatic reversal of the usual illumination. He runs away from the light at the end, his voice rising as the tape unspools too fast—“I run, I back away, to hide, from what? From fear? The truth? The light?”
On Maggot Brain, fear has been conquered, and there is no light left. And perhaps this was because of George Clinton’s immersion in the literature of the Process Church.
Founded in 1964 by a British Scientologist named Robert de Grimston, the Process Church of the Final Judgment worshipped God while loving Satan—on one wall of their churches was a Christian cross and on the opposite was a goat’s head in a pentagram. It urged followers to choose between Jehovah (the ascetic life), Lucifer (the sensual life), Satan (the violent life), and Christ (who unified all three), and then to follow one’s chosen path to its extreme. The unification would take place in an apocalypse, which was coming soon.
The cult’s magazine, The Process—from which Funkadelic quoted at length not just on Maggot Brain but on their next record, America Eats Its Young—was heavily into Hitler, Satan, blood, and doom. It devoted an issue to freedom of expression, featuring Mick Jagger on the cover; another to fear, filled with disturbing images and printed in purple, red, and silver ink; and another to death, including an article by Charles Manson celebrating death as “peace from this world’s madness and paradise in my own self.”
The Process Church was not very active in Detroit, and neither Clinton nor anyone in his band underwent its arduous initiation procedure. Clinton would soon develop an elaborate and dauntingly original cosmology of his own, borrowing from sci-fi movies and comic strips. Clinton’s P-Funk empire would become a kind of radical organization sporting its very own eschatology, aesthetics, and pantheon of minor gods. Funkadelic albums would become vehicles for a peculiar kind of evangelism, with mystical pronouncements sharing grooves with bathroom humor. But the Process Church proved an important source for him, for it gave Clinton moral permission to embrace and celebrate the dark side of human nature.
Another ingredient was Black Power. Funkadelic wasn’t as explicit about this as, say, the Last Poets, but the racial harmony of Sly and the Family Stone was clearly not in their vocabulary. Funkadelic was always a purely black thang.
To embrace and celebrate blackness was one of the central goals of the Black Power and Black Arts movements; this meant rejecting the association of blackness with evil that had been more or less built into the English language. Langston Hughes had written about this identification back in the 1940s, in “That Word Black.” In this story, Hughes’s protagonist wonders why every word or phrase containing “black” is negative—black cats, blacklist, black-balled, blackmail, the eight-ball, the Black Hand Society, black sheep, black magic, black mark, black as hell, black heart. “Wait till my day comes!” he exclaims. “In my language, bad will be white. Blackmail will be white mail. Black cats will be good luck, and white cats will be bad.”
The phrase “Black is beautiful” has become such a cliché that it’s easy to forget its revolutionary import, which was, as Rickey Vincent puts it in his history of funk, that “the demeaning language of European culture was finally, ultimately, being dissolved. Inverting the meanings of the term black was a monumental task.”
Larry Neal, in his 1968 manifesto, “The Black Arts Movement,” wrote about “the need to develop a Black aesthetic,” and posited that “the Western aesthetic has run its course: it is impossible to construct anything meaningful within its decaying structure.” In this he was echoing Don L. Lee, Etheridge Knight, and LeRoi Jones, who had written, in his “State/meant” of 1965,
The Black Artist’s role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. . . .
The fair are
fair, and death
ly white.
The day will not save them
and we own
the night.
Inspired by Jones and Malcolm X, the Black Power and Black Arts movements went so far as to call for violence, associating that violence directly with blackness. In “Black Art,” from his 1969 book Black Magic, Jones wrote,
We want “poems that kill.”
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Funkadelic played a variation on this theme. For them, everything dark was beautiful, whether it be blackness, dirt, or death. Clinton started on this idea as early as the first Funkadelic album, a record of deep-fried blues. During the song, “What Is Soul?” after a cry of “All that is good is nasty,” he compares soul to a ham hock in your corn flakes, the ring around your bathtub, a joint rolled in toilet paper, and chitlins foo yung—in other words, a mix of the nasty with the good. Clinton wasn’t simply reversing the English language, as Hughes and the “black is beautiful” people did. He was taking blackness’s negative associations and making them positive. In the new slang of the era, bad meant good.
And things got progressively funkier from there. The word funk originally meant body odor; the music was therefore dirty and sexy, intimate and hot. It involved people playing closely together, figuratively rubbing up against one another. Funk embraced heavily distorted electric guitars, bent notes and pulled strings, basses that popped rather than hummed, irregular drumming that split the difference between swing and straight time. Funk vocalists grunted and moaned, shrieked and sobbed, slurred their words and stretched them out.
Under George Clinton, funk embraced not just stink and dirt but went far beyond that, embracing death, war, and even the apocalypse. Yes, other funk artists shared this tendency—one funk band called themselves War, and James Brown released albums entitled Superbad and Hell. But War espoused peace and love, Brown self-reliance. Funkadelic, especially on Maggot Brain, reveled in decay.
For Clinton, funk was the answer to Hughes’s conundrum of how one could celebrate blackness while rejecting its meaning in the white world. Funk was a celebration of both blackness and its meaning in the white world—darkness, death, destruction. The process of reclaiming blackness had just been taken one step farther—and as far as it could possibly go.
Funkadelic had initially come together as the backing band for the Parliaments, a vocal quintet led by George Clinton since 1955. The name Funkadelic was suggested by Billy “Bass” Nelson, who was all of 17 years old. It was Nelson who recruited the other four instrumentalists in the band, and who, with Hazel, was largely responsible for their sound and image. “Cream, Blue Cheer, Sgt. Pepper’s, Sly, Vanilla Fudge: That’s what we were listening to constantly,” Nelson remembered. “And once Eddie started listening to Jimi Hendrix, he found his niche. Immediately, he was like, ‘Damn, Bill, I can do that! Can you play that bass shit, muthafucka?’ I was like, ‘Hey, man, I guess I’m gonna have to.”
The band was formed in Detroit in 1967, the time and place of the country’s most destructive urban riot, soon to be labeled “The Great Rebellion.” Forty-one people died, 347 were injured, 3,800 arrested, 5,000 rendered homeless. More than a thousand buildings were destroyed, 2,700 businesses were looted, and damage estimates reached half a billion dollars. Clinton, Nelson, Clarence Haskins, and the rest of the Parliaments were holed up in the Twenty Grand Motel, where, as Haskins explained, “people [were] getting their fingers, arms, wrists cut off for their jewelry. National Guard had us all pinned up against the wall. Took our uniforms out of the car, stomping on them, lookin’ for weapons. We were just afraid of being shot.”
In the early 1970s, Detroit was the fifth-largest American city (now it is 11th), and it was, by almost any measure, the worst. Even the chairman of the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce admitted that “Detroit is the city of problems. If they exist, we’ve probably got them.” Because of labor conditions, unrest was at its peak: In 1970, one quarter of Ford’s assembly-line workers quit, and on any given day, a full five percent of General Motors’ workers would be missing without an excuse, a figure that would rise to 10 percent on Mondays and Fridays. Public transit was practically nonexistent, the school system was on the verge of bankruptcy, thousands of homes were deserted because of corruption in lending institutions, the police department resisted segregation and created secret elite units, racism pervaded all aspects of life, and Motor City became Murder City.
But at the same time, Detroit was the site of one of the nation’s most revolutionary black liberation movements. In response to the riots, a group of black workers combined Black Power with the more radical elements of the labor movement to formulate a new vision and a new social movement, one that directly confronted the establishment. At the vanguard were three revolutionary organizations: the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, which organized wildcat strikes and published widely read newspapers; the Black United Front, which encompassed sixty organizations ranging from black churches to a black policemen’s group to DRUM itself; and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, whose name speaks for itself.
Funkadelic quickly established itself as a fixture on the Detroit rock scene, sharing management and performance venues with three white bands: the Stooges, the MC5, and the Amboy Dukes, led by Ted Nugent. An onstage marriage between Clinton and Stooges leader Iggy Pop, both of whom would regularly display their penises during their shows, was once staged by their publicist.
And along with rock bands, of course, were the Motown bands, of which the Temptations came closest to the Funkadelic style. (Clinton actually wrote some of the Temptations’ songs, and called Funkadelic “the loudest black band in the world, Temptations on acid”.) What all these bands had in common was a balls-to-the-walls aesthetic—loud guitars; fierce and steady rhythms; shouted-out lyrics about sex, drugs, and rebellion; songs that could go on for half an hour; flamboyant and violent onstage gestures; and an implicit menace, an unstated—or occasionally baldly stated—threat.
By the time Funkadelic recorded Maggot Brain, Hazel and Nelson had been playing together for nine years, with drummer Ramon “Tiki” Fulwood joining them in 1967. The trio had developed a solid rapport and, together with newer members Tawl Ross and keyboardist Bernie Worrell, recorded two albums which reached the R&B top 20 (as would Maggot Brain). Although Fulwood’s drumming was steady and forceful, there was an layer underneath of complex, mercurial rhythms that seemed to coexist uneasily with the central beat. Nelson’s playing was propulsive, inventive, and stylish; Ross’s guitar was solid; Worrell’s keyboard solos were both blues- and outer-space based. But what really made the band stand out was Eddie Hazel’s axe.
Jimi Hendrix had died on September 18, 1970, shortly before the recording of Maggot Brain began, and it’s possible that “Maggot Brain” was meant as a sort of requiem. For the white community, Hendrix’s death hardly mattered at the time: Time magazine’s contemptuous obituary read, in its entirety, “Died. Jimi Hendrix, 27, Seattle-born rock superstar whose grating, bluesy voice, screechy, pulsating guitar solos and pelvis-pumping stage antics conveyed both a turned-on, fetid sense of eroticism and, at best, a reverberated musical equivalent of the urban black’s anguished spirit; apparently of an overdose of drugs; in London.”
To Funkadelic, though, Hendrix mattered. Hazel was widely considered his successor. It’s easy to compare the two guitarists—both were blues-based and heavily electric, both embraced the psychedelic aesthetic while keeping it grounded in rhythm-and-blues, both displayed amazing proficiency with jaw-dropping ease. But while Hendrix was eager to experiment and grandstand, Hazel was no show-off. Moreover, he was an indissoluble member of the P-Funk family—he needed them as much as they needed him.
On their previous two albums, Funkadelic had been loose, sloppy, and ragged—in fact, the one before Maggot Brain, Free Your Mind, had been recorded in its entirety in one LSD-fueled day. But on Maggot Brain, they focused their energies so that every note counted. Clinton now says that he produced the record while on acid: “I just got in there and turned the knobs. It was such a vibe. I didn’t know any better—you can only do that stuff when you don’t know any better.” But he’s being disingenuous. Rather than in one day, Maggot Brain was recorded over a period of several months. It featured a number of guest musicians, including Gary Shider from the band United Soul, some female vocalists from Isaac Hayes’ backing group, and McKinley Jackson, trombonist for the Politicians.
Funkadelic was essentially a riven band at this point. The five instrumentalists were functioning as a sold unit creating the music; George Clinton was functioning not only as their producer but as their saboteur. He mixed Nelson and Worrell’s playing out of the released version of the song “Maggot Brain”, which Nelson still resents. He has called the cover and liner notes “bullshit, satanical to say the least…. That’s George sabotaging us again.
“It’s okay to be the bad guys of rock and roll, but look at how much class the Stones had with it. Then there’s the other point of, Wait, don’t go too far with it; we’re not white. There are things we cannot get away with because we’re black. But George didn’t care about none of that, at our expense…. Funkadelic was straight-up X-rated. He wanted to keep Funkadelic dirty.” Clearly, Clinton wanted Maggot Brain to be as extreme as he could make it.
After the release of Maggot Brain, Funkadelic essentially disbanded. Within a year, Worrell would be the only original member left. Clinton fired Fulwood for his heroin addiction, though he would later rejoin the band. Hazel, who was also addicted to heroin, spent a year in jail, convicted of smoking angel dust and assaulting a stewardess; he rejoined the band for a few later records, but his career then went into rapid decline, and he died in 1992. Nelson quit over financial matters (he claimed Clinton was keeping all the money and getting rid of the band made doing so easier), and went on to play with the Commodores, Chairmen of the Board, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Fishbone, and the Temptations. Tawl Ross barely survived an overdose of LSD and speed, and suffered irreversible brain damage.
The band was no longer the same. Clinton replaced the entire rhythm section, hiring players who had defected from James Brown’s JBs. Funkadelic’s next two records, America Eats Its Young and Cosmic Slop, were unfocused, ineffective, and in parts unlistenable. The heavy blues-based funk sound was almost completely abandoned in favor of a string section and a variety of off-the-wall parodic approaches, none of which had sticking power. By the time the band found its groove again—on 1974’s Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, essentially a George Clinton-Eddie Hazel record that attempted to do for sex what Maggot Brain had done for death—they were no longer as focused or ambitious.
As for funk itself, it soldiered on, producing many indelible hits and delectable obscurities. Even if it never got as heavy as Maggot Brain again, it remained a tremendously creative force, and it supplied the soundtrack for black America for the remainder of the decade. Eddie Hazel and Maggot Brain were essentially forgotten; Clinton’s P-Funk empire grew so huge that between his various bands and spin-offs they were releasing as many as eight records a year, all but burying Maggot Brain under subsequent product.
But for a brief moment in the early ‘70s, a band captured the odor of the age, the stench of death and corruption, the weary exhalation of America at its lowest. And it smelled very, very funky.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10403 | Lisa's Laws: September blue sky, from a child's view and from 9/11
My niece Katie, who just started first grade on Wednesday, has taken to using the word "glorious." We're not sure where she picked it up, but it has become her very favorite adjective. "This is a glorious hot dog," she'll say, or "Aunt Lisa, that is a glorious dress you're wearing."
Katie's new favorite word came to mind Wednesday morning, her first day of school and truly glorious. The sun was bright and the morning chill promised to give way to, as she would say, a glorious summer day. My Bella and her pal even jumped in the pool, the water cold from the September nights, but Wednesday's sky, blue and utterly cloudless, poured warmth down.
It was the kind of sky that pulls your face to it, caressing it until you lean your head back to you can feel soft heat. Here in New York we know that days like last Wednesday will soon give way to cold autumn rains and long, dark nights. So I indulged in that moment, feeling the sun and listening to the girls splash. Then I remembered how a blue and cloudless sky once held nothing but dread, and how 12 years ago it seemed impossible to ever look up and see it any other way.
Bella was an infant, only weeks old, on Sept. 11, 2001, and from her child's perspective it's part of a past so far away that it can't be reached, like Woodstock and black and white television and the Clinton administration. But of course she'll learn.
In school they talk about 9/11, even in elementary school. Bella has learned about the attacks, the war, the new Freedom Tower. She's seen the photographs and the memorials, even the twisted, tortured pieces of steel from the Twin Towers on display at the Liberty Science Center, where her sixth-grade class went on a field trip. Her dad and I talk about it with her, too. We answer her questions as best we can, but it's almost impossible to adequately answer how, and why, and will it happen again.
And we also talk about how, for a while after, when a firefighter in bunker gear would step onto a subway car or into a deli, or a firetruck would drive down the street, people would applaud. And how, for a while, it seemed that the American flag flew in front of nearly every home, from front porches and on flagpoles on lawns and in apartment windows. How everyone donated blood, and how, when we drive across the George Washington Bridge into the city, our gaze drifts to the right because when we were her age we always looked for the World Trade Center, and we still do.
If she hasn't been told of it yet, someone, surely, will mention that sky, and how so many of us will always, always remember how blue and perfect and open it was that morning, and then how chillingly quiet and empty it became. And how from now on a perfect sky, a rare gift from nature bestowed on these dwindling summer days, will break our hearts.
Could it be, though, that Katie and Bella will look up on a day like Wednesday and think only, as the sun kisses their upturned faces, "How glorious"?
Reader Reaction |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10417 | Last updated on March 16, 2014 at 0:04 EDT
If the object lies outside the earth’s atmosphere, as in the case of stars and planets, the phenomenon is termed astronomical scintillation; if the luminous source lies within the atmosphere, the phenomenon is termed terrestrial scintillation.
As one of the three principal factors governing astronomical seeing, scintillation is defined as variations in luminance only.
It is clearly established that almost all scintillation effects are caused by anomalous refraction occurring in rather small parcels or strata of air, schlieren, whose temperatures and hence densities differ slightly from those of their surroundings.
Normal wind motions transporting such schlieren across the observer’s line of sight produce the irregular fluctuations characteristic of scintillation.
Scintillation effects are always much more pronounced near the horizon than near the zenith. Parcels of the order of only centimeters to decimeters are believed to produce most of the scintillatory irregularities in the atmosphere.
Click here to learn more on this topic from eLibrary: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10448 | Mike Salvo / Bio
Currently I am Fronting and touring with "Faithfully- A Journey Tribute",I also have an original side project "King Joe" we are friends that enjoy an occasional gig or two during the year. All of which you can find in my "songs" section...
If you care here is a little more about me;
I have been in the Boston music scene since 1985. Starting with "Glass" a Medford based Hair Metal band of childhood friends: Darrin Blackler, Jerry Lynch and Mike Palumbo. In 1988 I met Steve Ferarra(Street Kid)and formed "In The Wild" a straight up rock band with Jack Marchese, Dave "Cup" Carmello and Skip Fisher. In 1991 we disbanded. In 2009 Steve & I reunited and have been writing and recording my new album (un-named) for release later this year.
General Info
Band Members:
Mike Salvo - Vocals
Artist Name:
Mike Salvo
Home Page:
Active Since:
Rock / Original Rock
Contact Info
Wakefield, MA
Similar Artists
• Journey
• Steve Perry (Journey)
• Kip Winger
• Dokken
• Bad English |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10461 | I'm a Runner: Nicholas Kristof
The New York Times columnist discusses his life as a runner.
November 28, 2012
I heard you wrote a piece for RW way back when?
Yes. This must have been, I'm guessing, my senior year in high school or possibly in my gap year after high school. So around 1976-'78. It was about a runner, a high school girl in Beaverton, Oregon, who was a superstar high school runner. I wrote it as a 900-word feature and I have a feeling that the editors, in their wisdom, turned it into a two- or three-paragraph little item. I don't remember if I got a byline or anything on it.
I wanted to start with one of your New York Times columns, titled "Addicted to Exercise," where you describe yourself as a "pathological runner" and that you might even be addicted to running. Can you characterize that addiction?
If I haven't run for a day or two, I get kind of itchy and fidgety. I suffer withdrawal pangs. And really, the only remedy is either to keep exceptionally busy or go out for a good run. Working out on a treadmill or a stationary bike just does not cut it.
How often do you get out there and how many miles at a pop?
I'd say I typically run six days a week. I typically would do, two-thirds or three-quarters of the time, a five-mile run. Last year, I started adding speedwork. What I do in that case is run to the high school track, which is only about a mile or so away, and do a couple fast 440s, with breaks in between, a couple fast 220s, and maybe a fast 100 or two, and then jog back home.
Do you live in the city?
No, we actually live in the Westchester suburbs.
Obviously, you have a busy and travel-heavy schedule, how do you manage to carve out the time? Six days a week is impressive for someone with a tight schedule.
One advantage of my schedule is that it is not remotely clock-punching, so I have some flexibility. I will sometimes run early in the morning when I get up, and at other times, at end of the day, including at night. I don't mind bad weather. I'm happy to run in the rain. I grew up in Oregon so I'm part duck anyway. If it gets below about 20 or 22 degrees, then I'll skip a run. It feels like it doesn't do my lungs any good. When I travel, I often don't run. It depends where I am. If I'm in Paris, I'll run. But if I'm in Sudan surrounded my minefields, then I'll probably pass it up.
Any places around the world that stick in your mind as wonderful runs?
Some of my favorite runs have been in places where I lived. In Oregon, on the farm I grew up on, there used to be a wonderful run through the woods right behind the farm. I could go for miles and never see anybody. I did once run into a possibly rabid coyote. But that was one of the few creatures I encountered on those runs. When I was studying at Oxford, I loved running through these little country villages around Oxford. The developing world tends not to have fantastic, beautiful runs, and typically when I'm traveling, it's in the developing world. In China, I always used to go for runs. But then I finally decided I was doing myself more harm than good because of the pollution in the air.
I was going to ask about China. I used to live in the former Soviet Union in the 1980s. You didn't see much running in the USSR then, and even when I went back a few years ago to run the Moscow marathon, which had been going for 30 years, none of my Russian friends had even heard of it, even though they'd lived in the city their entire lives. I'm wondering if the running culture, or lack thereof, is the same in China?
A lot of places where I run, people look at me like I'm completely nuts or they look behind me to see who I'm running from. In China--my wife and I lived there five years from 1988 to 1993--the state security had me under quite intense surveillance much of the time [as a foreign reporter], so often I'd have several chase teams from state security behind me. It was amusing. They were disdainful of moving on foot, so they were either in vehicles or on motorcycles. In that case, they were very easy to spot because they would be about 50 yards behind me, moving very slowly.
Do you ever get column ideas, crack writing problems, or divine other inspiration while on the run?
I tend to think a lot when I'm running and sort through ideas. It's not intentional that I'm trying to conjure story ideas when I'm running. It just sort of happens, and very often I'll get back home and immediately grab pencil and paper and jot down the ideas that come to me before I forget them.
Any examples?
The column you mentioned about addictions, I think that was one that came to me while running. I had the book The Compass of Pleasure, by David J. Linden, but wasn't quite sure how to turn it into a column, and then while on the run, it rattled around and reached its more or less final form.
Have you ever run with an interview subject or conducted an interview while on the run?
I don't think so. I've talked to former President George W. Bush about running, and various people about running. But I think it would also be a little hard trying to take notes while running.
Did you get any good running advice from President Bush?
Not really. And then he defected from running because of his knees and became a bicyclist. And I must say, I find bicycling much less of a workout and much less interesting.
Are you a solo runner?
Yes, I tend to be a solo runner.
You recently tweeted out an essay about backpacking in the wilderness as a healing agent. A very moving piece. Do you feel running has that same healing property or potential?
Yeah, I do. I think it's somewhat different. In the case of backpacking, I think the therapy comes less from the exercise and more from the wilderness and the solitude. In the case of running, it really comes from the exercise and the exhaustion. One of the reasons I've been taking to speedwork in the last year or so is that I find that if I've done a couple fast 440s, then it really gives me a nice mental boost throughout the day. It probably reminds me of high school and makes me feel younger for that reason.
Speaking of high school, you referenced your high school cross-country running in your column, can you tell me about those early days and what drew you to the sport?
I went to very small country high school in Yamhill, Oregon, and my freshman history teacher was also the cross-country coach, and he was desperate for people to make sure the school had a cross-country team. So he strongly encouraged me to try out. I hadn't done running before that. I tried out for the team in ninth grade, and made it because I don't think we had any runners; I think we only had five people try out. But then I really liked it and got reasonably good. We started out doing 2.5 miles and then switched to the 5-K and my best time in the 5-K was 16:58. My peak was my junior year. I was the tenth best junior or below in the state and went to the state meet for three years. But I never was in contention to win a medal or something.
Were you a competitive runner in college?
No, but I ran pretty much every day in college. I had a great six-mile route along the Charles River [in Cambridge, Massachusetts].
Ah, that's where I run every day. I live in Central Square in Cambridge.
Oh, yeah? That's great. Typically, I'd run late at night, about midnight, along the Charles River and loved it. Weekend runs were a little longer, into Boston, by the statehouse. I did one marathon in high school, and in college, I did Boston and New York City.
Do you remember your times?
My best was New York, where I crossed the finish at 2:59, but it took five minutes to get to the starting line because I was not officially registered. I just started at the back of the pack and ran.
A bandit run?
Do you remember your Boston time?
Boston time was 3:22.
Have you run any marathons since?
Haven't run any marathons since. I'd like to--I keep thinking about it. If I avoid injuries long enough that I can really train solidly, then I would like to run one again. If my body stays healthy, I'd love to run New York in the fall. But it will be a little depressing how much my time will have slowed.
Have you run other races between those marathons and now?
I ran a lot of road races in college--in Cambridge and Boston, 5-Ks and 10-Ks. The New York Times goes occasionally to meets. A few years ago, I ran in a few road races in Central Park.
Do you remember your times or PRs in those distances?
In the 5-K, my PR may very well have been the 16:58 from high school. I remember there was one 10-K, a huge race with 700 people or so. I think I came in 17th. That was my grandest appearance in a 10-K.
Do you have a dog or ever run with a dog?
No, I don't. When I'm home visiting my mother on the farm, I'll sometimes run with one of her dogs.
Have you tried Vibrams or barefoot running?
I tried the Vibram FiveFingers and they definitely make me run more on my forefoot. At one point, the ball of my foot was hurting, so I switched to the Nike Frees, which are sort a compromise. I like them. They certainly make me run more on my heels and less on my forefoot.
Do you have a running hero?
Well, [Steve] Prefontaine. When I was growing up in Oregon, he just really dominated and he had been this extraordinary high school runner himself. We were all trying to get down to 10 minutes in the two mile, and he had broken nine minutes in the two mile. When I was in high school, I remember getting to school one day and there was a note on the bulletin board that he had died that night in a one-car accident [May 1975]. But he was very much my running hero.
What is your biggest pet peeve with other runners?
I don't have particular peeves about other runners. I resent it when I'm running on a road and cars often think that they should stay in their lane and whiz by and miss me by two inches rather than skirt around more broadly. So I'm very indignant with cars when they do that. I don't really have qualms about other runners.
How did Hurricane Sandy affect your running?
I went out for a run just as Sandy was arriving, as trees were swaying but not yet falling. Fabulous! Then I’ve run a few times since, clambering over fallen trees and leaping downed electrical wires. We’ve lost power and heat but still have hot water, so I could shower afterward. As for the marathon runners, I understand the frustration of people who have been training for so long and flown to New York, and more power to those who went for a 26-mile spin a few times around Central Park. But ultimately I thought cancelling the marathon was the right call, because there was so much popular anger among New Yorkers at the idea of the marathon going ahead. Some people even were throwing eggs at those making preparations for the marathon course, and there would have been much more ugliness if the race had gone ahead. It’s heartbreaking to cancel, but the storm resulted in lots and lots of heartbreak.
OK, switching gears. I now have a bunch of quick-answer and fill-in-the-blank type questions.
I love running because...
It breaks up the stress of the day.
When I run, I think about...
Everything that has been nagging me for the last couple of days.
More likely to pass.
The hardest part about running is...
To me, carbo-loading is...
Unnecessary until my next marathon.
My most essential running equipment is...
My Nike Frees.
The difference between running and reporting is...
Running is often more thoughtful.
My favorite running song is...
I'm really embarrassed to confess: I often listen to NPR when I run.
My running ambition is to...
Run a few more marathons.
Which body part hurts most after a run?
Depends upon the moment. I've had knee problems and plantar fasciitis problems. I'd say maybe my knees.
The perfect running weather is...
Sunny and cool after it has just rained.
You know you've had a great run when...
You feel exhausted but exuberant.
The best running advice I ever received was...
Never run through an injury in the hopes that it will just go away.
I'm curious about one last thing. For me, running became something that allowed me to take action, that somehow instilled in me a sense of courage and ability to act. You are someone who very much takes action in your reporting and advocacy. I'm curious whether running informs or reinforces your ability to muster the courage to be a voice against injustice?
I think that running helps me step away from details and sort out larger ethical issues and what I should do about that. It gives me perspective about what's important and what I can do about it. In that sense, I think it helps galvanize me to try to make a difference.
It offers clarity.
It offers clarity about priorities. So often, my day is all about details. This lets me step back and soar above it all and see what is truly important.
Oh, and I just thought of another example of something that came to me while running: my win-a-trip contest. I was searching for a way to make the issues that I write about more relevant to readers. On one run, the idea of having a contest to take a student to come with me on a reporting trip in the developing world came to me and I rushed home and wrote it down before I could forget it, and I've have been doing that since 2006. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10491 | Sencha Inc. | HTML5 Apps
Productive Enterprise Web Development with Ext JS and Clear Data Builder
April 22, 2013 | Viktor Gamov
Guest Blog Post
Part One: Ext JS MVC Application Scaffolding
In Part One, I’ll cover the following topics:
• What is Clear Toolkit for Ext JS
Clear Toolkit for Ext JS contains the following parts:
Farata Systems
Figure 1. Verifying CDB Installation
Farata Systems
Figure 2. New CDB Project Wizard
Farata Systems
Figure 3. Adding a Web Project to Tomcat
Farata Systems
Figure 4. Running a Scaffolded Application
Part Two: Generating a CRUD Application
In Part Two, I’ll cover the following topics:
• Create a simple CRUD Ext JS + Java application
• Create a POJO and the corresponding
• Create a Java service and populate with data from the service
• Use the auto-generated Ext JS application
• Extend the auto-generated CRUD methods
• Use ChangeObject
• How you can use automatically generated UI for that application
• How you can extend it
• How to use the ChangeObject class
Person Data Transfer Object
package dto;
import com.farata.dto2extjs.annotations.JSClass;
import com.farata.dto2extjs.annotations.JSGeneratedId;
public class Person {
private Integer id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
private String phone;
private String ssn;
String ssn) {
super(); = id;
this.firstName = firstName;
this.lastName = lastName; = phone;
this.ssn = ssn;
// Getters and Setter are omitted
Farata Systems
Figure 5. Generated from Java Class Ext JS Model
PersonService Interface Annotated with CDB Annotations
public interface PersonService {
List<Person> getPersons();
When the code generation is complete, you’ll get the implementation for the service — PersonServiceImpl. The store folder inside the application folder (WebContent\app) has the store, which is bound to the PersonModel. And my person model was generated previously. In this case, Clear Data Builder generated the store that binds to the remote service.
Farata Systems
Figure 6. Structure of Store and Model Folders
Farata Systems
Figure 7. Folder with Generated Samples
This is how the generated UI of the sample application looks:
Farata Systems
Figure 8. Scaffolded CRUD Application Template
Implementation of PersonService Interface
package service;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import dto.Person;
import service.generated.*;
public class PersonServiceImpl extends _PersonServiceImpl { // 1
public List<Person> getPersons() { // 2
Integer id= 0;
return result; // 3
public void getPersons_doCreate(ChangeObject changeObject) { // 4
Person dto = (Person) deserializeObject(
(Map<String, String>) changeObject.getNewVersion(),
public void getPersons_doUpdate(ChangeObject changeObject) { // 5
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
public void getPersons_doDelete(ChangeObject changeObject) { // 6
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Each instance of the ChangeObject contains the following:
Person dto = (Person) deserializeObject(
Part Three: Data Pagination
In Part Three, I’ll cover Implementing Pagination including:
• Add the Ext.toolbar.Paging component
• Bind both grid and pagingtoolbar to the same store
• Use DirectOptions class to read the pagination parameters
Refactored implementation of PersonService Interface
public class PersonServiceImpl extends _PersonServiceImpl {
public List<Person> getPersons() {
return result;
Sample Application Entry
disableCaching : false,
enabled : true,
paths : {
episode_3_pagination : 'app',
Clear : 'clear'
// Define GridPanel
Ext.define('episode_3_pagination.view.SampleGridPanel', {
extend : 'Ext.grid.Panel',
store : myStore,
alias : 'widget.samplegridpanel',
autoscroll : true,
plugins : [{
ptype : 'cellediting'
dockedItems: [
xtype: 'pagingtoolbar', // 2
displayInfo: true,
dock: 'top',
store: myStore // 3
columns : [
tbar : [
// Launch the application
name : 'episode_3_pagination',
requires : ['Clear.override.ExtJSOverrider'],
controllers : ['SampleController'],
launch : function() {
Ext.create('Ext.container.Viewport', {
items : [{
xtype : 'samplegridpanel'
Controller for Sample Application
Ext.define('episode_3_pagination.controller.SampleController', {
extend: '',
stores: [''],
refs: [{ // 1
ref: 'ThePanel',
selector: 'samplegridpanel'
init: function() {
'samplegridpanel button[action=load]': {
click: this.onLoad
onLoad: function() {
// returns instance of PersonStore
Farata Systems
Figure 9. Request Payload Details
Implementation of PersonService with Pagination
package service;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import clear.djn.DirectOptions; // 1
import dto.Person;
import service.generated.*;
public class PersonServiceImpl extends _PersonServiceImpl {
public List<Person> getPersons() {
// 2
result = result.subList(start, limit); // 5
return result;
Additional Useful Links
There are 5 responses. Add yours.
11 months ago
Thanks for sharing - many intriguing ideas.
Some comments / questions:
A few of your generated .js files are a little loose with the extra commas. For example, the Ext.container.Viewport subclass I got in a simple test project had a trailing command after align: ‘center’. The HelloController had a trailing comma… there were others.
The tool puts A LOT of stuff in WEB-INF lib, some of which I don’t want and I think could contribute to longer build times. I wouldn’t want the jta jars or jotm or the apache commons connection pool stuff. Might be ok for tomcat depending on what you’re used to, but if you’re deploying to WebSphere or something I’m not really comfortable with these or with the framework choosing a transaction strategy for me. At least get rid of the gson source jars!
An example doing real database access with a persistence provider like hibernate would be useful.
This might be more of an Ext Direct question, but I’m not at all sure from the examples how you’d get data back to the client after a create. Case in point, the example where you create a Person sort of just stops after you see that the server got the request and you’re left staring at a screen where the new Person row still doesn’t have an id. This example would be a lot better if you took it one step further and at least returned a ‘fake’ id so you could see it on the client.
I like the idea of scaffolding, or at least the idea of generating .js from annotated java classes. It seems like there’s much room for innovation here. For example, no reason the paging toolbars had to be added by hand - there could have been some extra annotations that indicated the need for paging. It would also be nice if the framework provided at least a simple means of paging among items already in memory.
Interested to see where this project goes.
Viktor Gamov
11 months ago
Hello firefoxSafari,
Thanks for your feedback.
// Trailing commas
Thanks for pointing out. We will revise default templates for typos and unnecessary trailing commas.
//Transaction libraries
By default, Clear Data Builder creates project that could be run on Tomcat without any other dependencies. This is starting point for developer. Tomcat is widely adopted Java WebServer. But Tomcat itself is not full Java EE application server. Which means, some of the important APIs are missing. CDB runtime rely on standard Java Transaction API to translate client side Batch request into server side transactions. For that purpose, CDB ships with JOTM transaction manager library that enables JTA programming model in Tomcat. If you want to run application of WebSphere you need to manually remove jotm libraries. But you need to make sure that your JTA implementation registers java:comp/UserTransaction JNDI resource. Clear Toolkit not choosing a transaction strategy for you, as per Convention over Configuration, only provides a default implementation which works out of the box.
//Direct and CRUD
You can Java Example Project (New -> ClearDataBuilder for ExtJs Project in Eclipse). This project has extensive example of the CRUD methods. This example has answer to your question. Long story short, as I demonstrated in this article and screencasts, generated store has all required methods backed by server-side service implementation. There is nothing Direct or CDB specific. You can use store.load, store.add and etc
We have something in out minds to add in future releases of CDB.
Keep you eye on project page on Github!
I hope this will help!
11 months ago
Hi Viktor,
Thanks for the info.
//Direct and CRUD
You’re quite right - the Java Example Project did answer my question about id’s. For the benefit of others reading this, the key for me was that I had to invoke changeObject.setNewVersion(dto) in my _doCreate methods after I had assigned the id I wanted to the dto. It might be nice to add just this last bit to the screencast, too.
FYI, the Java Example Project gave me several JavaScript errors using Ext 4.2. The controller methods were looking for a method called getExampleCompanyStore, but the actual method Ext generated was getExampleCompanyStoreStore. Brings back nightmares from jax-ws where wsgen always wanted to call my endpoints ServiceService! After changing this, the examples worked as expected.
//Transaction libraries
I understand that I could remove the tx libraries for WebSphere and that it’s desirable for it to run on Tomcat out of the box. However, it still does sound like CDB is choosing a tx strategy for me in that I have to use JTA and I have to bind things to JNDI. Starting a project from sratch is one thing, but I’ve seen many apps use resource local tx and not mess with JTA at all. Debatable whether this is good, but it’s the reality for many older JavaEE apps I’ve seen. I think it would bring more value if the tx strategy was completely pluggable. Maybe it is - haven’t spent enough time on CDB to give a judgement on it.
Excited for future scaffolding options. Would love to eventually see the templates that actually generate the scaffolding opened up to give users more control. Something like grails or spring roo.
Our reality is that we might not be able to use all pieces of CDB on all apps, especially existing ones. IMO to reach the most people and have the most impact, it would good to decouple the Ext Direct and server side parts, the tx strategy, and the client side code generation. For example, maybe because of constraints on a legacy app, someone can’t use Ext Direct but they still get value from annotating Java classes to generate Ext model and sample grid, albeit not with not as much functionality. I realize this might not fall into the overall goals for the project, though.
I’ll keep playing around and check out the rest of the wiki pages - glad Java to Ext scaffolding options are starting to emerge.
Viktor Gamov
11 months ago
Hi firefoxSafari,
// Controller getters
Yes, it’s known issue with ExtJS 4.2 and it will be fixed in next release of CDB.
As for now, you can grab the code from Github and place it in your project. If you have other issues, feel free to report to the issue tracker [1].
// Transactional
Server-side component clear.transaction.djn.BatchGateway ( uses JTA to perform transactional handling of batch members that sent by BatchManager (see, sync() method) client-side component. If you don’t want to use JTA stuff, you need to provide your own implementation with signature described (In find annotated @DirectMethod execute method). If you have some particular use case in mind, please, fill the bug in the issue tracker on the Github [1], and will try to help you with it.
The ExtJS Models generator can be used as a standalone utility. Here is an example how it can be used from command line ($JAVA_HOME/bin should be in the PATH).
Also you can customize a service code generation even today. The templates (CDB uses XSL for the templates) are fully customizable. Please, look inside cdb_build folder of a generated project.
FYI, Clear Data Builder does not wipe out the generated code, it only replaces the older source files with the newer versions. Consequently, if you rename your Java classes, it is your responsibility to delete the generated source files related to the old class. Long story short, you can throw away a generator part any time.
11 months ago
Hi Viktor,
Thanks for the excellent responses. It sounds like the toolkit has been very well thought out.
Just a suggestion that some of these points would be good to have on the wiki wink
Nice work!
(note: third time I’ve tried to respond so apologies if there’s someday a flurry of dup comments).
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10518 | Choosing a 3D Projector
I have a 140-inch, 2.35:1 screen, and I'd like to replace my existing projector with a 3D model. I've narrowed my choices to the Epson PowerLite Pro Cinema 6010 and the JVC DLA-X30. What do you think?
Kamarul Ariffin
Tough call. We haven't reviewed the 6010 ($4000), but we did review the 5010e ($3300) here, and it's essentially identical to the 6010 except for its white casing (the 6010 is black) and the fact that the 6010 comes with an extra lamp, two pairs of 3D glasses, and a ceiling mount. We also reviewed the DLA-X30 ($3500) here.
The JVC undoubtedly has deeper blacks, and its 2D performance was rated as excellent. However, its 3D performance was given only 2 out of 5 stars, mostly because of obvious ghosting, in which the left-eye image is visible in the right eye and vice versa. Apparently, this was more pronounced than in the previous-generation X3.
The Epson exhibited much better 3D performance, but its 2D performance was lacking because the image wasn't as sharp as reviewer Kris Deering had seen on other projectors. He also thought the dynamic iris didn't work as well as it could. (The JVC has no dynamic iris, and yet it manages to achieve some of the best blacks in the industry.)
So between these two projectors, it seems to come down to which is more important to you—2D or 3D? Another alternative to consider in your price range is the Sony VPL-HW30ES ($3700, reviewed here). It got an excellent rating for both 2D and 3D performance with deep blacks and outstanding brightness (important for 3D and for your relatively large screen), which means you don't have to choose between these two types of content.
BTW, since you have a 2.35:1 screen, the JVC offers lens memories and the ability to add an anamorphic lens, so you can fill your screen using either of these techniques. (With lens memories, you can program one memory so the lens zoom, shift, and focus fill the screen with a 2.35:1 movie and push the black letterbox bars above and below the screen and another memory for 16:9 images with black bars on the sides. However, the actual results might not be entirely accurate, requiring some tweaking each time you change memories.) Neither the Epson nor Sony offer lens memories—they have manual lens controls—and the Sony does not support an anamorphic lens, though the Epson does.
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MatthewWeflen's picture
I owned a Sony SXRD rear projection set, which suffered from what seems to have been an all-pervading problem for Sony's RPTV sets - degradation of the blue light path over time (~8000 hours) which leads to a greening or yellowing of the picture. The problem was so prevalent that it resulted in a successfully settled class action lawsuit (see for very detailed info) as well as a semi-secret replacement program (in which I received my current Sony flat panel LCD for about 75% off of MSRP).
I am curious if Sony's front projectors have had the same issues, or whether Sony mitigated heat damage and dust intrusion in some manner which was more effective than in their rear-pro sets.
Kris Deering's picture
Matthew, I think I've answered this for you before on these comment sections. The SXRD issue was only relevant to the SXRD rear-projection TVs that they no longer make. It has never been an issue with the front projection implementations of the chip.
jnemesh's picture
They have pretty much the best projectors for the money right now. You wont regret purchasing one!
HomerTheater's picture
The 2 major concerns for 3D at home are (WITHOUT DOUBT):
1) Image brightness
2) Ghosting or other left-eye/right-eye image integration issues
They are equally important... a dim image that has no ghosting problems is really annoying. An image with no ghosting or other 3D problems that is too dim is very dissatisfying and you'll be kicking yourself the whole time you own the projector if you get stuck with something that's not bright enough in 3D mode. Beware the "wow factor" of 3D... the projector may seem satisfying initially because of the novelty of 3D at home... but as you accumulate more time with it, you begin to notice the limitations and problems more and more.
Image Brightness - a 140" screen is quite large. I have measured 2.9 fL in 3D mode for 100% white from a JVC X50 projector after it is calibrated (about 3.5 fL before calibration)-- and that was on a 72" wide 1.0 gain screen (real gain, not manufacturer spec which are unreliable). I don't know if the X30 is brighter or dimmer than an X50. That worked out to less than 100 "effective lumens" (reading through 1 lens of the 3D glasses while displaying a 3D 100% white pattern)with the 3D glasses turned on as you would use them to view 3D content. And that was as bright as that projector would get. With a 140" screen with 1.0 gain The Epson projector measured (5010/6010 series) produced 4 fL under the same conditions and looked brighter. But that was on a much smaller screen. When the screen size goes up, the light per unit area goes down. The 140" screen has 6250 sq. in. while the 72" 1.78 screen has just 2900 sq in in the central 1.78 image area. I find 3D brightness satisfying with that small of a screen only with the brightest projectors I've ever used... those that can produce 4-6 fL measuring through the 3D glasses (screen gain can help a lot here, but I use the 1.0 gain screen to keep the field level). So you may never achieve satisfying 3D with a screen as large as 140" if it is anywhere close to 1.0 gain (if it has lower gain than 1.0 you will REALLY be light starved). If you get a screen with some gain... say 2.0 or higher, you give up some image accuracy and you'll need calibration even more than if you were using a more "accurate" lower-gain screen.
That said... I've never... not once... seen ANY type of projector except DLP projectors produce perfect 3D with no ghosting ever, and with no problems with fully integrating left- and right-eye images. The very best HD LCD/LCoS projectors I've seen are the Sony mentioned above (and some sister models), and Sony's new 4K projector ($25K) is even better. But even those have issues at times with ghosting. DLP projectors, even very inexpensive ones (like under $1000), always produce "perfect" 3D. Of course the inexpensive DLP projectors don't look as good as "better" projectors and often lack controls needed to produce good images. I agree with the assessment of the Epson image quality in that series... good but not great. The Epson really needs the auto-iris to get blacks to not be brighter than you'd like them to be, but the auto-iris operation is noisy, making a grinding sound that reminds me of sound of hard plastic gears that aren't meshing quite as cleanly as they should. It's not grinding, it's different and difficult to describe.
I have yet to see a $3000-ish projector I'd be happy with when using it for both 2D and 3D. Not saying there isn't one, I just haven't seen one yet.
What I can say is that ghosting will make you crazy... once you have seen it, you'll keep seeing it and it ALWAYS "takes me out of the movie" by interrupting the immersion in the movie. I can also say you'll be very unsatisfied if the images aren't bright enough to be satisfying and that requires either a very bright projector (typically pretty expensive) or a screen with significant gain (which are typically not as uniformly illuminated, probably have more color issues that need to be corrected with calibration, etc.). So what you should be looking for right now (IMO) is a really bright DLP projector in your price range... and make sure it has good grayscale and color calibration controls so when your calibrator sets it up for you he can make the grayscals AND color accurate no matter what screen you end up using. Such a projector may or may not exist -- I just don't know.
For testing ghosting, Meet the Robinsons 3D is a real torture test. When the flying time machine arrives in the future for the first time, look for ghosting on vertical features in the buildings... you can use "Pause" to see what is happening as the images are panning. At one point near the beginning of this scene, the time machine flys over a patio with a round "bubble" window in the background. Pause on that and see if there is ghosting to the left and right of that bubble window. Many (non-DLP) projectors will ghose on pages in Lewis's handwritten notebooks or when Lewis lands on top of the invisible flying time machine just before they leave for the future for the first time. Some of the best non-DLP projectors will "pass" the handwritten notebook pages and Lewis falling on the invisible time machine, but fail on the buildings in the future.
MatthewWeflen's picture
Kris, thanks. Without a comment tracking system, it's entirely possible that you did answer it previously after I stopped checking the page my question was on. Apologies if this is a repeat.
borissauer1's picture
Kamarul, if my projector can be used as a comparison I vote for JVC all the way. I have a more expensive RS55U, which has the eShift 4K, lens memory and 3D. On my 115" 2.35:1 screen in a completely light controlled room, the brightness put out in both 2D and 3D is sufficient for my viewing. I do not have an anamorphic lens but the zoom method to fill my 2.35:1 is more than adequate, particularly with the eShift. The lens memory can take around 30 seconds to shift from 16:9 content to 2.35:1 zoom, but it really comes in handy. I couldn't be happier with my purchase which I got as a deal for $5200.
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Battle of Chile-Part 3: The Power of the People
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Glassblowing master Lino Tagliapietra visited MIT for a residency in MIT’s Glass Lab in October 2010. View a slideshow of Tagliapietra and students working in the Glass Lab.
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Apple’s new Macintosh operating system ships tomorrow. Visually stunning, OS 10.5–a.k.a. Leopard–is fast and stable, and it features a consistent set of powerful file-management tools familiar to anyone who has ever used iTunes. And unlike Microsoft Windows, which seems to grind slower with each successive release, OS 10.5 feels faster than 10.4 on the same hardware–provided that you have sufficient memory.
As I mentioned in my May 2007 review, Leopard’s centerpiece technology is Time Machine, a revolutionary backup system that lets you take your computer “back in time” to find accidentally deleted files, address-book entries, photographs, and the like. Click “Time Machine,” and the desktop drops off the screen to reveal a flowing star field with a sequence of windows progressing back toward the beginning of time (or at least to when you installed Leopard). Click on the timeline, and you can travel back to before you accidentally deleted a key paragraph in that annual report. You can then copy it and bring it back with you into the present.
Unfortunately, Time Machine has a serious problem: when you “secure empty trash” a file on your Mac, the backup remains in Time Machine–with no indication or warning to the user that it’s still there. If you want to delete the Time Machine backup, you need to enter Time Machine, find the file, and then tell Time Machine to delete all those backups as well. You’ll have no clue as to whether they are “securely” deleted or just unlinked.
Leopard’s other big breakthrough is its Parental Controls, one of the best implementations of child-control technology I’ve seen. Parental Controls allows you to set time limits on your child’s use of the computer (separate limits on weekdays and weekends), bedtimes, and wake-up times. The system gives a warning when bedtime is approaching; if your child is working hard on a paper for school, you can type in your username and password and lift the electronic curfew.
Parental Controls also allows you to specify websites that can’t be accessed, the people with whom your child can exchange e-mails and instant messages, and even which applications your child can run. I was pleased to see that restrictions on websites and the like are actually built into the operating system, rather than built into Apple’s Safari Web browser: I downloaded and ran a copy of Firefox, but the blocked websites remained blocked.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10601 | Networking Investigate
Deterring Malware by Imitating Virtual Machines
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Executive Summary
Securing hosts against intrusions is becoming increasingly important as resource and identity theft are rising in frequency and severity. Attackers often gain control of a system through software vulnerabilities that are particular to a specific software version. To prevent detection, they may purposely avoid instrumented systems such as honeypots that are actively monitoring attackers. In turn, such monitoring systems attempt to hide their purpose of attracting infection attempts. Analogous to honeypots attracting attacks, the paper introduces a new paradigm of protecting production systems by making them appear as monitoring systems, which are typically avoided by attackers. In this work, the author explores one direction in this theme by developing several techniques to imitate virtual machines often used by monitoring systems.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10602 | Um assobiador que nunca ouviram
TEDxRotterdam 2010 · 11:56 · Filmed Jun 2010
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No TEDxRoterdão, o campeão mundial do assobio, Geert Chatrou, executa o caprichoso "Eleonora", de A. Honhoff, e o seu próprio "Fête de la Belle". Num interlúdio fascinante, ele fala sobre o que o trouxe para este ofício.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10642 | The passionate governess - Charlotte Bronte's letters reveal a struggle between spirit and obedience
The Letters of Charlotte Bronte, Vol 1, 1829-1847 edited by Margaret Smith
627pp, Oxford University Press, £55
The lives of great writers tend to warp under the pressure that final success brings to bear on the past. And that is particularly true of the Brontes. Their biographies cannot escape from ready-made images of harsh schools, wild moors, lonely governesses and thwarted love. In them, Emily is always more than a little like Cathy, and Charlotte more than a little like Jane, and the sisters' tentative steps through life as they search for their voices and their subjects cannot be recreated.
The most recent biographies, Juliet Barker's The Brontes and Lyndall Gordon's A Passionate Life, reacted to the problem in opposite ways. Lyndall Gordon insisted on seeing Charlotte as a strong, inspiring heroine before she had penned anything except childish romances, whereas Juliet Barker over-played the petty littleness of her life in an attempt to escape the romantic myth.
But as we walk the corridors of The Letters of Charlotte Bronte we can share Charlotte's own faltering steps. This is the terrifying look of life seen from the inside, as we are confronted by the inability of Charlotte Bronte, the bored, lonely, poverty-stricken victim of 19th-century bourgeois mores, to realise that she was Charlotte Bronte, the self-sufficient writer who fused grand passion with a quiet vernacular.
The cries of this young woman, who could not know what she would do, rise up, biting to the heart: 'I shall soon be 30 and I have done nothing yet -' she writes as she is about to embark on Jane Eyre. And even after it is published: 'There are moments when I can hardly credit that anything I have done should be found worthy to give even transitory pleasure to such men as Mr Thackeray.' Against that was the cool certainty of the true author, as the inexperienced Yorkshire woman resisted the pressures her publishers put on her to rewrite the novel: 'My engagements will not permit me to revise Jane Eyre,' she wrote haughtily.
Throughout these years, Charlotte is forced to tread a swaying tightrope between decorum and passion, seen nowhere more clearly than when she writes to Robert Southey. This famous exchange, which was sold to the Bronte Museum only last week, is the epitome of Charlotte's most measured, bitter style - and she was only 20. After Southey had told her that 'Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life; and it ought not to be', she wrote back with a decorum that resonates ironically down the years: 'In the evenings, I confess, I do think, but I never trouble any one else with my thoughts.'
Lyndall Gordon imputes a conscious sarcasm to that remark, as though Charlotte already knew she could rise above it, as though her life's goal was already clear. But Charlotte was certainly deeply affected by Southey's attitude. As Margaret Smith notes below another letter, her poetic production quickly tailed off after their exchange. Surely her response is sincere, and surely this clash between obedience and passion drove all of Charlotte's later work. Reading her reply we sense somewhere in the margins all the meeker women who, ordered early on to think only of domesticity, never picked up their pens again.
And it reminds us why the sisters took androgynous pseudonyms when they published. Charlotte had exposed herself once, and felt the lash of the world. It makes one shiver in sympathy, as Charlotte tries to keep herself incognita - 'Allow me to intimate that it would be better in future not to put the name of Currer Bell on the outside of communications... Currer Bell is not known in this district and I have no wish that he should become known,' she wrote to her publishers above her precious mask, the signature 'C Bell'.
It is a little miracle that out of all the letters that were burnt, sold, cut up, destroyed, Charlotte's letters to Monsieur Heger, her beloved Belgian teacher, survived. He tore them into pieces and threw them away, but his wife picked them out of the bin and sewed them together again. When he was dying, his daughter, who had been entrusted with them by her mother, showed them to him. He threw them away again, and she picked them up again. And here they are, published now in both French and English.
The importance of reading them in French cannot be underestimated. Charlotte associated the language with Heger: 'When I pronounce French words, I seem to be talking to you,' she once wrote to him. And the linguistic freedom of the foreign language allowed a woman who had been forced elsewhere into a straitjacket of English respectability to burst forth.
As long as the letters are in front of us, we can free ourselves from biographical speculation - as to whether Charlotte felt sexual desire for her 'maitre' and what she really expected from him. We are able to respond directly in the only way that really makes sense, as though they are literature, complete in themselves, rich in their ambiguity, lyrical in their language, poignant in their emotions. 'Day and night I find neither rest nor peace - I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to all kinds of reproaches - all I know - is that I cannot that I will not resign myself to the total loss of my master's friendship - I would rather undergo the greatest bodily pains than have my heart constantly lacerated by searing regrets.' That inflammable mixture of impatient passion and dignified endurance was the potion she poured into Jane Eyre and Villette; here we see it being stirred for the first time.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10643 | Series: 52
52: Episode 26
So I'm sitting here on a cold stone wall above the firth, above the bay, above a row of boats moored and waiting for a tide, and I'm thinking back, about before, when I was as thin and lonely as a ghost, and I didn't know it, hardly a person at all, and all I had, and I thought it was everything, was books, poems, the words of dead writers to thicken me out. I was a too-thin girl, passing between the places I lived like a sheet of see-through plastic, but the kind that you can't really see through, though it looks transparent, because if you'd tried to look through me all you'd have seen was blur.
Down on the shore as clear as this north day itself, my fiddler and our two boys are picking up stones, deciding which ones to skim, dropping the ones that aren't worth it. Across the beach Jack Mercury is taking photos of clouds. Yesterday, when the tide was in, he leaned forward and held his big flashy digital camera over the water of the firth. He saw me watching him. I'm finished with all that, he said. I've been in love with the wrong too long. The wrong what? I asked him. He smiled. Then he dropped the camera into the water.
This morning he went to the newsagent's in Fortrose and bought a disposable Kodak. So simple! he said. Look! Click! He took my photo. It'll be a nice one, I was smiling at him looking so happy. He is quite changed. We all are.
I can hear them down there, making a noise like happy dogs, and behind me I can hear Polly; funny how I used to think of her as the posh woman, a dry-clean-only. She's not. She's Polly. I wonder what people reduced me to, or the old Girls to. Look at me, even me, reducing them to the Girls. But then, they are the Girls. I wonder how they're doing. I wonder how Bea is, how Mrs Coleman is, how Mrs Cobb is. I miss them. I'll ask the fiddler. I'll ask Polly. We should all go back to the hall. We should organise a big winter party, one where the staff gets to celebrate, where the bossturd gets to sing karaoke. He'd love that. I wonder what the bossturd's first name is. Polly'd be good at organising a party like that. Strange now that I know her so well, to think of her as just part of the great bland roaring noise of poshness pouring into Hinxted every weekend. She's marvellous. She's brilliant. She's Polly. She knows everything there is to know about birds, and gardens, and Icelandic sagas, and phonographs that were made at the turn of the century, and palaeontology, and choral singing of the 19th century, and how to strip a Land Rover engine, and not just these but a whole load of other things too.
She's still arguing, in her too-strong voice - it'll cause trouble, that voice! - with the man who's the head of the council in the village. She has decided she wants to open a café here. It'll be beautiful. Organic. Luxurious. It is so beautiful here it can't help but succeed! Like a Riviera in the north of England, she keeps saying. This isn't England, Polly, the fiddler keeps saying. Don't be a wally, Polly, the boys shout in unison.
So I'm sitting here on this cold stone wall and the feel of the cold through my clothes is wonderful, like hello, you're here, and I'm watching the fiddler chase the boys right to the water's edge, then the boys chase her with a crab they've found, then she chases them back, shouting, think I'm scared of an old crab, do you?
Then I think of the way I woke up in the caravan bed in the middle of the night, the condensation on the windows from our breathing, and I saw her there and I knew, in that moment, that waking up and seeing the face you're meant to see is like what coming back from the dead would be like.
In some countries, she told me, people believe violins are inhabited by the dead, especially the dead who really loved it, being alive. I think the noise she makes when she plays a tune is as if a breastbone could speak. I think about the fiddler playing that tune, "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square". I've never been to Berkeley Square. I don't even know where it is, but when she plays it, hello, I'm here.
A razor shell! one of the boys shouts. A stone with a face on it! the other shouts. Then one climbs on to the other's shoulders, a single-double child. A sycamore double-winged seed falls right by me, right on the wall. That reminds me. Birdseed, Polly says. She's finished arguing with the council man for the day; she's come down to join me here on the wall; she picks up the seed we both saw land by my hand. It's going to be a cold winter, she says.
The boys run towards then away from the water. Polly is off to see whether the newsagent sells birdseed. She'll cause so much of a fuss when she finds out they don't stock it that they'll order it in, far too much of it, and they'll be trying to sell it for years, and for all those years all the local birds will be really happy.
Imagine a handful of seed, thrown randomly out for the birds. Imagine all the hands, all up and down the country, doing this casual, generous thing all the winter. Imagine, on every single seed, written minutely, like by those people at fairgrounds and festivals who can write your name on a grain of rice, how fine it is just to be here, "a star to every wandering bark" all the way to "the streets of town were paved with stars". A winter bird takes a seed in his or her beak, then into the bird it goes. The bird survives the winter. Then the spring song comes out of the same bird's mouth in the chill of a March morning in little smoke-rings of sound, and the birdsong passes straight into the bones of the fiddler.
I can just hear Bea saying it in my ear, the song's never over, Bloss, what did I tell you? Mark my words, that song'll never be done.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10645 |
When Man Booker prize judges are photographed planting trees with the Woodland Trust, they offer a reminder of how English fiction and prize culture is flourishing on a global scale
Man Booker Trees
Sowing the seeds of success … 2012 Booker prize judges plant trees at the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood in Leicestershire
Last week I received a welcome reminder from the people who run the Booker prize of their commitment to the environment – a photograph of some recent Booker judges in wellington boots, planting trees.
Of course, this was not just about promoting green shoots and leaves. As spring heaves into view, the annual literary prize season opens again. It will run, roughly, from Easter to Halloween. During that time, Booker will want to assert itself as the premier book prize in the English-speaking world. No stone (or sod) will remain unturned in the ceaseless business of reminding the media and the reading public about Man Booker. The same goes for Costa, Samuel Johnson, the book prize formerly known as Orange, and many lesser awards.
Booker's tree-planting stunt is also a reminder that these trophies are big business. Costa fights the coffee shop war against Starbucks with volumes of poetry, first novels and kids' books. The Man Group extracts vital publicity for itself from the year's best literary fiction. Who, outside the Square Mile, had ever heard of the Man Group before it became the Booker sponsor?
It's big business for writers, too. Win the Booker prize and you become a millionaire. Win the top Costa slot (that one is a bit more complicated) and, like Kate Atkinson or Mark Haddon, your literary course is set fair. (Not necessarily a good thing, but indisputable nonetheless.)
Another reason the Booker judges travelled to the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood (QEDJW), in Leicestershire, to plant trees with the Woodland Trust is that this season is going to see a uniquely fierce battle for supremacy (and column inches) among the big beasts of the literary prize jungle.
Not only is the former Orange prize going it alone for a year as the Women's prize for fiction, announcing its longlist on Wednesday, but there is soon to be some stern competition from a new book award, the Literature prize, which will announce its sponsor at the British Museum on 13 March.
The Literature prize has all the characteristics of an event conceived in the post-millennial book world. It is well-funded (to the tune of approximately £250,000). It has already been well-promoted to the media, and has made a point of securing as much advance support as possible from London's literary community.
In short, it reflects a literary culture where prizes, as much as reviews, make the running, and where big prizes become themselves a cultural event of unprecedented consequence. You have only to watch the fate of Hilary Mantel (post-Booker and post-Costa) to see the impact of prize-winning on one blameless writer unfamiliar with the rules of life in the spotlight.
But never mind Ms Mantel. What Man Booker and, to a lesser extent, Costa will be really worried about with the Literature prize is its breathtaking ambition. In other words, its reach: it is global, treating the English language, for the first time, as a creative lingua franca as well as a commercial one.
I'm told by Andrew Kidd, the prime mover of the new prize, that the forthcoming London launch will be followed by events in Ireland, Australia, New York and Canada. From that list, it's the US dimension that makes this prize a real contender.
Booker and Costa (formerly Whitbread), founded in the 1960s and 70s respectively, are creatures of their time. Both focus on novels from Britain and the Commonwealth, and exclude the USA. Neither has any connection with, or understanding of, the literary energies of the global English language in, for example, the Middle East, China or the Pacific. Similarly, across the Atlantic, all the top US prizes – Pulitzer, National Book awards and the National Book Critics' Circle – celebrate American literary achievement.
Fiction in the English language has now slipped the surly bonds of Hampstead, Manhattan and the mid-west. English-language fiction, for better and worse, is becoming increasingly global, with booming markets in places previously overlooked by English and American publishers. This new prize is surfing a wave that could carry it a very long way indeed.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10649 | Clip joint: disguise
This week's selection of the best web movie morsels is convinced no one can tell who it is
No one dressing up as a giant bat could be said to be into disguise in the proper sense (unless they work at an animal sanctuary), and it must be said that Batman suffers a little from He-Man syndrome in the misdirection stakes. Just as Skeletor could surely peer through the fake tan, deepened voice and Tom of Sweden outfit to glimpse heir to the realm Prince Adam, then is the Joker still so traumatised from being played by Cesar Romero that he can't recognise Gotham City's leading playboy from the bottom half of his face? They need to bone up on the work of these cinematic dissemblers:
1) If Jeremy Clarkson isn't actually a Decepticon, infiltrating our airwaves to badmouth environmentalism and proselytise the petrolhead lifestyle, then he must be saving up that hefty BBC wage for the operation that would allow him to morph into a car for real. Scenes like this, from last year's Transformers, would ensue on the M25.
2) Inspector Clouseau can be relied upon never to pass up a disguise opportunity - and the more outlandish the get-up, the better. His Quasimodo outfit is about as respectful to the French cultural tradition as his accent.
3) How better to fool bloodthirsty pagan worshippers into not realising there's an uptight Christian in their midst than by dressing up as Punch, priapic-nosed incarnation of incorrigible male lust (1min 58secs)? Shame fool happens to be the operative word in The Wicker Man.
4) Shakespeare's subversive, gender-bending use of disguise has reverberated down the years (Some Like It Hot, for one, is a firm follower), but as in Twelfth Night, love cuts straight through any subterfuge. Even if Imelda Staunton, as the dragged-up Viola in the 1996 version, looks a bit like Mickey from Only Fools and Horses.
5) A great disguise is all about the little details, of course. Like not speaking English when you're supposed to be French - Gordon Jackson's moment of madness (6mins 21secs) in The Great Escape.
It was all about the peripheral players on last week's Clip joint. These are our unsung heroes:
1) "That you did not know you stole from him is the only reason you are still alive. He feels you owe him. You will repay your debt." Pete Postlethwaite, as middle man Mr Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects, reads the score card out on behalf of Keyser Soze.
2) Whatever else you say about George Lucas, I think he's got a strange talent for good people and place names - and he came up with a character to match in rusty-helmeted mercenary Boba Fett. Shame the new trilogy got all backstory on his ass.
3) It was pointed out that that if you're in an indie auteur, you probably have higher than the average per capita head of cool friends to call up if you're in need of a scene-stealing turn. If your cool friends are too busy on cool duty, then Steve Buscemi's Rent-a-Cameo service - here, as bellhop Chet at Barton Fink's Hotel Earl - is ready and waiting.
4) Upholding a long line of doughty, salt-of-the-earth, never-as-hot-as-the-lady-of-the-house domestics on film is Thelma Ritter in Rear Window.
5) Immaculately tailored in Shane Black's finest bespoke trashtalk, Val Kilmer's Gay Perry practically takes over the show in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Thanks to frogprincess, leroyhunter, JawbreakerWiseman, jacez and steenbeck for this week's picks
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10657 | The weight of opinion
Comment threads have exposed journalists to a torrent of abuse. What does it feel like to be attacked - and do sites do enough to moderate reader response?
• The Guardian,
• Jump to comments ()
Until a few years ago, journalists were well-insulated from their readers. Aside from letters in the spidery scrawl of the "green ink brigade" or those sent to the editor for publication, feedback from the public was rare. Today, it is instant, ubiquitous, and sometimes downright unpleasant - with some comment threads on the web quickly turning into a feeding frenzy. The growth of flaming - where hostile messages about writers are posted on forums or blogs - is changing the relationship between journalist and reader.
In a cover story last year for the New York Times Magazine, the ex-Gawker blogger Emily Gould wrote about her compulsion to "over-share" with readers on her blog - the 27-year-old revealed that she had had panic attacks after she was bombarded with vitriolic messages sent by viewers who had just seen her on a CNN discussion show about celebrities and the media.
Widely disliked
When the NY Times article was published, Gould was flamed again - readers posted 1,216 comments on the paper's website before the thread was closed. "The article seemed to bring out the worst in everyone who commented," says Gould. Milder posts accused her of being "a stupid little girl", while one sneered: "At first, I thought I was reading the sophomore page of the student newspaper at Harding High, Yokelville, Ohio. But then I realised it was the New York Times. Just awful." That post was "recommended" by 460 NY Times readers.
"There's this thing where the posts in these threads will try to outdo each other in saying the most horrible, shocking things," says Gould. "It's amazing, really. I feel like there's almost no historical precedent for this. People used to just think this stuff, now they can actually get to write it, or email you."
There are two main reasons why some comment "communities" turn on journalists with the gusto exhibited by Gould's detractors, according to the Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle. The first is simply that many first-person writers are widely disliked and the public now has the means to express that. "There's a genuine and justifiable annoyance at the sheer whining narcissism of columnists, including me," he says.
"Some readers always thought we were a pack of self-obsessed wankers. Now they have both the confidence and the platform to tell us what they think. And seeing their words 'published' on the internet, next to lots of other comments, seems to legitimise what they say and spur them on."
The second reason, he continues, is the writer's choice of subject matter. "Certain subjects set off a feeding frenzy - anything to do with race, immigration and Israel. Those are some of the touchstone issues and, crucially, they're also the issues politicians won't touch."
Certainly, such topics seem to hit a nerve. When Yasmin Alibhai-Brown recently wrote a column in the Independent headlined "Spare me the tears over the white working class", she braced herself for the response: "I knew there would be a reaction." The writer considers herself "very robust" - but nothing prepared her for the 915 posts that followed. Many amounted to hate mail, peppered with profanities. "Firozali A. Mulla", for example, urged her to "choose the cheapest fare" to Iraq or Afghanistan. "For three or four days I was a wreck after that column appeared," says Alibhai-Brown. "It was horrible. I really don't mind good, argumentative letters ... But people do not have the right to abuse or threaten me. And these [comment threads] have become an invitation to abuse."
Close moderation of comment threads could solve the problem. But ideas of how, and to what extent, vary widely between publications. One newspaper executive admits the issue is "the subject of much discussion" across the industry.
The Independent, for example, which has now removed the comments from Alibhai-Brown's article, has switched to a blogging platform that requires visitors to register before they post any comment. screens or "pre-moderates" some sections of the site, while other parts are only moderated if a reader complains. TimesOnline employs an outside company to pre-moderate all the comments posted daily, while mostly operates a post-moderation system, with moderators working in-house.
Blood-sport stuff
But, if readers' posts stay within the law and are not gratuitously offensive, is it acceptable for publishers to restrict them? Liddle would rather see editors adopting a hands-off approach. "Anyone can leave a comment, and that's a good thing," he says. "Otherwise only a certain strata of society tends to be heard on the BBC or in newspapers. That's why I don't object to the blood-sport stuff at all, and even the vitriol is fine. Columnists dish it out every week, we should be able to take it too."
Others, however, believe comment threads should not resemble the Wild West. The Spectator's web editor, Pete Hoskin, who rejects roughly one in 50 comments, argues that they work best when they are pre-moderated. "In a debating hall or even in parliament, you'd be kicked out if you launched into a diatribe or started swearing at the top of your voice," he says. "The same applies in a comment thread."
But the line between fair comment and abuse is not always easy to define. "I think it's the duty of editors to protect journalists from the more extreme end of what would once have been seen as hate mail," says Martin Bright, the former political editor of the New Statesmen. "Publications need to take stock about whether it really is acceptable to have these open-ended rants going on on their websites, poisoning their brands."
Alibhai-Brown goes further, questioning whether even moderated threads serve any purpose. "I think editors were initially overcome by the openness of it all," she says. "But the time has come for them to think about where this is going. There hasn't even been the beginnings of a proper debate and there really needs to be."
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10738 | Sign in with
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Your question
Intel e8400 clock problem
Last response: in CPUs
My CPU is Intel e8400 @ 3.0 Ghz and my motherboard is Gigabyte 965P-S3
My problem is that all the diagnostic tools I have used have shown me that my CPU was running at 2,4 Ghz instead of 3.0 Ghz.
I have never tried to overclock my CPU so I don't know what's going on with it.
Can anybody help me?
a b à CPUs
a b V Motherboard
965 is not a good chipset
what diagnostic tools? CPU-Z
the underclock is probably because ur keeping the CPU still if u move a window really fast or start a task it will go back to 3 ghz\
this is normal, it is called speedstep, it is for conserving power, ther is noting wrong with ur processor
a c 158 à CPUs
a b V Motherboard
Your motherboard only supports a 1066MHz FSB, the e8400 requires a 1333MHz FSB to run at 3GHz. You can either OC your FSB, or get a newer motherboard which supports 1333MHz FSB CPUs.
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a b à CPUs
a b V Motherboard
the proc automatically down clocks if the FSB is lower on the mobo, and like i said it is because the proc has speedstep, it will be lower if u don't do anything while testing it.
a b à CPUs
a b V Motherboard
Posting a screenshot of CPUz may help people to point you in the right direction because if your board is a revision 3.3 it can support 1333 FSB but a rev 1.0 might not.
a b à CPUs
a b V Motherboard
Basileus said:
Ok, so how can I do it manually?
But I remember my CPU running at 3.0 ...
In BIOS > MB Intelligent Tweaker(M.I.T.) > CPU Host Frequency (Mhz) > If you use a 1333 MHz FSB processor, set "CPU Host Frequency" to 333 MHz
Ok. And the strangest thing - I've turned the power supply off for a while, and then I've turned it on. And it seems that the problem is solved.
- as You can see.......
a b à CPUs
a b V Motherboard
Bonus!!, it could just be a buggy BIOS/CMOS issue. You could re flash the BIOS and do a CMOS reset it you wish but I would change the mobo battery first. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10760 | Twitter Trends
At first glance, the 'Bird is the Word' portfolio looked entirely sketched. Upon closer inspection, however, this is in fact a mixed-media series that combines photography and illustration. Beautifully whimsical (and slightly disturbing), it is definitely a must-see editorial.
Photographed by Ashley Champagne, 'Bird is the Word' was also illustrated by Cordelia Chan, styled by Kyla Kazeil and Stacey Boruk, and produced by Nathan Marshall. Makeup artist Nicola Gavins worked on the models, Ashley and Eri. This concept was put together for Georgie Magazine. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10770 | Does the thought of Gytheio make your mouth water? Then share your best restaurant tips with other foodie travelers. What kinds of cuisine is Gytheio known for? What are the best established restaurants? Where are the trendy of-the-minute eateries? What are the local delicacies? TripAdvisor travelers hunger for your suggestions! |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10791 | Jack: I had "lunch" with Martha Stewart and "dinner" with her daughter Alexis.
Liz: Gross.
Jenna: Gerhardt, would you like to dance?
Gerhardt: Sadly because my body does not produce joint fluid, I cannot.
Just to know she's filled with bile over me warms my heart.
Your name sounds Jewish. You must be important.
Bianca: Congratulations John, she's much sharper than the other girl you had ... what was her name?
Jack: Beyonce.
Liz: I'm twelve years younger than you.
Jack: A woman your age then.
Jenna: No, you're a good friend and thank you.
Displaying all 7 quotes |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10792 | Miranda faced something every woman dreads. She was making a list of all the men she'd slept with. At least all the ones she could remember. She started to wonder how she did all these men and did her law degree and became a successful lawyer.
Samantha: They practically chased me with torches like I was fuckenstein.
Carrie: Oh, relax, they can't evict you for having sex.
Samantha: Of course, not, they're just jealous, they're a bunch of dried up old farts who haven't had sex since Eisenhower, and I remind them of what they can't have. (Sigh) It might be time to move.
Carrie: No you can't move! You have a rent-control apartment on the Upper East Side.
Samantha: Honey, this isn't rent control, this is life control.
Carrie: Wow, it's like a Danielle Steel novel in here.
Aidan: Whoa, from a writer, I'm pretty sure that's an insult.
Steve: What's going to happen to me, does it hurt when you pee or something?
Miranda: No, men are just carriers, there aren't any symptoms at all.
Steve: Then, why do I need to know?
Miranda: Because if you don't get treated you could pass it on to other people.
Steve: But you're my only other person, and you already have it.
Miranda: Yeah, but see, if you've got it, they'll just keep passing it back and forth, plus I'd rather not sleep with you until this thing is out of my body, and I've got six more days of antibiotics, so, would you please, just go take care of it. Just go, get it over with.
If you're a thirty something woman living in Manhattan, and you refuse to settle and you're sexually active, it's inevitable that you'll rack up a certain number of partners, but how many men is too many men? Are we simple romantically challenged, or, are we sluts?
I just want to try to sleep with somebody I care about. I really think I can care about you. It's only been a week and a half, don't people date anymore?
Miranda: What about Aidan?
Samantha: Gay.
Carrie: No, he's not gay.
Miranda: Mother issues?
Carrie: No, I don't think so.
Samantha: Maybe, his dick curves to the right.
Displaying quotes 1 - 9 of 12 in total |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10824 | Subscribe English
look up any word, like poopsterbate:
7 definitions by fuck you I dont have any friends
Fucking kickass powerband from London. They are so fucking fast its amazing. They literally put the power in power metal. Nothing but pure kick your face in awesomeness. I cannot wait until they come into the states. You have to hear how fast they are. Their guitar work is unmatched in power metal and the drumming is the drumming of gods. Some may call their lyrics "cheesy" but it is better than you could ever do. Trust me you cannot match their skills in instruments. Don't believe me download "Soldiers of the Wasteland" That should change your mind.
Dragonforce literally owns power metal. No other power metal band can match up to their overall technical work and skills with the instruments. Forget Blind Guardian. This band owns power metal
by fuck you I dont have any friends October 05, 2005
747 695
by fuck you I dont have any friends October 05, 2005
94 57
by fuck you I dont have any friends October 05, 2005
50 18
2 variations.
1. Take your boner and shove it up your ass and when you let go you get a nice "snap" effect.
2. When you have a boner you pelvis thrust an create a whiplike "snap" effect.
I snaparooed the other day and I can still feel the pain when I get a stiffy.
by fuck you I dont have any friends October 05, 2005
7 3
the true spelling of "friend". You cant trust anyone thats why you put the "r" in parenthesis. Just incase you need to take it out its spells "fiend" basically thats what you should do in life to not get fucked over.
Dave: Hey man you wanna hang out tonight?
Bob: Does this mean we are friends?
Dave: Uh, no it means your my f(r)iend. Just hanging out.
Bob: Ok, you are right. I will most likely you stab you in the back one day just because you have something or someone or anything that is better than what I have. Being the typical piece of shit that most people are I will one day get jealous of you over such a small thing and never talk to you again. I will haunt you and not leave you out of my life until what better things you have are mine. That's the way life is. Do not trust anyone.
Dave: You do not have to remind me.
*After 4 years Dave does the stupid thing and trusts Bob, Dave gets a girlfriend and introduced him to Bob. Bob does not have a girlfriend and is constantly calling Dave's girlfriend and hitting on her. Dave does not like this so he shuts Bob out of his life feeling stupid and a tool. Bob could not accept the fact that his friend has something better than him. This is a typical human being. No matter what Dave does Bob will not go away. Bob is now a fiend. Fuck people I hate them all. In the end Dave gets hurt and never looks at people the same, he does not even trust his soon-to-be-wife. All because of Bob, Dave's life has been turned around. Everyone he meets is now just a f(r)iend.
by fuck you I dont have any friends September 29, 2005
86 95
the name for my penis
by fuck you I dont have any friends October 02, 2005
46 72
When something overflows and reeks with suckery. Nothing can suck as much as that. It is "the suck." You can feel the suck being emitted from "the suck" when get near it. To earn the title "the suck" it has to suckiest thing that has ever sucked in your sucky life before. Trust me you do not want to be "the suck" Bewarned, "the suck" is contagious and its suckage can be transfered through you touching it, or you sucking off the suck.
My girlfriend: You suck
Me: O yea? Well you are the suck
My girlfriend: Make love to me
Me: Ok!
by fuck you I dont have any friends October 06, 2005
49 92 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10825 | Subscribe English
look up any word, like straight money:
1. Extremely huge
2. Incredibly fucking large
3. Ungodly large
Guy 1: Man did you see the new chick?
Guy 2: Yeah man, she's got some boubungus ta-ta's!
Guy 3: Dirty pillows? Psssshhhhh, those were dirty matresses!
Teacher: Practice safe sex children! If you make love, wear a glove!
by Ajxx January 26, 2006
0 0
Words related to Boubungus:
fat huge large obese overweight |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10869 | Darkstalkers 3
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge demo, Darkstalkers Resurrection now available through Xbox Live
Darkstalkers Resurrection and a demo for Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge are now available through Xbox Live.
Darkstalkers 3 headlines
• Darkstalkers 3 rated by ESRB for Vita and PS3
Darkstalkers 3 has been rated by the ESRB for PS3 and Vita by Sony, meaning pretty soon we may see the PSone classic from Capcom pop up on PSN. The game is already available as a Game Archives title in Japan. Thanks, Siliconera.
• Darkstalkers 3, MegaMan 4 coming to PSN in Japan
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10870 | NY Mirror
Who wants to be in the studio audience for 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?' I did— don't ask— but my innocuous attempt to see the Regis Philbin hosted game show ended in disaster when press-phobic production assistants asked me to kindly slither back home. I did so, only to turn on the TV and find some press about the show all right— a report about that contestant who was erroneously told his Great Lakes answer was wrong and had to be rebooked for another stab at money grubbing. I prayed they'd let me crawl back too; I haven't been so addicted to a show since My Mother the Car got a lube job.
In the next potential dis, the 86th Street HMV Records invited me to interview Sean "Puffy" Combs— and not about geography— before the all-purpose assaulter/ spiritualist/ Hamptons homey sat down to sign copies of his new CD. (Aside: Yes, I know the guy's so overexposed that the world might blow up into a fiery mass with just one more mention, but I didjust run his name and no such apocalyptic horror transpired, did it? So let's carry on.) After Puffy's birthday fiasco, I wasn't too anxious to sample any more pain, but gave it a shot, waiting well over an hour for his bony, ultrafamous ass to make it to the Upper East Side.
You haven't seen so much fussing, setting up, and continual sputterings of "We expect him any second" since the last time I had a second date. Finally, the superdude arrived and even did a mini press conference for the assembled media droogs. "I got jealous when Ricky Martin came into my town," he gamely admitted, "so when myalbum dropped, I thought 'I better see some helicopters up there!' " There were indeed copters to monitor the frenzy outside, while in here, Puffy was wearing his clothing-line creations, holding up a copy of his magazine, and no doubt thinking about what to eat at his restaurant later on. He made a few more comments— about God, his son, and his own increased musical skills— before running off to sell those records, and then I was shown the door, I'm pretty sure by those same Regis Philbin people!
Since the long-planned interview never happened, I was told to leave a message that night for Puffy's personal publicist, who would set up a phoner for the next day. I'd seen her at HMV barking orders and having photographers thrown out, so I knew what to expect. I obediently called her office at 10:30 p.m. and the woman answered! (Do these frisky flacks ever rest?) "So," she crabbed, "you were hoping not to talk to me in person." "But I was told that you wanted me to leave you a message. I'm delighted to get you in person," I gurgled. Alas, now that she had me, she decided to become a game-show host and find out just what questions I planned to ask Puffy. (He's very selective about exposure, you know.) I uncomfortably muttered something about his record and his "media stature." She didn't know what that meant. I said, "You know, his prominence in the press." She didn't call back or send me the CD, as promised. Two days later, after I complained to HMV, she finally phoned, all sweetsy, but it was too late. Fuck you, Puffy. BOOM!
Well, we've survived thatexplosion, but already there are all new demoralizing challenges to endure, between relaxing sips of American Airlines coffee. I can't believe trannies haven't splashed back at bathing beauty Esther Williams over her dissection of matinee idol Jeff Chandler's love habits in her memoir The Million Dollar Mermaid. As you've heard, Williams— whom I worship no matter what— reveals that her then lover Chandler was such a cross-dresser, he made J. Edgar Hoover look like J. Edgar Hoover. But Williams's tone on this subject seems a little too petulant, and though she certainly reserves the right to have been shocked and/or unaroused by Chandler's fetish, her rage comes off a bit discompassionate. While trying to understand the psychological reasons for Chandler's gown wearing— insights that uncannily echo my own life history— Williams found herself screaming her lungs out and telling him, "You've ruined [our relationship] with your little secret. I loved you as a real person, as a man. When you dress up like that, do you know how ridiculous you look? . . . I find your aberration very, very sad." Gee, who's the real drag here?
Adding layers of polka-dotted texture, Williams reveals that she has her own, well, aberration. Once, after a prescribed LSD trip, she felt that half of her face was that of her late brother— and that's just for starters. "The left side of my upper body was flat and muscular, like the chest of a boy," she writes. "I reached up with my boy's large, clumsy hand to touch my right breast [the old breast stroke, I guess] and felt my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm that held me entranced as I discovered my divided body." But Esther, we loved you as a real person, as a woman!
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10885 | Agamben v. Beckett
I’m not actually here (I’m on honeymoon), but I thought I’d post a puzzler. Reading through Ann Lauterbach’s On a Stair, I see that she prefaces the book with two quotes:
The question “where is the thing?” is inseparable from the question “where is the human?” Like the fetish, like the toy, things are not properly anywhere, because their place is found on this side of objects and beyond the human in a zone that is no longer objective or subjective, neither personal nor impersonal, neither material nor immaterial, but where we find ourselves suddenly facing these apparently simple unknowns: the human, the thing.
Giorgio Agamben
Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable
And this led me to ask myself: why does the Beckett quote seem so acute, clearing away entire forests of assumptions with terse, razorlike words, while the Agamben quote reads to me like so much word soup? Personal preference, I suppose, but that begs the question. The Beckett quote begins a novel; I don’t know the source of the Agamben. They speak two different languages: Beckett’s forever prevents the idea of facing anything, while Agamben seemingly leaps towards immanence or transcendence. Some fly, others struggle to crawl.
And speaking of states of exception, here are a few Katrina links, first-hand reports preferred:
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10912 | Person:Elizabeth Graves (37)
m. 21 Aug 1787
Facts and Events
Name[1] Elizabeth Graves
Gender Female
Birth[1] 1744 Rhode Island, United States
Marriage 21 Aug 1787 to William Henry
Death[1] 1825 New Bern, Craven, North Carolina, United States
1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Elizabeth Graves Cooke, in Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial website.
[Last accessed 16 Oct 2012]
3. William born 1763 Hanover Co., VA, died 1798 at age 35 at New Bern, North Carolina, married 21 Aug 1787 to wealthy widow Elizabeth Graves Cooke, born 1744 in Rhode Island, died 1825, New Bern, North Carolina. William was sheriff of Craven Co., North Carolina from 1794 until his death, no children. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10920 | All posts tagged ‘knit’
Spotlight on Geek Crafts: Star Trek
Etsy: CuddleFish Crafts
To celebrate Star Trek day, why not take up your hook or needles and boldy go where quite a few crafters have gone before. I was quite thrilled by the amount of ideas I found online:
• The pattern doesn’t exist yet, but the idea is fantastic and easily duplicated - Star Trek fingerless gloves.
• All you need is a pixel by pixel picture of your favorite character and you could have a whole kitchen of these Trek themed pot holders.
• Are you into cloth diapering? Try covering one of those bad boys with a Trek Soaker.
• Make yourself a Star Trek sweater with this pattern from Patrick Hassel-Zein, you’ll need a Ravelry account to access it.
• Again, no pattern, but a great description of how to make your own Enterprise.
• The creme de la creme is this modified Ravelry pattern, used to create the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation in crochet.
• I have yet to succeed in knitting a pair of socks, but once I do, these Star Trek socks are definitely going on my list.
And for those who aren’t inclined to craft, as always Etsy and Artfire are full of Trekkie goodness:
• Picture above, these mug cozies from Cuddlefish Crafts are available in three varieties: Kirk, Spock and Red Shirt.
• To go along with those cold mornings, these beanies from Cutie Hats will warm your ears, no matter their size or shape.
• If you want to be a little more daring you can rock one of these Spock Toques from Etsy.
• To involve the whole family you can get a Spock outfit for your build-a-bear and a knitted baby sweater for your tiniest Trekkie.
You can also buy yarn in Star Trek inspired colors, should you want to just add that dash of Kirk or Picard into everything you do.
Spotlight on Geek Crafts: The Star Wars Beanie
Images courtesy of Jeremy at, MaryOriginals at, and Sara at
Casting Call For Volunteer Knitters and Crocheters
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Kowalsky, Nathan Edward
Works: 2 works in 5 publications in 1 language and 27 library holdings
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10932 | Guild:Divine Intervention (Shattered Hand EU)
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Revision as of 19:09, December 15, 2010 by Medizzle (Talk | contribs)
This article is a guild information page for Divine Intervention of Shattered Hand Europe.
Overview Edit
Guild ProgressEdit
Potentially the oldest Horde guild on Shattered Hand, Divine Intervention began life way back in January 2004. It was formed by 5 friends, that had met playing the Playstaion 2 online MMORPG Everquest Online Adventures,on the only server available for Europe - Stonewatchers.
Formed on Shattered Hand server on the 5th March 2005, the guild was originally set up to provide a home for EQOA players that wished to try Blizzards new MMORPG, World of Warcraft. To ensure everyone was catered for a Horde guild was formed on Shattered Hand, and an Alliance guild on the Bladefist server. The Horde guild seemed the most popular choice and was thus the focus of our efforts (the Alliance guild does still exist but it is very rarely used).
Divine Intervention is renowned as being a "social" guild. Our prime directives have always been fair play, friendship and team work. As with many things in life you get out what you put in, and that is very true of Divine Intervention. Whilst we do raid it is by far not our sole purpose for existing. We are proud that we have stuck to our ideals over these years and are able to provide a safe, fun and happy gaming environment for those of like minds. This will not be to everyones tastes though, but those who discover Div Int and like it, tend to stay around for a long time.
Weekly Raid ScheduleEdit
When raid schedules have been discussed and decided upon for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm dungeons we will update here.
Guild InformationEdit
Guild Master - Medius
Vice Presidents - Deadgedd, Guy
Officers - Duele, Cachusha, Porosa, Orcus, Pitaten, Atroth, Calmar, Ithryn, Pinkhelmet, Shugyosha, Yamu, Xialagor
Applications to Divine Intervention are only accepted via our recruitment forum.
Please visit website for up-to-date information and link to recruitment forum.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/10964 | Artificial intelligence: Job killer or your next boss? | ZDNet
Artificial intelligence: Job killer or your next boss?
Summary: As software automates an increasing number of tasks, is it time to reassess traditional workplace roles and create an office that suits both man and machine?
Could information technology become an engine of unemployment, automating roles that once used scores of human workers?
Some writers and academics argue this is already the case, blaming communications technologies and automation for the falls in both wages and the number of men finding jobs in the US over the past 40 years. The problem of workers being displaced and wages being driven down will continue to get worse, they argue, as increased computing power and better software empowers computers and robots to take over more roles in factories and offices.
The net result, argues MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson, could be a widening of the already sizeable gap between the earnings of employees and employers, and between college graduates and the less educated.
A sensible response to this shift, Brynjolfsson says, is to reassess workplace roles to find tasks particularly suited to people, and have humans and computers work alongside, rather than against, each other to complete them.
Intelligence augmentation
This notion of intelligence augmentation dates back to the early days of computing, when engineer Vannevar Bush coined the term to describe an intellectual symbiosis between man and machine. In 1945, Bush wrote about a future where an associative store of all books, records and communications called the memex would aid human recollection, a concept that today is embodied by the World Wide Web.
"Most of AI is statistics. Any time you need to do this kind of statistical processing - be it figuring out how to target an ad, give recommendations to someone on Amazon or figuring out how to segment a voting population - computers are magic. They can really come up with very good robust answers to those kind of questions. These statistical methods basically depend on the characterisation of data remaining the same.
"We [also] know what humans are good at. It's making hypothesis, writing poetry, dealing with things like incomplete data. Recognising patterns that are similar to other patterns that have been seen before but are not the same."
The online game Foldit provides an example of how to exploit the relative strengths of humans and computers when it comes to information processing, he said. In the game players fold computer models of proteins to help scientists gain insights into their real-world structure. Computers can take the brute force statistical approach but human pattern recognition skills enabled by the brain's visual cortex has allowed people to devise solutions to Foldit tasks that computers have been unable to match.
By being aware of these relative abilities, and matching people and machines to the right tasks, you can outperform machines or people acting on their own, Gesher said.
"The idea is to do everything you can to remove the friction at the boundary between man and machine. Offload as much as possible onto the machines and bring in the injection of human insight into the system."
How to beat a chess grandmaster
The power of human-machine collaboration was demonstrated by two unranked amateur chess players in 2005, he said. The pair took part in a Playchess.com freestyle chess tournament, where individuals can team up with other people or computers. Using custom chess software running on three laptops to analyse play these amateurs were able to win a competition that featured the Hydra supercomputer and several grandmasters.
"They understood the problems of chess well enough to know how to communicate with the computers to get them to do all the right work," said Gesher.
In this instance the deciding factor in who was victorious wasn't the ability of the individual humans or computers to play chess, but how effectively the human and computer chess players were able work alongside each other, he said.
"The grandmasters knew a lot about chess but they didn't know how to use the computers as effectively as possible, how to leverage them to win."
The reason that perfecting the interface between man and machine can pay such dividends is that that increases in computing power have outpaced our ability to exploit them, Gesher believes.
"In 1960, $1,000 would get you one calculation per second. Today that number is somewhere around 1010, so you're talking about nine orders of magnitude in 50 years," he said.
"What's special about this? It's never happened before. This exponential growth inside two or three human generations is completely unprecedented in human history. We're still figuring out how to use those machines' effective power.
"[Therefore] small changes in the friction at the interface boundary, in how we offload work to computers, can lead to huge gains in the work that we do."
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• The more things change, the more they stay the same
we heard this rant when the cotton gin was invented. When the steam engine was invented, when the computer was invented, when the automated loom was invented. It never pans out because people adapt, new jobs created by the technology appear, etc. Of course, back when these inventions occurred, people had the cultural attitude that they needed to provide for themselves and not have some nanny state wipe their nose and make sure they were safe on the playground. Who knows how it will play out in today's "take care of me," culture.
• Except the machines you cite ...
require oversight, an operator and tender.
Computers ARE the operator. And if something goes wrong the computer tells the tender where to look for the problem if not the actual fault.
But then, you rambled on about the nanny state so you're probably unable to figure that one out.
Rob Berman
• misnomer
Machine rendered physical slavery moot.
Society whines we don't think but it doesn't think, preferring self-fulfilling prophecy and blaming afterward...
Think about that.
• ps
With all the free time AI will give you just like how the cotton gin did, what will you do to contribute? What if you can't? Produce or perish, or pro-life, which are you?
• pps
And with all the competition, how do you plan to remain economically -- albeit ethically?
Keep thinking... but not too much. neo-feudalism might not be the future either...
• Until they don't....
Just ask Malthus. His theory was pretty accurate for the thousands of years of human history that preceded him, yet he was proven wrong by many of the inventions that you mention. Yours has only a few hundred to back it.
The average human brain is about 10x more powerful than the fastest supercomputer that we have now. Extrapolate Moore's law into the future and I will see desktop computers with more horsepower than all the brains of the entire human race combined.
All previous "job destroying" inventions only replaced people at a specific task and still required human oversight. So, being the adaptable creatures we are, we could move on to other more interesting things. But with that level of computing power we start arriving at machines which are not replacements for people at specific tasks, but replacements for people flat out.
With the advances in machine vision and dexterity occurring recently we are beginning to zero in on replacing unskilled labor entirely. Not everyone is bright enough to adapt. Even Foxconn is deciding that Chinese wages are too expensive over machines. Watson is starting to nibble at white-collar brain jobs too.
Our current economic models do not really support obsolescence of the human race. We may end up with augmented humans ala Deus Ex, we may end up with an odd socialism like Vonnegut's excellent Player Piano, or we may end up in a society where only ownership not productivity is relevant and most people are incredibly poor.
• The brain and thinking, can't be replaced by machines or "computers",
and what the brain does, has nothing to do with speed or how fast it does the thinking; the brain is also not about "horsepower", since it's "designed" to "just" decipher and solve problems and do wonderfully "creative" things. What the brain does, no computer today can even come close to matching.
As it is, the human mind is not just 10x more powerful than the most powerful computer; the mind is millions of times more powerful, and no computer will ever be able to "think", and that's what the mind is about.
A computer can be programmed to "emulate" what a human does, and perhaps to even exhibit a little bit of "thinking", but at the end of the day, it's still a set of computer instructions designed to mimic what humans do, and at the lowest level of "thinking". Heck, even a mouse is many thousands of times smarter than the most powerful super-computer of today.
• Mathus' theory will always fail
precisely because it doesn't take into account technological advancement. Likewise this theory that AI will completely replace humans will also fail because it fails to take into account that there is more to intelligence than computing power. If you assume a world with perfect AI and robotization, then there becomes no need for humans to work; they'll simply tell the robots to get make them whatever. If there isn't perfect AI and robotization, then there will always be a demand for the intangibles that only humans can provide.
• A modified Malthus
that takes into account technological advancement increasing the population cap works fairly well. And Malthus theory still accurately describes large swathes of the modern world even if 1st world countries have largely left it behind. It wasn't a failure so much as incomplete.
Indeed there is a lot more to intelligence than computing power. That's why we won't suddenly have human-like intelligence when we get computers that are as fast as the human brain: we don't understand the algorithms yet.
But once you start talking about desktop computers 6 billion times faster than the human brain you no longer need to understand the algorithms. We can brute force it with evolutionary algorithms and the biggest problem simply becomes supplying the inputs to allow it to learn correctly at high speed (over a hundred human years of experience per second).
The problem with an economy where we simply tell the robots to make whatever is that we will still be resource bound. Labor will not be a relevant cost, but material will be and the question becomes how to distribute resources. It also assumes that we have a rational economic transition to that state which may not be the case. There will be a long, messy, middle ground where much can go wrong. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11024 | This discussion is archived
2 Replies Latest reply: Dec 22, 2011 7:24 AM by Srini Chavali-Oracle RSS
Broken links
Srini Chavali-Oracle Oracle ACE Director
Currently Being Moderated
On the Database Upgrade home page at, there are several references to documents at the bottom of the page in section titled "Database Upgrade Resource Papers", one if which is "" (Benefits of Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g). Clicking on this leads to a 404 error. Can this link be fixed ?
Also, the link on the 11g XE page ( at the bottom that links to Apex (titled "Oracle Application Express") actually takes you to the SQL Developer page ( Is this intentional ? |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11025 | id summary reporter owner description type status priority milestone component version severity resolution keywords cc focuses 18493 HTML E-Mails aaroncampbell westi "Wojtek worked on the Enhanced E-Mails project for GSoC this summer. It's definitely something that would be nice to have in core. The plugin already exists in the repository - [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/enhanced-emails/ Enhanced Emails]. There are still some things that need to be cleaned up in the code, but it works pretty well. I'm hoping we can clean it up, test it, and get it in core. " enhancement reviewing normal Future Release Mail 3.2 normal 3.4-early |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11033 | Interface is a collection of rich interface components which utilizes the lightweight JavaScript library jQuery. With these components you can build rich client web applications and interfaces with the same simplicity as writing JavaScript with jQuery.
This module simply places Interface in a central location with one command that can be called by any module that wants to use the library.
A module or theme should simply call:
If you are adding this code from your theme, you should place this line in the _phptemplate_variables() function within your template.php file.
The function takes no arguments and returns no value, but it will include interface.js on the page.
More information about Interface can be found at along with complete documentation.
The Interface library included here depends on JQuery version 1.1.x. Drupal 5 comes with version 1.0.1, so this module requires the JQuery Update to be installed, enabled, and configured.
There's probably not any reason to install this module unless another module asks for it, you are writing your own Interface-based module, or you are adding Interface effects to your theme. Contrib modules that use the Interface library include:
Note: The jQuery Interface library itself has been abandoned and is no longer maintained. Please look at JQuery UI as a more modern alternative.
Project Information |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11041 | Apples and oranges
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Apples and Oranges, by Paul Cézanne.
An apple and an orange
The idiom is not unique. In Quebec French, it may take the form comparer des pommes avec des oranges (to compare apples and oranges), while in European French the idiom says comparer des pommes et des poires (to compare apples and pears). In Latin American Spanish, it is usually comparar papas y boniatos (comparing potatoes and sweet potatoes) or comparar peras con manzanas (comparing pears and apples). In some other languages the term for orange derives from apple, suggesting not only that a direct comparison between the two is possible, but that it is implicitly present in their names. Fruit other than apples and oranges can also be compared; for example, apples and pears are compared in Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, Slovene, Luxembourgish, Bosnian, and Turkish. However, apples are actually more closely related to pears (both are rosaceae) than to oranges. In fact, in the Spanish-speaking world, a common idiom is sumar peras con manzanas, that is, to add pears and apples; the same thing applies in Italian and Romanian, where popular idioms are respectively sommare la mele con le pere and a aduna merele cu perele. In Czech language the idiom míchat jablka s hruškami literally means to mix apples and pears.
Not all apples are alike.
Some languages use completely different items, such as the Serbian Поредити бабе и жабе (comparing grandmothers and toads), or the Romanian baba şi mitraliera (the grandmother and the machine gun); vaca şi izmenele (the cow and the longjohns); or țiganul şi carioca (the gypsy and the marker), or the Welsh mor wahanol â mêl a menyn (as different as honey and butter), while some languages compare dissimilar properties of dissimilar items. For example, an equivalent Danish idiom, Hvad er højest, Rundetårn eller et tordenskrald? translates literally as What is highest, the Round Tower or a thunderclap?, referring to the size of the former and the sound of the latter. In Russian, the phrase сравнивать тёплое с мягким (to compare warm and soft) is used. In British English, the phrase chalk and cheese means the same thing as apples and oranges. In Argentina, a common question is ¿En qué se parecen el amor y el ojo del hacha? which translates into What do love and the eye of an axe have in common? and emphasizes dissimilarity between two subjects; in Colombia, a similar (though more rude) version is common: confundir la mierda con la pomada, literally, to confuse shit with salve. In Polish, the expression co ma piernik do wiatraka? is used, meaning What has (is) gingerbread to a windmill?. In Chinese, a phrase that has the similar meaning is 风马牛不相及 (fēng mǎ niú bù xiāng jí), literally meaning "horses and cattles won't cross into each other's area", and later used to describe things that are totally unrelated and incomparable.
A number of more exaggerated comparisons are sometimes made, in cases in which the speaker believes the two objects being compared are radically different beyond reproach. For example "oranges with orangutans", "apples with dishwashers", and so on. In English, different fruits, such as pears, plums, or lemons are sometimes substituted for oranges in this context.
Sometimes the two words sound similar, for example, Romanian merele cu perele (apples and pears) and the Hungarian szezont a fazonnal (the season with the fashion).
A Hungarian expression with a somewhat modified meaning and construction is ízlések és pofonok (smacks and slaps). It refers to the fact that you cannot decide which one is better from things that depend only on the different tastes/preferences of people, just as you cannot compare two slaps in the face if they are received by separate people.
Further, the phrase "apples-with-apples comparison" is used when an attempt is made to make sure that the comparison is fair; for example, adjusting for inflation during a discussion of wages.[1]
Criticism of the idiom[edit]
Various scholars have questioned the premise of the incomparable nature of apples and oranges, both in serious publications and in weblogs and spoofs (see below). These criticisms of the idiom, however, tend to assume that you cannot compare apples and oranges is a descriptive statement capable of logical or scientific counter-example, without addressing the possibility of interpreting the idiom as a normative statement (meaning something such as it's not fair to judge apples and oranges by the same criteria).
Oranges, like apples, grow on trees.
At least two tongue-in-cheek scientific studies have been conducted on the subject, each of which concluded that apples can be compared with oranges fairly easily and on a low budget and the two fruits are quite similar. The first study, conducted by Scott A. Sandford of the NASA Ames Research Center, used infrared spectroscopy to analyze both apples and oranges. The study, which was published in the Annals of Improbable Research, concluded: "[...] the comparing apples and oranges defense should no longer be considered valid. This is a somewhat startling revelation. It can be anticipated to have a dramatic effect on the strategies used in arguments and discussions in the future."[2]
A second study, written by Stamford Hospital's surgeon-in-chief James Barone and published in the British Medical Journal, noted that the phrase apples and oranges was appearing with increasing frequency in the medical literature, with some notable articles comparing "Desflurane and propofol" and "Salmeterol and ipratropium" with "apples and oranges". The study also found that both apples and oranges were sweet, similar in size, weight, and shape, that both are grown in orchards, and both may be eaten, juiced, and so on. The only significant differences found were in terms of seeds (the study used seedless oranges), the involvement of Johnny Appleseed, and color.[3]
The Annals rejoined that its "earlier investigation was done with more depth, more rigour, and, most importantly, more expensive equipment" than the British Medical Journal study.[3]
Apples and oranges in teaching the use of units[edit]
A teacher decides between apples and oranges for a school play.
While references to comparing apples and oranges is often a rhetorical device, references to adding apples and oranges are made in the case of teaching students the proper uses of units.[4] Here, the admonition not to "add apples and oranges" refers to the requirement that two quantities with different units may not be combined by addition, although may always be combined by multiplication, so that multiplying apples and oranges is allowed. Similarly, the concept of this distinction is often used metaphorically in elementary algebra.
The admonition is really more of a mnemonic, since in general counts of objects have no intrinsic unit and, for example, a number count of apples may be dimensionless or have dimension fruit; in either of these two cases, apples and oranges may indeed be added.
Oranges as a type of apple[edit]
In many languages, oranges are, implicitly or explicitly, referred to as a type of apple, specifically a golden apple or a Chinese apple (confer hesperidium). For example, the Greek χρυσόμηλον (chrysomelon) and Latin pomum aurantium both literally describe oranges as golden apples. In other languages like German, Finnish, Polish, or Russian the terms for the bitter orange (a related species) are derived from Latin pomum aurantium. Additionally, the Hebrew word תפוז (tapuz) is a shortened form of תפוח זהב (tapuakh zahav), or golden apple.
In Dutch, sweet oranges are called sinaasappel, which is derived from China's apple. The Latvian apelsīns, Icelandic appelsína, Swedish apelsin, Norwegian appelsin, Finnish appelsiini, Russian апельсин (apelsin) and German Apfelsine share similar etymology.
See also[edit]
1. ^ [1] "Apples-to-apples comparison"
2. ^ Scott A. Sandford, "Apples and Oranges -- A Comparison," AIR, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1995).
3. ^ a b Marc Abrahams, "Apples and oranges have previously been shown to be remarkably similar", Annals of Improbable Research.
4. ^ RAMAS Software, Applied Biomathematics. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11042 | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
State of Connecticut
Flag of Connecticut State seal of Connecticut
Flag Seal
Nickname(s): The Constitution State
The Nutmeg State
The Provisions State
The Land of Steady Habits[1][2]
Map of the United States with Connecticut highlighted
Official language None
Demonym Connecticuter,[3] Connecticutian,[4]
Capital Hartford
Largest city Bridgeport[6]
Largest metro Greater Hartford[7]
Area Ranked 48th
- Total 5,543 sq mi
(14,357 km2)
- Width 70 miles (113 km)
- Length 110 miles (177 km)
- % water 12.6
Population Ranked 29th
- Total 3,596,080 (2013 est)[8]
- Density 739/sq mi (285/km2)
Ranked 4th
- Median household income $68,595 (3rd)
2,379 ft (725 m)
- Mean 500 ft (150 m)
- Lowest point Long Island Sound[9][10]
sea level
Before statehood Connecticut Colony
Admission to Union January 9, 1788 (5th)
Governor Dannel Malloy (D)
Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman (D)
Legislature General Assembly
- Upper house Senate
- Lower house House of Representatives
U.S. Senators
Richard Blumenthal (D)
Chris Murphy (D)
U.S. House delegation 5 Democrats (list)
Time zone Eastern: UTC −5/−4
Abbreviations CT, Conn. US-CT
Bear Mountain, highest peak in Connecticut
Highest point in Connecticut on slope of Mount Frissell, as seen from Bear Mountain
Connecticut's rural areas and small towns in the northeast and northwest corners of the state contrast sharply with its industrial cities, located along the coastal highways from the New York border to New London, then northward up the Connecticut River to Hartford. Many towns center around a "green", such as the Litchfield Green, Lebanon Green (the largest in the state), and Wethersfield Green (the oldest in the state). Near the green typically stand historical visual symbols of New England towns, such as a white church, a colonial meeting house, a colonial tavern or "inne", several colonial houses, and so on, establishing a scenic historic appearance maintained for both historic preservation and tourism.
Connecticut consists of temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. Northeastern coastal forests of oaks, hickories, and maple cover much of the state.[19] In the northwest, these give way to New England-Acadian forests of the Taconic Mountains.[19]
Areas maintained by the National Park Service include: Appalachian National Scenic Trail; Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor; and Weir Farm National Historic Site.[23]
Much of Connecticut has a humid continental climate, with cold winters and hot summers. Far southern and coastal Connecticut which is closer to sea level, has a more mild humid temperate/subtropical climate (sometimes statistically meeting this climate's criteria, sometimes not) with seasonal extremes tempered by proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. Most of Connecticut sees a fairly even precipitation pattern with rainfall/snowfall spread throughout the 12 months. Connecticut averages 56% of possible sunshine (higher than the USA average), averaging 2,400 hours of sunshine annually.[24]
Summer is hot and humid throughout the state, with average highs in New London of 81 °F (27 °C) and 87 °F (31 °C) in Windsor Locks. Although summers are sunny in Connecticut, summer thunderstorms often bring quick downpours and thunder and lighting. Winters are generally cool to cold from south to north in Connecticut, with average temperatures ranging from 38 °F (3 °C) in the maritime influenced southeast to 29 °F (−2 °C) in the northwest in January. The average yearly snowfall ranges from about 50–60" in the higher elevations of the northern portion of the state to only 20-25" along the southeast coast of Connecticut. Early Spring (April) is coolish and mid and late Spring (May/early June) is warm to hot.
Fall months are mild and bring colorful foliage across northern parts of the state (the southern and coastal areas have more oak and hickory trees and fewer maples) in October and November. During hurricane season, tropical cyclones occasionally affect the region. Thunderstorms are most frequent during the summer, occurring on average 30 times annually. These storms can be severe, and the state usually averages one tornado per year.[25] Connecticut's warmest temperature is 106 °F (41 °C) which occurred in Danbury on July 15, 1995; the coldest temperature is −32 °F (−36 °C) which occurred in Falls Village on February 16, 1943 and Coventry on January 22, 1961.[26]
Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures for Various Connecticut Cities
A map of the Connecticut, New Haven, and Saybrook colonies
Historically important colonial settlements included:
Windsor (1633)
Wethersfield (1634)
Saybrook (1635)
Hartford (1636)
New Haven (1638)
Fairfield (1639)
Guilford (1639)
Milford (1639)
Stratford (1639)
Farmington (1640)
Stamford (1641)
New London (1646)
View of New London in 1854
The western boundaries of Connecticut have been subject to change over time. According to the Hartford Treaty with the Dutch, signed on September 19, 1650, but never ratified by the British, the western boundary of Connecticut ran north from Greenwich Bay for a distance of 20 miles[32][33] "provided the said line come not within 10 miles (16 km) [16 km] of Hudson River. This agreement was observed by both sides until war erupted between England and The Netherlands in 1652. No other limits were found. Conflict over uncertain colonial limits continued until the Duke of York captured New Netherland in 1664."[32][33] On the other hand, Connecticut's original Charter in 1662 granted it all the land to the "South Sea", i.e. the Pacific Ocean.[34][35] Most colonial royal grants were for long east-west strips. Connecticut took its grant seriously, and established a ninth county between the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, named Westmoreland County. This resulted in the brief Pennamite Wars with Pennsylvania.
Historical population
Census Pop.
1790 237,946
1800 251,002 5.5%
1810 261,942 4.4%
1820 275,248 5.1%
1830 297,675 8.1%
1840 309,978 4.1%
1850 370,792 19.6%
1860 460,147 24.1%
1870 537,454 16.8%
1880 622,700 15.9%
1890 746,258 19.8%
1900 908,420 21.7%
1910 1,114,756 22.7%
1920 1,380,631 23.9%
1930 1,606,903 16.4%
1940 1,709,242 6.4%
1950 2,007,280 17.4%
1960 2,535,234 26.3%
1970 3,031,709 19.6%
1980 3,107,576 2.5%
1990 3,287,116 5.8%
2000 3,405,565 3.6%
2010 3,574,097 4.9%
Est. 2013 3,596,080 0.6%
Connecticut Population Density Map
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Connecticut was 3,596,080 on July 1, 2013, a 0.6% increase since the 2010 United States Census.[8]
Race, ancestry, and language[edit]
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Connecticut had a population of 3,574,097. Racially and ethnically the state was:
In the same year Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 13.4% of the population.[41]
Connecticut Racial Breakdown of Population
White 87.0% 81.6% 77.6%
Black 8.3% 9.1% 10.1%
Asian 1.5% 2.4% 3.8%
Native 0.2% 0.3% 0.3%
Native Hawaiian and
other Pacific Islander
- - -
Other race 2.9% 4.3% 5.6%
Two or more races - 2.2% 2.6%
The largest ancestry groups are:[47]
As of 2011, 46.1% of Connecticut's population younger than age 1 were minorities.[48]
Majority Racial and Ethnic Groups in Connecticut, 2010
Connecticut state welcome sign in Enfield, Connecticut
Entering the Merritt Parkway from New York in Greenwich, Connecticut
The total gross state product for 2010 was $237 billion.[51] The per capita income for 2007 was $64,833, ranking fourth, behind the District of Columbia, Delaware, and Alaska.[52] There is, however, a great disparity in incomes throughout the state; although New Canaan has one of the highest per capita incomes in America, Hartford is one of the ten cities with the lowest per capita incomes in America. As with Bridgeport, New Haven and other cities in the state, Hartford is surrounded by wealthier suburbs. The state's unemployment rate in August 2011 was 9.0%.[53]
According to a 2013 study by Phoenix Marketing International, Connecticut had the third-largest number of millionaires per capita in the United States, with a ratio of 7.32 percent.[54] New Canaan is the wealthiest town in Connecticut, with a per capita income of $85,459. Darien, Greenwich, Weston, Westport and Wilton also have per capita incomes over $65,000. Hartford is the poorest municipality in Connecticut, with a per capita income of $13,428 in 2000.[55] There are other lower-income and blue-collar towns, mostly parts of towns, in the eastern part of the State.
In 1991, under Governor Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., an Independent, the system was changed to one in which the taxes on employment income and investment income were equalized at a maximum rate of 4%. Since then, Greenwich has become the headquarters for a large number of America's largest hedge funds.[citation needed] As of 2011, the income tax rates on Connecticut individuals are divided into six tax brackets of 3%, 5%, 5.5%, 6%, 6.5% and 6.7%.[56] All wages of Connecticut residents are subject to the state's income tax, even if earned outside the state. However, in those cases, Connecticut income tax must be withheld only to the extent the Connecticut tax exceeds the amount withheld by the other jurisdiction. Since New York and Massachusetts have higher tax rates than Connecticut, this effectively means that Connecticut residents that work in those states have no Connecticut income tax withheld. Connecticut permits a credit for taxes paid to other jurisdictions, but since residents who work in other states are still subject to Connecticut income taxation, they may owe taxes if the jurisdictional credit does not fully offset the Connecticut tax amount.
Connecticut levies a 6.35% state sales tax on the retail sale, lease, or rental of most goods.[56] Some items and services in general are not subject to sales and use taxes unless specifically enumerated as taxable by statute. A provision excluding clothing under $50 from sales tax was repealed as of July 1, 2011.[56] There are no additional sales taxes imposed by local jurisdictions. During the summer, there is one week during which sales tax on certain items and quantities of clothing is not imposed in order to assist those with children returning to school.[citation needed]
Real estate[edit]
Homes in Connecticut vary widely with a median price of approximately $226,000. By contrast, the median value for a home in Fairfield County, for example, is about $370,000.[59][60] Connecticut has the most multi-million dollar homes in the Northeast, and the second most in the nation after California, with 3.3% of homes in Connecticut priced over $1 million in 2003.[61]
The agricultural produce of the state includes nursery stock; eggs; clams and lobster (shellfish); dairy products; cattle; and tobacco. Its industrial output includes transportation equipment, especially helicopters, aircraft parts, and nuclear submarines; heavy industrial machinery and electrical equipment; military weaponry; fabricated metal products; chemical and pharmaceutical products; and scientific instruments. Connecticut was an historical center of gun manufacturing, and, as of December 2012, 4 gun-manufacturing firms, Colt, Stag, Ruger, and Mossberg, employing 2,000 employees, continued to operate in the state.[62] Marlin, by then owned by Remington, closed in April 2011.[63]
As of November 2010, the state's unemployment rate is 9%.[67]
Map of Connecticut showing major highways
The Interstate highways in the state are I-95 (the Connecticut Turnpike) running southwest to northeast along the coast, I-84 running southwest to northeast in the center of the state, I-91 running north to south in the center of the state, and I-395 running north to south near the eastern border of the state. The other major highways in Connecticut are the Merritt Parkway and Wilbur Cross Parkway, which together form State Route 15, running from the Hutchinson River Parkway in New York parallel to I-95 before turning north of New Haven and running parallel to I-91, finally becoming a surface road in Berlin, Connecticut. Route 15 and I-95 were originally toll roads; they relied on a system of toll plazas at which all traffic stopped and paid fixed tolls. A series of terrible crashes at these plazas eventually contributed to the decision to remove the tolls in 1988.[68] Other major arteries in the state include U.S. Route 7 in the west running parallel to the NY border, State Route 8 farther east near the industrial city of Waterbury and running north-south along the Naugatuck River Valley nearly parallel with U.S. 7, and State Route 9 in the east. See List of State Routes in Connecticut for an overview of the state's highway system.
Southwestern Connecticut is served by MTA's Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line, providing commuter service to New York City and New Haven, with branches servicing New Canaan, Danbury, and Waterbury. Connecticut lies along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor which features frequent Northeast Regional and Acela Express service. Towns between New Haven and New London are also served by the Shore Line East commuter line. Operation of commuter trains from New Haven to Springfield on Amtrak's New Haven-Springfield Line is under consideration.[70] Amtrak also operates a shuttle service between New Haven and Springfield, Massachusetts, servicing Hartford and other towns on the corridor.
The Rocky Hill – Glastonbury Ferry and the Chester–Hadlyme Ferry cross the Connecticut River. The Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Ferry travels between Bridgeport, CT and Port Jefferson, New York by crossing Long Island Sound. Ferry service also operates out of New London, CT to Orient, NY, Fishers Island, NY and Block Island, RI.
Law and government[edit]
The Connecticut State Capitol in downtown Hartford
Constitutional history[edit]
Locally elected representatives also develop Local ordinances to govern cities and towns.[76] The town ordinances often include noise control and zoning guidelines.[77] However, the State of Connecticut does also provide state-wide ordinances for noise control as well.[78]
In 1818, the court became a separate entity, independent of the legislative and executive branches.[79] The Appellate Court is a lesser state-wide court and the Superior Courts are lower courts that resemble county courts of other states.
Local government[edit]
Unlike all but one other state (Rhode Island), Connecticut does not have county government. Connecticut county governments were mostly eliminated in 1960, with the exception of sheriffs elected in each county.[81] In 2000, the county sheriff was abolished and replaced with the state marshal system, which has districts that follow the old county territories. The judicial system is divided, at the trial court level, into judicial districts which largely follow the old county lines.[82] The eight counties are still widely used for purely geographical and statistical purposes, such as weather reports, and census reporting.
Connecticut shares with the rest of New England a governmental institution called the New England town. The state is divided into 169 towns, which serve as the fundamental political jurisdictions.[73] There are also 21 cities,[73] most of which are coterminous with their namesake towns and have a merged city-town government. There are two exceptions: City of Groton, which is a subsection of the Town of Groton, and the City of Winsted in the Town of Winchester. There are also nine incorporated boroughs which may provide additional services to a section of town.[73][83] One, Naugatuck, is a consolidated town and borough.
Same-sex marriage[edit]
On November 12, 2008, Connecticut became the second state (after Massachusetts) to allow marriages of same-sex couples. Connecticut was the third state to do so, but only the second where the decision was not repealed.
Connecticut political party registration 1958–2012 marked with presidential influence
Registered Voters[edit]
Connecticut voter registration and party enrollment as of October 30, 2012[85]
Party Active voters Inactive voters Total voters Percentage
Republican 430,564 19,084 449,648 20.27%
Democratic 768,176 47,537 815,713 36.77%
Unaffiliated 872,839 60,440 933,279 42.06%
Minor parties 18,960 1,063 20,023 0.90%
Total 2,090,539 128,123 2,218,662 100%
Political Office[edit]
Republican Areas[edit]
Presidential election results[86]
Year Republican Democratic
Percent Absolute Percent Absolute
2012 40.73% 634,892 58.06% 905,083
2008 38.22% 629,428 60.59% 997,773
2004 43.95% 693,826 54.31% 857,488
2000 38.44% 561,094 55.91% 816,015
1996 34.69% 483,109 52.83% 735,740
1992 35.78% 578,313 42.21% 682,318
1988 51.98% 750,241 46.87% 676,584
1984 60.73% 890,877 38.83% 569,597
1980 48.16% 677,210 38.52% 541,732
1976 52.06% 719,261 46.90% 647,895
1972 58.57% 810,763 40.13% 555,498
1968 44.32% 556,721 49.48% 621,561
1964 32.09% 390,996 67.81% 826,269
1960 46.27% 565,813 53.73% 657,055
Democratic Areas[edit]
The Connecticut State Board of Education manages the public school system for children in grades K-12. Board of Education members are appointed by the Governor of Connecticut. Statistics for each school are made available to the public through an online database system called "CEDAR."[89] The CEDAR database also provides statistics for "ACES" or "RESC" schools for children with behavioral disorders.[90]
Private Schools[edit]
Colleges and Universities[edit]
Lime Rock – a home of the American Le Mans tournament
Professional Sports[edit]
Connecticut's longest-tenured and only modern full-time "big four" franchise were the Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League, who played in Hartford from 1979 to 1997 at the Hartford Civic Center. Their departure to Raleigh, North Carolina, over disputes with the state over the construction of a new arena, caused great controversy and resentment. The former Whalers are now known as the Carolina Hurricanes. Presently, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, a farm team for the New York Islanders, compete at the Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, CT and the Hartford Wolf Pack, the affiliate of the New York Rangers, play in the XL Center in Hartford.
Connecticut is a battleground between fans of the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and New York Mets.[93] For the Mets and Red Sox, split allegiances among fans of both teams in the state during the 1986 World Series led to an article in The Boston Globe to coin the phrase "Red Sox Nation".[94]
In 1926, Hartford had a franchise in the National Football League known as the Hartford Blues. The NFL would return to Connecticut from 1973–74 when New Haven hosted the New York Giants at Yale Bowl while Giants Stadium was under construction.[95]
Non-Professional Sports[edit]
High School[edit]
College Sports[edit]
Yale v. Harvard[edit]
Arena Football[edit]
Hartford has hosted two Arena Football League franchises, in the Connecticut Coyotes from 1995–1996 and the New England Sea Wolves from 1999–2000, both playing at the Civic Center. Hartford was home to the Hartford Colonials of the United Football League for one season in 2010.
Current professional sports teams[edit]
Club Sport League
Bridgeport Sound Tigers Ice hockey American Hockey League
Hartford Wolf Pack Ice hockey American Hockey League
Danbury Whalers Ice hockey Federal Hockey League
New Britain Rock Cats Baseball Eastern League (AA)
Connecticut Tigers Baseball New York-Penn League (A)
Bridgeport Bluefish Baseball Atlantic League
Connecticut Sun Basketball Women's National Basketball Association
Etymology and symbols[edit]
Connecticut State symbols
Flag of Connecticut.svg
The Flag of Connecticut.
Animate insignia
Bird(s) American Robin
Fish American shad
Flower(s) Mountain Laurel
Insect European Mantis
Mammal(s) Sperm whale
Tree Charter White oak
Inanimate insignia
Dance Square dance
Fossil Dinosaur tracks
Mineral Garnet
Shell Eastern Oyster
Slogan(s) Full of Surprises
Song(s) Yankee Doodle,
The Nutmeg
Tartan Connecticut State Tartan
Route marker(s)
Connecticut Route Marker
State Quarter
Quarter of Connecticut
Released in 1999
Lists of United States state insignia
Connecticut state insignia and historical figures[1] except where noted
State hero Nathan Hale
State heroine Prudence Crandall
State composer Charles Edward Ives
State statues in Statuary Hall Roger Sherman and Jonathan Trumbull
State poet laureate Dick Allen
Connecticut State Troubadour Kristen Graves[97]
State composer laureate Jacob Druckman
Famous residents[edit]
See also[edit]
1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Sites, Seals & Symbols". SOTS. The Government of Connecticut. Retrieved June 12, 2008.
2. ^ a b c "Connecticut's Nicknames". Connecticut State Library. Retrieved September 15, 2011.
3. ^ Style Manual. U.S. Government Printing Office. 2000. §5.23.
4. ^ "connect". Merriam-Webster Online.
5. ^ "Resident names". Resources. SHG Resources.
11. ^ "Connecticut - Definitions from". Archived from the original on November 18, 2010. Retrieved September 17, 2007.
13. ^ "State of Connecticut Center of Population - From". Archived from the original on November 18, 2010. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
24. ^ "United States annual sunshine map". HowStuffWorks. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
26. ^ "All-Time Climate Extremes for CT". NOAA. Retrieved March 18, 2011.
30. ^ "Early Settlers of Connecticut". Connecticut State Library. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
31. ^ Edward Royall Tyler, William Lathrop Kingsley, George Park Fisher, Timothy Dwight, ed. (January 1, 1887), New Englander and Yale Review, 47, W.L. Kingsley, pp. 176–177
33. ^ a b Flick, Alexander C, ed. (1933–37), History of the State of New York 2, New York City: Columbia University Press, pp. 50–57 .
34. ^ Callison, James (March 14, 2006). "Connecticut Colony Charter of 1662". US history. OU. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
35. ^ Lacey, Barbara, "Migration from Connecticut", Encyclopedia (topical survey), Connecticut's Heritage Gateway .
36. ^ "1790 to 1990", Population, Census .
38. ^ "Resident Population Data". Census. 2010. Retrieved January 23, 2011.
39. ^ a b "Annual Estimates of the Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012" (CSV). 2012 Population Estimates. US Census Bureau, Population Division. June 21, 2006. Retrieved December 24, 2012.
40. ^ "Population and Population Centers by State". United States Census Bureau. 2000. Archived from the original on January 17, 2010. Retrieved December 4, 2008.
41. ^ Fact finder, US: Census bureau .
42. ^ "Connecticut – Race and Hispanic Origin: 1790 to 1990". US Census Bureau. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
45. ^ 2010 Census Data
47. ^ "American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates". American FactFinder. US: Census Bureau. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
49. ^
52. ^ "CT Named Richest State". The Hartford Courant. March 26, 2008. [dead link]
55. ^ "Connecticut per capita income, median household income, and median family income at State, County and Town level: Census 2000 data" (XLS) (spreadsheet). State of Connecticut. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
56. ^ a b c Summary of Tax Provisions Contained in 2011 Conn. Pub. Acts 6, The State of Connecticut, retrieved July 6, 2011 .
57. ^ "Connecticut income tax instructions" (PDF). Archived from the original on November 13, 2010. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
58. ^ Christie, Les (September 30, 2010). "Highest property taxes in the nation". CNN. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
59. ^ "Conn. Median Home Prices Down 18% in First quarter". The Warren group. May 4, 2009. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
60. ^ "CT house prices continue to fall". Hartford Business. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
61. ^ Christie, Les (February 23, 2006). "Million Dollar Homes". CNN. Retrieved January 23, 2007.
64. ^ [1] Ct "Oystering in CT, from Colonial Times to the 21st Century"
66. ^ The Economic Impact of the Arts, Film, History, and Tourism Industries in Connecticut (Highlights) (PDF), CT: Commission on Culture and Tourism .
67. ^ Local Area Unemployment Statistics, BLS .
68. ^ Connecticut Turnpike (I-95), NYC roads .
69. ^ "CT rides". April 15, 2010. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
70. ^ "NHHS Rail". NHHS Rail. July 19, 2010. Retrieved September 15, 2011.
71. ^ "New Britain-to-Hartford ‘Busway’ Receives Final Federal Design Approval" (Press release). State of Connecticut. October 31, 2006. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
72. ^ "New Britain-Hartford Rapid Transit Project Schedule". CT rapid transit. Retrieved July 25, 2010. [dead link]
73. ^ a b c d e f g "About Connecticut". The Government of Connecticut. Retrieved December 18, 2005.
74. ^ "Connecticut's Executive Branch of Government".
75. ^ Constitution of the State of Connecticut, CT: Secretary of State, retrieved April 30, 2012 .
76. ^ "Ordinances and Charters by Town – Judicial Branch Law Libraries". CT: Judiciary. Retrieved June 10, 2013.
77. ^ Town of Newtown, CT (August 20, 2010). "Noise Control Ordinance". The Government of Newtown. Retrieved June 10, 2013.
78. ^ Regulations (PDF), The Government of Connecticut [dead link]
79. ^ History of the Connecticut Courts. Last retrieved February 20, 2007.
80. ^ Enter your Company or Top-Level Office (May 15, 2013). "OPM: Arrest Warrant Data". Retrieved June 10, 2013.
81. ^ "Connecticut State Register and Manual: Counties". Archived from the original on October 10, 2006. Retrieved November 7, 2006.
82. ^ "State of Connecticut Judicial Branch". Retrieved July 25, 2010.
84. ^ a b Enter your Company or Top-Level Office. "Regional Planning Coordination at the CT Office of Planning and Management". Retrieved July 25, 2010.
85. ^ "Registration and Party Enrollment Statistics as of October 30, 2012" (PDF). Connecticut Secretary of State. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
87. ^ "Connecticut governor signs bill to repeal death penalty". FOX News Network. April 25, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
88. ^ "In historic vote, legislature overrides SustiNet veto", Advocac (article), Aarp [dead link]
89. ^ "CEDaR". State Department of Education. Government of Connecticut. Retrieved June 10, 2013.
90. ^ Resc Alliance (PDF) (brochure), Aces, 2011
91. ^ "Admit rate falls to record-low 7.5 percent". Yale Daily News. March 31, 2009. Retrieved April 23, 2009. [dead link]
92. ^ Rankings, U Conn .
93. ^ Branch, John (August 18, 2006). "Where Do Rivals Draw the Line?". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
94. ^ Cobb, Nathan (October 20, 1986). "Baseball Border War; In Milford Conn., Geography Brings Sox and Mets Fans". Boston Globe. p. 8.
95. ^ "History of the New York Giants", Sports ecyclopedia, retrieved September 12, 2006 .
96. ^ "Famer Search", Hall of Fame, College Football .
97. ^ "Connecticut State Troubadour". State of Connecticut. Retrieved June 29, 2013.
External links[edit]
Civic and business organizations
Preceded by
List of U.S. states by date of statehood
Ratified Constitution on January 9, 1788 (5th)
Succeeded by
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11043 | Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to: navigation, search
en This user is a native speaker of English.
Search user languages or scripts
AnnaKucsma is a person from New York City. Her native language is American English, and she can speak some French (though she can read the latter much better than she can speak it). She can often be seen knitting, reading, or contributing to Wikipedia and Wiktionary.
Her early forays into Wictionary-entry modification include:
To Do[edit]
When I'm not sitting at a desk at work, I gotta take a look at the guidelines on how Wictionary pages are structured (as opposed to mere syntax or how Wikipedia pages are structured). Then, I ought to get to work on the following:
• To translate: (I need to look these up first)
• knitting (noun) to French
• Morgan le Fay to French (I've seen this translated, just want to get it right the first time)
• yarn to French
See Also[edit] |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11044 | Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to: navigation, search
From Old English unwindan. See 1st un-, and wind (to coil).
unwind (third-person singular simple present unwinds, present participle unwinding, simple past and past participle unwound)
1. (transitive) To wind off; to loose or separate; to untwist; to untwine; as, to unwind thread, to unwind a ball of yarn
Could you unwind about a foot of ribbon so I can finish the package?
2. (transitive, obsolete) To disentangle
• 1836, Richard Hooker, The Works of Richard Hooker, Volume 4, page 27:
... but being not so skilful as in every point to unwind themselves where the snares of glossing speech do lie to entangle them, ...
3. (intransitive, slang) To relax; to chill out; as, to rest and relieve of stress
After work, I like to unwind by smoking a pipe while reading the paper.
4. (intransitive) To be or become unwound; to be capable of being unwound or untwisted.
Related terms[edit]
|
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11045 | From FedoraProject
< Features
Revision as of 20:28, 11 January 2012 by Vedranm (Talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
ns-3 Network Simulator
Design packaging scheme for ns-3 network simulator and provide it in Fedora.
Pretty usable spec file (C++ and Python simulations work) for ns-3 version 3.14 pulled from hg repository is available:
still missing: nsc (TODO), click (TODO), openflow (might consider it when/if Blake Hurd's changes go upstream, see below for details).
To use the specfile, you must:
• get ns-allinone-3.13.tar.bz2 and unpack it, manually rename ns-allinone-3.13 to ns-allinone-3.14, remove ns-3.13 inside of it
• get ns-3-dev using Mercurial, patch it with patch in this bug https://www.nsnam.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1327
• manually rename ns-3-dev to ns-3.14 and move it inside ns-allinone-3.14
• change ns-allinone-3.14/ns-3.14/VERSION from 3-dev to 3.14
• make an archive
tar cvjf ns-allinone-3.14.tar.bz2 ns-allinone-3.14
Once ns-3.14 is out, all this will not be needed.
To use ns-3 when installed via RPMs, you must use pkgconfig, e.g.
$ g++ first.cc `pkg-config --libs --cflags libns3.14-core-debug libns3.14-network-debug libns3.14-internet-debug libns3.14-point-to-point-debug libns3.14-applications-debug`
Current status
• Targeted release: Fedora 17
• Last updated: 2012-01-11
• Percentage of completion: 85%
Detailed Description
ns-3 is intended as an eventual replacement for the popular ns-2 simulator." (ns-3 home page)
For now, we package ns-3.14 development version, but it's very likely that final version will be available in time for Fedora 17, so we will upgrade to that. The reason why we have choosen to target Fedora 17 even though spec has been ready for a while is to take time to work with upstream on fixing issues in the installation process, so it's highly likely that we will be able to package ns-3 without any extra patches.
Benefit to Fedora
Fedora will be more attractive to researchers, teachers and students in field of computer networks since it will be much easier to install and use ns-3.
ns-2 is widely used in academia, and it's expected that ns-3 will follow that suit. There are already a couple of courses using ns-3. (Tom Henderson keynote at WNS3 2011 mentions three, but there are at least three more: CS641 at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, S-38.2188 at Aalto University, CS640 at Brigham Young University)
This is an isolated change, that requires adding packages to Fedora. ns-3 has quite some dependancies, and most of them are already in Fedora (see below).
How To Test
Tests and scripts used for testing simulator itself are provided in ns-3 and can also be packaged.
No special hardware or software is required; testing is handled by ns-3's test.py script that builds tests and executes them.
User Experience
Researchers, teachers and students will be able to install ns-3 much easier.
Definitly needed:
Not needed but will package since it's easy to do:
Possibly useful in the future/would be cool to have:
Contingency Plan
Release without ns-3 included.
Release Notes
ns-3 is a discrete-event network simulator for Internet systems, targeted primarily for research and educational use. ns-3 is now included in Fedora. This makes it easier for researchers, teachers and students in field of computer networks to install it and use it.
Comments and Discussion |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11049 | GHC: Ticket #3047: Panic! (the 'impossible' happened) :) <p> I was just coding up a solution to a Project Euler problem when the following occurred. I'm attaching the source file. It should be useful as it's very short (well, except for there being a 46KB list on one line). </p> <p> I apologize if this is a duplicate, because I'm using a fairly old GHCi. </p> <p> Cheers Ben </p> <p> [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( C:/Users/Ben/Desktop/ProjectEuler/22.hs, i nterpreted ) : panic! (the 'impossible' happened) </p> <blockquote> <p> (GHC version 6.8.2 for i386-unknown-mingw32): </p> <blockquote> <p> linkBCO: >= 64k insns in BCO </p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p> Please report this as a GHC bug: <a href=""></a> </p> en-us GHC Trac 1.0.1 bchallenor Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:37:03 GMT attachment set <ul> <li><strong>attachment</strong> set to <em>22.hs</em> </li> </ul> <p> Example </p> Ticket bchallenor Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:39:50 GMT <p> This could well be a duplicate of <a class="ext-link" href=""><span class="icon"></span></a>. </p> Ticket simonmar Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:17:22 GMT status changed; difficulty, resolution set <ul> <li><strong>status</strong> changed from <em>new</em> to <em>closed</em> </li> <li><strong>difficulty</strong> set to <em>Unknown</em> </li> <li><strong>resolution</strong> set to <em>duplicate</em> </li> </ul> <p> dup of <a class="closed ticket" href="" title="bug: BCOs can only have 64k instructions: linkBCO: >= 64k insns in BCO (closed: fixed)">#789</a> </p> Ticket |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11050 | id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,priority,milestone,component,version,resolution,keywords,cc,os,architecture,failure,difficulty,testcase,blockedby,blocking,related 3575,mkStdGen and split conspire to make some programs predictable,rwbarton,rrnewton,"The following program `random.hs` is intended to produce a line containing 30 random 0s or 1s. It is not an example of the best way to use System.Random, but it looks innocuous enough. {{{ import Control.Monad import System.Random print0or1 = do g <- newStdGen putStr . show . fst $ randomR (0, 1 :: Int) g main = replicateM_ 30 print0or1 >> putStrLn """" }}} Let's try running it a thousand times: {{{ rwbarton@functor:/tmp$ ghc-6.10.1 -O2 --make random [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( random.hs, random.o ) Linking random ... rwbarton@functor:/tmp$ for i in `seq 1 1000` ; do ./random >> random.out ; done rwbarton@functor:/tmp$ sort random.out | uniq | wc -l 60 }}} That's odd... there are 2^30^ possible output lines, but when I tried to generate 1000 random ones, I only got 60 distinct outputs. Why did that happen? One might think this is due to poor initial seeding of the random number generator (due to the time not changing very much during the test), but this is not the case. Attached is a fancier version of the program which reads an initial seed from `/dev/urandom`; it exhibits the same behavior. This phenomenon is not too hard to explain. It is ultimately due to a poor interaction between `mkStdGen` and `split`. First, we need to know a bit about the design of System.Random (some statements simplified slightly for this discussion). * The state of the RNG consists of two `Int32`s, `s1` and `s2`. * The initial state produced by mkStdGen almost always has `s2` equal to 1. (Extremely rarely, it might have `s2` equal to 2. We'll ignore this as it doesn't affect the argument.) * To generate a random 0 or 1, we first generate a new state using some simple functions `s1' = next1(s1)`, `s2' = next2(s2)`. (Note that `s1` and `s2` ""evolve"" independently.) The random value returned is the lowest bit of `s1'` minus `s2'`. * Splitting the generator `(s1, s2)` yields the two generators `(s1+1, next2(s2))` and `(next1(s1), s2-1)`. Our program functions as follows. * Initialize the generator stored in `theStdGen` (`s1` is some varying value `a`, `s2` is 1). * Repeatedly split the generator, replacing it with the first output, and use the second output to generate a 0 or 1. If we watch `theStdGen` while our program runs, we will see that `s1` is incremented by 1 at each step, while `s2` follows the fixed sequence `1`, `next2(1)`, `next2(next2(1))`, etc. The 0 or 1 we output at the `k`th step is thus the lowest bit of `next1(next1(a+k-1))` minus `b`,,k,,, where `b`,,k,, is some fixed sequence. And as `k` varies, `next1(next1(a+k-1))` turns out to be just an arithmetic sequence with fixed difference modulo a fixed prime so its lowest bits are extremely predictable even without knowing `a`. This issue can be fixed to some extent, without breaking backwards compatibility, by adding another method (besides `mkStdGen`) to create a generator, which does not have predictable `s2`, and using it to initialize the system RNG.",bug,new,normal,⊥,libraries/random,6.10.1,,,,Unknown/Multiple,Unknown/Multiple,None/Unknown,Unknown,,,, |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11051 | Skip to content
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My musings.
branch: master
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Octocat-spinner-32 2012
This is my personal blog, with my random ideas/things I've messed around with each day. I expect most things to be about programming languages, the connections between them and trying to hack languages into becoming something they really weren't intended to be.
Recent Posts
Pretty-Printing Types in F# (2012/05/13)
This year I took a compilers course at my university - we implemented a compiler for a simply pascal like language using OCaml. Whilst I grew to like OCaml (if not its compiler) there was still something that bugged me; namely the whi...
Automatic Currying in Javascript (2012/05/13)
Currying is a very useful feature in functional languages such as Haskell - it allows us to treat a function with multiple arguments as a chain of functions each accepting one argume...
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CSS3 Buttons
This is a collection of buttons that show what is possible using CSS3 and other advanced techniques, while maintaining the simplest possible markup. These buttons look best in Chrome and Safari (especially on OSX). They look almost as good in Firefox, with all other browsers falling back to a less-styled button.
These buttons are now implemented using Sass, using Bourbon. The plain, generated CSS for all the buttons isalso still available in its previous location within the repo.
If you use any of these buttons in the wild, drop me a note and let me know.
View the buttons here:
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tag: android-4.0.1_…
Android Init Language
The Android Init Language consists of four broad classes of statements,
which are Actions, Commands, Services, and Options.
whitespace from breaking text into multiple tokens. The backslash,
Actions and Services implicitly declare a new section. All commands
or options belong to the section most recently declared. Commands
or options before the first section are ignored.
an error. (??? should we override instead)
Actions are named sequences of commands. Actions have a trigger which
is used to determine when the action should occur. When an event
occurs which matches an action's trigger, that action is added to
that action is executed in sequence. Init handles other activities
(device creation/destruction, property setting, process restarting)
"between" the execution of the commands in activities.
Actions take the form of:
on <trigger>
Services are programs which init launches and (optionally) restarts
when they exit. Services take the form of:
Options are modifiers to services. They affect how and when init
runs the service.
four minutes, the device will reboot into recovery mode.
This service will not automatically start with its class.
It must be explicitly started by name.
setenv <name> <value>
Set the environment variable <name> to <value> in the launched process.
socket <name> <type> <perm> [ <user> [ <group> ] ]
Create a unix domain socket named /dev/socket/<name> and pass
its fd to the launched process. <type> must be "dgram", "stream" or "seqpacket".
User and group default to 0.
user <username>
Change to username before exec'ing this service.
Currently, if your process requires linux capabilities then you cannot use
this command. You must instead request the capabilities in-process while
still root, and then drop to your desired uid.
group <groupname> [ <groupname> ]*
Change to groupname before exec'ing this service. Additional
supplemental groups of the process (via setgroups()).
Do not restart the service when it exits.
class <name>
Specify a class name for the service. All services in a
named class may be started or stopped together. A service
is in the class "default" if one is not specified via the
class option.
Execute a Command (see below) when service restarts.
Triggers are strings which can be used to match certain kinds
of events and used to cause an action to occur.
This is the first trigger that will occur when init starts
(after /init.conf is loaded)
Triggers of this form occur when the property <name> is set
to the specific value <value>.
Triggers of these forms occur when a device node is added
or removed.
Triggers of this form occur when the specified service exits.
exec <path> [ <argument> ]*
Fork and execute a program (<path>). This will block until
the program completes execution. It is best to avoid exec
as unlike the builtin commands, it runs the risk of getting
init "stuck". (??? maybe there should be a timeout?)
export <name> <value>
Set the environment variable <name> equal to <value> in the
global environment (which will be inherited by all processes
started after this command is executed)
ifup <interface>
Bring the network interface <interface> online.
import <filename>
Parse an init config file, extending the current configuration.
hostname <name>
Set the host name.
chdir <directory>
Change working directory.
chmod <octal-mode> <path>
Change file access permissions.
chown <owner> <group> <path>
Change file owner and group.
chroot <directory>
Change process root directory.
class_start <serviceclass>
Start all services of the specified class if they are
not already running.
class_stop <serviceclass>
Stop all services of the specified class if they are
currently running.
domainname <name>
Set the domain name.
insmod <path>
Install the module at <path>
Create a directory at <path>, optionally with the given mode, owner, and
owned by the root user and root group.
Attempt to mount the named device at the directory <dir>
device by name.
setprop <name> <value>
Set system property <name> to <value>.
setrlimit <resource> <cur> <max>
Set the rlimit for a resource.
start <service>
Start a service running if it is not already running.
stop <service>
Stop a service from running if it is currently running.
symlink <target> <path>
Create a symbolic link at <path> with the value <target>
sysclktz <mins_west_of_gmt>
trigger <event>
Trigger an event. Used to queue an action from another
write <path> <string> [ <string> ]*
Open the file at <path> and write one or more strings
to it with write(2)
Init updates some system properties to provide some insight into
what it's doing:
Equal to the command being executed or "" if none.
State of a named service ("stopped", "running", "restarting")
Example init.conf
# not complete -- just providing some examples of usage
on boot
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH /system/lib
mkdir /dev
mkdir /proc
mkdir /sys
mount tmpfs tmpfs /dev
mkdir /dev/pts
mkdir /dev/socket
mount devpts devpts /dev/pts
mount proc proc /proc
mount sysfs sysfs /sys
write /proc/cpu/alignment 4
ifup lo
hostname localhost
domainname localhost
mount yaffs2 mtd@system /system
mount yaffs2 mtd@userdata /data
import /system/etc/init.conf
class_start default
service adbd /sbin/adbd
user adb
group adb
service usbd /system/bin/usbd -r
user usbd
group usbd
socket usbd 666
socket zygote 666
service runtime /system/bin/runtime
user system
group system
on device-added-/dev/compass
start akmd
on device-removed-/dev/compass
stop akmd
service akmd /sbin/akmd
user akmd
group akmd
Debugging notes
Andoird program logwrapper. This will redirect stdout/stderr into the
Android logging system (accessed via logcat).
For example
service akmd /system/bin/logwrapper /sbin/akmd
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Implementation of sbt's test interface for JUnit
branch: master
An implementation of sbt's test interface <>
for JUnit 4. This allows you to run JUnit <> tests from sbt.
Unlike Scala testing frameworks like ScalaTest (which can also run JUnit test
cases), both JUnit and this adapter are pure Java, so you can run JUnit tests
with any Scala version supported by sbt without having to build a
binary-compatible test framework first.
See LICENSE.txt for licensing conditions (BSD-style).
To use with sbt 0.10+, add the following dependency to your build.sbt:
To use with sbt 0.7, add the following dependency to your project:
val junitInterface = "com.novocode" % "junit-interface" % "0.10" % "test"
JUnit itself is automatically pulled in as a transitive dependency. sbt
already knows about junit-interface so the dependency alone is enough. You do
not have to add it to the list of test frameworks.
The following options are supported for JUnit tests:
-v Log "test run started" / "test started" / "test run finished" events on
log level "info" instead of "debug".
-q Suppress stdout for successful tests. Stderr is printed to the console
normally. Stdout is written to a buffer and discarded when a test
succeeds. If it fails, the buffer is dumped to the console. Since stdio
redirection in Java is a bad kludge (System.setOut() changes the static
final field System.out through native code) this may not work for all
scenarios. Scala has its own console with a sane redirection feature. If
Scala is detected on the class path, junit-interface tries to reroute
scala.Console's stdout, too.
-n Do not use ANSI colors in the output even if sbt reports that they are
-s Try to decode Scala names in stack traces and test names. Fall back
silently to non-decoded names if no matching Scala library is on the
class path.
-a Show stack traces and exception class name for AssertionErrors (thrown
by all assert* methods in JUnit). Without this option, failed assertions
do not print a stack trace or the "java.lang.AssertionError: " prefix.
-c Do not print the exception class name prefix for any messages. With this
option, only the result of getMessage() plus a stack trace is shown.
+v Turn off -v. Takes precedence over -v.
+q Turn off -q. Takes precedence over -q.
+n Turn off -n. Takes precedence over -n.
+s Turn off -s. Takes precedence over -s.
+a Turn off -a. Takes precedence over -a.
+c Turn off -c. Takes precedence over -c.
--ignore-runners=<COMMA-SEPARATED-STRINGS> Ignore tests with a @RunWith
annotation if the Runner class name is contained in this list. The
default value is "org.junit.runners.Suite".
--tests=<REGEXPS> Run only the tests whose names match one of the specified
regular expressions (in a comma-separated list). Non-matched tests are
ignored. Only individual test case names are matched, not test classes.
Example: For test MyClassTest.testBasic() only "testBasic" is matched.
Use sbt's "test-only" command instead to match test classes.
-Dkey=value Temporarily set a system property for the duration of the test
run. The property is restored to its previous value after the test has
ended. Note that system properties are global to the entire JVM and they
can be modified in a non-transactional way, so you should run tests
serially and not perform any other tasks in parallel which depend on
the modified property.
--run-listener=<CLASS_NAME> A (user defined) class which extends
org.junit.runner.notification.RunListener. An instance of this class is
created and added to the JUnit Runner, so that it will receive the run events.
For more information, see RunListener <>.
Note: this uses the test-classloader, so the class needs to be defined in src/test
or src/main or included as a test or compile dependency
Any parameter not starting with - or + is treated as a glob pattern for
matching tests. Unlike the patterns given directly to sbt's "test-only"
command, the patterns given to junit-interface will match against the full
test names (as displayed by junit-interface) of all atomic test cases, so
you can match on test methods and parts of suites with custom runners.
In sbt 0.10+, you can set default options in your build.sbt file:
testOptions += Tests.Argument(TestFrameworks.JUnit, "-q", "-v")
In sbt 0.7, add the following to your project:
override def testOptions =
super.testOptions ++
Seq(TestArgument(TestFrameworks.JUnit, "-q", "-v"))
Or use them with the test-quick and test-only commands:
test-only -- +q +v *Sequence*h2mem*
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This repository
theme issue with build file #35
TheCodeBoutique opened this Issue · 0 comments
1 participant
The Code Boutique
The Code Boutique
required in build file on 1.5 pre while deploying to Strobe site
config :all, :required => [:sproutcore, "sproutcore/ace"], :theme => 'sproutcore/ace'
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11079 |
On Sunday 10 February 2008, Frans Pop wrote:
> is still incorrect.
Well, there is actually another category. We have one library (libnewt0.52)
that is only included in D-I initrds through library reduction and for
which no udeb exists.
Udebs that depend on it are: cdebconf-newt-udeb and cdebconf-newt-entropy.
I see two solutions for this.
Option 1
Give libnewt0.52 a proper shlibs file changing the dependencies to
'libnewt-udeb' and add an empty libnewt-udeb package in the newt source
package so that dependencies can be satisfied.
Option 2
Hack cdebconf-newt-udeb and cdebconf-newt-entropy so that their dependencies
on libnewt0.52 get dropped.
The first option seems cleaner and therefore has my preference.
The reason I think we should fix this is that we want britney to check
dependencies before migrating udebs to testing and it seems to me that all
dependencies of udebs should be satisfiable by udebs and crosschecks
against regular packages should not be needed.
If there are no objections, I will prepare a patch against newt to implement
the first option.
Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11081 |
Re: DFSG: list restrictions, not freedoms
On Mon, Jan 25, 1999 at 03:44:04PM -0800, Chris Waters wrote:
> Rather than attempt to list all the freedoms that Debian guarantees,
> why not list the *restrictions* on freedom that we do allow, and say
> that any other restrictions violate our guidelines.
I like your idea - I wonde what it would look like when fleshed out a
bit more... It might be more susceptible to loopholes, though...
David Welton http://www.efn.org/~davidw
Debian GNU/Linux - www.debian.org
Reply to: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11082 |
Bug#241457: ITP: libgimp-perl -- Perl support and plugins for The GIMP
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
* Package name : libgimp-perl
Version : 2.0pre2
Upstream Author : Marc Lehmann <[email protected]>, Seth Burgess <[email protected]> and more for the included plug-ins
* URL : http://www.example.org/
* License : Perl (== GPLv2 or higher and Artistic)
Description : Perl support and plugins for The GIMP
This package includes the Perl modules necessary to write Perl-based
plugins for The GIMP. It includes several plugins with various
useful features.
This was available as gimp-perl (I'll add a fitting Provides) and was
built from the gimp source, but is now split out to it's own source
package. It's needed to build OO.org.
Reply to: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11083 |
Hints for cpufrequency on a D800 ?
I am thinking about going Debian for my D800 (actually, Suse 9.2), bu, working
with a spare notebook drive, i could not have the cpu frequency stepping work
for my centrino (765, i think? it's the 2.10 processor, 400 mhz fsb, 2mb 2nd
level cache.)
Can anybody help me out on this, please? I could not find anything on the
usual sites (linux-on-laptop, tuxmobil...)
Reply to: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11085 |
password change
Is there a way to script out the changing of passwords at the command line.
I have about 60 passwords to change manually, according to federal policy.
In windows I would just do a net user username password
Is there no similar linux command?
Reply to: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11090 | [Python-ideas] Multi-line comment blocks.
David Gates gatesda at gmail.com
Sat Jun 16 15:37:10 CEST 2012
I was throwing together a quick language list, so I pulled some of them
from hyperpolyglot, including Perl. So, guess it's not a dedicated comment
syntax, but it does nest (the document you linked says it doesn't, but it's
Found out that Lua also uses dead-code strings as comments. It supports
nested strings, but the delimiters in each layer must be distinct. Trying
to nest them otherwise is a syntax error, so you can't accidentally end a
string early like you can with quote delimiters.
On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 2:56 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16 June 2012 02:00, David Gates <gatesda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A Perl nested comment:
> >
> > =for
> > Comment
> > =for
> > Nested comment
> > =cut
> > =cut
> And the irony is that, as far as I recall, this is a form of Perl's
> embedded documentation syntax (and hence very similar in spirit to
> using multiline strings as comments). See
> http://www.perl6.org/archive//rfc/5.html (and note that perl 6 does
> *not*, apparently, include multiline comments).
> Paul.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11093 | import module name collision
Robert Brewer fumanchu at
Sat Sep 4 20:17:33 CEST 2004
Chris Foote wrote:
> Today I happened to accidentally name one of my project's
> files '', which collides with the module of the
> same name in Python's standard library:
> from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
> which causes problems within MIMEText later:
> File "/usr/lib/python2.3/", line 49, in ?
> from email.base64MIME import encode as encode_base64
> ImportError: No module named base64MIME
> Is there any mechanism to refer to standard library
> modules so that there's no name collision problem with
> the local filename ?
> ... or any other solution ?
I assume your '' is either in /Lib or in /site-packages...? The
quickest solution would be to make your project into a package and shove
your '' into it somewhere, so it's no longer 'top-level'.
Robert Brewer
Amor Ministries
fumanchu at
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General Laws
Section 126. A railroad corporation which neglects to comply with sections one hundred and twenty-three and one hundred and twenty-five shall forfeit one hundred dollars for each day such neglect is continued; and an engineer or draw tender who violates any provision of said sections or any regulation established in conformity therewith for such drawbridge by the corporation by which he is employed shall forfeit one hundred dollars for each offence, which shall be recovered in the county where the offence is committed, to the use of the informer.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11098 | Hacker Newsnew | comments | ask | jobs | submitlogin
grayrest 704 days ago | link | parent
Do you have an overview of how the async macro works? The presentation wasn't long enough to fit in but I'm hoping you have a written explanation somewhere. Cursory search didn't turn up anything.
I've seen flows of roughly the same complexity from a variety of abstractions: monadic (F# async), generator/coroutine (Python gevent, node fibers), futures/promises (twisted, mochikit, commonjs q), and callbacks (a million node async flow helpers) but they always involve more code. This looks like auto-transformed futures with error bubbling instead of error callback but I'd like to know how it's actually working. The lack of ceremony/annotation is commendable but I'm concerned it's fragile magic.
prospero 704 days ago | link
I haven't really written about this anywhere, and the code in its current state is far from self-documenting, so I'll give it a shot here.
The code transformation is pretty much all local. Since everything in Clojure is an expression (this is not true of Python or JS, I'm not sure about F#), I don't need to perform much analysis, I just need to make sure that each expression doesn't care about the difference between a future and a realized value.
Let's assume three primitives:
* an asynchronous future [1]
* something which merges a list of futures and realized values into a single future representing a list of values
* something which takes a function and a future, and returns a future representing '(apply fn value-of-future)', that will be realized once the future is realized
All we need to do is take every expression where a function is called, merge the arguments together, and apply the final primitive to the expression. The expression will return a future, which can then be picked up by the parent expression, and so on.
This glosses over how special forms are handled, and how the 'force' functionality works. Also, as I mentioned in the presentation, how the code executes is pretty opaque, and some sort of higher-order analysis would be nice so that it could be visualized using graphviz or something.
This is still an experimental feature, and will probably remain so until the 1.0.0 release of Lamina (I'm working on 0.5.0 right now). I'm not aware of any other macro that rips apart normal Clojure code quite as completely, which means that this is sort of uncharted territory. I want to make sure I've avoided all the pitfalls before calling it ready for production usage.
[1] https://github.com/ztellman/lamina/wiki/Introduction
|
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11100 | Compass Commander Lite
What's New
V1.14 Added touch button to access to settings for devices without physical button
V1.13 Bug fix
V1.12 Graphical improvements
V1.11 Minor bug fixes
V1.10 Improved visibility of compass
V1.9 Fixed layout bug on ICS devices
V1.8 German translation added (thanks to my friend Claudia)
V1.7 US customary measure added.
V1.6 Added French language
V1.5 UTM coordinates added
More from developer |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11104 | Luck, Psi and Belief in the Paranormal
4th-6th September, 2009 - 33rd International Annual Conference of the Society for Psychical Research, Univeristy of Nottingham
Forthcoming Talks:
August 2009:
Liberté, légalité, éternité
September 2009:
Luck, Psi and Belief in the Paranormal
Altered States, Imagery and Healing
Psi-verts and Psychic Piracy
Brazilian Psi and Altered States Conference: A Review
Paranormal Phenomena and Psychoactive Drugs
Species Connectedness and Psychedelics
Parapsychology and Psychedelics
Inner Paths to Outer Space
Entheogenic Entity Encounters
Inducing Near-Death Experiences with Chemicals
Psychonautic Misadventures in Time
Obituary: Duncan Blewett
Tribute: Albert Hofmann
An Interview
A Preliminary Survey
Paranormal Experiences and Psychoactive Drugs
Paranormal Phenomena and Psychoactive Drugs
Parapsychology: Magic and Science:
A Magical Perspective on Parapsychology
A Parapsychological Perspective on Magic
Recent Talks:
Liberté, légalité, éternité
Death, and the God of a Thousand Eyes
Psychology and Superstition
Pagan Entheogens
Hofmann, LSD & Parapsychopharmacology
The Neurochemistry of Psi
Entoptics: More Than Meets the Eye?
Parapsychology: Science of the Future or the Past?
Death, and the God of a Thousand Eyes
Luck as a Euphemism for Psi?
Does Psilocybin Cause Psi?
Death and the God of a Thousand Eyes
Death, and the God of a Thousand Eyes
The Neurochemisty of Psi
Psi may look like luck
Testing for Precognition
Entheogens: The Religious /Paranormal Bridge
Sacramental Plants and Psi
The Shaman, The Vision and the Brain
Visionary Encounters and Neurochemical Mythology
Psychedelics, Parapsychology and Exceptional Human Experiences
DMT Entities: Deities or Delusion?
Research in Parapsychology: Academic Studies of Magical Phenomena
Superstition, Magic and States of Mind
You Never Know Your Luck: The Psychology of Superstition
Luck beliefs, PMIR, psi and the sheep-goat effect: A replication. Dr. David Luke & Shelley Morin
Saturday 5th September, 2009 Annual Conference of the Society for Psychical Research, University of Nottingham
Given the growing evidence, such as that from psychophysiological psi research (e.g., Radin, 1997), that psi primarily functions unconsciously, then ordinary everyday psi that serves the needs of the person may merely “look like luck” (Broughton, 1991, p.193). A number of studies have found mixed but generally positive findings for the relationship between perceived personal luckiness and psi (for a review see Luke, 2007). The notion that perceived luckiness is related to psi, however, may be flawed by the lack of specific definitions of luck, given that it has multiple interpretations, so recent research has investigated different luck beliefs in relation to psi.
Luke, Delanoy and Shewood (2003) developed a Questionnaire of Beliefs about Luck (QBL) that measures differing beliefs along four non-orthogonal dimensions: Luck (luck is primarily controllable, but also internal, stable and non-random), Chance (luck is random, unpredictable, unstable and inert), Providence (luck is reliably managed by external higher beings or forces), and Fortune (luck is meant as a metaphor for life success rather than as a literal event). Using a non-intentional precognition test paradigm these luck beliefs were explored as predictors of psi in a series of three experiments (Luke, Delanoy & Sherwood, 2008; Luke, Roe & Davison, 2008). In addition, the experiments were designed to explore aspects of Stanford’s (e.g., 1990) ‘psi-mediated instrumental response’ (PMIR) model, within which the notion fits quite neatly that luckiness may ordinarily be used euphemistically to account for everyday unconscious psi. The PMIR model posits that psi primarily works unconsciously but that it does so in the service of the organism, such as in the avoidance of an impending accident, whereby such an event could easily be attributed to luck.
The basic set-up of the Luke et al. experiments is a computer programme where participants are asked to select one of four fractal images (mathematical patterns) based on quick aesthetic judgements, one of the images is then selected covertly by the computer, pseudo-randomly, as the unconscious precognition target. Participants perform 10 trials of this non-intentional psi task, and then perform a second task contingent upon their performance in the first task: Those participants scoring above chance on the psi task are directed towards a pleasant task and those scoring below chance are directed toward an unpleasant task, both of which are designed to escalate in pleasantness in direct proportion to the psi score. The pleasant task involved rating cartoon images, although in one version of the experiment erotic images were used instead. In one version of the experiment participants were randomly allocated to conditions either with or without the contingent task, finishing the experiment directly after the non-intentional psi task in the non-contingent condition. Each of the experiments, with a combined total of 157 participants, reported significant psi hitting, and furthermore a significant correlation between psi score and the Luck subscale of the QBL (r = .26) was found in Experiment 1, and with the Chance (r = 48) and Providence (r = .39) subscales in Experiment 2 (Luke, Delanoy & Sherwood, 2008; Luke, Roe & Davison, 2008). Experiment failed to find any relationship between psi score and the QBL subscales, however, but did find one with Openness to Experience (r = .46). Experiment 1 also explored belief in psi and found a weak but significant correlation with psi score (r = .22) in line with the sheep-goat effect (e.g., Palmer, 1971).
Exploring the PMIR model, one of the previous experiments had investigated the needs-serving function of psi by testing the hypothesis that having a reward/punishment task contingent upon psi score would be better than having no contingent, but found a non-significant effect in the opposite direction (Luke, Roe & Davison, 2008). It was noted, however, that finishing the psi task directly may have been more rewarding than performing the contingent task, thereby skewing the results, so the present experiment explored this by replicating the contingent/no contingent study but asked participants to rate the pleasantness of the experiment to determine whether performing the contingent task or finishing directly after the psi task was related to psi task performance. Furthermore, measures of luck beliefs (QBL), belief in psi, and Openness to Experience were explored as correlates of psi performance. As with the original contingent/no contingent experiment, participants were drawn from members of the public attending an exhibition, which in this case the keynote speaker discussed the psychology of luck. The research was advertised as a luck experiment and complete data was collected from 41 participants throughout the course of the day.
Results of the current study will be discussed. However, combining all the data from each of the four experiments using the non-intentional fractal image paradigm provides an above chance mean psi score of 2.92 (SD = 1.46, MCE = 2.50) which is highly significant (t[197] = 4.036, p = 0.000078 two-tailed, z = 3.88)
Luke, D.P., Delanoy, D., & Sherwood. (2003). Questionnaire of beliefs about luck. Unpublished instrument, The University of Northampton, UK.
Luke, D. P., Delanoy, D., & Sherwood. S. J. (2008). Psi may look like luck: Perceived luckiness and beliefs about luck in relation to precognition. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research,72 (4), 193-207.
Palmer, J. (1971). Scoring in ESP tests as a function of ESP. Part I: The sheep-goat effect. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 65, 373-408.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11105 | 1419days since
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The Island >
One of the most important figures in the novel The Lord of The Flies by William Golding is Piggy. Piggy provides balance to both daily life and major events that occur during the time in which a random, and rather unfortunate, group of British school boys are stranded on a deserted island. He is one of the few sources of good heart and good values found in this group. However these qualities about him cannot always be shown due to some of his physical disabilities. One characteristic that he has is his intelligence. This is quite a valuable quality to have when one is barely twelve years old and lost on an island at sea. In addition, Piggy has a motherly nature. This is crucial for the group because nearly half of the boys are even younger than eight years of age and thousands of miles away from their homes and parents. These characteristics of Piggy are represented by his glasses and the conch shell that he and Ralph discover during their first hours on the island.
Piggy's glasses are very important to both Piggy and the boys. His glasses represent Piggy's intelligence and without them there would be no fire. No fire means no signal to passing ships as well as no warmth or way to cook their meat. He is very attached to them, especially because he cannot see without them. When one of the boys takes Piggy's glasses his reaction is, "'my specs!' howled Piggy 'give me my specs!... jus' blurs, that's all. Hardly see my hand--'"(41). Piggy screams and tells them to give them back because he can hardly see his hand. He has dreadful eyesight. If he loses them everything will be a blur from there on. Piggy is an intelligent boy and knows more than the others. His glasses help to make him appear smart, despite his lower class. He knows a lot for his age and that is helpful. One example of Piggy's insight is a conversation he has with Ralph discussing why Jack acts so horribly. Piggy explains, "I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can't hurt you: but if you stand out of the way he'd hurt the next thing. And that's me" (93). Piggy knows what is coming his way. Also when Piggy's specs break, this causes havoc and Piggy becomes severely disabled. This is also terrible for the entire island because they may not be able to make any fires anymore and may never be rescued. As one could imagine, this puts forth a gloomy outlook.
Piggy is represented as a female figure to the boys on the island by the conch shell that he expresses great emotion for. The conch is a female symbol because it is a yonic object. Piggy is associated with it frequently, and often with great excitement from him. He is always concerned about it and shouts to the other boys about its importance in maintaining order at meetings. When Piggy is killed by the boulder on Castle Rock and the conch is completely shattered, this represents all civilization on the island being destroyed. Also, he is always on the beach by the huts. He is like a "mother" because mothers are usually the ones to stay at home and take care of the kids. That is what Piggy does with the littluns. When the older boys go off after the first meeting to scope out the island, Piggy stays with the younger boys and "moved among the crowd, asking names and frowning to remember them." (18). Piggy is also openly afraid of the beast. His thoughts once they discover the parachute figure on the mountain are, "Couldn't we- kind of- stay here? Maybe the beast won't come near us" (101). This shows that he is scared and just wants to stay on the beach. Piggy can't go on adventures to castle rock or go hunting because of his asthma and his larger body size. When the Ralph chooses Simon and Jack over him he gets mad and says, "You're no good on a job like this"..." I was with him before anyone else was" (24). Piggy becomes mad because Ralph chooses Jack and Simon to go instead of him. Piggy also is upset because he felt he knew Ralph the best and yet Ralph chose these boys he had just met to go. But Piggy isn't right for the task because he is not in nearly as good of a physical condition and wouldn't be able to keep up. In conclusion, Piggy's characteristics are prominent in the story and add to the balance of their lives on the island. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11119 |
A Song of Praise
We have a strong city;
God makes salvation
its walls and ramparts.
2Open the gates
that the righteous nation may enter,
the nation that keeps faith.
3You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
4Trust in the Lord forever,
5He humbles those who dwell on high,
he lays the lofty city low;
he levels it to the ground
and casts it down to the dust.
6Feet trample it down—
the feet of the oppressed,
the footsteps of the poor.
7The path of the righteous is level;
8Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,#26:8Or judgments
we wait for you;
your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.
9My soul yearns for you in the night;
in the morning my spirit longs for you.
When your judgments come upon the earth,
the people of the world learn righteousness.
10But when grace is shown to the wicked,
they do not learn righteousness;
even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil
and do not regard the majesty of the Lord.
11 Lord, your hand is lifted high,
but they do not see it.
let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.
12 Lord, you establish peace for us;
all that we have accomplished you have done for us.
but your name alone do we honor.
14They are now dead, they live no more;
their spirits do not rise.
You punished them and brought them to ruin;
you wiped out all memory of them.
15You have enlarged the nation, Lord;
you have enlarged the nation.
You have gained glory for yourself;
you have extended all the borders of the land.
16 Lord, they came to you in their distress;
when you disciplined them,
they could barely whisper a prayer.#26:16The meaning of the Hebrew for this clause is uncertain.
17As a pregnant woman about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pain,
so were we in your presence, Lord.
18We were with child, we writhed in labor,
but we gave birth to wind.
We have not brought salvation to the earth,
and the people of the world have not come to life.
19But your dead will live, Lord;
their bodies will rise—
let those who dwell in the dust
wake up and shout for joy—
your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead.
20Go, my people, enter your rooms
and shut the doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
until his wrath has passed by.
21See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling
to punish the people of the earth for their sins.
The earth will disclose the blood shed on it;
the earth will conceal its slain no longer.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11120 | 1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is just. 2Honour thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, 3that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest be long-lived on the earth. 4And ye fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. 5Bondmen, obey masters according to flesh, with fear and trembling, in simplicity of your heart as to the Christ; 6not with eye-service as men-pleasers; but as bondmen of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul, 7serving with good will as to the Lord, and not to men; 8knowing that whatever good each shall do, this he shall receive of the Lord, whether bond or free. 9And, masters, do the same things towards them, giving up threatening, knowing that both their and your Master is in heaven, and there is no acceptance of persons with him.
10For the rest, brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the might of his strength. 11Put on the panoply of God, that ye may be able to stand against the artifices of the devil: 12because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the universal lords of this darkness, against spiritual power of wickedness in the heavenlies. 13For this reason take to you the panoply of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having accomplished all things, to stand. 14Stand therefore, having girt about your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15and shod your feet with the preparation of the glad tidings of peace: 16besides all these, having taken the shield of faith with which ye will be able to quench all the inflamed darts of the wicked one. 17Have also the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is God's word; 18praying at all seasons, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching unto this very thing with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints;
19and for me in order that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the glad tidings, 20for which I am an ambassador bound with a chain, that I may be bold in it as I ought to speak. 21But in order that ye also may know what concerns me, how I am getting on, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make all things known to you; 22whom I have sent to you for this very thing, that ye may know of our affairs and that he may encourage your hearts. 23Peace to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 24Grace with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11121 | Jesus Heals on the Sabbath
1Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. 2Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath.
3Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, “Come and stand in front of everyone.” 4Then he turned to his critics and asked, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” But they wouldn’t answer him.
5He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” So the man held out his hand, and it was restored! 6At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus.
Crowds Follow Jesus
7Jesus went out to the lake with his disciples, and a large crowd followed him. They came from all over Galilee, Judea, 8Jerusalem, Idumea, from east of the Jordan River, and even from as far north as Tyre and Sidon. The news about his miracles had spread far and wide, and vast numbers of people came to see him.
9Jesus instructed his disciples to have a boat ready so the crowd would not crush him. 10He had healed many people that day, so all the sick people eagerly pushed forward to touch him. 11And whenever those possessed by evil# Greek unclean; also in 3:30. spirits caught sight of him, the spirits would throw them to the ground in front of him shrieking, “You are the Son of God!” 12But Jesus sternly commanded the spirits not to reveal who he was.
Jesus Chooses the Twelve Apostles
13Afterward Jesus went up on a mountain and called out the ones he wanted to go with him. And they came to him. 14Then he appointed twelve of them and called them his apostles.# Some manuscripts do not include and called them his apostles. They were to accompany him, and he would send them out to preach, 15giving them authority to cast out demons. 16These are the twelve he chose:
Simon (whom he named Peter),
17James and John (the sons of Zebedee, but Jesus nicknamed them “Sons of Thunder”# Greek whom he named Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder.),
James (son of Alphaeus),
Simon (the zealot# Greek the Cananean, an Aramaic term for Jewish nationalists.),
19Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).
Jesus and the Prince of Demons
20One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat. 21When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. “He’s out of his mind,” they said.
22But the teachers of religious law who had arrived from Jerusalem said, “He’s possessed by Satan,# Greek Beelzeboul; other manuscripts read Beezeboul; Latin version reads Beelzebub. the prince of demons. That’s where he gets the power to cast out demons.”
23Jesus called them over and responded with an illustration. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” he asked. 24“A kingdom divided by civil war will collapse. 25Similarly, a family splintered by feuding will fall apart. 26And if Satan is divided and fights against himself, how can he stand? He would never survive. 27Let me illustrate this further. Who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man like Satan and plunder his goods? Only someone even stronger—someone who could tie him up and then plunder his house.
28“I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, 29but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.” 30He told them this because they were saying, “He’s possessed by an evil spirit.”
The True Family of Jesus
31Then Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him. They stood outside and sent word for him to come out and talk with them. 32There was a crowd sitting around Jesus, and someone said, “Your mother and your brothers# Some manuscripts add and sisters. are outside asking for you.”
33Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” 34Then he looked at those around him and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. 35Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
두번째 번역본에서 참고 구절을 로딩합니다.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11124 | Search our Catalog
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global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11147 | To Be Made Whole By KellyA
Copyright @Sep1999 []
[This is a continution of the story "The Accused" by me]
Two weeks had gone by since Ezra had left Four Corners. Life went on as life usually does. The six remaining lawmen continued to break up the occasional brawl and rare bank robbery, they even took out a gang of cattle thieves who were terrorizing the surrounding ranches.
The six did their jobs as always, but anyone entering the town would immediately feel the underlining tension amongst the townsfolk. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never would. Yes, the six lawmen did their jobs, but something was missing.
Anyone passing in the street heard the yelling coming from the jail house, but were surprised when their young sheriff came flying out the door to land in the dirt. JD sat up on one elbow rubbing his jaw as Buck glared at him from the doorway, turned and stormed off. Anger flashed in JD's own dark eyes as he sat in the dirt watching Buck walk away, then his eyes soften as he realized it was the first time that his friend had ever hit him out of anger.
Buck's strides were determined and fast trying to rid himself of the frustration he felt. He couldn't believe he had hit the kid. He wasn't even sure why? Nothing felt right, his normal care-free attitude had deserted him and he felt numb, which was something the once gregarious cowboy was not use to. JD slowly staggered to his feet. He felt weak, but knew it wasn't from the punch he received from Buck. His adopted family was falling apart around him and he didn't know what to do about it. He watched as Buck headed towards the saloon not even turning around to look back.
Chris and Vin had words on more than one occasion. Vin would voice his concern over Chris' drinking and Chris would tell him to mind his own business. Chris would then ask the tracker why he stayed by himself so much? Neither one able to give an answer. These verbal barbs would usually end with Chris taking a swig of whiskey and Vin leaving in disgust.
Nathan's usually congenial bedside manner gave way to a more impersonal demeanor. He had lost interest in helping Josiah refurbish the church. In fact, none of the six men had helped in over two weeks. One day Josiah took a special dislike to a certain wall and applied a sledge hammer to it knocking a hole big enough for his massive form to walk through. Even the extreme physical exertion failed to erase the guilt and frustration that had taken up residence in the ex-preacher's soul. Mary felt like she was walking on egg shells whenever she was around Chris. She was also trying to deal with her own demons at how she had treated Ezra. Vin started leaving town more frequently and staying away longer. They all were withdrawing into themselves neither one able to face the others.
The six no longer felt whole. A part of them was missing and everyone felt it, but no one could understand it. Chris was the most surprised at how much Ezra's leaving had effected them all. In the beginning he had always believed that the southern gambler would be the first to leave their elite little group, but as time went by he wasn't so sure. Ezra seemed to need them as much if not more than they needed him. Chris knew Ezra didn't have a good childhood and hid a lot of his emotions behind that damn wall he sometimes put up. Chris threw back the shot he had been holding as his mind wandered, he now had more guilt to eat away at his already bitter soul.
On the rare night that six gunfighters found themselves together. They were the only customers in the saloon, being most patrons were afraid to be in the same room with all of them. They sat in silence listening to the distant thunder of an approaching storm all lost in their own thoughts. The batwing doors started to sway as the storm grew in intensity. The several lanterns flickered distorting the shadows within the solemn saloon. The six men sat together in an uncomfortable silence.
Josiah's tired eyes looked over the group of disheartened men. He had always thought that they were somehow all connected, that fate had brought them together for a reason. Now, as he felt the emptiness inside, he knew it was true and he knew they had to do something soon or lose everything they all once craved and they all needed.
Early the next morning Mary looked out her office window to see Chris crossing the street with determined strides, his saddle bags over his shoulder. She smiled.
Just as Larabee was about to enter the stables the doors opened and Buck came out leading his horse, followed by Vin, JD, Nathan, and Josiah. JD led two horses and handed the reins of one to Chris, who smiled at the young gunslinger. He looked up at the five men as they mounted their horses and settled into their saddles for a long hard ride. His blue eyes revealed the love he had for these men and the connection they all shared.
"Well, it's about time you showed up cowboy," Vin stated with a smile that had been all to rare lately. Chris shook his head as his own mouth twitched. He tied his saddle bags behind his saddle and mounted nudging his horse to the front.
The whole town watched as the six gunslingers paraded down the street. Judge Travis stepped out onto the boardwalk. Over the past couple weeks the esteemed Judge looked like he had aged ten years. He still hadn't forgiven himself for the part he played in Standish's departure.
"Mr. Larabee, when will you return?" The Judge asked as Chris neared.
Chris kept his eyes forward, his back straight as he answered, "We won't come back without him."
The Judge frowned at this, but didn't say a thing. Vin rode by next, tipping his hat. Josiah and Nathan followed, riding side by side.
"Mr. Dunne, you are still Sheriff here," Judge Travis reminded the young man.
JD pulled up his horse causing Buck to stop behind him. Buck wouldn't blame the young man if he stayed. He had a responsibility and Buck understood how important that was to him. JD reached over to his vest and removed the silver star on his chest dropping it at the Judge's feet. He spurred his horse forward to catch up with the others. Buck tipped his hat unable to hide the grin on his face. He was never more proud of his young friend.
*****Part 2
It took a couple days to determine what direction Ezra had taken after leaving Four Corners. The six gunslingers stopped at every town, every homestead and every ranch along the trail, hoping to pick up some information about where the wayward gambler might be heading. Everyone was grateful that summer was taking its time coming. The trail and surrounding areas were lush with a myriad of greens, interspersed with the vibrant colors of wildflowers against the backdrop of the overlapping foothills. Everyone's disposition had improved immeasurably. The decision to go after Ezra and bring him home had eased some of the guilt and the building restlessness they all felt. Even Chris managed to relax and enjoy the scenery and the company of his five friends. Buck and JD suddenly broke the silence with one of their verbal bouts, which was music to everyone's ears.
Ezra wandered haphazardly from town to town for over a week. When he left Four Corners he had no idea where he was going. For awhile he kept looking over his shoulder expecting to see one or more of the others following him, but as time went by he realized he was totally alone. He would sit in the saddle, absently shuffling his cards to pass the time, letting his horse pick its way along the rutted, well-used trail, not really paying attention or caring where the horse went. He tried to contemplate a future. He thought of trying to catch up with his mother, but dismissed this thought almost immediately. If he got back with her, he'd be under her control forever. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't seem to see a future, at least not one alone.
He continued to ride into any town he happened across, no matter how seedy, as long as it had a saloon. He had been trying to return to his previous way of life, but was finding it difficult.
"Okay fancy man, I think you're cheatin', I'm callin' you out," the presumptuous young man sneered. He stood, shoving his chair back. His hand hovering near his gun, which was the fanciest and shiniest item on his otherwise tattered attire. He had lost every bit of money he had to the southern gambler who remained seated raking in the pot. Everyone in the saloon backed up, giving space to the two men.
Ezra saw the fear, the young man was trying to hide behind a wall of false bravado. He was probably trying to make a name for himself and thought drawing down on a gambler would be easy.
"Sir, I have no need to cheat someone who plays so badly," Ezra berated.
The young man clenched his jaw at the slight.
Ezra had no wish to harm the young man and hoped he could end this with both of them walking out alive. He slowly stood, his green eyes coming level with the youth's brown ones. He saw the young man take a deep breath trying to calm himself.
Ezra drew his pistol so fast the man's eyes widen and he stepped back moving his hand away from his gun. "Sir, you'd of died of a real bad case of slow," Ezra's drawl dripped with malice. He was tired and wasn't in the mood to teach a child a lesson. He reached down and picked up the shot glass tossing back the liquor. He slowly backed out of the saloon keeping his gun in hand. He decided to spend the night out on the prairie just incase the young man forgot how lucky he was and decided to try and even the score by shooting him in the back. He never realized how much he had relied on the others to protect his back before.
Ezra laid under the blanket of night, his arms under his head, looking up at the stars. He was use to being alone, he'd been alone most of his life, why was it bothering him now. He found it hard to return to his previous way of life. Hell, he let one man win when he found out he was trying to get enough money so he could get married. What was wrong with him? He was on his own again, no one to worry about or care about. No one asking if he was okay or forcing him to get up at some ungodly hour to get shot at. He should be happy. He made sure his guns were close before closing his eyes. Wondering how the others were doing.
Five of the gunslingers were at the bar waiting for Vin to return. They had been on the trail of the elusive gambler for over a week now and every time they seemed to get close they'd lose him. This was the third town they'd been through in as many days, hoping that someone had seen their missing friend.
"I never thought it would be so hard to find one fancy dressed gambler?" Buck grumbled, downing the last of his beer.
Vin quietly appeared at Buck's side startling the mustached cowboy. "Gawd dang it, don't do that, now I know where Ezra got his sneakiness," Buck again griped, causing Vin's smile to grow.
"He was here the sheriff had him locked up for drunk and disorderly," Vin stated for all to hear.
"What happened?" Buck asked.
"He left him alone. Sheriff's real ticked. No one's ever broke out of his jail before," Vin replied with a grin. Chris passed the buckskin-clad tracker a beer.
"When?" Chris calmly asked.
"Five days ago," Vin replied.
"Five days," Buck repeated as he slumped over the bar. His tone laced with exasperation. He was starting to believe they'd never catch up with Ezra. JD put an assuring hand on the bigger man's shoulder.
Chris slung back the last of his beer, turned and walked away.
"What's wrong with Chris?" JD asked.
"We're not getting any closer. We don't even know where he's going. He just seems to be drifting from town to town," Nathan answered the young gunslinger.
"Yeah, but have you all noticed, he's staying in the area?" Vin remarked and followed Chris.
"Why hasn't he headed back to St. Louis or South Carolina or even California?" Vin asked the other men circled around the crackling fire trying to make sense of Ezra's wanderings. For a man who reveled in the niceties of society Ezra was sure living a nomadic existence.
"He's as lost as we are," Josiah quietly stated getting everyone's attention. Josiah looked up at the five men, the low fire highlighting the dark shadows on their faces. "He feels it too, something is missing, something is just not right. I think he's trying to return to his previous life."
Chris looked down into the coffee he was holding. He never really went for Josiah's spiritualism until now. There was no denying what was happening and what they all were feeling. Were the Seven of them fated and destined to remain together?
"What if we never find him, what's going to happen to us?" JD innocently voiced. Everyone looked up, their faces showing that no one had an answer.
"Why would he think he ran?" Nathan absently asked, bringing everyone's attention to bear and a somber spell to fall upon them all. Nathan couldn't get the thought out of his head and decided to put his thoughts into words. "When Ezra left, he said it was because he believed he had run out, causing the death of Judge Travis' godson, even though it had been Major Quist who had run."
"We convinced him," Josiah quietly muttered. "We believed he did, he trusted us, so he started believing it."
No one said a word, as they knew it was true.
Buck decided to try and lighten up the somber conversation.
"Okay, I have one question that's been buggin' me, how can a man who plays cards all night, sleeps half the day and avoids menial labor like the plague stay in such good shape?" Buck asked tipping back the bottle of red-eye they were sharing and looking around the circle for an answer.
Josiah hid a knowing smile. He had accidentally come across the southern gentleman a half mile outside of town where he had a punching bag set up. Ezra was a very accomplished boxer, which Josiah had already assumed after seeing the smaller man fight. Ezra had told him he learned to box at a very young age seeing that most of the bullies were bigger than him and he needed a way to protect himself. As he got older and relied more on his wit and guns to get him out of trouble he still found the art of boxing very relaxing and fulfilling and it did help to keep him in shape. He practiced for up to two hours four or five days a week. He had extracted a promise of silence from the ex-preacher, which he intended to keep.
*****Part 3
It was another saloon in another town, a little over forty miles south of Four Corners. The bartender stepped out from the back room to look upon six formidable men he hoped didn't mean trouble.
"Sir, we're looking for a friend of ours, brown hair, green eyes real fancy dresser and a gambler," Chris explained.
"Oh him, yeah he was here," the bartender answered with a grin relaxing a little.
"When," Vin asked.
"Oh, three days ago."
"You're sure," Josiah asked.
"Couldn't forget him there are two men still up at the Doc's place who won't ever forget him," the bartender explained with a twinkle in his eye.
"What are you talking about," Chris ventured to asked.
"He was in here three days ago, early, just as I opened up. Two others came in shortly afterwards. Jack McDermott who works out at one of the nearby ranches and another ranch hand. At first the men kept there distance from each other. Your friend just grabbed a bottle of whiskey and sat in a corner by himself. Then Miguel came in."
"Whose Miguel?" Nathan asked.
"He's this little Indian boy who sweeps up for me before the evening crowd. Well, I went to the back room and apparently McDermott and his buddy decided to have a little fun with Miguel."
Chris hung his head knowing where this was going.
"The next thing I hear is a gunshot. I grab my gun and look out onto the bar room and there on the floor is McDermott holding his balls and his buddy holding his knee, your friend standing over them holding Miguel behind him. Miguel had a bruise on his cheek where McDermott had hit him." The bartender shook his head and grinned at the incident. McDermott had always been a bully he finally met someone who put him in his place.
"Your friend gave me some money so I could pay the doc to fix 'em up then left."
"Any charges brought up?" Josiah asked.
"Nah, those two would of hurt the boy if your friend hadn't protected him."
"He didn't happen to say which way he was goin'?" Buck asked.
"Nope, sorry," the bartender replied seeing the disappointment appear on all six of the gunslinger's faces.
"Thanks." The six gunslingers prepared to leave.
"Oh one more thing gentlemen, you're not the only ones who asked about him," the bartender added.
The six men turned as one. "What?" Chris asked fear rising in his throat high enough where he could taste it.
The look in Larabee's face made the bartender bite his lip berating himself for saying anything. "Yeah, the next day a big fellow with short dark hair came around asking about him," he nervously explained.
"What did you tell 'im?" Chris asked.
"Same as I told you all. He didn't seem impressed though and infact got sorta angry. When he left he reminded me of a soldier, just turned and marched right out."
The six men left the saloon. "It can't be? Why would the Major be after him, hasn't he done enough?" JD asked as he mounted his horse.
"Chris, didn't the Judge say he was goin' to do time in some military prison," Vin asked, checking his cinch before swinging up into the saddle.
"Yeah, we'll wire the Judge and see if he knows anything," Chris replied.
"His twisted mind must blame Ezra for everything that happened to him," Josiah explained. His heart ached with fear for his gambling friend. Ezra was probably totally unaware he was being tracked by a madman.
"Lord, we have to find his southern ass before the Major does," Nathan added, with more fear and concern than anyone had ever heard from the dark healer, especially for the southern conman. Chris' heart beat hard in his chest and his fist clenched tight around the reins in helpless rage. If the Major caused more harm to Ezra he would exact his own type of punishment this time.
The six men continued heading south hoping it was the right direction. Vin felt himself drawn to a nearby ranch. Chris had learned early on to trust in the tracker's gut feelings and this time was no different. Ezra had stopped by the ranch after his horse picked up a stone. The rancher's two beautiful daughters had fed the handsome conman and hung on every southern syllable. They were able to tell the six gunslingers that Ezra had turned west, but he'd hadn't mentioned any specific destination.
The next saloon they entered they were greeted with piles of broken tables and chairs. Glass and debris had been swept to the side and a couple people were replacing the front window. They saw a thin, wiry man holding a broom and picking through the pile of broken glass trying to salvage any glassware that might still be useful.
"Ah, Sir, maybe you can help us we're looking for a friend of ours," Josiah inquired, taking in the devastation and getting a bad feeling.
The thin man straightened and placed an arm on top of his broom handle. He looked up at the huge ex-preacher.
"He's a real fancy dresser, a gambler..." Josiah continued when he got the man's attention.
Josiah couldn't finish his description as the man raised his broom up and anger contorted his impassive features.
"If I ever see that smooth talkin' son-of-a-bitch again I'll kill 'em, look what he did to my bar!" The man was practically yelling brandishing his broom causing the six gunslingers to slowly back out. Buck, Vin and JD were trying desperately to hold back the grins, which wanted to come to their faces.
As they left the bar, Buck busted out laughing, almost somersaulting over the railing. JD, Vin and Nathan joined in laughing until tears streamed down their face. Even Chris couldn't hide the smile.
"Ezra's gone plum-loco!" Nathan gasped out as he tried to control the fits of laughter.
"We better find him before he gets himself killed," Chris stated bringing everyone down from their boisterous hilarity and back to a more sober reality.
*****Part 4
Ezra was trying to enjoy himself in the poker game, but his heart wasn't really in it. In fact, over the last couple days his heart hadn't been in it. Luckily the people he played didn't really offer a challenge and he was able to win most games and accumulate a sizable amount of financial security. He nursed a bottle of whiskey as he folded sitting back in his chair. He knew the man to his right was cheating, but he didn't even feel like calling him on it. He looked over to the man on his left, a farmer by the looks of him, about Chris' build and age...Lord, he had to stop comparing everyone to his previous associates. The farmer had light brown hair and the look of desperation in his hazel eyes. At one time Ezra would of pounced on this weakness, like a lion going in for the kill, but today the prey would escape. There was a couple hundred dollars in the pot and the farmer was studying his cards intently, absently rubbing his thumb along his bottom lip, just like Vin would...Stop it! Ezra inwardly chastised himself and took a swig of whiskey, watching the confrontation that was unfolding before him. The person across from him folded, which left only the farmer and the cheater, who glared hungrily across the table at his victim. Ezra took another swallow and saw the perspiration break out on the farmer's forehead. The farmer reached into his thread bare coat pocket and pulled out a piece of paper laying it on the table.
"This is the deed to my farm," he stammered, looking across the table.
Ezra stopped in mid swallow and put the bottle down. It was one thing to lose money quite another to put your home on the line, especially on a crooked game.
"Sir," Ezra drawled, slightly inebriated. "You really don't want to do that."
"Shut up, this is none of your business," the other sneered. Ezra glared at the cheater and picked up the deed handing it back to the bewildered farmer.
"This man is cheating, he has two aces up his sleeve," Ezra calmly remarked.
"Why you son-of-a..." the man yelled drawing his gun. Ezra ejected his derringer and fired, striking the man in the head. The cheater's trigger finger twitched as he fell to the wooden floor, causing his gun to discharge hitting Ezra in the shoulder. A nearby patron checked the dead man's sleeve and pulled out two aces.
The farmer regarded Ezra with a mixture of astonishment and gratitude. "Mister, I owe you one," he stammered.
"Sir, your gratitude is misplaced. I did nothing but save my own hide, and I wasn't entirely successful in that endeavor." Ezra winced and grabbed at his shoulder as pain raced down his arm, numbing his fingers. The farmer got up and came to his side, pulling open his jacket.
"Damn, that looks bad. C'mon I'm taking you to my place, my wife can fix you up."
"Sir, that won't be necessary you are under no obligation to..." Ezra began as he tried to stand. His head spun and he had to use his uninjured arm to grab hold of the table so he wouldn't fall. The farmer grabbed him throwing his uninjured arm over his shoulder and leading him out not giving Ezra a chance to object.
"I won't take no for an answer, you're hurt," the farmer insisted.
Ezra looked at the man and had to swallow the sudden lump in his throat.
Anna and Hiram Stopka and their son Tommy had only recently come west from Virginia. They had used every bit of their savings to purchase a small homestead and farm, everything was perfect until they discovered they had been swindled. The person who sold them the homestead did not own the land. The Stopka's needed $500 by the end of the month or they would be evicted. Hiram had decided to take a chance and try to win the money playing poker, even though his gambling skills were sorely lacking. He told Ezra this as they rode out in his wagon to his modest farm.
"Why would you wager your deed?" Ezra asked clenching his teeth as the wagon encounter another pot hole sending a sharp pain streaking between his shoulder blades.
"I figured I had nothing to lose, this was my last chance. There's no way I can come up with $500 in less than two weeks, either way I lose the farm." Hiram released a long shaky breath. He looked over at Ezra who had become slightly pale and urged the team faster.
Darkness enshrouded everything by the time they reached the homestead. Ezra was only barely conscious as Hiram helped him down from the wagon and led him to the house. The door opened releasing some of its warming light onto the porch. A slender, blond haired woman met them at the door a wry smile on her oval face.
"Get some water boiling, Anna. He's been shot," Hiram said as he helped Ezra to a back room and laid him down upon a soft bed. Anna was only mildly surprised at the injured stranger her husband was struggling with. He was always one to help another; that was one of the things she loved most about him. Hiram lit a kerosene lamp which sat on a rough-hewed table and removed Ezra's jacket, weapons and boots. Anna came into the room carrying bandages and a basin of water, followed by a young tow-head boy.
"Who is he, pa?" The young boy asked, his eyes lit with excitement as he took in the stranger's fancy clothes and the derringer strapped to his arm.
"He saved our farm and probably my life," Hiram murmured ignoring his wife's concerned glare as he removed Ezra's blood soaked shirt. Ezra moaned slightly and tried to swipe Hiram's hand away.
"Easy son, don't worry we'll take care of ya," Hiram gently uttered placing his hand on Ezra's chest to stop him from rising. The words seemed to calm the agitated gambler down and he surrendered to the calling darkness.
Anna looked down at the stranger's blood covered chest and knew her questions would have to wait. She immediately went to work on the gambler's shoulder. The bullet was still in there, but it wasn't too deep. She expertly removed it and then cleaned and bandaged the wound. She could feel the fever that was already building within his weakened and pain ridden body. She drew the blankets up to his chest and left him to sleep.
Anna took time to put Tommy to bed. He was going to have to sleep in their room since the stranger now occupied his bed. Anna returned moments later to find her husband sitting in the huge chair, which sat in front of the fireplace, staring morosely into the flickering orange and red flames.
"Do you know who he is, Hiram?" Anna asked, not masking the worry she felt. She had seen the small arsenal that the stranger carried and noticed several bullet scars on his muscular body. This was a man who had been in many dangerous situations.
"His name is Ezra Standish. He's just a gambler I met in the saloon."
"Well, how did he get shot? And what's this about saving our farm?" Anna angrily asked her husband.
Hiram bowed his head unable to look his wife in the eye. "I got desperate I bet the deed." He heard her small intake of breath. "Ezra stopped me and the other guy got mad, it's my fault he was shot." Hiram put his head into his hands feeling his wife's delicate hand on his shoulder. He brought a hand up and grasped her slender fingers. "I've never seen anyone so fast, the other guy had gone for his gun first, but Ezra still managed to shoot him." Anna caught the awe in her husband's voice. "Ezra killed the man, but not before taking a bullet."
Anna looked at the closed door with worried eyes, she didn't want any trouble coming to her family and that man looked like trouble followed him where ever he went.
Ezra's fever grew worse during the night and Anna stayed by his side moping his brow with cool water. She listened to his quiet ramblings and started to see the insecure little boy inside the aloof man. Much of his murmurings she couldn't understand, but parts mirrored her own life, especially the parts about being alone. She would definitely have to get to know this man better.
***** Part 5
Ezra woke late the next morning, a sliver of sunlight breaking through the heavy curtains. His eyes took awhile to focus, but his hazy mind couldn't make sense of the unfamiliar surroundings. The room was small with a couple hand-made toys neatly stacked on a shelf on the other side of the room. A colorful, twill rug covered most of the wood floor. He tried to push himself up as the door opened allowing a young woman to slip in. She noticed he was awake and came to his side laying the tray of food she carried on the nearby table. She placed a slender hand on his now cool forehead.
"How you feeling?" She asked the bewildered gambler, propping up his pillow to make him more comfortable. The woman was probably only a couple years older than him with long blond hair. She wasn't what you call beautiful. The harsh life of the frontier had a way of robbing surface beauty, but left a stronger inner beauty.
Ezra winced slightly at the pain in his shoulder. "Better," he replied to the woman standing before him.
"I'm Anna, Hiram's wife. He brought you here last night," she reminded him seeing the confusion in his green eyes.
Remembrance flickered into his eyes. "Thank you for taking care of my shoulder." Ezra's quiet southern drawl brought a smile to her face. He revised his first thought, 'She was pretty.' Ezra threw his legs over the side of the bed preparing to get up, relieved that he still had his pants on.
"Whoa, what do you think you're doing?" Anna surprisingly asked as she moved closer prepared to bodily restrain him.
"Madam, I've been enough of an imposition." Ezra tried to stand, but immediately fell back as a wave of dizziness washed over him. He closed his eyes to fight off the nausea that flowed through him.
Hiram entered, he had been working out in the fields since sunrise and was already covered in sweat and dirt. He saw Ezra try to stand and immediately sit back down his face turning an ugly shade of white right before his eyes.
"Listen Mr. Standish, you're not going anywhere until my wife says you're fit to do so, even if I have to hog tie ya to the bed."
Ezra smiled and shook his head. "Lord, you sound like Nathan."
"Who?" Hiram asked.
Ezra raised his head. "Just someone I once knew."
Anna saw the buoy of sadness drift across Ezra's sea green eyes. Tommy wiggled in under his father's arm and stared excitedly at Ezra.
"My husband is right Mr. Standish, we would of lost the farm..." she paused pressing her lips together in a tight firm line. She glanced at her husband and continued, "lost it sooner, if it hadn't been for you or Hiram could have been killed. Now you just stay in that bed." Anna came over and grabbed Ezra's legs swinging them back up. "And you need to eat to keep up your strength."
Ezra laid back against the headboard realizing he was too weak to argue, and the bed did feel good. Hiram put a loving arm around his wife and the two left the room to give the gambler some privacy. Tommy had managed to secret himself in a corner. Ezra leaned over to grab a muffin from the tray and saw the boy silently standing. He smiled motioning for him to come closer.
"Hi, my name's Tommy, what's yours?" the boy blurted out without the slightest hesitation or fear.
"You can call me Ezra."
"Are you a gunslinger?"
This caused Ezra's heart to ache and his eyes to cloud over, but he kept the smile on his face for the boy.
"No Tommy, I'm not a gunslinger."
"My pa says he never seen anyone draw as fast as you."
Ezra chuckled. "Well, if I was a might bit faster, I might not of been the unfortunate recipient of the knave's bullet."
Tommy stared at Ezra bewildered. "I wouldn't of been shot," Ezra explained with a chuckle.
"Yeah, but then I'd never of met ya," Tommy honestly said.
Ezra smiled and shook his head at the young boy's logic. Anna peered into the room seeing Tommy sitting on the bed sharing breakfast with the mysterious gentleman. Ezra was telling the boy some story and had his undivided attention. Both looked happy and the gambler seemed quite at ease with her son. Anna had never met a gambler like Mr. Standish and she had met her share in her life. He wasn't your usual unscrupulous type, which seemed to be the more common personality trait amongst gamblers. There was something more, a lot more to this man.
Later that afternoon Ezra managed to get out of bed and make it out to the large comfortable chair in front of the fireplace. The house was quiet and he suspected everyone was out doing their chores. He loved the feeling of family which seemed to fill every corner of the small home, but he also felt like an intruder. His thoughts drifted back to the family he left in Four Corners. He had felt like an intruder even amongst them, though he had thought he was finally being accepted and learning to trust and accept them, until the prior incident revealed everyone's true colors.
Ezra woke still in the chair someone had draped a blanket over him. He didn't open his eyes, but heard the crackling of the fire in the fireplace and the rhythmic creaking of a nearby rocking chair. He slowly opened his eyes to see Anna quietly knitting across the small room. When she noticed he was awake she put her sewing aside.
"How are you feelin, Mr. Standish?"
"Much better thank you, and please call me Ezra."
Anna blushed slightly. "Is there anything I can get you, Ezra?"
"Maybe just some water."
"I'll get it," Tommy called out. Ezra hadn't realized that the boy was in the room with them.
"My husband will be in shortly he's just bedding down the stock," Anna explained and picked up her sewing. Tommy brought Ezra a small cup of water which he took giving the exuberant youth a smile. The warm fire and the coziness of the cabin warmed his aching body and soul. Hiram entered the warmth of the small cabin and flopped his lanky body down in a chair.
"It's good to see you up and around Mr. Standish."
"Thanks to your wife's fine administrations I should be fine enough to travel tomorrow," Ezra said. He felt as much as saw the disappointed look appear on Tommy's face.
"Mr. Standish, you're welcome to stay for as long as you like," Anna told him. She could always read people pretty good and she felt that Ezra was a good man.
Ezra smiled, he hated to go, but the feelings that were being dredged up were almost more than he could handle. These people reminded him of everything he had lost.
"I'm sorry, but my mother is expecting me in California shortly," he lied.
"We understand," Hiram said trying to alleviate some of the discomfort he knew Ezra was feeling. "I'll take you to town to fetch your horse after breakfast tomorrow."
Ezra looked over at the boy whose head was bowed, he seemed to be examining his hands. Ezra placed his hand under the boy's chin and raised his face up to meet his. The boy's large eyes glistened with unshed tears. "What if I tell you about the legend of six courageous gunslingers?" Ezra said bringing a smile to Tommy's face. Ezra helped situate the boy upon his lap then took another sip of water. He began to weave a tale of life in the wild west his words painting pictures in everyone's mind.
"Once, a long time ago in a very wild and growing town their were six gunslingers who protected it from various miscreants." Ezra's voice took on a far off quality, as he continued, "The leader was fearless with a hardened heart and a gentle soul. He dressed all in black with eyes like blue ice, which could drop a man dead in his tracks just by staring at him. If he went for his gun you might just as well lay down and die."
"Was he as fast as you?" Tommy broke in.
"Yes, I believe he was," Ezra replied with a smile. "The tracker had the eyes of a hawk and the heart of a saint. He could track anyone or anything across a calm lake or barren rock, and could shoot the eyes out of a rattlesnake half a mile away." Tommy was totally mesmerized even Hiram and Anna found themselves pulled into the world Ezra was creating. "The healer could pull a bullet out of you before you even realized you were shot while protecting your back at the same time. The preacher's voice could soothe a wolf and make it lie down with the lamb." Ezra's eyes began to water and he took a deep quivering breath. He was glad the room had darkened with the coming night. "The Kid was fast with a heart of gold, always seeking adventure. He would lay down his life for anyone as would the others. The charmer had a heart and grin as big as Texas and would follow any one of the others to hell and back. They were all brothers in spirit."
"Did they kill people?" Tommy asked.
"They only killed when they had no other choice or when one of their own was threatened, and God or the devil protect the person that brought harm to any one of them. There was a time when five rather notorious outlaws came to town. The six gunslingers were waiting for them. The five outlaws took one look at the hardened and dangerous men and laid down their weapons without firing a shot."
Ezra continued to recount stories of the six gunslinger's escapades, losing himself in the memories. Each story becoming more astonishing with each telling.
"Tommy dear, it's time for bed, say good night to Mr. Standish," Anna quietly broke the spell between her son and Ezra.
"You won't leave before sayin' good-bye would ya," Tommy innocently asked.
Ezra put on his best appalled expression. "Sir, I would be a cad to do such a thing."
Tommy gave Ezra a hug which he returned trying to capture and hold onto the feeling for as long as he could. He didn't know when or if he'd ever have that feeling again.
*****Part 6
The slow, tired plodding of the six horses mimicked the feelings of their riders as they made their way down the main street of the town, pulling up in front of the saloon. It was mid morning and they hoped to find someone who had seen Ezra. They had been forced to backtrack several times over the last day and a half and weren't even sure if they were still on the elusive conman's trail. After almost two weeks in the saddle they were all tired and haggard looking, even JD's usual exuberance was now overshadowed with the discouragement and fatigue that dragged at his body.
"Alright, let's see if anyone is in the saloon, if not, we'll take a couple hours to eat and get cleaned up and check back later after we check the hotel and restaurant," Chris explained. They hadn't come across the Major's trail in over four days and hoped he had given up. The six men stepped into the well kept establishment.
"Not a good sign, this ones still in one piece," Buck facetiously remarked, receiving slight chuckles from JD and Nathan and a faint smile from Chris.
They didn't see anyone at first, but heard someone in the back room behind the bar.
"Hello, anyone here?" Josiah's baritone voice echoed through the empty saloon. A balding, elderly gentleman stepped out, a towel flung over his shoulder. He was a large man easily as tall and big as Josiah.
"Yeah, what can I do fer ya?" He asked, his eyes narrowing as he quickly scrutinized the six men. He was use to dangerous looking folks, but not six of them at a time, but he also noticed how tired these men appeared and some of his nervousness subsided.
"Friend, we're looking for someone. A gambler type, fancy dresser, brown hair, southern accent," Josiah described prepared for the inevitable disappointment.
The bartender eyed the men suspiciously. There was only two reasons he could think of why men would be trailing someone so hard; either their so-called friend was wanted and these men were the law, or he had wronged these men in some way and they were seeking revenge. He didn't like getting anyone in trouble especially when he didn't know all the circumstances.
"Why ya, lookin' for him?" the bartender reluctantly asked.
This got everyone's attention, this man knew something. Suddenly new life filled the six men and all eyes came to bare on the stonewalling man behind the bar. Vin and Buck grabbed Chris, who was ready to jump over the bar to extract the information anyway he could. Vin flashed his friend a look, which caused Chris to control his rising temper. He was tired and frustrated, and his nerves and patience were on edge. He wasn't in the mood to be played with. It had been a long week and Chris was starting to worry they'd never find Ezra, at least not alive. The bartender had involuntarily stepped back wishing he had grabbed his shotgun. He had seen the look in the dark-clad gunslinger's eyes and it sent a shiver of dread down his spine.
Josiah saw fear come to the bartender's eyes and tried to put him at ease. He placed his massive form in front of Chris' piercing blue eyes, effectively blocking the bartender's view of the easily riled gunslinger.
"Listen sir, he's a friend of ours we're just trying to find him," Josiah tried to assure the nervous bartender.
The bartender looked into Josiah's bearded face and saw hope and despair burning in his blue gray eyes. He looked at the other men seeing the same thing. He ran his hand over his balding pate trying to decide what to do.
JD stepped forward leaning on the bar. "Please sir, we really need to find him. He's our friend." Maybe it was something in the young gunslinger's voice or his sincere boyish face that convinced the large man.
"He was here two nights ago, caught a guy cheatin'. He saved Hiram Stopka from losing his farm," he finally answered.
Buck whooped and grabbed JD picking him up off the floor. Vin slapped Nathan on the back. They were getting closer. Chris remained quiet they had been close before.
"Do you know where he might of headed after leaving here?" Josiah asked.
"Yeah, he's probably still out at the Stopka's home. The cheater drew on him. Lord, I never seen anyone as fast as your friend. He shot the man right between the eyes, but the cheater got a shot off and your friend took a bullet in the shoulder."
The excitement evaporated off the six men and their faces of joy fell.
"Was he hurt bad?" Nathan asked. The bartender chuckled slightly at the black healer's concern for a southerner.
"Nah, I don't think so. Hiram took him to his place so the Misses could fix him up."
"Where is it," Chris asked, hope now awakening within him.
"It's about five miles north of town, you can't miss it just follow the road north until you come to a whitewash post then go east."
The men raced out of the saloon new found energy surging through them as they realized they were very close to finding their missing friend. Bartender shook his head and smiled, then a frown pulled down the corners of his mouth, he wondered if he should of told them about the man who had also come by earlier asking about the missing southerner.
***** Part 7
Tommy collided with the fancy dressed gambler, almost knocking him over. Ezra grabbed the door frame to steady himself wincing slightly at the pain in his shoulder.
"Sorry, Mr. Standish I have to go and get some milk," Tommy hurriedly explained. Ezra rubbed the young boy's head as he raced past.
"Why Mr. Standish you're up early?" Anna said noticing that he had managed to put on the clean shirt she left for him. He was also clean shaven which made his dimples more prominent. His shoulder still throbbed slightly, but he felt it was good enough to ride. He didn't want to impose on these people any longer and had planned on leaving after breakfast. He was still a little weak, but thought he could make it to the next town.
"Well Madam, the aroma of that delicious breakfast was more than I could resist."
Anna smiled, she loved his southern accent. Over the past day she had got to know Mr. Standish, she felt he was a good man, but he was also a lost one. Hiram came into the kitchen with an arm load of firewood placing it next to the large wood stove.
"The team's all hitched up and ready to go whenever you want Ezra," Hiram said.
"Well I certainly couldn't pass up on your wife's good ..." Ezra began.
"Ma, Pa!" Tommy's frantic cry got everyone's attention and they raced to the front door. Hiram flung open the door and stepped out onto the porch followed by Anna and Ezra. What they saw turned their blood to ice. Anna was about to race forward until Hiram grabbed her around the waist. Her eyes were wild with terror as she stared at her young son in the grip of a large and menacing looking man.
The large man had a thick, massive arm around Tommy's neck and his gun pointed at his head. The boy was scared and looked longingly towards his parents. Ezra's heart had stopped at the sight. He pushed past Hiram and Anna.
"Let the boy go, Major!" Ezra sneered. His anger was growing. After everything he'd already been put through, this man had the nerve to threaten a family that had helped him. Ezra wanted to put a bullet through the Major's sadistic heart.
"No problem, I just want you, Standish," Major Quist calmly stated, tightening his grip on the boy.
Ezra stepped off the porch offering himself to the deranged man. Anna feared for Ezra's life and grabbed his arm. He turned and smiled at her seeing the concern in her soft oval face. He gently removed her hand from his arm placing it in Hiram's grasp.
"You," the Major motioned towards Hiram. "See that rope there?" Hiram saw the coil of rope laying on the ground between them. "Get it and tie one end around Standish's hands and make it tight." The Major squeezed Tommy on the shoulder bringing a yelp of pain from the small boy. It took everything Ezra had not to charge the man.
Hiram slowly walked over and picked up the rope keeping his eyes on his son. He returned to Ezra and looked at him regretfully. Ezra clenched his jaw and nodded. Hiram wound the end of the rope around Ezra's wrists knowing he was causing pain in his shoulder. When he finished he turned to the Major.
"Good, now bring it over here and drop it on the ground," the Major instructed. Hiram brought the rope over leading Ezra behind him. He dropped it on the ground and moved back to his wife.
The Major turned his gun on Ezra and shoved the boy towards his parents. Tommy ran past Ezra and into the open arms of his mother. Ezra smiled at the scene, which made it all worth it. The Major picked up the rope and pulled Ezra towards him glaring down at the smaller man. He didn't know why the gambler was smiling, but pretty soon he would wipe that smile off his pretty face. The Major mounted his horse and wrapped the rope end around his saddlehorn then looked towards the Stopka's who feared for Ezra's life.
"Now, if you people are smart you'll forget all about me and Mr. Standish and what just took place. Have a good day." He tipped his hat and nudged his horse into a walk forcing Ezra to follow.
"C'mon maybe we can get to town in time and get the sheriff," Hiram stated running towards the wagon.
For awhile Ezra listened to the Major's ranting, but he kept speaking in the past then he'd jump to the present and Ezra gave up trying to follow the one-sided conversation. His shoulder throbbed miserably and the Major would jerk the rope occasionally sending up a flare of pain that would cause him to inhale audibly. He had no idea what the Major had in store for him, but he was glad they were away from the Stopka's. The sun was almost at it's zenith and Ezra was grateful that the day had decided to remain cool. He could see the tree dotted foothills ahead and figured the Major was taking him there so he could easily kill him and hide his body. He was surprised that this didn't seem to bother him much, although he regretted that the others would never know what happened to him. They probably thought he returned to his mother or headed back to St. Louis.
"Pa, Look!" Tommy yelled out pointing towards the west, six riders appeared as if out of no where. Hiram pulled the team to a halt.
"Ah shit, now what?" Hiram picked up his rifle and put it across his lap. He wondered if he could out run the men in his wagon, but immediately dismissed the idea. He didn't have anything of value on him, but he feared for his wife and son. He checked his rifle and swallowed the lump of fear which had risen in his throat.
"No, pa it's them, it's the six gunslingers that Ezra told me about," Tommy explained unable to contain the excitement in his voice. "Look, the man dressed all in black."
Hiram squinted and did indeed see a tall man wearing a dark duster and hat he seemed to be leading, riding just ahead of the others; three on one side and two on the other. Anna wrapped protective arms around her son as the six gunslingers approached the wagon. Chris tipped his hat, but before he could say a word.
"You all wouldn't be friends of Ezra Standish?" Hiram asked, hoping his son was right.
"Yes, we would."
"You gotta save him. Some man he called Major took him," Hiram explained. He heard several of the men curse and one wearing a poncho bowed his head.
"Where?" Chris anxiously asked.
"About two miles back."
The six gunslingers spurred their horses and galloped away. Hiram turned his wagon around and headed back hoping they would reach Ezra in time.
*****Part 8
The Major glared back from atop his horse at the man he had tied to the end of the rope. Ezra hadn't spoken a word the whole time.
"You know, the Judge went and told my superiors all that I did," Major Quist sneered.
Ezra's head came up as he realized the Major was addressing him, but he remained quiet concentrating on staying on his feet. His shoulder wound had opened up and was bleeding and he was starting to feel light-headed.
"They took away everything, all my commendations, medals, even my horse. I was on my way to serve six months in a Military prison down in Texas, but I escaped."
Ezra smiled inwardly he hadn't been aware that Judge Travis had done this for him. The Judge's own guilt had forced him to see that justice was met out to the Major.
Major Quist yanked at the rope causing Ezra to hiss as a sharp pain shot up his arm. "You ruined my life!" Quist yelled at the taciturn southerner.
"Well, I guess that makes us even, since you didn't do mine any good either," Ezra sarcastically replied, his green eyes burned with anger and his rising fever.
The Major kicked his horse into a trot forcing Ezra into a run to keep from being dragged. He started boisterously singing some old military cadence as Ezra held onto the rope and continued running trying to watch out for rocks and debris, which might trip him up. The Major held this pace for almost a mile impressed with the gambler's stamina. Ezra looked up catching the malevolent smile on the Major's face and dread settled into his stomach refusing to leave. The Major spurred his chestnut gelding into a gallop bringing Ezra down hard and knocking the wind from his chest. His right knee came down on a rock sending a shock wave of immense pain down to his foot and up to his hip.
Vin picked up the trail easy enough and slowly followed Ezra's boot marks in the dirt.
"Where is he takin' him?" JD asked.
"I don't know JD, but it won't be good wherever it is," Buck replied.
After about a mile Vin noticed Ezra's steps had widen, he was being forced to run. Vin didn't say anything to the others, but Chris caught the look and also noticed the tracks, they picked up their pace. Vin hoped they wouldn't abruptly change directions. Then his worse fear materialized as he looked at the ground seeing the shallow sweep of dirt.
"Shit, he's draggin' 'im!" Vin yelled back to the others, breaking his horse into a gallop.
The Major looked back at the limp form he now dragged and pulled up his horse. He thought Ezra was dead. He dropped the rope and dismounted walking towards the dust and blood covered body. He drew his gun deciding that if the gambler wasn't dead he'd end it. Just as he reached Ezra's body he heard the sound of horses and drew back taking cover behind a boulder.
Chris saw Ezra first and leapt from his horse even before it came to a stop. A bullet at his feet stopped him from racing to Ezra's side. The others quickly came abreast of him. A horrified look came to all six of the gunslingers' faces at the condition that their friend was in.
"Sweet Jesus," Josiah murmured grabbing hold of the handle of his revolver and squeezing. He never wanted to kill anyone so badly in his life. Nathan released a quivering breath trying to come to grips with the sight before him.
Ezra was laying face down in the dirt. His brown hair chalked with dust; his wrists bloody and torn. Chris stared at his unmoving friend, hoping...willing some kind of movement, something to show him they were going to be whole once again.
"That's close enough Larabee," the Major called out. Larabee's ice blue eyes burned with a rage that had been buried since the death of his own family. This man would pay dearly for what he's done.
Buck's hand shook as he ran it down his face. JD cast a sidelong glance at the mustached cowboy who looked ready to charge the man at any minute. 'I'll be right behind you, Buck,' JD thought turning his gaze back to Ezra. Vin's quiet blue eyes now burned with a murdering madness.
They'd come so far and were so close, were they too late?
Hiram and Anna pulled up their wagon just behind the six gunslingers. Before they could stop him Tommy leapt from the wagon. "Tommy, No!" Anna yelled. Tommy ran past the gunslingers even as Josiah tried to grab the small boy. Everyone prayed that the Major wasn't so far gone he'd shoot a little boy.
"Please, Mister don't hurt him," Tommy cried out, falling across Ezra's back, his young voice shaking with sorrow. The Major stepped out from his cover, his rifle pointed towards the ground. "He's my friend, please," Tommy pleaded, tears streaming down his young face. His small hands clutching at Ezra's dirt covered shirt.
Major Quist ran his hand through his short hair then rubbed his eyes. The madness faded as an overwhelming sadness came over him. He looked at the small boy seeing his own son at that age and smiled. He'd missed so much of his son's life. He never even really knew Orrin, but it became so important for him to gain his son's respect and admiration, even in death. Major Quist's eyes looked at the battered man and clouded. Ezra's still form was replaced with the dead body of his own son. 'What have I done?' He thought to himself. He had killed his son, it was his fault. This was the first time that Jacob Quist had admitted this to himself, and with that admission the life left him, his shoulders slumped and his face went slack.
Chris holstered his gun and stepped forward. He didn't have to look back to know the others were right behind him. He stopped a few feet from Tommy and Ezra. "Tommy, go back to your parents," he said quietly. His tone broaching no discussion. The boy reluctantly stood, the front of his shirt covered in dirt from Ezra's back. He walked slowly back to his waiting parents.
"It's over Major, all we want is to take Ezra home," Chris stated trying to keep his voice even and calm.
The Major's dull dark eyes met Chris' blue ones and what Chris saw there tempered his anger a little. In that fleeting glimpse he saw a broken man. A man who had lived his whole life riding on the back of his pride, self confidence and courage. When these failed him, his life had become meaningless.
"Everything, everything I loved is gone, my son, my friends. What happened?" he asked, knowing he'd never receive an answer.
A grim smile slowly appeared on the Major's face and he slowly raised his rifle.
"Don't Major," Chris warned flatly, knowing what the Major was about to do. They all drew as one and fired. The Major was dead before he hit the ground the smile still on his face.
Nathan rushed to Ezra's side before the echo of the gunshots died. Buck, JD and Josiah all knelt down on one side of the gambler. Vin cut the ropes which still bound the conman's wrists. Chris didn't move, he just closed his eyes hoping he wouldn't hear what he feared. Nathan searched for a pulse finding a very slow weak one.
"He's still alive," Nathan said quietly, gently turning him over with the others help.
Chris let the relief show on his face and came and knelt at Ezra's side.
"Nathan, is he going to be alright?" Chris turned to Buck's anxious fear-filled voice making no effort to hide the tears that fell down his face.
"He's not in death's door yet, but he's at its welcome mat," Nathan replied. He ran his experienced hands over Ezra's abused body. "He's lost a lot of blood. His shoulder wound has opened again and his shoulder is dislocated. His knee is swelling. I don't know if it's busted or just sprained. He's got several broken ribs and a busted collar bone." Through the whole examination Ezra never uttered a sound or made a move.
Nathan felt Ezra's head and his hand came away bloodied. "We have to get him some place where I can work on him, quick."
At that moment Hiram and Anna came up in the wagon. "Get him in we can take him back to our place."
Nathan and Josiah lifted his shoulders, JD grabbed his head, Buck placed his hands under Ezra's back as Chris and Vin each grabbed a leg, together the six carried Ezra to the wagon and laid him gently down. Nathan climbed in next to him as did Chris.
*****Part 9
They laid Ezra gently down on the bed he had earlier occupied. Nathan and Josiah removed his shirt and quickly and expertly put his shoulder back in place. Nathan noticed that not a sound escaped Ezra's lips. Vin cut away the leg of his pants revealing the bruised and badly swollen right knee. Nathan began washing and cleaning Ezra's many abrasions and cuts. Anna and JD kept a constant supply of clean water and clean cloths coming. Josiah gently wiped his forehead with a cool cloth. Buck and Chris stood close by in case they were needed. It took a couple hours to get Ezra bandaged and cleaned up. Nathan wrapped his knee and propped it up on a pillow. He had to cut into it to release the fluid, which had built up. There was a two inch cut on the front of his head that had to be stitched. Nathan was worried, the cut was very deep and had cracked his skull slightly. He knew Ezra had a bad concussion and hoped he regained consciousness. He didn't speak out loud his fear that Ezra may never come to, his injuries might be to extensive.
Nathan and the others moved morosely into the living area of the cabin. Nathan planned on getting something to eat and then returning to Ezra's side. Anna went into the kitchen to prepare some food, hoping someone would eat. She had to do something a person could suffocate on the depression which filled the room. Chris placed a hand on the hearth and looked into the low burning fire, listening to the crackling of the dry wood.
"Can you really make wolves lie down with sheep?" Tommy abruptly asked Josiah who gaped, slightly bewildered at the awe-struck boy. He then turned to Vin and asked, with the same innocent exuberance. "Ezra says you can track anything, anywhere." Vin smiled at this. Then Tommy's large eyes turned to Nathan. "Ezra will be okay he says you're the best healer there is." Nathan had to fight to keep the tears from spilling over.
Anna entered the room carrying a tray of sandwiches hearing what her son was saying. "You'll have to forgive my son, the way Mr. Standish talked about you all we didn't believe you were real. He told some pretty far-fetched tales."
"How do you all know Ezra?" Hiram asked the six men.
"He's one of us," Chris proudly exclaimed, moving his eyes from the flames and meeting Hiram's hazel eye stare.
"Now that I believe," Hiram declared.
Josiah and Buck took turns telling the Stopka's all that had happened over the past month. Anna's eyes glistened with tears as she listened to all that Ezra had been put through and the loyalty and friendship that these men held for each other.
Ezra remained unconscious for two days. A fever raged through his battered body and the fear of losing him started to whittle its way back into the minds of the men. The six men took turns watching over him and administering to him, but usually they all could be found in various positions on the floor of the room. On the night of the second day Ezra opened his eyes. He didn't know where he was at first, the flickering lantern light distorting the small room. He felt a hand on his forehead and at first thought he was dreaming. Then his eyes focused and he could make out Nathan's dark face smiling down at him. He felt another hand behind his head raising it up to the cup of water that Nathan held. Ezra moved his eyes slightly to look into the face of Josiah.
"How you feelin' Ezra?" Nathan asked. Ezra almost cried thinking he'd never hear those four words spoken again by the dark healer.
"Hurt, all over. What happened?" Ezra gasped. His eyes looked around the room seeing four more indistinct shapes laying on the floor. He swallowed the lump which rose in his throat. They had come for him.
"We'll tell you later just get some rest now." Ezra's eyes slowly closed and he grinned as he realized that Nathan had slipped him one of his concoctions.
The next morning everyone was awaken to Nathan urging Ezra to open his eyes. "C'mon Ezra, you need to wake up for a bit. I need to get some more water in ya." Everyone surrounded the bed to be graced with Ezra's green eyes slowly opening.
Chris gently raised his head so Nathan could give him some water.
"Do you think you could manage some broth?" Nathan asked. Ezra slowly nodded his head and Josiah came over and propped up the pillows. Ezra looked at the six faces that smiled down at him.
"Lord Ezra, we've been chasing after you for two weeks," Buck said.
Ezra swallowed and replied, "I guess it's very fortuitous that you found me when you did." Ezra paused then looked towards Chris. "The Major?"
Chris' jaw clenched. "He's dead," he finally answered.
Ezra couldn't deny the relief he felt, but he was also sadden by this. He had forgiven the Major he knew he wasn't responsible for his actions.
The next evening the six gunslingers shared a relaxing and mouth-watering dinner with the Stopka family. Ezra's condition had slowly improved over the past day.
Buck was regaling the Stopka's with his many stories and anecdotes, even though he had to clean them up slightly for Tommy's sake.
"What if he still doesn't want to come home with us," JD innocently asked taking a bite of mashed potatoes. His question brought silence to the table.
The next morning Anna slipped into Ezra's room finding Nathan trying to force the recalcitrant gambler to drink some more medicine.
"May I speak with Mr. Standish alone, Nathan?" Anna asked the dark healer. He threw up hands and nodded.
"Maybe you can get him to drink this," Nathan said as he walked out.
Ezra smiled up at the kindly woman who sat down next to him.
"I want to tell you a story, Mr. Standish." Anna clasped her hands together and gathered the courage she would need to relate her story. "I lost my mother and other siblings when I was very young. My father couldn't care for me and passed me from one distant relative to the next. I was abused physically and emotionally." Anna's eyes began to water as some of the long shut away memories came to the surface. "I finally ran away and then was truly alone which I preferred for a long time. I did what ever I had to, to survive." Anna looked straight at Ezra seeming to throw her thoughts into his head. He lowered his eyes in understanding. There was not much a woman alone could do to survive. "I met Hiram at a bordello in El Paso. He saw the real me trapped inside and helped to release that and we fell in love. Even after everything I'd been through in my life I consider myself one of the luckiest people alive. I have a family who loves and protects me and is there for me. They accept me for who I am, past, present, future." Anna paused and swallowed looking into Ezra's emerald eyes searching for understanding. She was surprised to see all that and more.
The calmness of Anna's voice suddenly gave way to a sudden firmness. "Now, there are six men out there who care a great deal about you and I think you care a great deal about them. That's not something you throw away. Not everyone is lucky enough to find one person much less six who care about them."
Anna could see Ezra trying to hold back the tears
"Now, I don't begin to understand what your life or the lives of those six men have been like, but I bet it's been a whole lot better since you all met."
Ezra reached out and took Anna's hand in his. "Dear Lady, you understand more than you know."
Anna stood as Chris and the others entered the room she smiled and quietly walked out.
Everyone had decided that Chris should be the one to try and convince Ezra to return with them since they knew Ezra would take him seriously. Chris had thought about what he was going to say all night, thinking about all the reasons for Ezra to come home and hoping he had thought out all the rebuttals for any and all arguments that Ezra might come up with.
"Okay Ezra, here's how it's goin' to be, you're coming home with us and that's all there is to it we..." Chris began, prepared to recite the speech he had thought about for the past day.
"Yes, Mr. Larabee I will come back with you," Ezra calmly said, looking up at the dark-clad leader, a faint smile on his face at Chris' sudden befuddled appearance. "How can I refuse such a benevolent invitation."
Everyone broke out in laughter. "I guess we won't have to resort to plan B, huh Chris," JD remarked with a glint in his eyes. Buck slapped the young gunslinger up side the head.
"And what pray tell was plan B?" Ezra asked, the mischievous glint returning to his green eyes.
"Oh nothing really, Chris would just knock you out and we'd tie you to a horse," Buck explained, his face breaking out in a grin, ignoring the sneer from Chris.
"Welcome Back Ezra," Vin said. Everyone surrounded Ezra's bed placing a hand on his leg or shoulder. Ezra couldn't stop the tear that slowly made its way down his cheek.
After a couple more days rest, Ezra was fit enough to travel. The Stopka's lent their wagon, which was filled with straw to make the long trip back as comfortable as possible. The swelling in Ezra's knee had diminished, but he still couldn't put any weight on it so Nathan and Josiah had to carry him out.
Chris sat upon his horse looking down upon the couple and their son who stood on the porch. "Thank you for everything, we'll get the wagon back to you as soon as possible. Were indebted to you all and if you ever need anything you know where to find us."
"Thank you Mr. Larabee that is a comfort," Anna replied. Chris looked down at Tommy and tipped his hat in silent salute, Tommy's heart swelled with pride.
"Pour that laudanum down 'em, Josiah," Nathan instructed, as Josiah practically forced the awful tasting liquid down Ezra's throat.
"Nathan I hate this stuff," Ezra balked, trying to catch his breath in between gulps. He was stretched out on a blanket in the back of the wagon. A canopy had been erected over him using some old blankets. His shoulder was bound as were his ribs. Nathan had placed some blankets under his injured knee. Him and Josiah were going to remain in the wagon to tend to him on the long trek back to Four Corners.
Buck laughed out loud sitting in the driver's seat of the wagon, which earned him a sneer from the hapless conman.
"Yeah, but it'll make the ride home more bearable for you and us, Ezra," Nathan replied. Ezra flashed the same sneer back at Nathan. He was fighting to keep his eyes open as the medicine started to take effect on his weakened body.
Ezra tried to raise a hand hearing the chuckles from his friends. "I'll get even with you all for this," he managed to say before his hand fell back down and his eyes rolled back in his head. Nathan pulled the blanket up to his chin and nodded to Buck, who eased the horses forward. Chris, Vin and JD followed, leading the extra horses. Everyone felt better than they had in weeks, it was good to be heading home.
Anna had stepped inside as the wagon pulled away. She suddenly reappeared at Hiram's side on the porch. "Hiram, I found this on the night stand." She handed him an envelope which he opened. He grabbed his wife's arm as his knees buckled slightly at what he saw inside. He fanned out $500 and a note.
"For making us whole again,
The Seven"
THE END (Sep 1999) |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11148 | HI! Name's Milli incase you didnt already know. Usually, I write Teen Titans fics, but today, I thought I'd try my hand at aDP story.
Sam Manson doodled on her binder and sighed dreamily as she stared at Danny Fenton.
Finally realizing that she was being poked, a small bit of pain set in. "Ow." She turned and glared at Tucker Foley. "What."
"You're supposed to be studying to the English test tomorrow. Not drooling over Danny."
"I wasn't drooling over Danny."
Hearing his name, Danny turned around and, moving quickly, he drug his chair in between his friends. "You guys say my name?" He asked. "No." Sam said quickly before Tucker could answer. "Mr. Fenton, Ms. Manson, Mr. Foley... why aren't you three studying?" The teacher, Mr. Lancer asked. The trio looked at him. Slowly, very slowly, Danny slid to his desk. "We are studying."
Sam smiled as she held in her laughter. 'That's another reason why Danny is so perfect.' She thought as she put her chin on her hand, once again, staring dreamily at Danny.
Then suddenly...
"OW!" Sam bent down and rubbed her leg and glared at Tucker. "Studying, no drooling." Yes. Tucker had kicked her.
"Please, Sam?"
"No. I dont want to see..." Sam took the newspaper clipping from Tucker. "Where's that stupid... oh. 'The latest horror movie - It Came From A Toilet' ugh. That is such a guy movie."
"But...but...but..." Thinking fast, Tucker blurted out, "Danny wants to see it." Sam paused and appeared to be staring at something in the distance. "Whoa..." Tucker grinned. "I knew that you'd see it--"
"Not that beanie boy. Look." Sam pointed to a swirling purple vortex. Slowly, Sam began to walk toward it. Moving quickly, Danny grabbed her arm before she got too close. "Don't get too close, Sam. You dont know where it could take you." Sam sighed, then wiggled out of Danny's grip. "Please Danny. If it was dangerous, I think you would know so, wouldntcha?"
"I-I guess..."
"Well, that's settled. What do ya say we...explorer the vortex?" Tucker asked. "No. No. This vortex thing opened on its own, it'll close on it's own. It could take us to the past, during the Civil War." Sam and Tucker looked at each other. "C'mon, Dan." Tucker begged. "No."
"Please, Dan-Dan?" Sam asked, using the pet name she had given him when they had first met. Danny looked at her, but he soon wished he hadn't. She gave him an adorable pout. Sam smiled slightly as she put her finger on his chest and drew small invisible circles on his chest. "Did I ever mention how hot you look when you're Danny Phantom?"
Danny blinked. "What about when I'm Danny Fenton?" Sam smiled seductively. "Probably even more than Danny Phantom." Danny gulped, looked to the left, then right, then in front and behind him.
Two rings suddenly appeared around Danny then a few seconds later, Danny Phantom appeared. Behind Danny, Sam and Tucker hi-fived and linked arms, they jumped into the vortex.
Future: 10 years:
"Wow... this place is amazing." Sam said as she wiggled from the boys' grip. She looked up and saw cars... or what she thought were cars, flying above her. Danny also looked up and sighed. Running behind a tree, he transformed back into Danny Fenton. "Oh my gosh! I think... we're in the future!" Sam said happily as Danny calmly walked out behind the tree. Sam turned to her friends grinning. "I wonder what happened to us."
"The last time we were in the future, we found out we were dead." Tucker muttered. Danny glared at him. "Sorry."
"The future's changed, Tuck. Oh, wow! Is that Paulina?" darting across the street, Sam ran to the Paulina-look-alike whom was shopping in a store. "Uhm, excuse me, are you... Paulina?"
The woman turned looked at her and gave her a glare. "Ew. A Goth geek. Get away from me, loser."
"Yup, that's Paulina, all right." Sam muttered as Danny and Tucker walked over. "Was that Paulina?" Tucker asked. "Yep. That's Paulina. The snobby attitude gave her away." She quickly brightened. "Let's find us! I wonder if we're still friends!" Sam quickly ran out of the store on to the sidewalk. The boys sighed and walked after.
"C'mon, Sam! Talk to me! Please!" running to the park, Sam's eyes widened as she saw a black-haired woman and a black-haired man. 'Is that... me?'
"I dont want to talk to you right now, Danny Fenton." Future Sam said as she rubbed the tears from her eyes. Future Danny's eyes got big and blue. "Sam!" Past Sam turned and saw Danny and Tucker running toward her. "Shush! Look. That the future me." Sam whispered. Tucker blinked. "What's she crying for?"
"Oh, I just had a fight with Danny. Watch." Future Danny made a motion like he was going to put it on Future Sam's shoulder, then he decided against it. "I'll... be at home if you ever... want to talk." Future Danny said softly. Future Sam waved her hand at him. "I dont want to talk to you, Danny."
"Well... uh... okay. I love you, Sam." Future Danny said as he turned around and began to walk away. Future Sam rubbed her eyes. "I love you, too, Danny." She said quietly as she fiddled with her sleeve.
"Wow... you two are together?" Tucker asked, looking at Sam and Danny. Sam blinked. "I'm going to talk to her...er... me. Yeah, that's it. I'm going to go talk to... me."
"Be right back."
Sam quietly walked up to Future Sam. "Uhm... excuse me?" Future Sam jumped and turned. "Uh... do I know you?"
"Yes... no... Well... kinda. I'm you or rather, what you used to be. I'm fourteen." Future Sam smiled. "Back during the years when I had a crush on Danny." Pause. "Hey, how did you get here?"
"Uhm... hey, Danny, Tucker! Come out here and meet me!" slowly, Danny and Tucker walked out. Future Sam's eyes widened. "Danny and Tucker! Oh I haven't seen you – well, actually the future you—in years, Tuck!"
"Why? What happened to me?"
"Nothing. You just moved to New York after you married Valerie."
"Hey... is he... okay?" Future Sam asked.
Past Sam looked at Tucker... who had passed out. "Uh... he will be." Danny looked at the Future Sam. "So... just out of curiosity... what did... uh... the future me... do?" At the mention of Danny, tears came to the Future Sam's eyes. "Danny... oh, he's going to hate me forever."
"Ow!" Danny glared at Past Sam. "What was that for?"
"For making me cry. No one makes me cry."
"I dont even know what I did!"
"You're heartless, Danny!" Pause "Is Danny heartless in the future?"
Future Sam's eyes widened. "Heartless? And... Danny? In the same sentence?"
Past Sam nodded. "That's true. Danny's too sweet to be that cruel." Danny turned red. Sam turned to him. "Sorry I called you heartless." Danny smiled. "Eh, dont worry 'bout it, Sammy."
Future Sam smiled. "The good old days." She stood. "Well, I suppose I have to face Danny some time."
"Want us to help?" Danny asked. Both Sams smiled at each other, then at him. "What?"
"You've always been the sweetest guy I've ever met." Future Sam said, smiling. Once again, Danny blushed. "Well... uh... let's go see the future me."
"Well, here we are." Future Sam said as the trio had walked to her house. A child-like giggle was heard. "Auntie Sammy!" a little boy with red hair ran up to Future Sam and grabbed her leg. "Hey, Dennis. Did your mommy leave you here with us?" Dennis nodded. "She had to work, hey, why is Uncie Danny so unhappy?"
"Can we talk to it... ugh... inside?" Past Danny asked, then he looked at Sam. "We really need to put Tuck on a diet." Past Sam nodded. "Yea, let's go in." Future Sam picked up Dennis and walked to the door and pushed it open. "You can put Tuck on the couch, he'll be--"
Turning, Sam noticed that the two had abruptly dropped Tucker on the couch. "Fine. Uh... okay." Future Sam put Dennis on the ground. "I'll get some water. That always helps Danny for when he passes out." She said as she went into the kitchen.
Dennis just stood there, staring at Past Sam and Danny. "Toy?"
"Excuse me?" Sam asked.
"Danny, calm him down!"
"How? I dont have any experience with kids."
"Dennis! Come in here!" a manly voice called out. Dennis stop mid-tantrum. "Coming, Uncie Danny!"
A few minutes later, a man with raven black hair walked into the room, carrying Dennis. He looked at his past self and at the past version of Sam. "Hey." He said, smiling, then he went upstairs. "C'mon Denny. It's time to go down for your nap." Dennis responded by yawning.
Sam yawned. "If I know you like I know I do..." she said, smirking at Danny, who rolled his eyes, before looking at her watch. "You'll realize that something is different in... 3...2...1."
At that moment, Future Danny came running down the stairs. "Hey! Who the heck are you?"
Sam nodded. "Yup. Right on time." She stood up. "Hi, Danny. I'm Sam... age fourteen." She pointed at past Danny. "And this is your past self... also age fourteen."
Future Danny blinked. "Sam?"
"Yes?" Future Sam said as she walked into the room, carrying a glass of water. "Did you want to tell me something or did you want to yell at me some more like you did this morning?" Future Danny sighed heavily. "I told you I was stressed." Future Sam rolled her eyes "Yea. Right. Whatever. Here, Sam. Use this to wake up Tuck." Future Sam handed past Sam a glass of water.
She turned and walked into the kitchen, not even looking at Danny who sighed. "C'mon Sam! Talk to me. Please?" Past Danny and Sam looked at each other. "Want to go snoop?" Danny asked. "Not really." Sam replied in monotone.
"Great!" Danny grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the kitchen where their future selves were arguing.
"Sam! Why wont you talk to me?" Future Danny yelled. Future Sam said nothing as she ran the water in the sink. "Oh, C'mon Sam! Dont make me beg!"
Silence echoed in the kitchen, well, not exactly. There was the sound of water running and dishes going into the sink. "Sammy? Okay, Sam, I'm sorry I yelled at you this morning, and... I'm sorry I called you a fat veggie-eating freak." Sam "accidentally" dropped the dish she was about to put it on the drying rack. Sam only said one word after a two-minute pause. "Oops."
Danny sighed sadly. "Please Sam." He said in a weak voice. "I can't stand it when you're mad at me."
Slowly, Sam put down a dish and she turned around. She glared at him. "I have no desire to talk to you, Danny."
"Can you try to?"
Sam sat down and looked at him. Telling him he had her attention. Danny sat next to her. "Apology accepted." Sam whispered. "So... can you tell me why you're so moody?"
"Can I? Yes. Will I? No."
"Why not?"
"Because you'll hate me."
"Hate you? I could never--"
"You will. Trust me." Sam stood.
Danny copied. "I do. Now, what's wrong?" Sam turned to him. "Danny... I'm pregnant."
"Oh... my... god." Past Sam whispered. "I'm... pregnant?" past Danny's eyes widened. "With my kid?" they both looked at each other. "Whoa." They said in unison.
Future Danny stared at future Sam. Eyes wide. "You're... you're... what?"
"Pregnant, Danny. Three months. That's why I've been so moody lately and with your busy work and all, I'd understand if you'd--" Sam was abruptly cut off by danny pressing his lips to hers and kissing her deeply.
The past Sam and Danny's jaws dropped. "And I thought today's surprises were done." Danny said. "Dan-Dan, shush." Sam said, waving her hand. "They're not done talking yet."
"Hey, wait, I thought you didnt want to snoop on our future selves."
"That was before I found out I was pregnant with your baby! Now, shut up."
Future Danny let go of Future Sam and grinned. "A baby? As in, a crying, pooping, part-of-you-and-me-honest-to-goodness baby?" Sam smiled and nodded. "Yes! This the best day of my life!" Danny picked her up and swung her around.
Past Sam smiled and went away from the doorway. She grabbed the glass of water she had put on the coffee table and splashed it on Tucker who awoke coughing. "Hey... how'd we get out of the park?" Sam sighed. "Never mind, Tucker. We've got to get home."
"Home? Why?"
"Because we dont belong in the future Tuck."
"I can help you get home." The teenagers looked at Future Danny. "Wow... is that what you'll look like when you're 24?" Tucker asked. Past Danny grinned and puffed out his chest. "Oh, yeah. That's what I look like." He said as he looked at Sam and smiled seductively. Sam returned the smile. Tucker looked back and forth between the two. "Did you two get together while I was out?"
Sam's smiled widened. "Kind of. Now, can we go back to present-day Amity Park?"
"Sure. I'll get you home." Future Danny smiled and opened a portal. "You'll get this power later." He said to the past Danny who was gapping at that ability. "I've set it for ten years in the past. When you're 14."
Future Sam walked up to future Danny who wrapped his arm around her waist. Present-day Sam and Danny saw this movement. Past Danny grabbed past Sam's hand and smiled at her.
Tucker pouted. "I can't believe we went ten years in the future and where am I? New York—is that an engagement ring?"
Future Sam blinked. "Engagement--? OH! This?" she looked at her hand, then at Future Danny, and smiled, then at Tucker. "No, it's a wedding ring."
"Wedding--" Tucker grinned. "I knew it."
"Tucker! C'mon, lets go!" Past Danny called. Tucker ran over to his friends. "Hey, you guys! Guess what I found out!"
Past: Present Day
Danny shook his head as he picked himself off the ground. He couldn't help feeling that something happened to...to... Sam. Sam! What happened to sam? He looked around frantically. Hm... He saw... Tucker but no sam. "Tucker! Tucker, wake up!" Danny cried out, stomping on Tucker's foot. "OW! Ugh... feel like I ate a desk."
"Where's Sam?"
"Oh, I'm fine. Thanks for asking, Dan."
"Where. Is. Sam?"
"How should I--?"
"Danny, Tucker. Are you guys all right and... Am I the only one with a major headache?" sam asked walking up to her friends limping slightly and holding her head. "Actually... no. I have a headache, too. What happened?" Tucker asked; both of them looked at Danny. "I dont have a headache, but I have a feeling that something happened... sam, are you okay?"
She nodded.
"Well... Danny thought you were hurt."
"No. I'm fine. In a little bit of pain, but fine." Danny shrugged. "Oh, well. It's probably not important." He said as he wrapped his arm around Sam's waist. She leaned into her grasp.
"Uh... did you guys get together while I was out?" Tucker asked. Sam and Danny blushed. "Kinda." Sam said, smiling. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11149 | Sucky summary.
What do Trainers Learn?
By Dark Ice Dragom
The Good and the Bad
What do trainers learn?
They learn that they can use living creatures as weapons. They can use them for entertainment. For fights. To use them to achieve their goals.
They use pokémon to be popular or famous.
They see pokémon as ways to generate money for themselves.
They also learn that pokémon can be companions. Friends on a lonely journey.
They learn that pokémon can help in ways that humans sometimes can't.
Pokémon help to teach their trainers about the world without telling them.
They learn that pokémon have their own personalities and each is unique.
What do trainers learn?
Sucky ending. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11150 | After introducing Heath, Neferet went on with other school announcements. My mind was reeling with worry and confusion. What the hell was I going to do?????? All I wanted was to go back to my room and cry, maybe even scream into a pillow to let out some frustration. Finally the announcements were over and I tried to rush out of the room without running into Heath, Erik, Loren, or Stark. Instead, I ran into my mentor and High Priestess, Neferet.
"Hello Zoey Redbird. I have a favor to ask of you." Neferet said
"Of course, anything you need." I replied, hoping it was quick so I could run to my room.
"Well, we actually do not have enough room for our new student, Heath, and I was thinking that since you are such a responsible fledgling, I could trust you and have him stay in your room until we can find space for him somewhere with the other boys. Especially since you are one of the only fledglings without a roommate at the present time"
BAD WORDS BAD WORDS BAD WORDS!!!!!! OMG this is not good.
"Neferet there is absolutely nowhere else for him to go? What about…um…." I said, trying to not hyperventilate
"Zoey, please be mature about this. You don't even know this boy"
"I expected better from you Zoey"
Great now she wants to make me feel bad…
"I am sorry Neferet. It's just a surprise. I would be happy to have our newest fledgling room with me for a little while." I managed to say without vomiting
"Thank you Zoey I knew that I could count on you." Such a fake voice…
Neferet walked away, in all her grace. Damn her
That terrible female dog!!!!!! Was she just out to get me? I can't have the guy I have imprinted with stay in my room! Just thinking about Heath made me want his blood. Shit. This will not end well. Before I could run into anyone else that would cause me problems, I ran up to my room. I probably only had a few minutes until Heath came up into my room, cocky grin and all. Being the good girl that I am (lol) I cleaned up my dorm and then went out to the common room area. Damien, the Twins, and Jack weren't back yet so I actually had some piece and quiet. I was completely stressed, knowing that Heath would probably cut himself and tempt me to drink his blood, which would end up with kissing and…..oh dang it. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, I grabbed some Count Chocola and brown pop. It calmed me down, but just a little.
Too soon for my liking, Heath walked into the common area with someone on the staff helping him with his luggage. I was not ok. Freaking out in fact. There he was, the boy that I had grown up with. The boy I had kissed…the boy I had imprinted with.
"Z!!! ohmygosh I have missed you." Heath exclaimed
He ran over and gave me a hug. I could smell his blood and I gots to say, it made me horny…. GEEZ!!!!
"Hey long time no see." I tried to produce one clear sentence while I attempted to get over my dizziness.
"So where do I put my crap?" Heath asked
Wow this was so not awkward. I thought it would be a bit weird…
" Oh um in my room, well your room too now." I led him to our room. His bed would take the place of Stevie Rae. :(
Instead of unpacking right away he dropped his stuff, closed the door behind him and looked at me. Those eyes. Oh I know them so well.
"Zoey, a room all to ourselves" he said in a seductive, cocky voice
"Heath we cant. I mean. You are at the House of Night to learn. We cant and shouldn't be doing anything stupid."
Trying to tempt me he walked up to me and started kissing my neck, then arms around my waist. I pushed him off then walked across the room, a safe distance away. My heart was pounding
"Come on babe, you know you want me…"
I needed to open a window, something…
Then he had the knife. No no no. not good. I didn't have enough time to react and take the knife away. As soon as the smell of Heath's blood filled the room, it was all over.
AAAHHHH I am so sry that I haven't updated in a billion years. School took over my life, and lots of drama has been going on…haha goldeneyedfanpire. But now that summer is here I am gonna try and update at least once a week. Read review and love!!!!!!
PS. Read my other stories, Brother vs. Brother and What if? |
global_01_local_0_shard_00000017_processed.jsonl/11151 | Author's notes: Ok, so this is a series of (hopefully) 100 drabbles examining the relationship between our lovely crime fighting pair, Dan and Rorschach, beginning at… well, the beginning and (hopefully) going in order from there to 1985. Of the 80 chappies I have planned, only 2 are actual slash (and even those are pretty tame), and they will have warnings if that's not your thing. The rest are intended to be just friendship, but if you choose to see them as implied, I have no problem with that
Warning: mild swearing overall, not just in this chapter.
Oh yeah. Watchmen isn't mine. Obviously. God, could you imagine?
First Meetings
Nite Owl was on patrol. He was young, he was strong, and at that particular moment, he felt invincible. He'd just caught his first criminals of the night. A couple of would-be carjackers that were too surprised at the sight of a grown man in a spandex owlsuit leaping out of the shadows to really put up much of a fight, but as Nite Owl was handcuffing them to a lamppost for the police to find, he couldn't squash the swelling feeling of a job well done.
As he was securing them, he launched into his lecture about the importance of following the law and accepting the consequences for your actions and how they were lucky this was all that was happening to them. This was where one of the carjackers interrupted him, "Shit man, I know how lucky I am you're not that crazy inkblot guy!"
Nite Owl paused, blinking in surprise, "What inkblot guy?" He asked cautiously, not sure if this was some weird thing these kids were pulling to make him look stupid or…what. But the kid seemed more than willing to elaborate with the attitude that he or someone else had been grievously wronged when secretly they knew they probably deserved it.
"He's a mask, like the rest of you freaks," Stupid little punk. "Only this guy's a psycho! The crazy little bastard broke Fred's fingers just for being around some guys who were selling--"
"Shut up, man," The second kid finally spoke up for the first time. Good. Nite Owl had been concerned he might've given the little idiot a concussion, "Rorschach could be here right now and you'd never know it." And Nite Owl thought he was dramatic. But the fear in both their eyes was apparent. And interesting. He'd never heard of this Rorschach and to be quite honest, he wasn't willing to take the word of some stupid kids that he existed at all. But still, if he did, then he'd gained quite a reputation, at least in the eyes of these criminals. Which, Nite Owl understood, wasn't saying much, but at least they feared him. The most Nite Owl could manage was sheer bafflement, which worked. Finally, Nite Owl shrugged and left the kids tied to the lamppost.
At the end of the week, Nite Owl had completely forgotten about the mysterious Rorschach. In fact, that Saturday night, he was more preoccupied with the rather unlucky predicament he'd found himself in than anything else. As it turned out, because this was the way Nite Owl's life worked, he'd unwittingly stumbled into the middle of some kind of drug deal. And not the kind that happened between two or three people. No, this was some kind of…drug dealer to-do or something because there was about 10 of them all touting various weaponry and none of them seemed to appreciate the fact that Nite Owl had interrupted their meeting.
Imagine that.
Unfortunately, they'd recovered from the shock faster than Nite Owl and before he could do anything, they had him surrounded. Figures. Now Nite Owl was at a crossroads. He could try to fight it out, but he really wasn't in the mood to get his ass handed to him in a fight, or he could use that auto-retriever he'd installed in Archie even though it had never been tested and it would really rankle his pride knowing he had to run from a fight and --
"Waugh!" The heavily tattooed man directly to his left let out one strangled yelp before suddenly someone (or something) sucked him into the inky shadows at the end of the alley. Everyone froze, including Nite Owl, who knew in the back of his mind he should take advantage of the universal bewilderment to get the hell out of there, but he just couldn't force his legs to move. Later he would tell himself that his sudden immobility was because he didn't want to run away from a fight. But if he was really being honest with himself, it was mostly because he was too shocked over everything that was going on to make any sort of definitive movement.
Their confusion slowly turned into panic when another of their group disappeared in a similar manner, snatched up by the dark shadows. Before any of them could react further, a small tan blur exploded from the depths of the alley, landing in front of Nite Owl, in the middle of the throng, taking everyone by surprise.
He was robed in a frayed tan trench coat and violet pinstriped pants. There was a dirty fedora perched atop his head and even though he was standing in with his back to Nite Owl, he had the distinct feeling the look on the shorter man's face must be terrifying, which only partly stemmed from the utterly horrified looks on the other men. There was a moment of shock as the man pursued the scene before him. He let out one dissatisfied "Hurm." before leaping into action. Damn, but he was good. He didn't have any sort of weapons or gadgets or even armor that Nite Owl could tell, but he seriously doubted the guy needed any. He was really, really good. It was the type of good that made Nite Owl feel rather inadequate. It was like watching a dance, a lethal, deadly dance, yes. But weirdly graceful.
Quickly, and far too easily to be possible (which made Nite Owl more than a little envious), he'd taken care of the problem and without even acknowledging Nite Owl's presence, casually stepped over the groaning bodies and started to walk back down the alley. Nite Owl jerked out of his stupor and lurched forward, picking his way through the sprawled dealers, "Hey! Hey, wait up!" The small figure paused, half turning to face Nite Owl, just enough for Nite Owl to see his mask. Nite Owl couldn't sustain a single shocked gasp. His mask, well god, his mask was weird. It was white enough to glow against the backdrop of shadow that pressed against him but was covered with some black viscous material that changed every so often. Nite Owl had heard that a while ago, there'd been some fabric that could kind of do that, responded to heat and all that, it was just weird as hell seeing it on a person.
"Uhh," Nite Owl had momentarily forgotten what he was going to say, "Hey, you're Rorschach, right?"
The man in the strange mask made no reply, just stared at him suspiciously. Or as suspiciously as a man could when he had no face, "Uhm." Wow, this was awkward, "I've heard of you." he finished lamely.
Rorschach stared flatly back at him and Nite Owl suddenly felt very silly. He was to say something else equally stupid, he was sure, when the pattern shifted and he spoke, "Nite Owl. Have heard of you too. Hrn. I've never really thought I'd ever have to rescue another masked rescuer. Interesting." Dan would just have to take his word for it that he did find it interesting because his gravelly voice showed no interest , just a vague contempt.
"Yeah. Yeah, you really saved my ass out there. Thanks." Finally remembering his manners, Nite Owl extended his hand out to the shorter vigilante, who actually started with surprise. After a moment of awkward staring, a purple gloved hand slowly emerged from a pocket to hesitantly touch Dan's own. Dan grasped it. They shook. Rorschach held on longer than was probably necessary and Dan (pretty good at reading body language) could tell he was taken aback. When he broke the shake, however, the purple hand flashed back into the depths of his trench coat.
"Hurm." He muttered as a sort of goodbye and stalked back down the alley.
"Hey Rorschach!" Dan called to his hunched shoulders, "If you want, you could join up with the other masks. We meet sometimes. If you want, I could give you--"
The gravelly voice rang out with a tone of finality and Dan was left standing alone in the middle of a dripping alley surrounded by the bodies of ten guys he hadn't touched.
Sometimes being a masked hero was weird as shit. |
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