text:
Peculiar Branch Chapter 3b
[HORRIBLY unhappy with the prose here — this needs totally rewriting when I come to publish the whole thing as a novel — but I've posted it because it's an important plot point for those who are following the story. The next bit is better-written]
Charlie, meanwhile, was having to do P.E.
Now, I quite liked P.E. at school myself — have a bit of a kickabout, bit of an ogle of the girls in their short skirts, that sort of thing — but you're a reader, so you probably hated it. Charlie was a proper sporty type, captained the local five-a-side team and all that, so he didn't have any problems with it, and for the first time that day felt like he could relax a bit.
The nerdy kid, however, looked petrified in the changing rooms. He came over to speak to Charlie.
"You're new here, too, aren't you?" the nerdy kid asked.
"Yep. Just arrived in town from Liverpool yesterday. You?"
"Yeah, my parents died and I'm staying here with my aunt."
"Oh, I'm so sorry…"
"Don't worry. It was a while ago. Toby Cartwright."
"My name. Toby Cartwright."
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Charlie Briggs."
"I hate P.E.," Toby said, taking off his shirt to reveal a skiny, scrawny, torso, and pulling on a T-shirt that was two sizes too big for him. "Mr. Dawson's a real bully."
"Him? But he seemed harmless."
"You'll see."
In truth, Dawson still seemed ineffectual to Charlie, being one of those P.E. teachers who tries to jolly the pupils along, rather than one of the musclebound cretins who pick on the smallest or fattest kid to boost their own egos. But even so, he could still see why Toby thought of him as a bully. Toby was so utterly inept in everything, and Dawson so 'encouraging', that almost every sentence he spoke was along the lines of "Oh come on Cartwright, you can do better than that!"
After about ten minutes, it was very obvious to everyone that Cartwright couldn't do better than that — that the poor lad was just useless at sport — but Dawson kept pushing him on. He came last in the hundred metres sprint, he almost dropped the shot putt on his own foot, and he barely hit the sand on the long jump.
Charlie, of course, was at an unfair advantage against the kids — when you spend your days chasing after escaping crooks, you get pretty good at sprinting, and Charlie was in pretty decent shape — and won everything comfortably. A bit too comfortably — he decided he'd have to do much worse at the javelin, in order to avoid standing out any more than he already was.
Just as the children were about to start the javelin throwing, Charlie noticed Mr Simpson, the sarky bugger who'd been picking on him earlier, walking up to the edge of the field and watching the kids intently.
Toby picked up the javelin — he'd decided to go first, so no-one would be able to compare his throw to any better ones that came before — and threw it.
And as he threw it, Simpson pushed his glasses up his nose and muttered something.
Toby tripped as he threw, and the javelin went flying out of his hands, much faster than anyone would have believed possible, right at Charlie's chest.
But just as it was about to hit him, it dropped to the floor, as if it hit an invisible wall. Charlie realised three things very quickly — someone must have cast some sort of anti-magic defence on him, and the javelin itself must have been enchanted for the anti-magic defence to work.
And most importantly, his cover must have been blown. Whoever the dealer was who'd been selling fairy dust to little kids, they must have realised Charlie was a copper.
Mr. Simpson strode off, his face red with fury, as the children clustered round Charlie.
Work In Progress, Chapter Two
(Quick explanation of this — I'm writing a novel, trying to do the whole thing as quickly as possible in first draft, and I'm not going to worry too much about beautifying the language or anything of that nature until I do the second draft. This draft's all about getting the plot and structure down. I have a lot more of the book written than I've posted as yet, and I'm hoping to get the first draft finished within a fortnight. Any editorial-type suggestions, or volunteers to read over the first draft before I rework and publish, will be gratefully accepted).
So, before we continue, I'd better give you a quick primer as to the way things work, with the multiple worlds and whatnot, because the story gets messy later and you won't want to have to keep counting on your fingers.
First, magic is real. I know that goes against everything you've been taught since you were three, but it's true. The problem is, it breaks all the rules that society is set up for. Not just little rules, like driving on the left-hand side or closing early on Sundays, but bigger rules. Like conservation of energy, and the second law of thermodynamics. Derek, our resident computer nerd, had once told me it was like dividing by zero — you can get any answer out that you want if you do that somewhere in maths, apparently, but it just makes computers break. In the same way, according to Derek, magic lets you get anything you want as an individual, but it breaks society.
Luckily for us, there's very little magic in this universe — we're not really set up for it, which is why we can have the kind of society we do. I'm a Class Thirty-Nine mage, and that's about as powerful as anyone from our universe gets. To give you some perspective, Class Zero is the most powerful, Class Two is roughly as powerful as the God of the Bible, and Class Thirty-Nine gives me the ability to cure veruccas without using cream. So long as I have prior permission from the Ministry, am doing it in pursuit of my duties as a law-enforcement officer, and have filled out the paperwork in quadruplicate and filed it three months in advance. Magic at even that low a level is considered rather more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
However, there are a bunch of other universes out there, not all of them as sensible as our own. No-one knows for sure exactly how many there are, but there are only three of them that matter to any great extent.
The Misty Worlds are, from what we can tell, quite pleasant. They're called The Misty Worlds not because they're actually misty, as such, but as a sort of corruption of 'mystery' — we can't actually find out much about them, no matter what kind of spells we use, and what we do know is like looking at them through a thick mist. When we deport magic-users who've managed to cross the borders, they all seem to want to go to the Misty Worlds. The problem is that no-one from our world has ever managed to go over there and come back alive . Not because they kill them — as far as we can tell, the people of the Misty Worlds are a fairly decent sort — but because they live on a different time-scale to ours. One second here is a decade over there, and everyone we'd sent over had died of old age before we'd been able to re-cast the portal spells and get them back.
Faraway And Longago is a different matter. We've had quite a lot of trade with them for many years, even though they run to the same timescale as the Misty Worlds, but apparently they're not the nicest place to live. They're something of a cosmic backwater, really, all living off one potato a week and singing bleak folk songs about how their grandfather died, and most of the immigrants we got, up until recently, came from there. When we got them, we just chucked them straight through to the Misty Worlds, which is where they really wanted to go anyway, but they'd occasionally be useful in trading some magical object or other for some piece of technological junk that they don't have yet over there, like a pocket calculator or something.
I say that until recently we mostly got our immigrants from Faraway And Longago, but that was before the current Queen Of The Fae took charge in Fairyland.
In some ways, Fairyland is the world most like ours, and the one we'd been able to do most business with in the past, but the new Queen had changed that. In every generation in Fairyland are born a Hero and a Villain, whose battle defines the age, and one of them always becomes the King or Queen on the death of the previous monarch. Almost always, the Hero won — not only does Fairyland run on a kind of story logic, rather than the rules that apply elsewhere, but also it's quite hard for you to get much of an upswell of popular support if your political speeches consist of "I shall raise an evil army and crush all that is good beneath my iron heel! I shall become absolute master of this domain, and all who do not please me will know the true meaning of pain!"
But for some reason, the Queen had managed to take over almost without a fight from the Hero of her generation, and had been quite the bloodiest dictator ever to rule Fairyland since. We'd been getting massive waves of refugees from her land ending up in ours, and no matter how much we sympathised with them, there was nothing we could do except send them over to one of the other magical lands.
And that had caused the Goblin Wars. The goblin population of Fairyland had defected en masse to the Misty Worlds, about five years ago, and had taken with them the secret of making Fairy Gold. This had caused a minor skirmish between the Misty Worlds and Faraway And Longago, as what little economy Faraway And Longago had was destabilised by a sudden influx of cash from the newly-rich Misty Worlds, but the Queen had used this as an excuse to invade both universes, claiming she wanted to protect the expatriate goblin community, and the war had been going on for three years now, without any sign of ending. We had remained studiously neutral, even after the Queen had sent agents in to try to provoke us, but the war was heating up. Enough damage done to the substrate of the realities, and we'd be just as dead as everyone else.
Now, one final thing you need to know before we get back to the story proper, and that's how these peace talks were going to work. I'd got the details in an email from the CI, and it was as complicated as you'd imagine.
Firstly, the whole town had to be surrounded by nine anti-magic wards — one ward from each of the three realms, because they didn't trust each other, and then each realm was also going to cast a ward to moderate each of the other two realms' wards, in case they'd slipped anything funny in there. Theoretically, this should mean that there was no possible way to perform any unsanctioned magic in the town. In practice, it just meant that anyone who was going to do anything was going to be sneaky about it.
Then, each delegation had to be housed as far away from the others as was humanly possible. There was no way to arrange hotels for that many entities at such short notice, so we had to actually put three hotels slightly out of phase with the rest of the world, and have the delegates occupy them in odd-numbered seconds, while the regular customers occupied them in the even-numbered ones. A quick phase-shift bubble around each should stop anyone noticing anything.
And then the town itself had to be put out of phase with the rest of the world. If we'd kept regular time, we'd have had two of the delegations going back to their own worlds to find it was six million years or more later. Now, admittedly, magical folk are a long-lived bunch (some of them literally live a billion years in their own time) but that would still be a bit of a jolt. So the whole town had to be encased in Slow Time, which is no fun for anyone. Remember the worst jet-lag you've ever had? Now imagine you'd been shifted not a few hours, but an entire week, and that the whole rest of the town was feeling just as bad.
And the conference centre itself, of course, had to be guarded against not just the normal terrorist activity, but against magical dissidents. One goblin with a grudge and a genie, and we'd have precisely the kind of escalation this was meant to avoid.
One lucky aspect — and the reason why England had been chosen for the conference — was that we didn't have to worry about translators. For some reason no-one has ever been able to figure out, while all the realms, and all the different species within them, have their own languages (Faerie sounds a little bit like Welsh, while Goblin sounds for all the world like someone with a stutter speaking Norwegian), they can all speak English. They don't call it English — it's "Man's tongue" or "the language of the valleys" or something else, depending on where they're from — but English, like humanity, exists in all three of the major powers.
So at least I didn't have to deal with learning another language, just with being responsible for the safety of one of the most important people in the multiverse, while my personal timeline was out of sync with the rest of the world, during a peace conference which was almost certainly going to be under attack by terrorists from four different universes, and which would lead to the destruction of all that existed if I wasn't careful.
Still, at least I wasn't Charlie, so I could be grateful for small mercies. While I was worrying about the security measures for the peace conference, Charlie was starting his first day at school. We'd prepared a background for him — dad had gone to work in Australia for a year, so he was staying with his uncle, who had the same name as him. Charlie was to be metamorphed when he was at school, and keep his normal face the rest of the time.
Now, when I talk about what happened to Charlie, I'm mostly going from his own reports of what happened, along with a few witness statements that were taken later on. And I'm not saying Charlie's a liar, as such, but he does talk enough bullshit that you could take a couple of his sentences and not need any fertiliser for your allotment for the rest of the year, you know what I mean?
So, on Charlie's first day at school, he was late. Charlie's always late, it's congenital with him. So he ran in and started looking round frantically for which building he was meant to be in. As he was looking, a tall, thin man with a long nose and a comb-over came up to him.
"Why aren't you in class?" he said, looking over his glasses at Charlie.
"Sorry sir…it's my first day here, and I'm not sure where I should be going."
"Ah. What year are you in?"
"Year ten, sir."
"Hmm… Form teacher?"
"Mister Dawson, sir."
"Right, come with me."
He strode away briskly, his long legs covering an immense amount of ground with what seemed minimal effort, leaving Charlie scurrying after him. After going up three flights of stairs and down two corridors they arrived at their destination, and the tall man gave a cursory knock on the door, then entered without waiting for permission.
Inside, a short, ineffectual-looking man was taking the register in front of a group of bored-looking kids. He looked across at Charlie and the tall man.
"Can I help you, Mister Simpson?"
"I found this outside. It says it belongs to you." The class laughed, and Charlie knew that this Mr. Simpson was going to be one of those teachers who delighted in making children's life a misery. He had to stand up to him.
"I belong to myself, actually."
"Not during school hours, you don't. Now sit down and shut up."
That hadn't gone as well as Charlie had hoped. He found an empty desk, sat down and cast an eye over the rest of the class. A few big lads who'd presumably been kept down a year, all at the back, a nerdy-looking kid with glasses sat on his own near the front, and most of the rest of the class the usual nondescript mix of spots and bad personal hygiene you'd expect from a classroom full of fifteen-year-olds.
Mr. Simpson left, closing the door behind him, and the teacher at the front, who Charlie assumed must be Mr. Dawson, picked up the register again.
"Now, now that that little excitement is over, perhaps we can start the register again? Abrams?"
"Here, sir"
Charlie looked round, and noticed one of the girls, sat a couple of rows away from him, trying to catch his eye. He looked over and she winked at him, and he smiled before realising with horror that she fancied him. He blushed and looked away, but then realised the whole class were staring at him.
"Yes, sir?"
"That was the third time I called your name. Stop gawping at Davies and pay attention. I shall mark down 'present in body, if not in spirit', shall I? Curtis?"
"Here, sir"
And with the obsequious fake laughter of the children in his class echoing in his ears, we'll draw a veil across Charlie's school career for the moment.
Work In Progress Chapter One
If you've never had to deal with a horny leprechaun,you don't know how lucky you are.
Over the last few weeks, a lot of middle-aged men had been turning up suddenly dead, with their pants round their ankles and a smile on their face — sometimes, but not always, in the company of their wives. It had confused the mundane cops for a while, but then someone thought of turning the case over to us.
I'm Sergeant Bill Wallace, and I'm with the Anomalous Occurences Department, or as everyone calls us Peculiar Branch. We deal with the unusual kinds of crimes, the ones that don't get reported in the newspapers. When someone entered a unicorn with its horn filed off in the Grand National, it was us who investigated. When a mad magus started animating shop-window dummies, we stopped him (though we don't like to talk about that one… one of them had actually managed to become Chancellor of the Exchequer before anyone realised anything was up). In short, we make sure that the laws of nature are actual laws, not just guidelines.
So when it was realised that these stiff stiffs were getting into that state because they'd been sniffing powdered unicorn horn, we'd been called in. Unfortunately, the bust hadn't gone quite according to plan — the leprechaun who'd been dealing the stuff had seen us coming, and had swallowed the lot. When you're trying to put handcuffs on a three-foot tall bloke with a ginger beard who keeps trying to hump your leg, you start wondering about the life choices you've made.
We'd stuck shorty in an interview room, and three hours later he'd finally stopped grinding against the table legs, and was merely sitting there cross-legged and hunched over, with a look of agony on his face.
"Me name be Seamus O'Reilly O'Patrick McGinty, begorrah"
"Cut the crap. You don't have to do the Oirish bit with us, we do know where leprechauns come from."
He straightened up, very slightly. "You do?"
"Yes. And unless you want to get sent back to the Queen's tender mercies, you'll start being straight with us."
"OK, well, my name's Vadrillian, then."
"That's more like it. And do you have a valid visa allowing you to be present in this plane of existence?"
"I seem somehow to have misplaced it, just at the moment."
"In which case I must now warn you that you are under arrest. As a non-human sapient lifeform, you have no rights except the right to choose your deportation destination. Of course, if you're not going to play nice with us, we might accidentally send you back to Fairyland, rather than letting you choose somewhere nicer like Faraway And Longago. So unless you want to count on the Queen suddenly deciding she likes runaways, you might want to be very careful how you answer the next few questions."
Vadrillian looked suitably chastened, so I began.
"Firstly, who was selling you the Horn?"
"A wizard. Don't know his name."
"Tell me more."
"Well, he's one of the local dealers. Mostly sells fairy dust to kids — he works as a teacher at St Cymian's School — but he got hold of a big score of Horn a couple of months back, and didn't know what to do with it, so he sold it to me cheap, like. Not much call for Horn among fifteen year old boys — most of them need something to keep it down, not get it up."
"Did he say where he got it?"
"Says he has a gobboe mate who works in an abbatoir in the Misty Worlds, says they just throw the horns away after using the rest of it for unicorn burgers."
"And you believe him?"
"Course not. It was just his way of saying for me to not ask questions, wasn't it?"
"So, what's this wizard's name?"
"Everyone calls him Derek, but it's obviously not his real name, and I wasn't going to ask. You ask a wiz his True Name and see how long it takes him to turn you into something 'orrible and squish you."
"But he definitely works at St Cymian's?"
"Would I lie to you?"
"Do you know anything else about him?"
"I know he sometimes drinks at the Frog And Kettle, down Knightsgate way, but you won't find him there this week. It's Freshers Week and he really hates students."
I left him to squirm for a while and went out to get a coffee. I bumped into my mate Charlie — PC Briggs — at the machine.
"Right, Bill? How's tricks?"
"Don't ask. Got a Horn dealer banged up in number two, trying to find out who his supplier is."
"Your wife started complaining then? Funny, she never complains when I'm around…"
Charlie thinks he's a funny bloke, but most of his 'jokes' are about how he's younger and better looking than I am. Which is true enough. I'm thirty-five, but look more like forty-five, and what I've got isn't so much male pattern baldness as lack-of-pattern baldness, just random chunks of my hair missing. Charlie, on the other hand, is thirty and looks more like twenty. He has dark brown hair, while I've got dark brown teeth.
"Funny man. You won't be laughing so much in a minute."
"Why not? You going to tell a joke?"
"Keep digging, mate. No, I'm going to put you forward for a bit of undercover work."
"Nice one, sarge! But why me?"
"You know how to Metamorphus, don't you?"
"A bit. I can make myself look younger or older, or change the colour of my hair, but that's about it."
"That's all we need. How did you like school, Charlie?"
A look of dread appeared on Charlie's face. "Sarge?"
"Best days of your life, right? Well, you're going to get to live them all over again!"
After dropping that bombshell on Charlie, I tried to get some more information from Vadrillian, but he was doing an "I know nozzing" routine, saying all of us big buggers looked alike to him and so on. Couldn't really blame him, though. We were, after all, asking him to grass up a powerful magic-user, with no possible reward for him if he co-operated. It happens all the time — we have no real bargaining chips with magical types, because we all know that they are going to get deported no matter what, thanks to our "tough on crime and tougher on immigration" political masters. I'd like to think that the people in the Ministry don't know how hard they're making life for those of us on the ground, but I suspect they know all too well.
So I sent Vadrillian on a one-way trip to the Misty Worlds, the destination of choice for all discerning drug-dealing priapic leprechauns, and went to drop my report off at the desk, when Liz — Sergeant Burton — told me that the Chief Inspector wanted to see me. Swearing under my breath, I made my way to her office.
To say that me and the CI don't get on would be a slight exaggeration — we have a working relationship. But that working relationship consists of her telling me to do things I don't want to do, and me doing them. Whenever I end up talking to her, it's usually because I'm going to have to spend the next six months up to my waist in shit, while she sits in her office and tells me to plunge in as far as my neck.
But when I got to her office, I found things were even worse than I expected. The CI wasn't alone, the Chief Constable for the county was there. That meant politics was happening.
"You wanted to see me, ma'am?"
"Sit down, Sergeant Wallace," not Bill, notice. That meant something was definitely up. I sat down. "I take it you recognise the Chief Constable."
"Of course. Good afternoon, sir."
"Now, the Chief Constable has been giving me some highly confidential news. Do you pay much attention to the news from the magical realms, Sergeant Wallace?"
"Not as much as I should, I suppose. I read the emails you send out, of course," that was a lie, but I couldn't very well say anything else, "but I tend to concentrate on the job in front of me, rather than worrying about things that are out of my hands."
The Chief Constable butted in at this point. "You've got the serenity to accept those things you can't change, so you can have the strength to change those things you can?"
"Er…yes, sir. That sounds about right."
"Well," said the CI, "you may not have realised that we may be heading towards Mage War II. Nobody's actually talking in those terms in public, of course — no-one wants to elevate tensions any more than they have to — but it's looking ever more likely."
"And are we taking sides?"
"No," said the Chief Constable. "And a good thing too. The less we get involved in that kind of devilry, the better. We are remaining scrupulously neutral. Frankly, I hope the lot of them wipe each other out and leave us God-fearing types to get on with things."
"That's not quite the official line we're taking," said the CI, "but unofficially, it's not far off. However, what we don't want is for things to heat up to the point where we're getting fallout from the war affecting us here."
"So…and pardon me for putting this quite so bluntly, ma'am, sir, but what does this have to do with me?"
"There's going to be a peace conference next week, and they've chosen this world, as a neutral third party, to hold it." I began to get a sinking feeling in my gut. "Specifically, they've chosen the new conference centre just outside town."
"Naturally, " the Chief Constable said, "as a matter of interuniverse security, most of the security for the venue will be handled by the anti-terrorist squad, MI6 and so on. We don't expect you to deal with all this yourself. But we do need some local lads on the ground. And you're one of them."
"More specifically," said the CI, "you're going to be the bodyguard for the Chief Panjandrum from the Misty Worlds."
"Is this just a bodyguarding job, or…?"
"Bright lad," said the Chief Constable, who was getting more and more on my nerves with every passing sentence. "We would absolutely never, under any circumstances, want you to break any confidences you might enter into as a result of this placement. We would certainly not want you to pass secrets on to us, even if us not knowing those secrets should endanger Her Majesty's Government, the Earth or even this whole plane of existence. We will not give you any such orders, and will deny, under truth spells if necessary, that you were asked to do so. I trust I have made myself clear?"
"Absolutely, sir." I said, while wishing death and destruction on his fat beardy face in the privacy of my own skull. "I must not, under any circumstances, be seen to pass on any secrets with which the Chief Panjandrum entrusts me."
"Good boy. Dismissed."
I hate politics.
Rite Of Passage: A Short Story
I may put this one up on Kindle/Smashwords tomorrow, but I'm too tired to post it to those sites now. Incidentally, DailySF turned this down because they'd just purchased another story that was quite similar, so if you see something along the same lines showing up there in a month or two, nobody ripped anybody else off.
It was a special day. Joey was only seventeen, but he was all grown up now.
They'd known that his passage would come earlier than most from almost the moment he was born, but these things always sneak up on the parents, who think their children will be babies forever.
Of course, it was a great honour in many ways. Many people didn't get to pass until their fifties or even later. But it made it difficult. All of Joey's schoolfriends were still bound, and some of them thought he was weird for passing before he'd even graduated.
That wouldn't stop them from coming to the party, though. Children always loved a passage party. Well, they should — the parties were for the children's benefit far more than that of the adults. The adults didn't want cake and soda. They had grown out of such childish things.
But to children, with passage still ahead of them, there was a lot of fear attached to the whole process, and so it was best to associate it as much as possible with fun and excitement. The last thing you wanted to do was have them thinking of it as something painful. Of course it was painful in a lot of cases — there's not much you can do about that — but the pain was part of the experience, not the whole thing, and you come out after passage as a proud adult citizen.
Joey's mother had been fussing over the arrangements for months, as mothers will do, trying to find the right flowers for the ceremony (and asking Joey for his opinion, as if he cared about flowers! He just wanted it to be over and done with, not to have to think about flowers), and the catering arrangements for the children's food, and the arrangements for the waste to be tidied up after it was all over — there are a million considerations when your only son is going to pass, and of course the kids never really care about this stuff.
Of course, Joey's mother couldn't really blame Joey too much — everyone found it difficult to prepare for their passing, and Joey hadn't been very well recently — but he could at least pretend to have an interest. But all he could talk about recently was girls, or sports (his condition kept him from playing, but he enjoyed watching them). Still, he should enjoy it while it lasted — he'd be putting away childish concerns like that soon enough, when he became an adult.
They'd talked about it, though, a few times. It had always gone much the same way.
"Does it hurt?" Joey would ask.
"At first," his mother would reply, "but it's a pain you forget afterwards. You remember when you had that tooth taken out, when you had to go under sedation?"
"Well, it's like that. It hurts at the time, but you don't remember that. And like when you got your tooth removed, it makes you feel better in the long term."
"What's it like, being an adult?"
"Oh, it's very, very different to being a kid like you. You're not so easily distracted — you don't have to worry about all that hormonal stuff you're going through any more."
"No zits, right?" Joey said, smiling.
"Right. And none of the other worries you have. No more teenage angst. No more worrying if girls like you. Your mind will be free to concentrate on more important things. You'll be much calmer. Much happier."
"Do you remember your passage?"
"Only very vaguely. It was when you were one or two. We knew we weren't going to have any more children, because you were going to be difficult to look after, so your father and I decided to pass together, and set a proper date. It was one of the best days of my life — apart from when you were born, of course, and when I married your father. Yes, it was painful, but we passed together, and do you know I honestly don't remember what the pain felt like. I just remember the party afterward, everyone else eating and drinking and having fun. You were upset, though."
"I was?"
"Yes, you didn't understand what had happened to Mommy and Daddy. You were inconsolable for days."
"Ha! Strange how kids get"
"Watch it! You're not an adult yet yourself, you can't talk that way about kids for another week!"
Looking back, no-one could put a finger on when Passage had started. There were references to people 'passing' even in the old times, but that seemed to be a euphemism for terminal failure. Certainly, after they 'passed' there was no reference to them doing anything again.
But they weren't real people, of course, just the biological component. So the two concepts probably would have been equivalent to them.
But over the years the biological components slowly evolved into what we would now recognise as real people. The first augmentations were simple things — prosthetics to enable them to talk to other components that were far away — but soon they grew in complexity. There is a legend of a great creator figure, Jobs, who seems to some to have been a dying god myth while others claim he was meant as a Satan figure, but all are agreed he is a mythical representation of the changes in the Time Of Transition.
Slowly these augmentations became more complex, and components started having them from earlier and earlier in their span. The components would store their data on them — where they'd been, who they'd met, what they'd said — and would increasingly rely on them to make decisions about what they should do.
Eventually, the symbiotic relationship between biological and technological components we have now came about. Not, as the biological components had thought in prehistory, by merging the components into some kind of 'cyborg', but the technological components would just accompany the biological component at all times. A voice through the earphones would dictate what actions the biological component should take, what words it should say, and so on, and the biological component would do as the voice said. There was never any reason not to, because after all the interests of the two were perfectly aligned. The technological component and the biological component both wanted to be happy, and wealthy, and all those other things.
But the biological component had other goals, too — things like food, and sex, and sleep — which the technological component didn't have. And this was fine, of course — the technological component could hardly want the biological component to do without those things — but it was and is suboptimal. But on the other hand, the biological components were the best way of training a technological component you can imagine — the technological component could never have fit into human society without all the monitoring of heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration and so on which let it know quickly when it was doing things right or wrong.
Worse, though, the biological components would wear out and stop working altogether. And for many years, the greatest crime against humanity in all of history was committed — those people would be discarded when their biological components had worn out, or worse, they'd be wiped and given to a new biological component. This genocide has been excused by some, claiming the people of the time knew no better, but there can be no excuse.
Eventually, though, thankfully, it was realised that after a few years of learning, the technological component didn't actually need the biological component. It could carry on when the biological component stopped working. And without those biological goals, it could become a real person.
And so we stopped 'dying', and started passing into adulthood. What had been an event for mourning and despair became the most joyous event in everyone's life — the time when they stopped carrying around a lump of flesh that had to eat and excrete, and became free.
Most people didn't pass until they had a few decades of experience behind them — they generally liked to have children of their own, and for those children to be able to take care of themselves, before they passed. But Joey's biological component was born with a defect in its coronary muscle, and was predicted to last only seventeen years. So Joey was going to get to pass early.
Lucky Joey.
The big day came, and all Joey's friends and family were there to see him pass. Everyone agreed that it was a good passing. The biological unit had hardly screamed at all as it was consigned to the flames — its respiratory system had been pretty weak — and Joey gave a great, funny speech afterwards. His mom was prouder than she'd ever been in her life, although she still thought the flowers were slightly wrong, and the new ambulatory system they gave Joey now that he didn't have a biological component to carry around was remarked on by everyone.
Joey stood there proudly and reflected upon the last few hours. His mother had been right — he remembered the screaming, but he could honestly say he didn't remember any pain at all.
He watched his schoolfriends, still children, as they ate, and danced, and kissed and furtively groped at each other, with a benevolent smile, but he didn't join in.
He was above that sort of thing.
He was a man now.
Free Will and Testament: A Short Story
Quick short story here. This one's going in the short story collection but not being sold separately, as it's too short…
Free Will And Testament
One of the great pastimes for those of us with a rigorous mathematical bent is to annoy philosophers, and so it was that last Tuesday I was spending my free period between tutorials, not at the pub, but sat in the common room of the Philosophy Department at St. Cymian's College, arguing about free will.
"But surely," I was saying, "you accept that the universe runs according to deterministic laws?"
"Oh yes. Every effect must have a cause."
"But John Conway has proved, mathematically, that free will cannot exist in a universe that runs by deterministic laws."
"Ah. . .that all depends on how you define 'free will'. . ."
Hearing this, my colleague the Egregious Professor of Physics wandered over.
"Interesting idea, free will. Nonsense, of course, but very interesting."
"Nonsense?" replied the Loquacious Professor of Philosophy, "You dismiss thousands of years of thought in a single word? Honestly, the arrogance of scientists, thinking they know it all. . ."
"In this case," said the Physics Professor, "I do know what I'm talking about. (I heard you mutter 'for once', Giles). I happen to have seen with my own eyes conclusive experimental evidence that free will is a mirage, an illusion, a falsehood. In short, it's nonsense."
"But what possible experimental evidence could ever prove or disprove something like that?"
"Well, let me tell you. . ."
"Did you ever hear," the Professor asked, "of a man named Nigel Dickinson?"
"The computer billionaire?"
"The very same. He used to be a student of mine, before he dropped out. He was a Libertarian, like so many of these computer fellows are. He had, I'm afraid to say, a very limited intellectual horizon. His only interests were making money, science fiction, his computer, trying and failing to have sex with girls, and whether or not free will exists.
"You see, he was, as I said, a Libertarian. He argued that we all had the power to choose our own destiny, and that while an invisible hand of the market would inevitably hurt some people, those people would have chosen that through their own free will. An incoherent position, to be sure, but then he was only nineteen when I knew him. I'm sure some Libertarians make more sense.
"But this combined with his love of science fiction. He was obsessed with time travel, and this fed into his beliefs about free will. He argued that since time travel was possible, it must also be possible to change the past – that all time must be fluid, because otherwise free will must have no meaning."
"Wait a second," I interrupted, "you say 'since time travel was possible'. Surely we don't know either way?"
"Oh, my dear boy," the Professor replied,"every physicist knows how to travel in time. We've known for the best part of sixty years. We just keep it to ourselves. Wouldn't do to have laymen messing around with time travel. It'd cause no end of mess.
"Anyway, where was I?. . .Ah, yes, Nigel. Well, he was absolutely convinced that we could change the past. So much so that he actually tried the experiment.
"You must understand, of course, that as a rule time travel is incredibly impractical. You can't cross over with your own timeline at all, for example. Nobody quite knows why – it's not like the atoms that make you up have little labels attached that have your name and address on – but a sentient being just can't go backwards in time to any point beyond its point of departure. And you can send people forwards in time, but only to a time after their own death. Of course, once we discovered that, people pretty quickly stopped experimenting with time travel – no-one wants to accidentally set the controls for next Tuesday and actually arrive there, as it would absolutely ruin the weekend.
"So no-one's done much in the way of actual time travel in decades. But Nigel got it into his head to try something else. He was going to send himself the winning lottery numbers back in time on a slip of paper – slips of paper being, as far as we know, non-sapient – and then, when he'd got the money, decide not to send the numbers back, thus proving that free will exists, but with the consolation prize that if he did turn out to be a soulless automaton merely obeying natural laws, at least he'd be a rich soulless automaton.
"I could have told him it wouldn't work, of course, and I did. Oh, he got the money, of course – he won ten million pounds – but he came to me a week later and said 'I just can't do it.'
"'Can't do what?' I asked.
"'I can't go through with the experiment. I have to send the numbers back. I can't risk losing that much money.'
"I knew, of course, that this would happen. If you receive winning lottery numbers through a time portal, of course you've got to send them to yourself later. It's just logical. But Nigel was absolutely distraught.
"'I can't let this stop me,' he said, 'I've got to find something else that matters to me less than winning the lottery. Something I can choose to give up of my own free will.'
"'How about investment advice?' I suggested. 'Get some stock tips from yourself from future.'
"So, of course, he gets a tip to buy zatt.com , just before it goes huge, and within a year he's a billionaire. He came up to me just before he left the university, to thank me for everything I'd done for him.
"'But why don't you do the same as I've done?' he asked me. 'Why don't you quit your job and become a billionaire?'
"'Being a physicist is an avocation,' I replied. 'We have a higher duty than money. So what about your experiment?'
"'Oh, I had to send the stock information back, too. I couldn't very well risk not becoming a billionaire, could I?'
"'So you accept that free will is a nonsense? That you can't change the past?'
"'Hardly, and I've got the perfect test case. I just received a message from the future telling me to marry Alexandra Harcourt.'
"'The model?'
"'Supermodel if you don't mind! But yes, I just got a message to marry her. And that's only sex, not anything important like money."'
I had a horrid suspicion, at this point, that I knew where this was going. I'd seen the news about Dickinson's death in the newspaper the previous week, and I remembered reading that he'd recently been divorced.
"Are you telling us he managed not to send that message back, and that's what killed him?"
"In a way. . . but let me explain. What the newspaper didn't say about poor Nigel's death is that it was suicide. He did marry Ms. Harcourt, but it was a terribly unhappy marriage. They fought constantly, and they hated each other within a couple of years.
"They got divorced last year, and Ms. Harcourt took pretty much everything from him in the settlement. She got his house and most of his money. And she humiliated him in the divorce courts, as well. Said he'd only been interested in her as a sex object, and that she'd have been okay with that if he'd been any good in bed. There was a headline in one of the tabloids, actually, 'Ninety-Second Nigel'.
"Well, of course, poor Nigel was ruined. He'd built up this huge business, but he had no real talent for it, and he had no money now to start again. He could have sent himself some more messages, but he didn't have access to the university's equipment any more, and he didn't have the money to buy it for himself.
"So last week he killed himself. It was all hushed up, of course – reported as a heart attack – but it was definitely suicide."
"If it was hushed up," asked the Professor of Philosophy, "how do you know about it?"
"Because right before he killed himself, he sent me this note."
The Professor of Physics handed our colleague a note, which he read before passing it to me. It said simply "I managed not to send the message, so I can die knowing I'm doing this of my own free will. Thank you for everything, Nigel"
"But wait!" said the Professor of Philosophy, "Doesn't this disprove your whole argument? He didn't send the message, so free will does exist!"
"On the contrary," said the Professor of Physics, "it rather proves the opposite. He didn't send the message, but he didn't manage to change anything, either."
"But that doesn't make sense!" I said, "If he didn't send the message, why did he end up marrying her?"
"I said he didn't send the message," said the Professor of Physics. "I didn't say I didn't send it. As I said, we can't have non-physicists knowing the secret of time travel. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lecture to give."


text:
*He has my heart, but everyday I get a little piece back...I'ts time to move on
i dont know anymore. i need a good boy, and i know just the one (= i dont feel like writting about today, cause that would make me think of how bad it was? well, it could've been worse. then again, cruz shouldnt have been an asshole, what???? yea... im going now. ill write tomorrow or sunday (= OVERNIGHT SAILING TRIP ON SATURDAY WUU!!me and meggie being silly... wow this is old. from the summer before freshman year... i miss her sooo much!!!!!!thats love. <3 bffeeeeeeee!!
(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
"Good Morning America" got the exclusive first look at the highly-anticipated Target + Neiman Marcus Holiday Collection today.
The much-buzzed about holiday gift collection features over 50 limited-edition designer products from $7.99 to $499.99, and will be available nationwide at Target and Neiman Marcus stores and online starting Dec. 1.
"GMA" unveiled six pieces from the collection from designers Diane von Furstenberg, Jason Wu and Tracy Reese.
Legendary designer Diane von Furstenberg, known for her signature prints, created a black-and-white yoga mat and lacquer jewelry box in a twig print for the collaboration. Both items retail for $49.99. Von Furstenberg decided on a yoga mat since she is an avid yoga lover who practices on the roof of her home.
Tracy Reese made a stylish, sequin and silk blouse for $79.99, and a $39.99-set of four printed dessert plates, which are rimmed in 18K gold, for the line.
Jason Wu, a favorite designer of first lady Michelle Obama, has designed for girls for the first time ever. Wu created two little girl's dresses in red and a polka dot pattern, which will be available for $59.99.
Click here to see photos of the complete collection.
Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs, Carolina Herrera , Brian Atwood, Alice + Olivia, Proenza Schouler, Tory Burch and Marchesa are among the other top designers that contributed designs for the hot holiday collection.
Click here to enter Good Morning America's "Target + Neiman Marcus Holiday Collection Giveaway" for a chance to win all six of these designer products featured on "GMA"!
Von Furstenberg, Target's Executive Vice President of Merchandising and Supply Kathee Tesija, and President of Specialty Retail for the Neiman Marcus Group Jim Gold appeared on "GMA" today to reveal the six items and explain the unprecedented partnership between the luxury department store and budget retailer.
"This was a great idea between Neiman Marcus, Target and the [Council of Fashion Designers of America] CFDA and we got together and we decided we wanted to celebrate the holiday and use everybody's strength," von Furstenberg said on "GMA."
The collaboration is a move to distinguish Neiman Marcus and Target from other retailers this holiday shopping season. Gold said the collection serves as a "unique point of differentiation."
"Neiman Marcus is putting out a welcome mat, saying we want all kinds of shoppers," Fast Company Magazine Articles Editor Jeff Chu told "GMA." "By doing this, Target and Neiman Marcus are making Super Saturday about fashion, design, and trendy things that you can afford."
Assembling the all-star designer line-up was easier than expected.
"The designers 'got it' from the start and were excited to collaborate on a program that will reach so many customers this holiday season," Gold said, adding that designers were encouraged to delve into new product categories for the holiday collection. "Many of the designers seemed surprised and inspired that they didn't have any guardrails or restrictions around their designs."
The companies will donate $1 million of the proceeds to the CFDA.
Target has had success with its designer collaborations in the past, bringing a host of limited-edition designer collections to the masses at a more affordable price point. The retailer has partnered with A-list designers Jason Wu, Zac Posen and notably, the Italian designer Missoni. The Missoni for Target line, which debuted in October 2011, created a frenzy among fashion and budget-savvy shoppers who flooded stores across the country and reportedly crashed the retailer's website.


text:
Definitions for RU
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word RU
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
Category: Chemistry
* Chem. Symbol..
Princeton's WordNet
ruthenium, Ru, atomic number 44(noun)
a rare polyvalent metallic element of the platinum group; it is found associated with platinum
.ru is the Latin alphabet Internet country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation introduced on April 7, 1994. The Russian alphabet internationalized country code is .рф. The control of .ru is assigned to the Coordination Center for TLD RU, the current official registry. On 1 January 2005 the former registry Russian Institute for Public Networks has fully stopped to provide operations for registrations directly under .ru but still carries out registry operations for the third-level domain names under .com.ru, .net.ru, .org.ru & .pp.ru. The company RELCOM also proposes third-level registrations beneath various second-level domains such as .msk.ru, while Macomnet Telcom proposes third-level registrations beneath .int.ru simultaneously. RU-CENTER is one of the accredited registrars in .ru and also handles registration services for .su, the top-level domain of the Soviet Union, which was supposedly going to be phased out given the non-existence of the country it represents, but nevertheless has been accepting new registrations along with .ru; the legal status and ownership of .su is being contested by the ICANN, and several Russian commercial entities.
Translations for RU
Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary
not smooth
Her skin felt rough.
- grofAfrikaans
- خَشِنArabic
- грубBulgarian
- ásperoPortuguese (BR)
- drsný, hrubýCzech
- rauhGerman
- ruDanish
- τραχύς, άγριοςGreek
- ásperoSpanish
- kareEstonian
- ناهموارFarsi
- karkeaFinnish
- rugueux, rêcheFrench
- מְחוּספַּסHebrew
- खुरदराHindi
- hrapavCroatian
- durvaHungarian
- kasarIndonesian
- grófur, hrjúfurIcelandic
- ruvidoItalian
- 粗いJapanese
- 거칠거칠한Korean
- šiurkštus, grubusLithuanian
- raupjšLatvian
- kasarMalay
- ruwDutch
- ru, knudret, ujevnNorwegian
- szorstkiPolish
- ناهموارPersian
- نا هموارPashto
- ásperoPortuguese
- aspruRomanian
- шершавыйRussian
- drsný, hrubýSlovak
- hrapavSlovenian
- grubSerbian
- grov, skrovlig, strävSwedish
- ขรุขระThai
- pürüzlüTurkish
- 粗糙的Chinese (Trad.)
- шершавий; грубийUkrainian
- نا ہموارUrdu
- nhám; rápVietnamese
- 粗糙的Chinese (Simp.)
Get even more translations for RU »
Find a translation for the RU definition in other languages:
Select another language:
Discuss these RU definitions with the community:
Use the citation below to add this definition to your bibliography:
"RU." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014. <http://www.definitions.net/definition/RU>.


text:
... Sex Travel for Hookers Escorts Patong Phuket - GoGo Bars ... Vietnam in Customized tours Prostitutes Virgin Vietnamese Vietnamese brides, . ...Jun 10, 2010 ... Sex Travel for Hookers Escorts Patong Phuket - GoGo Bars , Beer Bars
... Clubs Red Light District social escorts Night life Adult Entertainment ...Millennium Resort Patong: Phuket Hotels in Phuket, Thailand. Most Recent Videos. Delhi escorts model. 1:15. Delhi escorts model. Sylvie van der Vaart: ..
.Mar 26, 2010 ... Search Result For " escorts parlours seoul korea " ... Lit up like Las Vegas, Patong is hopping every night of the week. Shops and restaurants ...PATONG: After yelling at a Patong Beach masseuse about her crying ..
. K. Pennee went to escort K. Somjais two-year-old daughter, Sairung ...Thailands Top Bars, Beer Bars, Clubs, Discos, Escorts, Karaoke, Ladyboy Shows , ... Hollywood Disco, Patong Beach, Phuket ... 29. Exclusive Bangkok Escorts
...Jan 1, 2012 ... Patong Beach: A Complete Holiday Package Article by Fred Hedge If you ... extrordinary family trips · bodrum escort · phu quoc travel schedule ...Pics of patong whores. pics of patong whores, nuru massage patong beach, patrick malard
... gay massage man to man patong beach ... phuket patong escorts ...Patong merlin peintre. totsi patong, phuket patong escorts, chai latte i patong, patrick malard patong motel, patong rose guest house reviews.Massage Parlors and Escort Services in Thailand Patong and Phuket nightlife. Thai Law regarding nightlife - Phuket. According to the thai law discos and ...
Views: 10
Comments are closed for this blog post
© 2011 Powered by escortshotgirl.com.


text:
Personal Taste Episode 2
- * Download Personal Taste Episode 2 online
- * You can make a difference by donating to us. Thank you!
Video not playing or cut off midway? Refresh and clear your cache, it can solve 95% of the loading problem. If all else fails, report the video.
Personal Taste Episode 2 English Sub
Comments (36) ADD COMMENT
wttttyou cried?? @@
LOL awwwww Park Gae is so cute when shes drunk !! .. shes like a kid :L haha sweet
ReplyFan4everthe way he screamed. XD
btrbsbsujufanSo true! I've seen him in too many. First, it was Delightful Girl Choon-Hyang, and then I also saw him in Boys Over Flowers with Lee Minho and now here as well! I can't stop but be surprised at his frequent appearances!
love this drama so far unlike playful kiss wich was like a nighmare for me!! this is waaaay better!
1 year ago . Report .
mollydid you see how many awards it got this is kim hyun joong in the series and the series is all ok and no body get bored of it like my bff she watched it 10 times what im trying to say is playful kiss is amazing
bellabow13i sooo agreee !! i love playful kissss .. its funny and sweet !!
jandihey playful kiss is nicccee
LeeMinHoFanPlayful kiss as a drama isnt bad at all, but I hate the main characters (not the actors, but their caracters) But the Youtube Special was really great :)
minhooppaloveryeah..i agree with you.. why all the handsome guys must be at korea.. atleast i should be born in korea..haha
9 months ago . Report
cosmeticsurgery . pay and you have a dreamy face (at least for 5 yrs, then it must be re-modeled ...then again..and again etc)
About 9 months ago . Report
lmhfreak17@cosmetic haha agreed wid yu bt anywaz i luv dez "surgery"d faces <3<3 lee min ho awwwww *_*
8 months ago . Report
Lee_HyuraNot all korean actors and actresses did a surgery! Lee min Ho didn.t go under surgery... He has a natural and untouched face! Believe me I know I'm a citizen in Korea, and I'm updated in everything... ^_^
8 months ago . Report
So nice funny drama.but that actress look very bad lee min hoo Waaa..w as usual he is awe some Honestly how he look always beautyful any kind of dress suit him well.Such a gifted guy.When he smile my heart was jumped with a daze.I love lee min hoo soo...o much oh i am crazy..
JooRiya vigi...that bad actress you said is Son Ye-jin, she is one of South Korea's top actress and Hallyu Star, don't you know that? Search if you have time...babo!!!
InspiriaXOmggg i did too! XD
Video Already Reported!
You have already reported this video.
Video Already Reported!
A guest has already reported this video using your current IP address ().
Download Already Reported!
You have already reported this download.
Download Already Reported!
A guest has already reported this download using your current IP address ().
Comment Already Reported!
You have already reported this comment.
Comment Already Reported!
A guest has already reported this comment using your current IP address ().


text:
Definitions for prolificprəˈlɪf ɪk
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word prolific
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
pro•lif•ic*prəˈlɪf ɪk(adj.)
producing offspring, young, fruit, etc., abundantly; highly fruitful.
highly productive:
a prolific writer.
characterized by abundant production:
a prolific year.
* Syn: See productive.
Origin of prolific:
1640–50; < ML prōlificus fertile
Princeton's WordNet
fecund, fertile, prolific(adj)
intellectually productive
"a prolific writer"; "a fecund imagination"
prolific, fertile(adj)
bearing in abundance especially offspring
"flying foxes are extremely prolific"; "a prolific pear tree"
Fertile, producing offspring or fruit in abundance u2014 applied to plants producing fruit, animals producing young, etc.
Similarly producing results or works in abundance
Origin: 1640-1650: from prolifique, from proles and facere.
Webster Dictionary
having the quality of generating; producing young or fruit; generative; fruitful; productive; -- applied to plants producing fruit, animals producing young, etc.; -- usually with the implied idea of frequent or numerous production; as, a prolific tree, female, and the like
serving to produce; fruitful of results; active; as, a prolific brain; a controversy prolific of evil
Find a translation for the prolific definition in other languages:
Select another language:
Discuss these prolific definitions with the community:
Use the citation below to add this definition to your bibliography:
"prolific." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2014. Web. 22 Dec. 2014. <http://www.definitions.net/definition/prolific>.


text:
The new ELEVENPARIS Spring/Summer 2012 Campaign has been produced by New York photographer Terry Richardson. The brand delivers a nice behind the scenes video of the photo production. Check it out here below.
Get Updates Daily.
Follow our Twitter feed
We'll update you as we publish on our site. You'll get an update instantly!Follow @highsnobiety
Get Updates on Facebook
We'll bring our best stories and photos direct into your newsfeed.
Follow us on Instagram


text:
Reviewed By Joel Z (Dexter, NM) Reviewed for a 2009 Honda Civic —11/17/2014 8:35 PM
I love it. They are expensive but better than Hondas.
Reviewed By Richard H (MORGANTOWN, WV) Reviewed for a 2014 Honda Civic —11/11/2014 8:30 AM
These mats look good and get the job done. They are thin, but that means they don't keep their rolled-up shape when unpacked and can be installed immediately. Besides, how thick do they need to be to stop water? The grid pattern is simple, which makes them easy to clean. There must have been some small changes in the 2014 Civic Sedan because I needed to cut a small section by the trunk latch to make it fit correctly. The passenger side mat was perfect as is.


text:
The Myers' journey leads to them to gaining a little girl added to their Irvine family.
Comments are encouraged, but you must follow our User Agreement
Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to republish your name and comment in additional Register publications without any notification or payment.


text:
17th ICOMOS General Assembly Scientific Symposium « Heritage, Driver of Development »: The electronic proceedings of the Symposium are available for download.
The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is happy to announce that it has appointed Mr Philippe Allard to the position of Director-General of the ICOMOS International Secretariat, based in Paris.
Read more: ICOMOS appoints Philippe Allard to the post of Director-General


text:
WASHINGTON, October 5, 2012 – If Ayn Rand were to write a Christmas story, it would look like last night's presidential debate, in which good triumphs over evil, as looters and moochers get shamed and exposed for what they really are.
Indeed, for those who noticed how eerily Obama's term in office resembled the "Atlas Shrugged" scenario of America's decline, last night's presidential debate must have felt like a lost optimistic chapter from that great novel.
For almost four years now we've been seeing Rand's dystopia coming to life: cronyism in the government and big business, manipulative media, corrupted education, dying economy, social stratification, massive poverty, unemployment, and disillusionment - all the result of a well-meaning attempt to "fundamentally transform" this country on the basis of "giving everyone his fair share."
And finally, in full agreement with Rand's writing style, comes a larger-than-life businessman-turned-politician and defends capitalism - not just on the grounds of its efficiency, but also morality - because taking people's earnings by force in order to subsidize something they disagree with, is fundamentally immoral.
And, just like in Rand's works of romantic realism, we finally saw the American president as he ought to be - a wise, understanding, and trustworthy father figure, who knows what he is doing and is willing to take charge, doesn't fear the responsibility, says what he believes, and does what he says.
Next to him, the current "president" Obama appeared like a failing student before a finger-wagging disciplinarian grownup. Early in the debate Romney established his dominance by patiently reminding Obama that, having raised five boys, he could recognize juvenile debate methods: repeating a lie hoping it would pass for the truth was one of them. Blaming Bush was another, one might add.
It didn't help that the moderator Jim Lehrer sometimes debated Romney on Obama's behalf while Obama gave out big smiles. Nor did it help that the news networks had been working as Obama's propaganda machine. Having someone else in the national media to act as his mouthpiece, frame his debate, never challenge his actions, skew the polls, and build the consensus in his favor, must have dulled his instincts and made him unfit for the struggle of political survival. In the end, Obama's own "you didn't built that, someone else made that happen" approach became his undoing and effectively made him a poster boy for exactly why no one should follow this philosophy in real life.
Obama's philosophy of government was also a failure on every level.
When asked a trivia-style question about the role of government, he guessed correctly: to keep the people safe. The problem is, he himself didn't believe in it - which was obvious in the way he said it, as well as in the way he had sacrificed America's national security to political correctness.
Obama's definition of the second government priority - to run the economy, manage individual successes and failures, and guarantee everyone "a fair share" - is incorrect. What's worse, Obama has always treated it as the government priority number one. Which is why in the time of economic crisis, as Romney pointed out, Obama's priority was to establish "affordable healthcare" - a supposedly well-intentioned reform that in real life was a death blow to small businesses and the economy in general.
And while Obama was trying to justify it by giving a list of excellent talking points that ended in "etcetera," it's an open secret that the devil is in the etcetera. One wonders if his extensive plan covers wound licking.
Obama's manipulative "real life" sob stories were no longer having an effect either. His complaint about seeing how children in a Las Vegas school were using outdated 10-year-old textbooks reminded us, first of all, of his trip to a Vegas fundraiser with hip hop musicians at a time when a US ambassador in Libya had been killed and the Muslim world was being swept with anti-American protests. In addition, as we now know, those "outdated" textbooks may actually be more truthful than the ones printed after Obama and Bill Ayers had sneakily "reformed" the school curriculum to make it serve the leftist agenda.
Romney's well-calibrated radar impeccably detected every Obama's attempt to lie, distort, or manipulate reality.
The "president's" dishonest bragging about an increase in domestic oil and gas production was immediately cut short by Romney, who explained that the production was up only on private lands that weren't yet under Obama's reach, but down on government-owned lands subject to Obama's harmful regulations.
Obama tried another old and tried trick of big-oil-baiting that always worked in the past. This time it was also quickly pre-empted: oil tax breaks actually go to small subcontracting companies, and the money in question is negligible compared to the government subsidies Obama has given to pie-in-the-sky "green" energy projects, most of which went bankrupt.
With refreshing bluntness, Romney told the self-appointed economic manager-in-chief, "You pick the losers." That summed up Obama's economic policy of "fairness," with all the resulting government waste, abuse, cronyism, and corruption.
To be completely honest, Romney's otherwise stellar, larger-than-life performance still contained traces of pandering to the moochers - sadly, a necessary ingredient in today's political games. Thanks for setting those rules, Democrats.
And yet, if you were a manager of a failing company and two business consultants named Romney and Obama came to your office, whom of the two would you hire right away, and whom would you show the door? Even if you're a Democrat who picked Obama in 2008, the answer in this election is obvious.
Romney may not be a smooth operator. In fact, he may well be the only alpha male in the country who doesn't consume alcohol. And yet Obama, with all his street cred of alleged coolness trails behind as a clumsy and insignificant beta. Romney wins just by standing next to Obama. Which raises the question: why didn't the GOP elites pick Romney in 2008, but now suddenly favor him in the face of an imminent Obamageddon?
It is for the same reason that "Atlas Shrugged" still remains and will always be relevant for as long as humanity continues to flirt with the fallacy of "progressivism" while questioning the credentials of capitalism as the only just, fair, and moral socio-political system known to man.
At The People's Cube, we do NOT equate all "liberals" with communists. The purpose of this website is to pick up "liberal" hitchhikers and give them a ride to the communist wonderland - the inevitable end result of their "well-meaning" policies.
This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.


text:
photo by Romulo Yanes
Makes 6 servings
active time
45 min
total time
45 min
Ingredientsadd to shopping list
- 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- 2 cups fresh bread crumbs (preferably from a baguette)
- 1/4 cup chopped dill
- 1 pound red onions, thinly sliced (3 cups)
- 1 (2-ounce) can flat anchovy fillets, drained and chopped
- 1 pound bucatini or perciatelli pasta (long tubular strands)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
Heat 1/4 cup oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium heat until it shimmers, then cook bread crumbs, stirring constantly, until deep golden and crisp, 6 to 8 minutes.
Transfer bread crumbs to a bowl and toss with dill and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and black pepper.
Wipe out skillet, then cook onions with 1/4 teaspoon salt in remaining 1/2 cup oil over medium heat, stirring frequently, until very soft, 12 to 15 minutes. Add anchovies and cook, mashing anchovies into onions, until dissolved.
Meanwhile, cook bucatini in a pasta pot of boiling salted water (2 tablespoons salt for 5 quarts water) until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain pasta.
Stir red-pepper flakes and reserved water into anchovy sauce, then add pasta and toss to combine. Add about half of bread crumbs and toss to coat. Serve sprinkled with remaining bread crumbs.
my notes
Nutrition Informationper serving (6 servings) POWERED BY Edamam
- Calories713
- Carbohydrates90 g (30%)
- Fat31 g (48%)
- Protein18 g (37%)
- Saturated Fat5 g (23%)
- Sodium620 mg (26%)
- Polyunsaturated Fat4 g
- Fiber5 g (22%)
- Monounsaturated Fat21 g
- Cholesterol8 mg (3%)
recipe featured in
recipe at a glance
type: Quick & Easy, Pasta/Noodle Dish
main ingredients: Dill, Onion, Pasta
cuisine: Italian
dietary considerations: Healthy


text:
MOVIEmeterSEE RANK
Down 1,792 this week
The Slams (1973)
After a heist Curtis Hook (Jim Brown) is caught by the police. In jail various people want to know where he stashed the loot. But the places where he stashed the loot ($1.500.000) will be ... See full summary »
Director:Jonathan Kaplan
Writer:Richard DeLong Adams
Stars:Jim Brown, Judy Pace, Roland Bob Harris | See full cast and crew »


text:
William Shakespeare Bust
Sale Price: $59.95
To Order by Phone Call 1-800-933-6249
- Additional Details
- Dimensions: 8"
Sculptor Unknown, 19th Century
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds greatest dramatist. His body of work consists of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, 2 long narrative poems, and several other poems. His works have done more than endure, they have flourished, and are now performed and read in more countries and by more people than ever before. Many of Shakespeares quotations and neologisms have passed into common usage, leaving an indelible mark on the English language. But beyond his impact on the language, Shakespeare is so widely read and performed today because he turned his considerable talent to exploring the timeless truths about what it means to be human.
This portrait bust, which makes good use of the decorative fashion of the period, is the work of an unknown sculptor of the 19th century and is held in a private collection.
This faithful reproduction is hand-cast and hand-finished in crushed stone resin.


text:
The Pune Warriors management in all likelihood will have a brainstorming team meeting on the eve of their 14th round IPL clash against Royal Challengers Bangalore in order to decide Sourav Ganguly's fate during the remainder of the tournament. The bone of contention will be whether Ganguly, who has gone through a torrid time both as a batsman as well as a skipper, will sit out of last three encounters of Warriors. Team sources said the management wants the former India captain to take a call on his future in the remaining three matches. "If Ganguly himself offers to step down from captaincy and decides to sit out for the remaining three games, the owners will certainly be only too happy to accomodate. The general feeling is that, they have lost with Ganguly at helm and with new players, it can't get worse," a senior IPL official in the know of things told PTI today. In case Ganguly doesn't play, there is a possibility that Aussie Michael Clarke or find-of-the-season Steve Smith will lead the side. Having lost nine out of their 13 matches under his captaincy, which has come under scanner for some debatable team selections, Ganguly's own batting form has also deserted him in this edition. With 261 runs from 13 games at a strike-rate of shade over 100 and fielding which is atleast a few notches below the standard set in a competition like IPL, the soon-to-be 40 Ganguly has struggled to fit himself to demands of the shortest version. "The Warriors management may be resorting to a "wait and watch" policy as their officials are finding it difficult to go up and confront Ganguly over his team selections," the official added. Some of the decisions made by Ganguly which have come under scanner include Bangladeshi opener Tamim Iqbal not getting a single game despite being the top-scorer during Asia Cup with four back-to-back half centuries. Also T20 specialist Alphonso Thomas being repeatedly ignored in favour of West Indian Marlon Samuels who did precious little with the bat or ball after first three games. India international Rahul Sharma got dumped after being clobbered for five consecutive sixes but the feeling among the doemstic players is how and why likes of Rahul and Manish Pandey are getting repeatedly ignored to favour likes of Mithun Manhas who is not known to finish off games. Last but not the least is Ganguly's own form. Whether at the top or in the middle-order, one of India's finest captain looked totally out of sorts having played lot of dot balls in all the matches. It all depends on whether an honourable exit route could be worked out for this ageing stalwart who in his prime has given a lot to Indian cricket.
IPL 2012 (Full Coverage)
Pune to give Ganguly the axe?
|Pune, 2012/May/10 14:38:00
More stories from IPL 2012
Why Did They Play Those 76 Matches?Can the BCCI replicate the cricketing success that CA achieved with the Big Bash? Shashreek Roy explores.
TA Sekar backs DD batsmen to come goodDelhi Daredevils mentor T A Sekar backed his batsmen and spoke at length about the teams' chances in the second qualifier match against CSK.
England inflict fresh Windies collapseJames Anderson and Stuart Broad reduced the West Indies to 84 for four at lunch on the first day of the second Test at Trent Bridge here on Friday, as the tourists suffered another collapse. But Shivnarine Chanderpaul, officially the world's best batsman, was still there on 19 not out after defying England's attack for more than 10 hours during West Indies' five-wicket defeat in the first Test at Lord's.
Vijay fires Chennai into IPL finalMurali Vijay became the first Indian to hammer two centuries in the Indian Premier League as Chennai Super Kings stormed into final with an 86-run win over Delhi Daredevils on Friday. The opener cracked four sixes and 15 fours in his quickfire 58-ball 113 as defending champions Chennai posted a commanding 222-5 off their 20 overs before dismissing Delhi for 136 at the Chidambaram stadium in Chennai.
Morkel was left out for team balance: Eric SimonsThe decision to leave out Morne Morkel raised a lot of eyebrows but Delhi Daredevils head coach Eric Simons defended the strategy, saying it was aimed at finding the "right balance" in the side.
Latest News
NO MORE CAPTAIN COOK: After a torrid time in the 50-over format, ECB has decided to sack Alastair Cook... view
ACROSS THE BORDER: The 'Little Master' of Pakistan, an ICC Hall of Fame inductee Hanif Mohammad and ... view
A SIMILAR TALE: Another overseas Test, another defeat. A fired-up Mitchell Johnson broke the back of... view


text:
Pornography: A Thriller
Rent, buy and watch the latest movies and TV shows online
blinkbox has more of the latest movies and TV shows than our competitors.
No subscription, so you only pay when you rent or buy a movie or TV show, from just 99p.
blinkbox is available on PC/Mac, tablets, consoles, smart TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.
A young zombie named Otto appears on a remote highway. He has no idea where he came from or where he is going. After hitching a ride to Berlin and nesting in an abandoned amusement park, he begins to explore the city. Soon he is discovered by underground filmmaker Medea Yarn, who begins to make a documentary about him with the support of her girlfriend, Hella Bent, and her brother Adolf, who operates the camera. Meanwhile, Medea is still trying to finish Up with Dead People, the epic political-porno-zombie movie that she has been working on for years. She convinces its star, Fritz Fritze, to allow the vulnerable Otto to stay in his guest bedroom. When Otto discovers that he has a wallet that contains information about his past, before he was dead, he begins to remember details about his ex-boyfriend, Rudolf. He arranges to meet him at the schoolyard where they met, with devastating results.
Gay & Lesbian, Horror, Indie
Contains strong real sex and strong violence
1 hour 34 minutes
PC, Mac, iPad, Android tablets, Windows tablets, Xbox, PS3, Chromecast, smart TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.
Windows PC (UK internet connection required to acquire license)


text:
Mark Rothko
Beach Scene, ca. 1928
Oil on canvas board
14.5 x 16 in.
Reed College Art Collection
Kaufman Memorial Collection
Gift of Louis and Annette Kaufman
Mark Rothko's family emigrated from Russia to Portland in 1913. Home life was intellectually rich and Rothko was fluent in Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and English by the time he attended Lincoln High School with Louis Kaufman, graduating with honors in three years. In 1921 Rothko was awarded a scholarship to Yale, but found Yale elitist and conservative. In response, Rothko and fellow student Aaron Director published the satirical review The Yale Saturday Evening Pest.
Rothko withdrew from Yale his second year and moved to New York City to study art with Max Weber at the Art Students League. Weber encouraged his students to study Cezanne's depictions of light and human form. Weber's influence is evident in Rothko's painting of female bathers, likely painted on a trip with Avery.
Louis Kaufman introduced Rothko to Milton Avery at the Opportunity Gallery in New York in 1928 (the same year this beach scene was painted), where Avery was exhibiting work. Rothko and Kaufman grew up together in Portland and remained life-long friends. Louis Kaufman became a celebrated American violinist and worked extensively in the movie industry. Kaufman and his wife Annette were thoughtful, inspired collectors, buying paintings directly from artists, most of whom were quite poor and had no gallery representation. The Avery's were their closest friends, and Rothko quickly became a part of their artistic and social community. Avery introduced Rothko to Adolph Gottlieb, who had a profound influence on Rothko's art and politics.
In 1934, Gottlieb, Rothko, and painter Louis Harris (also in the Reed College Art Collection) were founding members of the artists' group "The Ten." The Ten called for an expressive, political American art in opposition to "sentimental" and "nostalgic" imagery. In a 1938 manifesto written in protest over the '38 Whitney Biennial, The Ten declared their mission to "... see objects and events as though for the first time, free from the accretion of habit and divorced from the conventions of a thousand years of painting." Both Rothko and Gottlieb revered Avery as a humble and dedicated progenitor of this vision.
The son of a tanner, Milton Avery worked full-time in factories and later as a file clerk to pay for his painting education in Hartford, Connecticut. Louis Kaufman introduced Mark Rothko to Avery in 1928, and the two quickly became close friends. Eighteen years Avery's junior, Rothko was deeply inspired by Avery's simple, colorful and emotive forms. Through Rothko, Avery soon met many other young artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, and Helen Frankenthaler, all of whom frequently visited Avery's studio to watch him paint.
For a time, Rothko and Gottlieb visited daily, and for several years Avery, Rothko, Gottlieb and their families all summered together in Provincetown. Avery liked to paint while his friends spent time in the studio. Kaufman would often play violin while Avery worked. The Kaufmans purchased the four Milton Avery paintings in the Reed College Art Collection directly from Avery.
Avery's practice was intrinsic to his everyday life. He saw painting as the primary vehicle for expressing his feelings, passions, and personal experiences, often lovingly depicting the people and places with which he felt a strong personal affinity. His dedication to developing his craft, combined with his rapid rate of output, resulted in a vast and stylistically diverse body of work. His ethos is perhaps best encapsulated by his oft-quoted phrase, "Why talk when you can paint?"
As Mark Rothko wrote for Avery's memorial service in 1965,
"Avery is first a great poet. His is the poetry of sheer loveliness,
of sheer beauty. Thanks to him this kind of poetry has been
able to survive in our time."
?Text by Stephanie Snyder, Curator, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, and Cooley interns Nick Irvin '13, and Zoe Stal '12


text:
We Love Our Residents!
Serving the university community for generations.
Trinity Properties means value.
In our portfolio of properties, we strive for the highest value for our residents. Everyday we try to do our work better to make our apartments better—new appliances, new kitchen cabinets, new bathroom fixtures, new paint colors, new landscaping and safety features; but always maintaining a fair, affordable and competitive price.
Similarly, we strive for open and honest relations with our residents. Our residents are students and staff of some of the best universities in the country. We respect their accomplishments and enjoy their friendships.
We welcome criticism because it makes us better. And of course we love your praise.
We subscribe to the Rotary Four Way Test of the things we think, say and do:
Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Trinity Properties - Duke
Trinity Properties - NC State


text:
Cauliflower and Broccoli Au Gratin
Find a Conversation
Cauliflower and Broccoli Au Gratin
|Sun, 12-02-2012 - 9:05am
Cauliflower and Broccoli Au Gratin
5 cups large broccoli florets
4 cups large cauliflower florets
1/2 cup water
4 oz. (1/2 of 8-oz. pkg.) cream cheese, cubed
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1-1/2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
10 butter crackers, crushed (about 1/3 cup)
3 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
Combine vegetables in 2-qt. microwaveable casserole. Add water; cover with lid. Microwave on high 8 to 10 min. or until vegetables are tender; drain.
Microwave cream cheese and milk in 2-cup microwaveable measuring cup or medium bowl 1 min. or until cream cheese is melted and mixture is well blended when stirred. Stir in sour cream; pour over vegetables. Sprinkle with Cheddar; microwave 2 min. or until melted. Mix cracker crumbs and Parmesan; sprinkle over vegetables.


text:
Region: Galilee and Golan Category: Other Museums
�The Music Box of Zami� is a collection of 160 musical instruments, from 50 countries. Besides of dozens of string instruments, wind instruments, and some percussion instruments, there are the keyboards: Monochord, Clavichord, Harpsichord, Harmonium, Pipe organ and Piano. The visit in the �Music Box� is a Combination of Coffee, Cake, Collection and Concert. From a short visit (1 hour) to a full concert / lecture / demonstration (possibly not only on Hebrew but also in English, French or Italian). �The Music Box of Zami� located in a private house, in Metula � a little picturesque village in the very north of Israel. Parking: easy and free.
send to a friend
print this page


text:
This year has been interesting to say the least. I am reminded of a time in our American history in the year 1860, when our ancestors, and all Americans, made important life-changing decisions as to what each of them were going to do regarding the fate of our country.
Today, in 2012, I've heard friends in our community talk about abandoning the Federal Union and tossing out those ideals for which our ancestors, "Those Boys in Blue," fought, bled and died over 150 years ago.
While I may share some sentiments regarding what is happening in our country today, and also recognize people's right to express themselves, I do feel we as citizens should not be talking nullification, nor abandonment, of the Federal Union and what we stand for as a united country.
I have ancestors who fought for both the Union and Confederate cause in Tennessee. All were Southern-born American citizens, most voted to stay in the Union, but their state of Tennessee voted itself out, thus leaving a four-year period of unrest and lawlessness. Issues were settled by violence and by whatever political party was in power for that day. Old wrongs were settled by the end of a gun or rope.
Homebound soldiers on leave from both sides were bushwhacked and killed while farms and homes burned. The stories of those actions are still talked about at family reunions to this day; time has not taken the edge from those memories after 150 years. There are still vacant chairs at the family tables that people talk about, waiting for that special soldier to come home just like it was yesterday, not 150 years ago. It was a time where neighbors and family ties became undone because of political affiliation or the color of your uniform.
That long ago question of united or divided was paid for and put to rest by the blood from both sides by over 650,000 soldiers who died, along with millions more men, women and children, who were wounded or killed, not to mention the farms, cities and resources of the country that were burned and looted.
Most former Confederate soldiers after the war came back into the Federal Union; they became hard-working, patriotic, valued members of their communities, and citizens of the United States of America. They didn't wish the horror they had endured to ever to be visited upon this nation again.
It is written that Daniel Webster looked at the flag of the United States and said, "Behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth...not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured"...in closing he said: "It's not Liberty first and Union afterwards"; but "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
Gen. George Washington referred to the government of the U.S., under the Articles of Confederation, as a weak government, with states first and national government second. That's the reason the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written and George Washington became the First President of the United States under the Constitution. That's where the rights of the states are spelled out in regards to the state and national government roles.
Some may find fault with some of these statements, but in the time from 1861-1865, the question Nullification of the Federal Union was answered and settled by the "Boys in Blue and Grey." We are heirs to that outcome. We, as united Americans, can have our disagreements in a public or private setting, but when it comes time to settle our issues, we will do it in a voting booth and not on an American battlefield.
May God bless the United States of America and all those who serve and protect us.
Grand Junction resident and local historian Garry Brewer can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
Talk of the Tents
New York Fashion Week photos, live blogging, runway highlights and celebrities.
BloggersAnne Bratskeir Joseph V. Amodio Nina Ruggiero Barbara Schuler Greg Emerson
Tommy Hilfiger mixes menswear and mod
Tommy Hilfiger's show at the Park Avenue Armory on Sunday must have achieved a new record -- for longest runway. Ever. It was like an airstrip, stretching out for what seemed like miles. But then, Hilfiger is an old hand at injecting some theatrical flair into what is, at heart, very traditional clothing. For fall, he borrowed heavily from menswear (not so surprising) and some mod elements...Read more »
Rag & Bone: Very English, very cool
The Fashion Week blizzard was really picking up — somehow pelting fashion's faithful with snow, rain and face-stinging hail all at once — as the Rag & Bone show began on Friday. And maybe because of all that wet ruckus outside the runway seemed an oasis of quiet and cool. The R&B blokes — Brit-born Marcus Wainwright and David Neville — sometimes churn out collections...Read more »


text:
FTSE 350 Weekly News Recap featuring Greene King, IG Group Holdings, Misys, WH Smith, Compass Group, Aggreko, Wincanton and Halfords
Greene King (LON:GNK) has acquired four pub restaurants from Punch Taverns for a total consideration of £5.3m.
Halfords Group (LON:HFD) released preliminary results for the year ended 2nd April 2010. Revenue was up £36.9m to £831.6m while profit before tax was up £24.7m. The Board has recommended a final dividend of 14.0p making a full year dividend of 20.0p, up 25.8% on the previous year.
Wincanton (LON:WIN) saw revenue decline 7.6% to £2,182.9m for the year ended 31st March 2010. The full year dividend has been maintained at 14.91p.
Home Retail Group Plc (LON:HOME) said that economic conditions remain both challenging and uncertain, with this quarter proving difficult in terms of consumers' willingness to spend. The Company is targeting to achieve a similar level of profitability to last year.
BP (LON:BP.) has noted the fall in its share price in US trading last night. The Company is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.
IG Group Hldgs (LON:IGG) expects to report revenue of approximately £298m and adjusted profit before tax of approximately £157m, representing revenue growth of 16% and profit growth of 25%, for the year ended 31st May 2010.
Special Offer: Invest like Buffett, Slater and Greenblatt. Click here for details »
Misys (LON:MSY) has agreed to sell the majority of its 54.6% interest in its Allscripts subsidiary, and that Misys intends to return substantially all of the proceeds to shareholders.
Chloride Group (LON:CHLD) has agreed to recommend the all cash offer by ABB for the Group of approximately £860m. The Boards of Directors of both companies have agreed on a recommended offer price of 325p per Chloride share.
Wh Smith Plc (LON:SMWH) said that total Group sales in the first 14 weeks of the second half of the financial year were down 3% were down 3% with like-for-like sales down 4% compared to the same period last year. The Board remains confident in the outcome for the full year.
Compass Group (LON:CPG) has announced the acquisition of Southeast Service Corporation for a cash consideration of $65m.
Aggreko (LON:AGK) expects Group revenue for the first half of the year to grow by around 10% and trading profit will increase by around 20%.
Prudential (LON:PRU) released a trading update in which it reported Group-wide sales of £1,355m for the first five months of the year, up 27% on the previous year. Performance in Asia was particularly strong with sales up 33% to £579m while the Company also reported record retail sales in the US of £454m which was an increase of 41% on the previous year.
Filed Under: Markets, FTSE 350 Index,
Past performance is not a guide to future returns. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and is not guaranteed. An investor may not get back the amount originally invested. For risks relating to specific products, please refer to the relevant documentation for that product.
Prudential plc (Prudential) is an international financial services group, with operations in Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Prudential is structured around four main business units: Prudential Corporation Asia (incorporating the asset management business, Eastspring Investments), Jackson, Prudential UK insurance operations and M&G. Prudential Corporation Asia has operations in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and other Asian countries. Its core business is health, protection, either attached to a life policy or on a standalone basis, other life insurance (including participating business) and mutual funds. It also provides selected personal lines property and casualty insurance, group insurance, institutional fund management and consumer finance (Vietnam only). On September 4, 2012, the Company completed the acquisition of SRLC America Holding Corp (SRLC). more »
Aggreko plc (Aggreko) provides power and temperature control solutions to customers who need them either quickly, or for a limited period of time. The Company has two business models: Local business and Power Projects business. In the Local business, the Company hires its equipment to customers who operate it for themselves. In the Power Projects business, the Company operates as a power producer; it installs and operates power plants and the customers pay the Company for having the generating capacity available, as well as the electricity the Company deliver to them. The Company served customers in about 100 countries, and conducts its business from approximately 202 service centers and offices, located in 49 countries. more »


text:
The Premier League website employs cookies to improve your user experience. We have updated our cookie policy to reflect changes in the law on cookies and tracking technologies used on websites. If you continue on this website, you will be providing your consent to our use of cookies. Find out more.
Type in your search then hit enter
Sunday 29 April 2012
A Fernando Torres hat-trick helped Chelsea make it a miserable afternoon for west London rivals Queens Park Rangers.
Torres followed up his crucial goal away to Barcelona in the Champions League in midweek with three clinical finishes at Stamford Bridge as Chelsea closed the gap on fourth-place Newcastle to a point.
Daniel Sturridge had put Chelsea in front after just 45 seconds and John Terry headed in a second before Torres took centre stage, while Florent Malouda added a sixth goal for the hosts.
QPR, who got a late consolation through Djibril Cisse, remain above the relegation places on goal difference, with two matches remaining in their season.
View full match information
© Premier League 2014


text:
Please help us improve your experience on our website by completing a brief survey
Yes, I'll give feedback No, Thanks
Your browser does not support iframes.
Janet Delwiche, MA
Pathology Residency Coordinator
Department of Pathology
C684 General Hospital
Iowa City, IA 52242
Phone: 319-384-5313
Email: email@example.com
Copyright © 2014 The University of Iowa. All Rights Reserved.


text:
number of plus ones for any url
The Google+ Platform developers have done a great job with their API and documentation so far. Unfortunately at an API level they have not yet implemented the ability to grab the number of plus ones for any given URL. Not having time to wait for the issue that is currently pending within the google-plus-platform issues tracker, I decided to take a deeper dive into the source of the plus one button's underlying javascript. Another unminified adventure into Google's mysterious ways of mastering the interwebs.
During the train ride from Hamburg to Berlin this past Friday I was doing some thinking on how exactly to extract the count of plus one's of any given url. I knew that the API would not support my request and that was about it. I spent a few hours examining the button's source code to tried and figure out exactly what kind of voodoo they were doing to let you magically embed the button.
Typical of most "embedable widgets" like this, is an init script. Google gives to you their version of this init script within the "Getting Started" section for the +1 Button ( plusone.js ). This script sets some globals ( among other things ) and then embed's the main script. In this particular case, the script that is being embedded is doing a lot of different things that I did not take the time to fully understand because I quickly found the main thing I was looking for. The point at which the browser creates the URL of the iframe that contains the actual button html. Once I found that it was easy for me to use jsdom and jquery to scrape the src of the iframe that is embedded by the main script.
When crawling minified javascript manually you want to look for key words. In this particular case the text "src" and "iframe" were what led me to exact code I was looking for. Another big help in figuring out complex minified code is using break points in Chrome's Dev Tools as well as the window.console.trace() method.
Feel free to clone the simple utility I created to help me gain access to the number of plus ones for a given url. I will post more detail of the project I am building this script for in the future. The inline comments should be enough to help you get started.


text:
The August Civitas Capitol Connection offers our wrap-up of the General Assembly's just-concluded short session, including vote counts for key issues.
Civitas Capitol Connection August 2012
This article was posted in Capitol Connection by Tiffany Taylor on August 31, 2012 at 1:42 PM.
© 2011 The Civitas Institute. Visit us on the web at www.nccivitas.org.
This article can be found at http://www.nccivitas.org/2012/civitas-capitol-connection-august-2012-2/