text:
This is a work of complete fiction. It just popped into my brain and I wrote it down. Everyone in this story is of legal age, whoever you are, wherever you are. No one under legal age may read this, if you know what's good for you. No one over legal age should read this for the same reason. Please feel free to repost this in any non-pay site but it would be nice if you could let me know where. All characters used in this story are a parody of any real or fictional person. Comments are always welcome and appreciated. No character is under 18 yrs old.
Starring: Scarlett Johansson as The Black Widow
Avengers: What If Thor Had Been A Few Minutes Late? (MF,oral,anal)
by muhabba
Natasha Romanoff, aka Natalie Roman, aka Shield Agent Romanoff, aka The Black Widow was trapped. Trapped in the expanded guts of the S.H.I.E.L.D. hellicarrier. Trapped with her worse nightmare. Trapped with the Hulk.
Fear did not come easily to Natasha. Raised as a assassin and a spy when she was just a child and later recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D., she had seen and done far too much to succumb to fear. But the Hulk... When Agent Caulson informed Natasha that she would be the one to bring in Banner a cold chill had ran down her spine. She knew handling Banner would be no problem by herself. But the Hulk... Banner was a lonely man on the run and probably desperate for a little meaningful human contact. Natasha had known that the best way to approach Banner was with a seemingly unofficial and honest way. But the Hulk... She was a gorgeous woman with a fit and toned body, heart shaped ass, flaming red hair, full lips, sparkling blue eyes and large, firm C-cup breasts. She had no problem approaching men and engaging them. But the Hulk...
Now Natasha was trapped in a situation she had never been trained for. Trapped with the Hulk. He was massive: Nearly nine feet tall, almost 3 times her width, capable of lifting or crushing several tons, more than capable of jumping 3 miles in a single leap, bullet proof and completely unpredictable. He was a mountain of unrepressed rage.
As a spy Natasha was capable of speaking a dozen different languages fluently, slipping into any number of different identities. All of which were completely useless against the Hulk.
As a assassin Natasha was capable of silently killing someone a dozen different ways. She was equally skilled in unarmed combat, firearms, knives and even poisons. All of which were completely useless against the Hulk.
As a agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Natasha had access to world class, top secret documents and Intel, the latest in high-tech weaponry and tools years more advanced than anywhere on the planet. All of which were not here in the bowels of the heli-carrier. All of which were completely useless against the Hulk.
Banner had already been worked up and treading the thin line between human and rage monster as the entire group argued but then surprise took them all. An attack on the heli-carrier happened at just the wrong moment and the explosion had knocked Natasha and Banner into the lower levels. The last straw for Banner and he started to turn. Ripping through his clothes and targeting her. She had been the one to bring Banner from Calcutta. She had been the one, it was her fault. Natasha had tried to make a run for it, to give Thor time to make it to her, but had damaged her ankle in the fall. She had made a little head way out of sheer terror, putting some distance between herself and the monster, but a back handed slap had sent her flying though the air and off a steel wall. Her skill set had left her prepared for anything she used to think. But the Hulk...
Natasha brought herself shakily to her feet as the Hulk stood growling over her, surely preparing to smash her to paste. She silently accepted what was going to be a rather sticky death. Thor would never make it in time. Natasha took what was sure to be her last breath, her firm breasts pushing against her tight uniform, and her life flashed behind her eyes. Her training as a child, jet-setting across the globe as a spy and dealing in secret files and private information, the blood she spilled and the people whose lives she had ended as a assassin, meeting Clint when he was sent to kill her but being recruited instead, being introduced to Fury, the secret missions with S.H.I.E.L.D. and recruiting Banner. As a child she was taught how to spy, how to fight, how to insinuate herself into people's lives and when best to lie, cheat, steal or kill. "No..." she suddenly thought. "how best to lie, cheat, steal, kill or seduce."
Even as a child Natasha had been beautiful and she had been taught how best to use her charms. With a overly dramatic swoon she pretended to collapse against the wall. "Oh Hulk. You win. I should have known better than to lie to Banner. No wonder you're angry. You have definitely taught me a lesson. Hulk is the strongest one there is."
The Hulk gave Natasha a strange look as he slowly raised one of his giant fists
Natasha reviewed everything she knew about the Banner/Hulk dynamic. If Banner hated something then the Hulk hated it. If Banner was hungry then the Hulk was hungry. And if Banner was attracted to someone then the Hulk was attracted to them and if Banner was lonely then the Hulk too was lonely. Natasha cocked her hips to one side and arched her back, pushing out her chest. "I bet Banner was pretty upset when he found out we had a cage for him. Probably pretty upset at me for not telling him, huh?"
Natasha slowly raised one of her hands up to the neck of her tight uniform, careful no to startle the Hulk. "Boy. It is sure hot in here, huh Hulk? I guess I shouldn't have shot that steam pipe then?" She talked slowly and lovingly to the Hulk, as if he was a child. A large potentially murderous child. "And Banner... I bet he couldn't have handled all this steam. Could he? Nope." Natasha slowly started pulling down the zipper of her uniform, exposing her slender neck and her sweaty cleavage encased in her sports bra. She dropped the pitch of her voice, going from calming to seductive. "I bet it's not too hot for you. Not for the The Incredible Hulk. I bet Banner couldn't take all this heat."
Natasha pulled the top of her uniform open, exposing her bra encased tits and gleaming abdomen, hoping her idea would work. Desperately hoping to change all of Banner's anger at her from violence into something she could use. "I can imagine all the things Banner wanted to do to me. All those mean..." Natasha shrugged her uniform off her shoulders leaving her only in her sports bra from the waist up and letting it dangle behind her. "...nasty little things." She ran her finger tips across her chest as she seductively licked her juicy lips. "To bad he wasn't man enough to catch me." She began to slowly saunter over to the Hulk. "Not like you Hulk. You caught me. Didn't you?" Natasha continued to stroke her chest with one hand and placed her other hand on the Hulk's massive chest.
The Hulk lowered his arm as woman stroked his chest with one hand and ran her other hand down her own chest, over her large tits, down her sweaty abdomen and used one finger to slowly circle her belly button. A quizzical look washed over his face as he spoke for the first time in a booming voice. "Hulk... catch Red Woman?"
"That's right Hulk. You caught me. And I bet you could do all those nasty, naughty little things to me that Banner couldn't." Natasha started to slowly run her hands down the Hulk's chest to his abs, tracing the muscles with her fingertips.
The Hulk's brow furrowed as he struggled to think. "Hulk... do... nasty things?"
"Naughty things, Hulk." Natasha whispered breathlessly as she continued to caress her chest and the Hulks rippling abs.
"Nasty, naughty things?" the Hulk whispered as he continued to stare at Natasha with confusion.
"That's right Hulk. Nasty and naughty things. Because Banner couldn't catch me." Natasha took the hand sliding across her gleaming chest and joined it the her hand caressing the Hulk.
"Banner not catch Red Woman. Hulk catch Red Woman. Hulk do nasty, naughty things to Red Woman." The Hulk bellowed, his voice vibrating against the metal walls and pipes.
"If you can catch me." Natasha lunged around the Hulk, rolling across the floor before regaining her feet and attempting to sprint away.
"If Hulk catch... huh?"
Natasha tried to run full out. If she could get far enough away from the Hulk, give herself enough room to maneuver, she could come up with a plan and escape. However it wasn't easy to maintain a sprint in the cramped quarters or with her damaged ankle. She just wasn't fast enough.
After about 30 seconds the Hulk realized that the Red Woman was escaping from him. He leapt after her, sweeping away any obstacle separating him from the Red Woman. After a few moments the simple creature caught up with the woman and grabbed her dangling uniform and used it to lift her off the floor. "Hulk catch Red Woman! Hulk do nasty, naughty things!" He yelled in triumph. The Hulk dropped his prey to the floor, grabbed her uniform with one hand and her sports bra in the other and ripped.
In an instant Natasha was nearly naked. The only clothing she had left was her black thong, her boots and enough of the lower parts of her pants to cover her calves. Her sweaty body and her large, gleaming breasts were completely exposed and her pale nipples hardened at the contact with the air. She had managed not to yell, not wanting to startle the Hulk, and stared defiantly up at his looming body in complete fear. Quickly regaining composure Natasha gave him a heavy lidded stare and used one hand to remove her sweaty, mussed hair form her eyes and her other hand to play along the tops of her heaving tits.
Natasha smiled seductively at her worse nightmare and purred. "Ohh. Very good Hulk, you caught me. I'm..." she used one hand to cup one of her large tits, "all..." she used her other hand to slide down her body and play against the front of her black thong, "...yours."
"Hulk catch Red Woman!" the green beast yelled out. "Do nasty, naughty things!" The Hulk slammed the Red Woman against a nearby wall. He grabbed both of her hands in just one of his and raised them above her head, pulling her body up straight and causing her large tits to sit up high and proud on her heaving chest.
The Hulk bent down and began trying to kiss Natasha. His thick, large tongue found her gasping mouth and plunged in. Because of the size difference a normal kiss was impossible and the Hulk began plunging his tongue in and out of Natasha's gaping mouth.
Natasha's eyes shot open in shock. "Jesus!" she thought. "His tongue is larger than most cocks. So much for trying to run for it. I've got to see this through." Using her years of experience at seduction and because of the size of the Hulk's tongue was the size of a cock anyway, Natasha decided to treat it like it was, if fact, a cock. She used her own warm, wet tongue to caress the Hulk's tongue every time it thrust into her mouth and began slowly bobbing her head back and forth while sucking hard. "Like a blowjob." She told herself. "Just treat it like any other giant, wet, thick, long cock."
Starting out the Hulk's thrusting tongue had nearly choked the frightened, sweat soaked spy, but as Natasha took control of the kiss he relaxed enough and she started to breathe easier. She moaned deep in the back of her throat as she continued to suck at the Hulk's tongue and bob her head back and forth.
The Hulk used his free hand to molest the Red Woman's gleaming chest. His hand was large enough to cover bother of her well-endowed, creamy tits and he enjoyed the way her hard, pink nipples scraped against his callused palm.
"Fffuuucccggghhh!" Natasha tried to yell out around the tongue raping into her mouth as the Hulk molested her naked chest and she felt her body start to respond. She had never felt anything like this before. The Hulk's giant hand covered both her impressive tits so that any stimulation one of her breasts felt was felt by the other at the exact same time. Every squeeze, grab, rub and flick of the Hulk's hand was like sexual stereo. She shuddered in unwanted pleasure as her thong covered pussy became drenched. She had started out just wanting to keep the Hulk distracted long enough for Thor to find them and now she was feeling pleasure like never before.
The Hulk pulled his head back from Natasha as she unconsciously bent her head forward, not want to release his invading tongue.
The Hulk released the panting, moaning Red Woman's chest and licked his lips at the sight of her pale tits jiggling around on her chest, their natural firmness kept them from moving for too long. Her tits pointed out high on her panting chest and her nipples were small, pale little stones. The Hulk bent down and began lashing the creamy tits with his tongue and tasting the salt from her sweat.
"Oh Fuck!" Natasha screamed out in unwanted pleasure before quickly clamping her sore mouth shut. "Don't want... don't want to..." It was so hard for her to think straight with this much bliss shooting through her body. "Don't want to s... startle... startle him." She bit her bottom lip and screwed her eyes shut in concentration. Trying not to yell out is sexual pleasure, but it was the hardest thing she had ever done. She had never had someone treat her tits like this. Hell, nobody but the Hulk was capable of treating her tits like this.
The Hulk's large tongue lashed at the Red Woman's pale chest. His tongue was so large that is could completely envelope one whole tit allowing him to lick and lift the whole fleshy orb, scrapping at her hard nipples before letting the tit fall to gravity. The Red Woman shivered with each long lick and began moaning and grunting louder and louder each time. The Hulk gave one long, drawn out swipe to one delicious tit and then the other, alternating back and forth. Driving the sexy female wild.
With one long lick Natasha moaned, unable to hold it in anymore. "Fuuuucccckkkk..." finishing it with a hiss and still trying to not shout out. Every time she felt the Hulk's tongue licking at her chest she pushed her tits out farther, trying to shove as much of her heated flesh against his monstrously large tongue as possible, not wanting it to miss an inch of her. Her breath was coming in sharp, ragged gasps as she felt herself responding more and more to the Hulk's violent treatment to her body. She squeezed her thighs together and rubbed them back and forth wanting, needing, craving the friction. Her pussy felt like it was on fire and she could feel her juices mixing with her sweat and sliding down her legs to puddle on the floor.
The Hulk lashed his tongue sideways across the Red Woman's tits, enjoying the taste of her sweat and the feel of her nipples as they scraped his tongue. He lifted his head up a little to stare at her quivering breasts rising and falling with each of her panting breaths. "Hulk like pretty tittes." The beast snorted before bending back down.
"Jesus Fuck!" Natasha screamed out suddenly. The Hulk had taken his mouth and placed it entirely over one of her gleaming tits and sucked hard. The whole tit fit easily into his mouth with enough room for him to lick and stroke the firm flesh with his wet tongue. Natasha couldn't keep silent anymore. "Oh Fuck, Jesus, Ohhh! Mmmmm oh fuck oh fuck, mmmm oh god!" she screamed out in pure, unwanted pleasure. The Hulk released her tit with a loud smacking sound and started in on the other quivering tit. "Fuck!" she yelled. All thought about not startling the Hulk was forgotten. All thought was gone. All that mattered was the feel of her chest being assaulted by the monster.
Natasha squeezed her toned thighs together, desperate for the friction, desperate to cum. Her stark terror had first turned to near animalistic lust and now it was a near inhuman need to cum. She no longer cared that the Hulk was a gamma irradiated monster that had nearly killed her, all that mattered to the sweat soaked and lust driven secret agent was that he make her cum.
The Hulk released the Red Woman's pale flesh and lifted his head up to stare at her. "Red Woman taste good."
Natasha barely had the energy to open her eyes. Her mouth was parted as she panted and gasped for breath, licking her scarlet lips and trying to stare bleary eyed at the monster. "Tha... thanks."
The Hulk leaned close to the Red Woman's face and grinned. "Hulk taste more!" Using his free hand he ripped off her thong, exposing her over heated, drooling pussy.
As the Hulk tore away Natasha's black thong, the material threaded though her tight ass cheeks and slid across her puckered asshole and swollen pussy lips, causing her to scream out. "Aaarrrrrgghh!" "Jesus. Almost (pant)... almost there. Cum. I need to (pant)... need to cum." She thought desperately. The feel of her wet, naked cunt exposed to the air caused a shudder to run through her body as she panted in lust and causing her tits to jiggle on her heaving chest. As the Hulk bent down she unconsciously spread her creamy thighs, her labia opening slightly and a stream of her hot juices streamed to the floor.
The Hulk took a moment to sniff quizzically at the Red Woman's open pussy and licked his lips in anticipation. He stuck his long tongue out and licked at the moisture between the Red Woman's legs and causing her to moan out. He watched her panting chest, almost hypnotized by her swaying tits. The Hulk smacked his lips and grinned. "Red Woman taste good. Hulk want more!" the green beast bellowed as he shoved his inhumanly long tongue into the Red Woman's sopping pussy.
"Finally!" Natasha screamed as her orgasm ripped through her. The Hulk's tongue filled her more than any cock she had ever taken as it slid through her tight cunt and stretched her overheated walls. "Fuck!" she screamed as the Hulk released her hands as he tongue fucked her and she used her now freed hands to grip his hair and wrapped her toned and creamy legs around the green beasts head. The Hulk was using one hand to hold Natasha up, her tight ass seated in his palm and used the thumb of its other hand to strum across her sweat slick tits. With every flick of the Hulk's thumb her tits swished back and forth on her heaving chest and she squealed out every time his callused thumb scraped across her hard nipples.
The Hulk moaned in pleasure, a deep rolling rumble that started in his massive chest and vibrated up his neck to his thrusting tongue as more of her juices filled his mouth.
"Oh Fuck Yes!" Natasha screamed out as she came again. It was too much, the Hulk's callused thumb abusing her jiggling tits, her firm ass cheeks scrapping against his rough palm and his thick tongue stretching her pussy more than it had ever been before. Natasha began thrusting her hips up to meet his probing tongue, humping against the Hulk's mouth and face-fucking the nearly mindless beast.
The Hulk grunted, enjoying the taste between the Red Woman's legs that were wrapped around his head. He wanted more and he knew how to get it. He moved his pinky finger on his hand holding the sweaty Red Woman's ass as she grinded against him.
Natasha froze, her eyes wide in shock and fear as she felt the Hulk's pinky finger move across her toned ass. "no" she whispered. In an instant the sweat from her body combined with the cum drooling from her over-heated cunt allowed the Hulk to penetrate her tiny, tight, puckered little asshole. "Aaarrrggggh! Fuuuuucccccckkkkk..." she screamed, as her tightest hole was violated and the Hulk's pinky finger slid inside of her.
The Hulk's littlest finger was easily the size of the biggest cock Natasha had ever had, and combined with the Hulk's tongue stretching her pussy, her body was filled like it had never been before. With a lust filled thrust onto the Hulk's finger and tongue she came and screamed out in pleasure. "Ooooo hhhh Godddddddd!" Natasha came harder than any time in her life. She screamed as she slammed her tight ass down, loving the unwanted penetration and gripping the Hulk's head with her toned thighs as her upper body thrashed around. Her firm, large tits sloshed around on her heaving chest as she shook and shuddered in the wake of the most savage orgasm she would ever have in her life. Wave after wave of electric pleasure crashed and tore through her sweating, lust filled body. Natasha struggled to remain conscious as her body peaked higher than it ever would again.
As her orgasm began to ebb, Natasha felt herself begin to slip into unconsciousness and lost her grip on the Hulk's head and her thighs went numb as tiny tremors rippled through her muscles. She slid out of the Hulk's hands and fell flat onto the floor, in a puddle of her own cum, in front of the great beast. She meekly tried to lift herself up but realized it was useless. The most powerful orgasm she had ever had left her completely helpless. Natasha could do nothing except lay naked in a sweaty, prone heap at the Hulk's feet as he stood and stared down, smiling at her. Through her wide, fearful, bleary eyes she could see the massive erection trying to rip its way out of the Hulk's pants. It was easily the size of one of her thighs and nearly as long as her entire torso. It would easily split her in half and all she could do was occasionally twitch as she came down from her orgasm.
"Hulk do nasty, naughty things to Red Woman." The Hulk bellowed as he began reaching for the front of his pants.
With a sudden crash Thor burst through the wall and carried the Hulk to the other side of the room and through the wall at the opposite side.
"Bout time." Natasha moaned, shuddering in fear at the thought of being fucked by the Hulk's massive erection. "Gotta find my spare uniform." She dreamily thought as she began crawling to the stairs.
The End
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SEATTLE -- Months after a motorcycle flash mob took over the streets of Seattle, police now say they want the public's help to find a group of motorcyclists who beat and pulled a gun on a man on Aurora Avenue North on that day.
On Aug. 26, more than 100 motorcycles drove through Seattle.
About 5:30 p.m. that day, a 39-year-old man in a pickup was stopped at red light in the 7300 block of Aurora Avenue North. Motorcycles surrounded him.
Motorcycle riders began beating the side of his truck and yelling at him, police said. He called 911, then got out of his truck to confront the motorcyclists. Several riders hit and kicked him.
Video captured the incident, and police have released it.
Wednesday night, KOMO News spoke to the victim who said he wants his attackers off the streets.
"They're not real bikers, they're not real men, they're not real upstanding citizens," said the victim, who did not want to share his name, concerned about being tracked down. "They're just garbage people who got away with acting like garbage people."
Police say one person, dressed in a gray motorcycle jacket and tan pants, pointed a pistol at him.
"When they found out that I was no sucker, they took 15 of them on me then they pulled a 40 caliber chrome pistol on me," the victim said.
The victim said he's had to spend $2,500 repairing his truck and his attackers stole his keys.
"I want these people off the road," the victim said. "I want them treated exactly the same way that street racers are, as a public menace. If you do a wheelie, you lose your bike."
The suspects fled in different directions as officers arrived.
Police say the suspects were wearing helmets, so identification is difficult.
Detectives are asking anyone with information about this group and or the incident to call 206- 684-5550.

subset: commoncrawl


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In our opinion, KTM leads the pack when it comes to TV spot ads. With superb photograph and quick edits, KTM creates ads that are just as edgy as the lines on the RC8, and promotes the hooligan within all of us. Unfortunately the way product liability works in the United States prevents many of these ads from actually airing in the US market. So, we thought we'd bring them to you so you can see how KTM envisions you using their bikes on the street and track. Continue reading for the videos.
690 Supermoto
950 Supermoto


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by Tom Utescher
The visiting Penn Charter girls ruled the higher rungs on the team ladders in last Tuesday's squash match at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, but the host Lions claimed victory in positions five through nine to pull out a 5-4 win over the Quakers.
SCH evened up its season record at 3-3 with the successful outing, while Charter slipped to 1-6.
The shift several years ago to the nine-player (collegiate) format from the old scholastic standard of seven has worked against the Quakers this season, as there is a sharp divide in the middle of the line-up between primary squash players and athletes whose main athletic interests lie elsewhere. Several teams who lack the top talent of the Quakers have been able to beat them by having experienced squash players farther down on the depth chart.
SCH proved to be one of those teams. Going in, the Lions could hope to pull off an upset at one of the top four spots, but they knew they must win five-through-nine, and did.
With four odd-number bouts on the courts to begin with (three through nine) Springside Chestnut Hill got out to a 3-1 lead in the team score. The Lions' Nina Nalle, who recently broke into the varsity line-up, defeated fellow sophomore Sydney Stokes, 11-7, 11-3, 11-1 in the ninth spot, while at number seven Lions senior Sam Blake was an 11-4, 11-3, 11-2 winner over visiting junior Emma Ebert.
Sophomore Courtney Hamilton gave a convincing performance in the fifth spot, topping PC junior Ryann Shaffer, 11-1, 11-2, 11-1. Charter got on the scoreboard thanks to rising freshman star Izzy Hirshberg, who already played varsity matches last year as an eighth-grader. At number three, she posted an 11-2, 11-5, 11-5 win against Lions sophomore Caroline Canning.
Hirshberg's positioning in the third spot gives the Quakers a very solid number four in senior co-captain Amanda Roberts. Roberts, who will attend Yale University, took an 11-5, 11-0, 11-5 decision over one of the Lions' senior co-captains, Kelly Brady. Brady will continue her career at a strong squash school, Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
The other co-captains for the two teams met in the top spot last Tuesday. Lions senior Libbie Maine won an extended opening round, 14-12. PC's Princeton-bound Tara Harrington, who lives just a few blocks from SCH, came on to capture the next three games, 11-4, 11-9, 11-4. PC completed a sweep of the top four spots thanks to sophomore Margaux Losty, who defeated the hosts' freshman number two, Francesca Fabiani, 11-6, 11-8, 11-9.
Meanwhile, SCH picked up a fourth victory of its own from senior number six Ellie Stout. After starting out 11-5, she got a push from PC sophomore Danielle Reisley in the next two games, but Stout prevailed in both of them, 12-10, 13-11.
At number eight, junior Hannah Baxter from the host team was engaged in a lengthy struggle with Leigh Steinberg, a Quakers tenth-grader. Baxter gained a 2-1 edge in the bout, 8-11, 11-4, 11-1, but Steinberg bounced back to take the fourth game, 11-5. Baxter, who played number one on the Lions' tennis team this fall, captured the fifth game at 11-8 to clinch the team victory for Springside Chestnut Hill.
SCH mentor Rich Sheppard, who has coached the squad since the 2005-2006 season, said this is the first time during his tenure that the Lions have defeated the Quakers.


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Tennessee: $73.4 million
Georgia: $485.7 million
Alabama: $302.5 million
Source: The White House
(In Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia)
24,700 HIV tests
180 primary and secondary schools
460 teachers, aides and staff who help children with disabilities
71,000 civilian Department of Defense employees
6,980 low-income students who rely on work-study jobs or other aid to finance college
Source: The White House
POLL: Do you worry about the impact of the pending sequester?
WASHINGTON - Two hundred Tennessee teachers at risk of getting fired. Four thousand Georgia children unable to get vaccines for measles and mumps. Twenty-seven thousand federal employees in Alabama facing furloughs.
For the first time, the White House this weekend released state-by-state data behind the Beltway buzzword "sequestration," warning of painful spending cuts and real-life consequences ahead.
In a Sunday afternoon conference call with reporters, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said most people haven't digested the reality behind budget-slashing rhetoric. He called the sequester "disruptive to their lives and communities."
Barring congressional action before Friday, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama this year face a combined $861 million in agency reductions, grant modifications and unrecoverable revenue as a result of indiscriminate cuts and furloughs, White House figures show.
Despite a shared role in creating the sequester, Democrats and Republicans equally dread its political impact; warnings of private-sector layoffs and a nationwide economic slide are the talk of Washington.
Local worries are beginning to emerge. At the National Governors Association winter meeting here this weekend, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he fears the cuts indefinitely could delay toxic-waste cleanup at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"Every line item gets cut, regardless of what it is," he told The Washington Post on Saturday. "This is not a smart way to do government."
Passed as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, the automatic cuts were designed as an incentive for Congress to find palatable ways to slash $1.5 trillion over the next decade. That didn't happen. The sequester was scheduled to trigger Jan. 1, but Congress postponed it until Friday.
Another delay seems unlikely as both parties assign blame with the countdown clock ticking.
By releasing 50 state profiles, the White House implied the sequester harms everyone everywhere, potentially weakening nutrition aid for seniors, law enforcement grants and early education programs such as Head Start.
Other possible casualties include public health initiatives, work-study jobs for college students and environmental projects for clean air and water.
Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama will lose $53 million in education funding for primary and secondary schools, White House figures show. Additionally, civilians who work for the Department of Defense stand to lose $402 million in unpaid furloughs.
Another human cost? Nearly 9,000 fewer children in the tri-state area will be immunized against whooping cough, influenza, hepatitis B and other disorders, the White House said.
Despite the implications, there appears to be no action toward a deal.
Citizens might assume their officials were discussing potential solutions last week, but a Washington visitor would have encountered a quiet Capitol as Congress enjoyed a five-day recess. Many members traveled to their home states and griped publicly about a lack of debate. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama enjoyed a long Presidents Day golf holiday in Florida.
Sunday's data dump and media conference call were the latest in a comprehensive White House public relations effort to sway Republicans to postpone the cuts.
"There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are working today who will lose their jobs as a consequence of this Republican decision," Pfeiffer said, adding the president would rather close tax loopholes on corporations and the nation's wealthiest than rely solely on spending cuts.
After allowing the George W. Bush tax cuts to expire in January, Republicans loathe Obama's proposed remedy of tax increases and spending cuts. GOP lawmakers call for solving the problem with spending cuts alone.
Last week in Chattanooga, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., called the automatic cuts "ham-handed" but said America would be "better off as a nation if we let the sequester kick in than we would to continue to sweep this problem under the rug."


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United Mining Exploration Commission: A group of friends playing
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custom HUD skins (patch 54) plus more...
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Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 7:36 am
Post subject: custom HUD skins (patch 54) plus more...
oldest HUD thread archived
ND general forum thread
Steelbeans is doing the wynar routine, but it's mostly levelled headed stuff and even a few pics of
's draft copy of a hud replacement.
ND general forum thread
Another on the same topic of hud skins (this one specifically for targetting)
Bit of a rant by nystryke
HiTek and Hurricane in a race
UMEC Classified
As expected, most of the bug fixes weren't perfect (duh)...but at least they're trying AND producing back-to-back patches almost.
Hmmm...as for the improved Amananth powerplant outputs? jeez.
A phoon with an instigator/guzzlers/knocker/haven/pint has 2737k pwr/sec AFTER capacitor. this would allow one hitman to fire at full thrust, or 2 sharks OR 2 feathers to fire at full thrust...you have a few options: (rated from personal favorite down to least favorite)
2hit/rrak combo 8476 (full fire rate at ~3% throttle)
4thorn loadout 6560 (full fire rate at ~38% throttle)
2thorn/2shark combo 6000 (full fire rate at ~48% throttle)
2feather/2shark combo 5320 (full fire rate at ~61% throttle)
{{{data included a -500 power surplus; standard "margin of error" for a capacitor; the limit you can push it in a combat zone and not have your capacitor run out of energy TOO quickly}}}
FYI, you can see quite plainly i'd rather deal with hitmen/barrak power issues than the ability to fire at full thrust. *shrug* That's my nonpvp opinion.
Last edited by MajorFreak on Sun Nov 17, 2002 11:01 am; edited 4 times in total
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Test Pilot
Joined: 25 Oct 2001
Posts: 566
Location: The sticks!
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 10:17 am
Post subject:
I'm thinking of making some HUD displays, but right now I'm in competition with Hurricane - and he's got the lead!
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US Advisor
Joined: 03 Oct 2001
Posts: 374
Location: Sunny Florida
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 10:47 am
Post subject:
Well, that's one improvement. Question, though: are the new huds still opaque? AND... is it just the central hud? Or can you mod other parts of the UI? Like the bottom section?
Think they might *gasp* let everything in the UI be modified? Even added to? *gasp* Maybe custom FF displays are on the way... nah, too many people want them. ND doesn't give us things we want. (Mining ships anyone?)
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Test Pilot
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 273
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 1:39 pm
Post subject:
Rainy13 wrote:
Well, that's one improvement. Question, though: are the new huds still opaque? AND... is it just the central hud? Or can you mod other parts of the UI? Like the bottom section?
Think they might *gasp* let everything in the UI be modified? Even added to? *gasp* Maybe custom FF displays are on the way... nah, too many people want them. ND doesn't give us things we want. (Mining ships anyone?)
hmmm, im trying to figure out if the sarcasm in the final statement is in the fact that we were given mining ships, or in the fact that we were given mining ships that arnt.
Personally, I havnt seen a mining ship till I see something with 4x size 5 engines, a 420 minimum cruise speed, 750 cargo capacity or greater and 4x size 3 gun slots at least to get a bit of a decent mining rate out of the thing.
To make life very interesting - I wouldnt make the gun slots forward facing either - id have them mounted to converge at a point slightly underneath the chat box.
actually - im not sure of that last point anymore - might screw up circle mining (if you *really* want to try active mining with 500 ore that is.).
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US Advisor
Joined: 03 Oct 2001
Posts: 374
Location: Sunny Florida
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 6:16 pm
Post subject:
Nah. To me a mining ship looks like this:
800 hold
4xsize5 minimum thrust, preferably 6xsize5
Turning rate of a tow
8 size-3 gun slots (with a size-1 cap! :p)
the ability to deploy mining drones ;)
That's a good start, anyways.
And no, BF, I don't like the existing miners. If they had real engines (read: size-4) I could deal with them. They'd be useful. Especially if you double their cargo holds to about 100 as well.
As it stands, they're inferior to the transports. Tranny speed, handling, and power more than make up for their slower mining speed. Hell, the Hurricane's 6 missiles are a nice equalizer. :)
And what retard figured out that a 1.5xspeed of the Banker made for a good size-3 spoon? Are they TRYING to spit on the Quantar? At least 2x (.08) would have let the Hurricane be the best mining transport of the set, instead of just equal now.... bad enough that it used to be inferior. I won't even go into my ideal mods for the Hurricane.
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Test Pilot
Joined: 25 Oct 2001
Posts: 566
Location: The sticks!
Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 6:45 pm
Post subject:
Well, I combined (and slightly modified) the two top ones at this time (Migg and Brew) and got this:
Now in the pic, the yellow X goes in the brackets that is near the flux.
I've got one in development at this time, so I don't want to share it with everyone quite yet.
Darnit...it is taking my time away from my competition... :x
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Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 6:16 pm
Post subject:
Original HUD files just in case
Text reformatting
Installation instructions for dummies
Mouse users
Last edited by MajorFreak on Wed Oct 09, 2002 12:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 11:45 am
Post subject:
is there a way to reduce the size of the CURSOR>?
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Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2002 6:32 pm
Post subject:
ND Technical Forum Thread
hmmm...that one's kaput. go
Last edited by MajorFreak on Tue Dec 24, 2002 7:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2002 3:50 pm
Post subject:
looks like
has a download section for this
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 8:17 am
Post subject:
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Test Pilot
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 273
Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:36 am
Post subject:
MajorFreak wrote:
How realistic is realistic tho?
Never having actually been in the AirForce - and certainly nowhere near the cockpit of an actual modern jet fighter ... well ... how close actually are these HUDs to what one gets in a modern fighter's hud?
Anyone actually have real experience?
This last one tho is actually quite nice...
Does one want percentile remaining AB fuel? or for AB fuel to be measured in minutes remaining (Octs might potentially need an alternate HUD gfx with x2 time scale if they purchased a single engine craft.).
Also ive noticed that the standard radar overlay isnt aligned properly - if yoy park in space with a contact close to the inner "circle" and rotate - the contact moves closer to and then away from the inner circle - the scale is wrong.
hmmm, pity my photoshop skillz suck, a set of radar backdrops for different sized radars with exact distances and a proper FOV indicator might be nice - drop in the graphic that corresponds to your current radar range.
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Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2002 4:43 am
Post subject:
ND general forum thread
Looks like
is back and asknig questiongs...BTW, check out Dyson's HUD if you like the spider look.
Last edited by MajorFreak on Tue Dec 24, 2002 8:13 am; edited 1 time in total
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Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 3:27 am
Post subject:
new website out. this time by Dyson. mostly about his HUD replacement files, so go check it out...it's even got a tutorial on how to do it. *g*
Last edited by MajorFreak on Tue Dec 24, 2002 8:14 am; edited 1 time in total
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Posted: Sat Dec 14, 2002 6:57 am
Post subject:
Octavian only HUDs
Full cockpit makeovers too...AVON CALLING!
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Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2003 1:51 pm
Post subject:
BaadF00d wrote:
MajorFreak wrote:
How realistic is realistic tho?
click the picture. takes you to a german site. (i can't read it, so if there's something cool that site explains plz let us know)
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Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2003 3:23 am
Post subject:
I prefer the Dyson HUD and aiming recticle. (not recommended one uses 2d or less than 1027*, but here's it at 800*600/16bit)
*notice the thrust meter? it's at exactly 25% thrust*
BTW, here's it at 1027*768/32bit...and 50% thrust:
BTW, here's a crossreference to mouse/keyboard customization (and recommended layout)
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 12:11 am
Post subject:
I am using Tesrends recticle off of the Brotherhood site. I am really diggin it.
I have noticed that it doesnt work that great with ammo though (although that could be because i suck at ammo). Pyldrvr has a great recticle for ammo that I think is available at the (SOL)Navy site.
There are also a bunch of good downloads at
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Chief WO4
Joined: 09 Feb 2002
Posts: 473
Location: Tripoint
Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 3:08 pm
Post subject: FTP transfer between mindphyre and razorskiss complete
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text:
Tax bill fails amid political 'tension'
Hartford - In an effort to help revenue-strapped municipalities such as New London, where nearly half the properties are tax-exempt, House of Representatives Speaker Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, proposed a plan that ultimately failed this legislative session to tax nonprofit hospitals and colleges.
The proposed legislation was watered down twice, and the House passed both versions. But neither version was called for a vote in the Senate, where the majority caucus - fellow Democrats - were strongly opposed to the plan.
"Our Senate caucus, when we discussed the bill, was not in favor at that late moment in the session of changing a very significant policy in the state of Connecticut, and that policy is - not to tax nonprofits," said Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn.
The bill was bogged down by the fact that it proposed new tax policy, was widely opposed by nonprofit colleges and hospitals and was not openly supported by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. In the end, the proposal became one of many study bills.
The bill may have also fallen victim to political tensions between the House and the Senate this session.
"It was a different atmosphere, that was for sure. I mean, there was tension, you felt it," said House Republican Leader Larry Cafero, R-Norwalk. "What we do in the last couple of weeks ? is you move bills, you have discussions, what about this one, we'll trade you this one for that one. There were no discussions going on."
Earlier in the 2014 legislative session, Democratic senators were dismayed by the fact that Sharkey had called their caucus leader's bill to ban genetically modified grass seed, only to have it defeated, said state Sen. Edward Meyer, D-Guilford. A speaker rarely calls a bill to the floor that he or she thinks will be defeated.
"That was a form of dissing the leader of another house," Meyer said. "And I thought it showed a very high level of integrity of Senator Williams. When he had the opportunity to kill the speaker's bill, he chose not to go in that direction."
Williams, the sponsor of the grass-seed bill, said, "The negative reaction to the idea of taxing nonprofits was so strong that some in the caucus wanted us to take the bill up on the floor and to vote it down, and I said that would not be the right thing to do, that is not how we operate in the Senate and that is not how we treat the caucus members in another chamber."
Although the tension between the Democratic Senate and House leaders was palpable, Sharkey said he didn't think the Senate's decision not to vote on a version of his nonprofit tax bill, often referred to as "reverse PILOT," had anything to do with the House's rejection of Williams' grass-seed bill. "I would just call it a lack of communication," he said.
"I take the Senate president at his word, that he did his best to try to get the Senate to agree to the very watered-down version of the reverse PILOT," Sharkey said. "I am not quite clear why individual senators would have an objection to providing property tax relief to their constituents and feel that perhaps protecting these large institutions like colleges and hospitals, major corporations in their communities ... that's more important than providing relief to their families and their constituents in the form of property tax relief."
Sharkey's initial bill would have allowed municipalities to tax nonprofit colleges and hospitals and required the state to reimburse the nonprofits a portion of the tax.
Proponents said today's nonprofits behave like corporations, offering six-figure salaries and rapidly expanding their facilities, so they should pay for municipal services such as police and fire protection. The tax idea was also appealing to municipalities, which receive only about 32 percent - rather than the mandated 77 percent - in Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) funds from the state for tax revenues they can't collect for tax-exempt properties.
The program has been flat-funded at $115 million for five years, but the General Assembly approved a $10 million increase for next year.
Nonprofit colleges and hospitals said paying property taxes would mean they would have to raise tuition and cut down on community services. The real problem, they said, is that the state doesn't keep to its commitment of funding the nonprofit PILOT.
Because the bill was controversial, the speaker diluted the initial PILOT bill into an amended bill, House Bill 5583, which would have required nonprofit colleges and hospitals that purchase taxable property on or after July 1 to pay taxes on that property. In another effort to get something resembling "reverse PILOT" to pass, Sharkey, with the support of Cafero, added an amendment to another bill, Senate Bill 470.
The amended bill would have allowed municipalities to tax one- to four-family residential structures at nonprofit colleges that were purchased as of July 1, 2015, if the municipality approves the tax change and the General Assembly approves the municipality's ordinance. The House passed each amended bill, but the Senate did not take either one up for a vote.
"Very few of these ideas get done in the first year," Sharkey said. "These are all ideas that oftentimes take two or three years to get vetted, and we'll obviously be continuing that fight."
Legislative committee approves 3 bills affecting municipal revenue
Malloy favors tax reform talks but doubts 'reverse PILOT' will pass this year
Never forgive, never forget: Trump once again bashes John McCain over health-care vote
Local town leaders decry bill that would shift car tax to state


text:
Alta Mesa Resources, Inc. is a publicly traded (NASDAQ: AMR, AMRWW) independent exploration and production company focused on the development and acquisition of unconventional oil and natural gas reserves in the eastern portion of the Anadarko Basin referred to as the STACK. The STACK is an acronym describing both its location—Sooner Trend Anadarko Basin Canadian and Kingfisher County—and the multiple, stacked productive formations present in the area. The STACK is a prolific hydrocarbon system with high oil and liquids-rich natural gas content, multiple horizontal target horizons, extensive production history and historically high drilling success rates. Alta Mesa has assembled a large, highly contiguous leasehold position, largely in the up-dip, naturally-fractured oil portion of the STACK in eastern Kingfisher County, Oklahoma. The Company has identified over 4,000 gross horizontal drilling locations, at least half of which it expects to operate. These drilling locations are in Alta Mesa's primary target formations comprised of the Osage, Meramec and Oswego. Alta Mesa opportunistically acquires acreage in its non-operated locations with the goal of operating wells in these locations. Alta Mesa has a seasoned management team, whose mission is to maximize the profitability of our assets in a safe and environmentally sound manner. We apply advanced engineering analyses and enhanced geological techniques to under-developed or over-looked conventional resource areas to create value. We employ disciplined management processes and have the flexibility to respond to the market.
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Hurricane Harvey had a devastating impact on Texas and Louisiana. Our thoughts and prayers are with our employees and the communities that were impacted by the storm. Both during and after the the storm, Alta Mesa's employees got involved in helping its fellow workers and its community to rescue the stranded and then begin the long road to recovery by cleaning and restoring their homes and neighborhoods.
Alta Mesa's mission is to maximize the profitability of its assets in a safe and environmentally sound manner. Our vision is to be an enduring enterprise engaged in finding and developing energy resources. Our values serve as a compass for our actions and describe how we behave in the world.


text: Grateful Americans are honoring former President Gerald Ford this weekend at a reunion in Dana Point, California. They owe their citizenship, and perhaps their lives, to the man born in Omaha, 100 years ago this Sunday. Iowa Archives remembers "Operation Babylift," and the epic rescue of several thousand Vietnamese orphans.


text:
Monit is a utility for managing and monitoring processes, files, directories,
and devices on a Unix system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair
and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations.
Maintained by: Bryan Harris
Keywords: monitor,repair,maintenance,maintain
ChangeLog: monit
Download SlackBuild:
monit.tar.gz.asc (FAQ)
(the SlackBuild does not include the source)
|Individual Files:
| doinst.sh
| monit.SlackBuild
| monit.info
| rc.monit
| slack-desc
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Slackware® is a registered trademark of Patrick Volkerding
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
Web Design by WebSight Designs | Managed Hosting by OnyxLight Communications


text:
Seriously. Where are they? I remember stealing the neighbors' Popular Mechanics back in 1971 and reading about flying cars. The editors said the technology would be here by the new millennium. It was printed in a magazine so it had to be true. So where are they?
I read that article so many times I had it memorized. I spent countless hours designing my own flying cars, parachutes, gliders, just about anything that could suspend me, even for a short while, above the ground. My poor mother could never figure out what happened to all her bed sheets while Dad was convinced the PVC pipe missing from the garage was a sure sign of oncoming dementia. My bad guys. I did it.
Right now, I'm wishing for a flying car so bad it hurts. I'm on the big track at Willow Springs, stuck behind some uppity punk in a 5 Series. Every time I move to pass, he shuts the door. If I didn't care about the car I was driving, I'd gladly swap paint with this dude. But it's not mine and I can't afford to repair it. Plus its owner would shove me down a hole in the desert, forever.
Now if this car could fly, well, I could simply sail right over Mr. 5 Series. And the ride home would be brilliant. No more stop-and-go crap come Los Angeles, just a straight shot to Fullerton. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Every 10 years or so the flying car resurfaces on the grid. This time it's an outfit called Terrafugia with a vehicle they call the Transition. At first glance, the Transition looks like something that escaped from Disney's Tomorrowland. Or maybe a carnival. Remember those cool "spin and hurl" rides, the pods fixed to giant counter-rotating arms, the pods filled with screaming people? Strap some wings on one of those. That's the Transition
I always wondered what would happen if one of those pods came loose. How far would it fly? If the folks at Terrafugia had anything to do with it, about 450 miles at speeds close to 120 mph. From an engineering standpoint, the Terrafugia people have done an admiral job. Building a genuine flying car is a daunting task. Problems like aerodynamics, weight, strength and handling characteristics are multiplied 20-fold. And then, depending on the targeted market, the vehicle has to be user-friendly, or even better, idiot-proof. In the current state, there's a vast difference between driving a car and piloting an aircraft. A vast difference. The thought of the old lady living across from us flying an aircraft is beyond horrific. She has enough trouble simply backing out of her driveway. A few crushed bikes, a poodle and a dead mailbox should be painted on the side of her Crown Vic as confirmed kills.
There's an old pilot's adage, something akin to "looks good, flies good." Well, I've been looking at the Transition for three weeks now and I'm not convinced it satisfies either. It completed its initial flight testing at New York's Plattsburgh Field, where it took off and flew about half a mile at an altitude of 30 feet. Not quite as inspiring as I had hoped.
Had the MIT-educated design crew been tasked with building an aircraft, they would have succeeded, with something akin to the Evektor Sportstar. Had they built a car, it most likely would have resembled the edgy Tramontana. Both of these vehicles meet and exceed the "looks good, flies good" philosophy. The Spanish-built Tramontana has a top speed of 200 mph and will hit 60 mph in 3.5 seconds. The Czech-built Sportstar has a maximum cruising speed of 170 mph and a range of 800 miles.
It's when we mix these two disciplines together that things get complicated. Nearly 50 years ago, a gentleman named Moulton Taylor built something called the Aerocar. While the project was considered successful-he managed to patent his design-the vehicle never went into mass production. I guess the guys from Terrafugia didn't get that memo.
While I love both cars and aircraft, I'm no longer interested in a vehicle that is both. Call me a purist. Plus, it's my guess that the next design leap in personal aviation will involve vehicles capable of sustained hover. Why use a road at all?Plus, it'll save me from backing over the dog.
Les Bidrawn


text:
Partial-Match Searching
We turn next to the more subtle problem of "partial-match" or "crossword puzzle" searching: A query string may contain both regular letters and the "don't care" character ".". Searching the dictionary for the pattern ".u.u.u" matches the single word
auhuhu, while the pattern ".a.a.a" matches 94 words, including
casaba, and
pajama. (That pattern does not match
abracadabra, though. The entire word must match the pattern; we do not look for patterns in the middle of longer words.)
This venerable problem has been studied in many papers, such as in "The World's Fastest Scrabble Program," by A.W. Appel and G.J. Jacobson (Communications of the ACM, May 1988). In "Partial-Match Retrieval Algorithms," (SIAM Journal on Computing, 5, 1976), R.L. Rivest presents an algorithm for partial-match searching in digital tries: Take the single given branch if a letter is specified, for a don't-care character, recursively search all branches. Function
pmsearch implements Rivest's method in ternary search trees. The function puts pointers to matching words in
srcharr[0..srchtop-1]. It is called, for instance, by:
srchtop = 0; pmsearch(root, ".a.a.a");
The following is the complete search code:
void pmsearch(Tptr p, char *s) { if (!p) return; nodecnt++; if (*s == '.' || *s < p->splitchar) pmsearch(p->lokid, s); if (*s == '.' || *s == p->splitchar) if (p->splitchar && *s) pmsearch(p->eqkid, s+1); if (*s == 0 && p->splitchar == 0) srcharr[srchtop++] = (char *) p->eqkid; if (*s == '.' || *s > p->splitchar) pmsearch(p->hikid, s); }
pmsearch has five
if statements. The second and fifth
if statements are symmetric; they recursively search the
lokid (or
hikid) when the search character is the don't care "." or when the search string is less (or greater) than the
splitchar. The third
if statement recursively searches the
eqkid if both the
splitchar and string are nonnull. The fourth
if statement detects a match to the query and adds the pointer to the complete word (stored in
eqkid by our sleazy hack).
Rivest states that partial-match search in a trie requires "time about
n(k-s)/k) to respond to a query word with
s letters specified, given a file of
k-letter words." Ternary search trees can be viewed as an implementation of his tries (with binary trees implementing multiway branching), so we expected his results to apply immediately to our program. Our experiments, however, led to a surprise: Unspecified positions at the front of the query word are dramatically more costly than unspecified characters at the end of the word. (Rivest suggested shuffling the characters in a word to avoid such problems.) iTable 3i gives the flavor of our experiments. The first line says that the search visited 18 nodes to find the single match to the pattern "banana." The tree contains a total of 1,026,033 nodes; searches with some of the first letters specified visit just a tiny fraction of those nodes.
Table 3: Partial-match searching.
Near-Neighbor Searching
We finally examine the problem of "near-neighbor searching" in a set of strings: We are to find all words in the dictionary that are within a given Hamming distance of a query word. For instance, a search for all words within distance two of
Dobbs finds
hobby, and 14 other words.
nearsearch performs a near-neighbor search in a ternary search tree. Its three arguments are a tree node, string, and distance. The first
if statement returns if the node is null or the distance is negative. The second and fourth
if statements are symmetric: They search the appropriate child if the distance is positive or if the query character is on the appropriate side of
splitchar. The third
if statement either checks for a match or recursively searches the middle child.
void nearsearch(Tptr p, char *s, int d) { if (!p || d < 0) return; if (d > 0 || *s < p->splitchar) nearsearch(p->lokid, s, d); if (p->splitchar == 0) { if ((int) strlen(s) <= d) srcharr[srchtop++] = (char *) p->eqkid; } else nearsearch(p->eqkid, *s ? s+1:s, (*s == p->splitchar) ? d:d-1); if (d > 0 || *s > p->splitchar) nearsearch(p->hikid, s, d); }
Our web site contains data on the performance of this search algorithm. It is quite efficient when searching for near neighbors, but searching for distant neighbors grows more expensive. A simple probabilistic model accurately predicts its run time on real data.
The primary challenge in implementing digital search tries is to avoid using excessive memory for trie nodes that are nearly empty. Ternary search trees may be viewed as a trie implementation that gracefully adapts to handle this case, at the cost of slightly more work for full nodes. Ternary search trees combine the best of two worlds: the low space overhead of binary search trees and the character-based time efficiency of digital search tries.
Ternary search trees have been used for several years to represent English dictionaries in a commercial optical character recognition (OCR) system built at Bell Labs. The trees were faster than hashing for the task, and they gracefully handle the 34,000-character set of the Unicode Standard. The designers have also experimented with using partial-match for word lookup: Replace letters with low probability of recognition with the "don't care" character.
Ternary search trees are efficient and easy to implement. They offer substantial advantages over both binary search trees and digital search tries. We feel that they are superior to hashing in many applications for the following reasons:
- Ternary trees do not incur extra overhead for insertion or successful searches.
- Ternary trees are usually substantially faster than hashing for unsuccessful searches.
- Ternary trees gracefully grow and shrink; hash tables need to be rebuilt after large size changes.
- Ternary trees support advanced searches, such as partial-match and near-neighbor search.
- Ternary trees support many other operations, such as traversal to report items in sorted order.
Jon is a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs. Bob is the William O. Baker Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.


text:
Heat, Bulls take battle to Chicago
The bloodbath that has become the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls shifts to the Windy City for Game 3 Friday night.
After a testy Game 2 in Miami that saw the Heat annihilate the Bulls, 115-78, and saw both Taj Gibson and Joakim Noah of Chicago get tossed in pretty ugly fashion, the United Center will be ready for Game 3.
Whether some of the Bulls' injured pieces will be ready for Friday is another story.
The rumor du jour is that Derrick Rose may finally make his season debut on Friday night. The Bulls and Rose have been non-committal for a long time about Rose's availability, although he has been medically cleared for over two months.
The other two injured Bulls don't sound like they'll be ready to go for Game 3. Kirk Hinrich has been sidelined since Game 5 of their first-round series against the Brooklyn Nets with a calf issue.
Then, there's Luol Deng. Originally reported as the flu, Deng actually was tested for meningitis, then suffered serious side effects of a spinal tap.
"I couldn't control my body, really," admitted Deng, who said he lost 15 pounds through the ordeal. It was scary. Scary for me, scary for everyone that was around me. I've never seen anything like that. I never knew of a spinal tap before that. I didn't know the reaction or the side effects."
On Thursday, he participated as best he could in the team's shoot-around, but it didn't go well, making his availability for Friday doubtful.
"I tried to shoot a little bit and I struggled. I couldn't do it well," said Deng. "We'll see. It's really my first day out of the house and out of the hospital. I want to play, but I don't know what I can do. I haven't done anything. It really (stinks)."
So did the Bulls' performance in Game 2 Wednesday.
The team not only got blown out, but lost its cool. Chicago was assessed six technical fouls and Noah and Gibson were ejected. Gibson, in particular, left the floor in an ugly manner. When various media outlets showed highlights, Gibson's mouth had to be distorted. It was that clear how flowery the language was.
"We're better than that, including myself," Gibson said. "We play ball the right way. We handle ourselves accordingly with referees. This hardly happens to me. It was a sign of frustration, getting blown out in a playoff game on national TV."
Miami took a five-point lead after the first quarter, extended it to 14 at the half, then poured it on in the third and led by 29.
The Heat, for as great as they are, are not a physical team. But on Wednesday, they dictated the pace of the game and fought back a bit after Monday's disappointing home loss in Game 1.
During that setback, which cost the Heat home-court advantage, both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade chirped a little too frequently with officials.
"We felt that we did a little too much (complaining) last game," Wade acknowledged. "Instead of worrying about the game we were worried about other things."
They were focused in Game 2, especially James, who took the physical play to Noah and the other Chicago big men.
"I was just trying to make sure we kept our composure throughout everything that was going on and to understand that we were here to play a basketball game," James said. "We know it is going to be physical each and every minute. We're not going to shy away from that. We have to understand that we're here to try and win the game."
Ray Allen was Miami's high scorer in Game 2 with 21. James had 19 points, nine assists and five rebounds, while Wade, Chris Bosh, Mario Chalmers and Norris Cole all scored in double figures.
For the Bulls, Marco Belinelli led the way with 13. Noah and Nate Robinson were the only other Chicago players to crack the 10-point plateau.
The two teams split the two meetings in Chicago this season, but the Bulls' last victory at home, on March 27 ended the Heat's 27-game winning streak, the second-longest in NBA history.
Miami has lost five of its last six in Chicago.
Game 4 will be Monday night.


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It doesn't seem like the Bishop Hendricken football team needs any added motivation, not with the way the Hawks are steamrolling Rhode Island competition these days.
They'll have some anyway on Friday night against Barrington.
Sitting in the stands, sporting his green "Bishop Hendricken" fleece jacket, will be longtime NFL executive A.J. Smith, a 1967 Hendricken grad and the former general manager of the San Diego Chargers.
This week marks the first time that Smith has been back to his alma mater since he graduated 46 years ago. A current senior executive with the Washington Redskins, Smith returned on Wednesday to Hendricken, where he was once a standout football player himself, and took part in a number of events during the day, including a chat with the football team.
"They're so fortunate to be a part of this and how fortunate they are to be a part of a tremendous athletic tradition, particularly the football team and their achievements," Smith said. "I want to wish them luck Friday night. Focus on the game, don't worry about the scoreboard. Let the coaches worry about that and get after it. Try to get us a victory over Barrington."
The Hawks have won 39 of their past 43 games, including playoffs, and that was without the motivation of having one of the NFL's most well-known executives watching and rooting them on in the stands.
At 6-0 so far this year, you think they want their first loss of the season to come with that guy in the stands?
"He's walked in these kids' shoes, he's worn the uniform," Hendricken head coach Keith Croft said. "I think it gives the kids something to shoot for. I know his message in school today was don't stop chasing your dreams."
Smith had dreams of his own when he was playing football for former Hendricken coach Emo DiNitto, and later when he graduated and went off to college. Initially, those dreams centered on teaching physical education in Providence and coaching at Cranston West.
But as time went on, they grew. He played some semi-pro football and became a part-time scout in the NFL for the Houston Oilers, the New England Patriots and the New York Giants, all the while still teaching.
Then one day he got a phone call that changed his life. It was 1985, and he was being offered a full-time job as a scout.
He took it and never looked back.
"I did that, and I've been blessed and fortunate that I'm still in it now with the Washington Redskins," Smith said. "It's been a long time. I just enjoyed it, but you never know. I just got lucky, took the opportunities and ran with it."
His career unfolded like a book, as he started new chapters every time he moved up the ranks. In 2003, he was named GM of the Chargers, and they quickly became one of the most-talented and high-profile teams in the NFL.
During his 10-year tenure in San Diego, Smith built a team that went 97-69 and made the playoffs five times. After last season, in which the Chargers went 7-9, Smith was let go from his position.
But someone of his stature doesn't just hang out on the market very long. He was scooped up by the Redskins, where he serves in a consultation role. He also gets to work with his son, who is a scout with the club.
It's been a journey that was impossible to predict, but one that is plenty inspirational. Because of the flexibility in his new role, he was finally able to make it back to Warwick, and he hasn't wasted the opportunity. He took a tour of Hendricken on Wednesday, and was surprised to meet up with some of his old teammates and his old coach, DiNitto. He had lunch with Hendricken's administrators, and he spoke to the senior class as well. Then he spoke to the football team, two days before the Hawks host fellow-unbeaten Barrington in a battle of the top-two ranked teams in the state.
"I'm sure they have dreams and aspirations," Smith said. "I hope the one thing that hits them is, I'm one of them. I went here. It's not like an NFL executive from someplace else as a guest speaker. I'm one of you guys. And to come back – I've got my colors on proudly, and I'll have them on Friday night – I hope that's an extra kick for them. And I wish them the best."
Smith, a 2003 inductee into the Hendricken Hall of Fame, lives in Del Mar, Calif., with his wife Susan, who is also back in Rhode Island to enjoy the trip with him.
Together, they'll be cheering on the Hawks. Smith makes the trip only once every half-century, roughly, and he picked a good week to come back – Hendricken-Barrington is as big as it gets in this state.
Smith knows a thing or two about big games. He watched his Redskins beat the Chargers, his former team, on Sunday before flying into Rhode Island.
"Big thrill," Smith said with a smile, about Washington's victory.
Another victory this weekend would be the icing on a pretty special week.
"I can't wait to go to the game Friday night. I hear it's a big game, by the way," Smith said. "I did some research. No. 1 against No. 2. So I'm getting an extra bonus to sit there as a fan and cheer on my old high school."
You think the Hawks won't be ready?
Kevin Pomeroy is the assistant sports editor at the Warwick Beacon. He can be reached at 732-3100 and firstname.lastname@example.com.


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mjrweb needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 98 designs submitted by 21 freelance designers.
We are a new web based application SaaS company. Snip is a new social sharing app that allows publishers to track sharing. We bring analytics to the social graph!
Everyone using the web, ecommerce, content publishers...anyone can benefit from this app if they have a website.
We need a simple, modern home page design which immediately explains Snip, and how it works. The benefits of using Snip should be the primary message delivered when landing on this page.
We need a home page.
We love other SaaS websites, simple UI, and a clear message. One example of a "clear message" we like is http://37signals.com/
The home page will show what Snip does, and has a working example of the button.
Simple login area at the top. We have provided graphics (logo's and icons) here;
We also have a wireframe for the layout we want here;


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Now in its Sixth Edition, The Human Record continues to be the leading primary source reader for the World History course. Each volume contains a blend of visual and textual sources; these sources are often paired or grouped together for comparison. A prologue entitled, "Primary Sources and How to Read Them," appears in each volume and serves as a valuable pedagogical tool. Unlike many world history texts that center on the West, The Human Record provides balanced coverage of the global past. ApproximatelyAndrea, Alfred J. is the author of 'Human Record - Volume 1 to 1700', published 2008 under ISBN 9780618751105 and ISBN 0618751106.[read more]
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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
On 31st January 2010 Windows Azure and SQL Azure will transition to becoming services that you have to pay for which means that my three small demos that are hosted up there are going to disappear hence I thought now would be a good time to review before they are digitally ground into dust.
Tweetpoll was a demo that I wrote back in April 2009 and is hosted on Windows Azure at http://tweetpoll.cloudapp.net/. Here's what it does:
Here's a diagram that shows that a little better and demonstrates which parts use Azure web and worker roles. It was built at a time when one could only have one worker role per application therefore two threads are used to simulate the pushing onto and picking off the queue:
Its a very noddy application and the use of a queue is gratuitous but nevertheless its a useful demo of what can be achieved and enabled me to get some experience of building an app on Azure. The source code is available at http://tweetpoll.codeplex.com.
I wrote a blog entry back in May 2009 called Tweetpoll – My first Windows Azure application is live that introduced Tweetpoll. In that blog entry I provided a screenshot of the graph that gets displayed at http://tweetpoll.cloudapp.net and here it is again:
Here's what it looked like in July 2009:
And finally today in January 2010:
I said at the time that it would "be interesting to see if the graph smoothes out over time" and sure enough that is what has happened. We still get a massive spike around 140 characters of course but its clear to see that the curve has smoothed out before that spike. I also find it interesting that there are more tweets in the 30-50 range than 90-120; something for academics to ponder over perhaps. Finally, if you are wondering why some tweets appear to be over 140 characters in length then take a read of my blog entry The Longest Tweet where I explain why that is.
Incidentally, by adding up the counter for each tweet length I can determine how many messages Tweetpoll has gotten off of the public timeline since April 2009 and I display that number at http://tweetpoll.cloudapp.net too:
Last but not least here's how many hits the site has had:
Again, if you're interested in looking under the bonnet of Tweetpoll then the source code is available at http://tweetpoll.codeplex.com.
When SQL Azure entered public beta I wanted to build an app that would demonstrate its capabilities so I built http://northwindazure.cloudapp.net/Northwind.svc/. Its is, quite simply, a copy of the venerable Northwind database hosted on SQL Azure with a WCF Data Services (née Astoria) head on top of it which is hosted on Windows Azure. If you hit the WCF Data Services head then this is what you see (make sure you have feed reading turned on in your browser):
Some sample queries that you can issue:
All the code is available on Codeplex at http://nwindazure.codeplex.com/.
If you want to read more about RESTful Northwind then go read my blog entry RESTful Northwind on SQL Azure where I also talk a little about how I attempted to use datadude (aka Visual Studio Team System for DB Pros aka whatever-its-called-today) against SQL Azure.
This one is a lot simpler than Tweetpoll or RESTful Northwind, it is simply a SQL database hosted up on SQL Azure. In December 2009 Brent Ozar blogged about how he had been archiving tweets from various people that he follows into a SQL Server database and he made a backup of that database available for anyone that wanted to use it. I thought it would be cool to host that database up on SQL Azure both because it would demonstrate SQL Azure's abilities and because it would save anyone else having to go through the rigmarole of restoring it themselves so I copied the schema up there and pumped the data in using SSIS.
Read more (including instructions on how to access it before it disappears) at TwitterCache now hosted on SQL Azure.
These apps/services will be disappearing in about one week from now so if you're interested in using them go and do it now. Remember, the code for Tweetpoll and RESTful Northwind is up on Codeplex at:
Hope these have been useful to someone, they certainly have been for me!
If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here
Subscribe to this post's comments using


text:
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Use FORMS-E application forms
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text:
Xfinity Forum Archive...
This is an archived section of the community.
Content in this area has been identified as outdated or irrelevant.
This change was done in an effort to make the forum easier to use and to keep only the most helpful and recent content active.
Post your questions in the Xfinity Community
The XFINITY Community Forums will close in the middle of December.
To stay connected to us and other Xfinity.com and XfinityTV users, please follow us on Twitter and "Like" us on Facebook. For issues with your XFINITY service, please visit our Help & Support site.
TV and movie lovers could also interact with each other on Tunerfish, a social community where fans can share what they're watching, post reviews and find recommendations.
We appreciate your involvement in the XFINITY Community Forums and hope you continue to engage with us and other users as we move our conversations to the aforementioned social venues.
Thank you.
UPDATE: The closure of the Community Forums on Xfinity.com is now scheduled for December 16th (subject to change). This closure does not affect the Help & Support Forums on Comcast.com.
Comcast closed the Community Forum on December 16, 2011.
Links to the Community Forum redirect to this thread in the HELP forum.
I split out the discussion that started on November 23rd when Comcast Eric made the announcement. You can continue the discussion in the other thread (click the long link above to follow that thread). Please let this thread remain mostly informative since someone made it the landing page for redirects from the closed community forum.
I am locking this thread. It would be helpful if a Comcast forum administrator would make it sticky.
**** There are new forums noted below created by your community forum friends. ****
UPDATE: The closure of the Community Forums on Xfinity.com is now scheduled for December 16th (subject to change). This closure does not affect the Help & Support Forums on Comcast.com.
Come on over
Great group of people, most if not all from these very Comcast forums.
But no need to worry...
If you are lonely during these times, and wish to talk to people on a more personal level..
Please comes to Critters, we are not a corporations who bows to our advertisers or lobbyists wishes, we are just people, living our lives, and talking about it.
The long discussion about this issue has been moved to this other thread.
This is a customer-to-customer help forum. If you want to complain to Comcast go to:
I am locking this thread.
@RedMomma5 wrote:
Hello friends,
I was known as RedMomma5 on Comcast and many of you may remember me. I have started my own website and am the Administrator. We currently have over 40 members from the old Comcast Community that have joined.
I am posting this message here since many of you have been looking for a new place to hang out and perhaps have not found the choices currently available to your liking.
My site is built with general conversation in mind and we have many forums from which to choose. I hope you will consider visitng to see if it meets your needs. The name of my site is Crimson Cafe and the web address is: http://crimsoncafe.forumotion.com
You must register to become a member before you can view the forums. The welcome forum is open to visitors and will give you information about the site and how to register.
Hopefully the "Help Forum" will allow this message as a courtesy to Comcast customers who have been "displaced" from their enjoyment of being able to post in the forums.
Thanks for looking and I hope to see you there.
Adding to locked landing thread.


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(UPDATE: This is new version of the story that was first reported Wednesday, with new quotes, including from the BSO musicians.)
Marin Alsop has signed a new contract that will extend her tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through August 2021, 14 years after she began the job.
Her hiring made global headlines, both because she was the first woman to gain the top artistic post at a major American orchestra and because the BSO players initially objected, describing the search process as rushed.
Since that initial bumpiness, Alsop and the musicians have developed a smooth working relationship and have enjoyed considerable successes locally and nationally; several visits to Carnegie Hall generated glowing notices.
"My start was so surprising, on so many levels," Alsop, 56, said. "I didn't come into this with any expectations. But this has gradually become my home. It has been an organic process. I love the orchestra and I love living here."
Alsop's previous contract was to have ended in 2015. The orchestra celebrates its centennial in 2016.
Musicians were informed of the Alsop contract during a rehearsal Wednesday for this week's summer season-closing concerts.
Violinist Gregory Mulligan, head of the players' committee, read a statement later in the day congratulating Alsop on the new deal.
"BSO musicians are happy for the stability this development signals to our orchestra, and for the growth that will now occur," Mulligan said.
The musicians have begun negotiating with BSO management on a new contract; the current one expires in September.
"In light of our own contract negotiations, Marin's contract renewal demonstrates the commitment BSO leadership has to continue providing the city of Baltimore with world-class symphonic music," Mulligan said
During her first years with the BSO, Alsop greatly revitalized the scope of programming and helped get the orchestra recording again after a long hiatus. A recording of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" on the Naxos label was nominated for a Grammy in 2009. There are plans to issue recordings of Bernstein's three symphonies over the next several years.
The conductor has launched innovative educational projects with the BSO, including the OrchKids venture in inner city schools; and two projects for adult amateur players, the BSO Academy and Rusty Musicians. These initiatives have generated widespread national and international attention.
"My goal is that, by the end of the contract renewal, these programs will be so well organized and supported that they will just be part of the fabric of what the BSO does," Alsop said.
The conductor's right hand remains in a cast, the result of a fall early this month in Brazil, where she is music director of the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra (her contract with that ensemble runs through 2016). Alsop canceled several concerts after the accident, but expects to be back on the podium by the middle of August, when she is scheduled to conduct in London.
The BSO's financial situation has been generally sturdy during Alsop's tenure; an $850,000 deficit last fiscal year was an exception. The orchestra's president and CEO Paul Meecham said that a much smaller deficit was anticipated for the current fiscal year, which ends next month, and a balanced budget is projected next year.
During the season before Alsop's arrival, average capacity at the orchestra's home base, Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, was 58 percent, and 77 percent at its second home in Montgomery County, the Music Center at Strathmore. Last season's capacity figures: 70 percent at Meyerhoff, 80 percent at Strathmore.
The orchestra also reports that the number of contributions has reached about 10,000, almost double the figure in 2007.
"Marin is a wonderful asset for the orchestra," Meecham said. "She is part of the compelling vision that helps us raise money. I'm relieved and thrilled she has renewed through 2021. There is so much more she has to offer."


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Hello everyone,
A friend of mine is a pretty die-hard Christian (shock horror, both of his parents are missionaries/vicars) and he often posts little sayings of some kind or another on Facebook, which I usually ignore. However, today he posted something that really irritated me for some reason:
"The more I look at science, the more in awe of God I become."
And just to make that worse, one of his Christian friends commented "Boom" as if he had made some kind of infallible argument. Somehow, I feel as though nothing I say will make any difference because they must be incredibly deluded already to believe that God just "invented" science. Basically, this is the guy who thinks he's a "modern and intelligent" Christian by saying that things like Noah's Ark are "just stories and aren't meant to be taken seriously by Christians". But if that is true, then why take ANY of the Bible seriously and where does he draw the line between stories and (what he believes is) the truth?
In the past I asked him and his friend where the evidence was. He claimed science (yes, seriously) helped prove Christianity and that Christianity was about "opening yourself" to it and believing, and then you "feel God" or whatever. How do you argue with someone like that??
What do you all say to religious people (not necessarily just Christians) who claim that science is just an invention of God? Is there a specific way to argue with someone who twists everything to awkwardly suit modern day thinking?
Views: 5852
Do 'Gods' go 'poof', when they stop being thought about?
Ahem...(clears throat)
Alas, poor Yorick Richard! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite
jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a
thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!
My gorge rises at it.
Goodbye Fair Richard you will be missed, the brighness of my life diminished slightly by your passing this way never again, but fear not my friend some other christy foole will take your place and tickle my funny bone once more. :D
Dear Richard:
The deeper fates have received you, and off you go.
To serve in an abstract heaven, where strings of words are betrayed by silence?
We who lift the vail, can offer no tasty meal of certain truths, and can only show strings of symbols that do not include 'God' as a factor.
Is this the best of all possible universes, where 'God' is hardly more than a 'was once thought', footnote?
I wish you well.
In the vast web of 'data', will the appearence of 'God' reappear as that last decimal point? Will a vector resolve into a magnitude and direction, pointing to where 'God' must sit?
My hands seive not the deeper meanings at this moment, but if I sit quietly among the trees of deep time, will I perceive the great forest that surrounds the throne of 'God'?
One thing that I found really fun to watch was I would schedule some times with the local university's science department. Find out what type of experiments they have going on and taking my friends to watch/participate in simple experiments. There is a difference is reading about science and another to actual do it. Makes it hard to argue against.
In HS, I was ablt to sit in on a 'Young Scientists' retreat at OSU. Sadly my parents could not pay for it, so I sort of 'crashed' the conference.
During that one day, 'get in free card', we watched the superconductor experiments going on, and a few more, that now I can't seem to remember..;p(.
How can you argue with someone that is "religious" which to me is pretty much the same as insane, you would better spend your time talking to a wall, at least the wall won't make bizarre comeback arguments.
Warren, good points. I am very selective about discussing religion, which I why I love this site.
These days, I see the religious as victims of negative societal forces. Religion is part of the way the world makes sense to them at this point.
I have some friends on facebook that do the same thing. Here are my bottom-line responses to your post:
If you wish to remain friends with this person, then accept them the way they are. This doesn't mean you need to stay silent. Instead of trying to use logic or compelling arguments to change their beliefs (see #1 above), simply ask them questions, like: "what does science say about god?", "how do you choose what to believe as truth in the bible?", etc.
I have some friends that I question like this to try and figure out why they have these beliefs. I don't judge them and I tell them what parts I disagree with. They are aware that I'm an atheist and we both agree to disagree on many things, but we have interesting discussions.
Hi Ike,
I like your approach to discussing religion with the religious.
I find it to be a rather disarming technique to do as you do, ask questions. Honestly seek out answers to your questions about their position. I like to point out that I'm confused by their position, which is very different than telling them that they don't make sense.
Wow, lots of posts on this one.
Natasha, on the surface it seems like your friend is employing circular logic.
I recommend Wikipedia's page on informal fallacies in logic. Study of these will make you more cynical if you are like me, because you start noticing fallacies everywhere. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
Also, this is one of the oldest arguments in the history of arguing, and time is only on our side as our telescopes and microscopes get better and better. They have no new information to use. The list of their foibles only grows, and the science on our side becomes more and more airtight.
Also, this is the information age, and I believe that religion is the enemy of information (being based on disinformation).
The easiest thing to do is youtube Christopher HItchens.
As the years go by, the good friend may have a harder time accepting infallible doctrine.
Thinking about this (today), metaphorically: Rational thinking requires planting (rational) flowers, and pulling (irrational) weeds. I don't see how I can pull others' weeds, but maybe I can plant flowers. Even if someone believes in God (or other delusion), it's okay with me as long as they're not out to discredit science, or out to spread lasting damage (like a garden pest).
Science is more about observing, describing and testing ideas than it is about disproving delusions. It's about the flowers that everyone can see, smell, and spread, and it's up to each individual to pull their own weeds to make space. Forcefully spraying other people's weeds for them usually does more harm than good.
The more I learn about science, the more awesome nature is. Even if God put it all there for us to appreciate, we still need to use our brains and our senses, learn about and appreciate the world we're born into, and pass it on healthier than how we found it. Skip their weeds but give them seeds.


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text:
Safe, strong and free.
These three words make up the foundation that Front Range Center for Assault Prevention is built on.
FRCAP executive director and founder Victoria Strong believes every child is born with these rights and the organization takes that message and its Child Assault Prevention (CAP) project to schools across the Front Range.
Arvada-based FRCAP addresses all forms of assault against children -- bullying, physical, emotional and sexual assault and more -- and teaches them about stranger awareness. The program aims to educate kids about these types of abuse and provide them with the skills and strategies to recognize and deal with those situations.
"It's an empowerment program. We're talking about kids' rights to be safe, strong and free," Strong said.
The program will launch at Eldorado K-8 in Superior in late April.
Kris Berdan, president of the Soaring Eagles Alliance, the Parent-Teacher Organization at Eldorado, said they had to move quickly to bring the program to the school after the kidnapping and murder of Jessica Ridgeway. Jessica went missing in October while walking to school in Westminster and her body was later found in a field in Arvada.
Strong said FRCAP's program has educated kids in all but two schools in the Boulder Valley District at least once, if not multiple times, since it was founded in 1996.
She said she fielded nearly a dozen calls a day in the six-week period after Jessica went missing.
"It hit a little too close to home for a lot of people," Berdan said.
That case created a reaction, "as it should," Strong said, adding that that type of abuse is rare compared to other abuse that happens in children's lives at home, school and other environments.
"The stranger piece is just a small piece of their vulnerability," she said.
The CAP program will be introduced to kids at the elementary level first, and Berdan plans to bring the program back in the fall for the middle school students.
Berdan said that dozens of parents were concerned for their children's safety following the Jessica Ridgeway kidnapping and approached the school about safety programs.
That's when the PTO sought out FRCAP. The Soaring Eagles Alliance will fund a portion of the program at the elementary level and its cost will also be offset by a grant the PTO received from the Town of Superior's Contingency Grant Fund.
Created in 2008, the grant was implemented to assist groups in Superior that benefit the community. The Board of Trustees budgets $10,000 a year for the grant and Eldorado's PTO recently received $1,500 to bring the CAP program to the school.
The PTO will fundraise to pay for the middle school program, which includes topics like stranger awareness and bullying, dating abuse, sexual harassment and internet and technology safety.
Eldorado K-8 staff will receive a two-hour training, and parents, grandparents and guardians can attend a two-hour training as well, led by Strong.
Strong and staff member Sarah Adams lead the classroom workshops that teach kids to be aware of their surroundings, how to perform a "guttural" yell to scare strangers away and self-escape skills.
They also teach kids about the "right to tell" a trusted adult about physical or sexual abuse incidents. After the workshops, kids have approached Strong about those types of situations, she said.
"We've had over 400 disclosures over the past 16 years of abuse that has happened or is currently happening," Strong said. "They'll come out and tell us about it or go home and tell their parents or tell their teachers the next day."
Strong said it's important to get kids and adults involved in the discussion and education in assault prevention.
"We educate the entire community because everyone needs to be on the prevention team," she said. "Everyone needs to be educated and everyone needs to be on board."
For more information about FRCAP, visit frontrangecap.org.