Backtracking Quotes

If we misread the blueprint of our life, we need not be ashamed of backtracking on our chosen options. Admitting to mistakes may make us human and maybe great again. ("Sisyphus' hardship on the hill")

Sometimes, if she simply remained quiet, and let the inadequacy of his excuses reverberate on the air, he became ashamed and backtracked.

Always stick to the story. It was when you started backtracking that people got in trouble. Interrogation 101.

I need to backtrack. I need to reboot. Do not save changes

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.

Though no one can backtrack and create a brand new start, Everyone is capable of taking their life in a brand new direction.

plan B plan Battered and Broken plan Boxed in plan Bailed on and Back from the dead plan Better luck next time plan Balled up plan Backtracked plan Backhanded plan Backward steps plan Blackballed, Black-marked, and Blacklisted plan B-side, Bye Bye Baby plan Belly up and Beat down plan Bad days ahead and Best are far Behind

Lost people are different. They will drive around in the same circle over and over rather than try a new path. Their fear of getting more lost paralyzes them into staying lost in the area that's just become familiar. It supersedes their ability to chart a new course. They circle and backtrack and stay comfortably lost because it's less scary than seeing something different than what's presently in front of them.

But I'm liking staying here if it means I get to check out two hot chicks every morning." Crisis winked at me, but when he looked at Logan, he was backtracking. "From a distance. Like a mile. Maybe ten miles. Fuck, sorry sweet stuff, but not going to admire you at all. I'll just admire Kat.

We had to keep explaining things, backtracking and filling gaps. We realised our own conversations had evolved into a kind of shorthand, a tidy, neat little minimalism. Covering the whole canvas in broad obvious brushstrokes for outsiders felt like a waste of sounds, time and effort. Speaking with footnotes.

And then they started deleting the protest reviews. That was my line. When they started to stamp out dissent, actually to make it disappear with virtually no excuse for doing so...that’s not neglect. That’s not an overwhelmed person or people trying to figure it out. That’s an entity that has decided that they do not care, that they have moved on from the issue, do not see it as an issue, and is trying to avoid bad press. Or they are too far down the line to backtrack on what they’ve been doing and save face. They’re content with their wildly inconsistent policy enough to no longer care what effect it is having on their user base. If you try to silence dissent, then something is very, very wrong.

I believe that the ‘love of your life’ is just a person that you chose. You choose them because you believe that they’re it.

My companions could make observations. Sloane could generate relevant statistics. If there'd been witness testimony, Michael could have told us who was exhibiting signs of guilt. But here, now, looking at the pictures, this was my domain. I would have to backtrack to explain how I knew, to figure out how I knew -- but I was certain.

I realize that not everyone could be granted the chance of getting a decent closure – most people just deal with the decisions they made then on their own.

He was wishing the past was a place you could backtrack to, take a sideroad you'd walked hurriedly past, wake somebody from a bad dream he was having.

The old concept of chronological, orderly, symmetrical development of character died when it was discovered that the unconscious motivations are entirely at odds with fabricated conventions. Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, backtrack, arrest themselves, retrogress, mobilize, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and traumas. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some are cubistic, some are hard-edged, some geometric, some abstract, some impressionistic, some surrealistic!

you are sad now. you are not sad forever. there are no paved roads to healing. you must build one brick by brick. there will be backtracks before breakthroughs but- you must collapse into yourself before rebuilding. you must unearth every wound before learning the power of salt. you will build that yellow brick road- in your own time and on your own terms. - the grit of healing.

I ran again, losing myself amongst my water-wolves. Some of the soldiers were taking to the sky, flapping upward, backtracking. So my wolves grew wings, and talons, and became falcons and hawks and eagles.

I made my way to the living room and sat down on the sofa. Hannah followed a moment later and sat down opposite me. She looked exhausted. ‘You look exhausted,’ I told her. ‘Thank you.’ ‘No, no, it’s not that you look bad,’ I said, backtracking. ‘You just look more tired than usual.’ ‘Mmm hmmm,’ said Hannah. ‘Not that you usually look tired.’ Hannah rolled her eyes. I decided I was talking too much and turned my attention to the pitiful collection of ‘80s music cassettes that she’d inherited when she moved into the apartment. Then I started talking again. ‘You know, you’re only one album away from owning Bananarama’s full back catalogue.’ I looked over to Hannah. She wasn’t laughing. That felt strange. She always laughed at my crappy music cassette jokes. I tried another.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later...later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

She had gone quite a distance. He had to backtrack a significant way, stopping to call out every few paces. When at last he found Yorda, the sight of her slender frame sent a stab of pain through Ico's chest as he remembered the girl he had seen in the water. He reached out his hand to her.

Before me, before us—did you ever—were you ever in love?’ He paused for a while then shrugged. ‘I thought I was a couple of times at my last school—the usual crushes.’ ‘Yeah, I really don’t want to hear it,’ I said, backtracking like crazy. ‘You’re going to tell me they were blond and beautiful size zeros.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I tend to do that. Any life isn’t just one story; it’s thousands of them. So when I try to tell one of my own, I sometimes go down an alleyway when I should take the main street, or if the story is fourteen blocks long, I sometimes start on block four and have to backtrack to make sense.

Often adults said to me, “You’re so strong, you’re so brave.” But I didn’t want to be strong, I didn’t want to be brave. I wanted a fresh, fluffy brain, one that was not tormented by wars and fear. I wanted to backtrack in time to a world of innocence, to regress into the landscape of The Boxcar Children. It was so nice there.

I feel like I took a wrong turn but went so far down the road I didn't have the energy to turn back. Please, Martin, you must remember this. It's never too late to turn back if you make a wrong turn. Even if it takes you a decade to backtrack, you must do it. Don't get stuck because the road back seems too long or too dark. Don't be afraid to have nothing.

I’ve noticed a paradox in great scientists and superforecasters: the reason they’re so comfortable being wrong is that they’re terrified of being wrong. What sets them apart is the time horizon. They’re determined to reach the correct answer in the long run, and they know that means they have to be open to stumbling, backtracking, and rerouting in the short run. They shun rose-colored glasses in favor of a sturdy mirror. The fear of missing the mark next year is a powerful motivator to get a crystal-clear view of last year’s mistakes. “People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot,” Jeff Bezos says. “If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot.

Hold out what men have said. (Desmonde and Delilah backtracked)

Not only is there constant backtracking, but the many subproblems all remain simultaneously active and are addressed opportunistically.

When you are in your twenties, even if you’re confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later … later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It’s a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it’s obvious why you did; if you don’t, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

You’re fooling around with my daughter while there are ghosts in the house!” she accused Jack as if this was an act akin to rounding up innocent citizens randomly in order to torture them just for kicks. Then, bizarrely, she backtracked, “Not that I frown on fooling around, because, you know, everyone needs a bit of nookie. Especially on a Sunday afternoon.” Mom turned to Yasmin and shared, “Best time of the week, Sunday afternoon.

Annie clouded up. For a second, he thought she was going to erupt, and flinched. She saw that...and got control of herself with an visible effort. She took three deep breaths, each longer than the last, and her features became serene. All at once it seemed totally clear to Mike that she was right and he was nuts - that his ingenius theory was nonsense, childish, fantasty bullshit. His conviction evaporated, and he was ashamed. He felt his cheeks grow hot, groped for words with which to backtrack - "I have to admit I have no better explanation for the the facts," Annie said slowly. Again, Mike did an emotional instant 180. "Holy shit -" She held up a hand. "I am going to think now. Very hard, for a long time. You will be as quiet as possible while I do." She got up from the computer, went to the bed, and lay down. "Think yourself, or read, or play games with the headphones on, or go Topside if you like." She clasped her hands on her belly, closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep

There's someone in my school who has many boyfriends," states Elsa. 'Oh, well I wouldn't want to suggest that the girl in your class is a-' says Mum, feverishly backtracking. "He's a boy." Elsa corrects. Mum looks confused. Elsa shrugs. "It's complicated," she says.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later ... later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more back-tracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, the the log of your journey is much less clear. Or, to put it another way. Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that means something new is being born. Does this makes any sense if we apply it to our individual lives? Even if that something new is our very own self? Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

She stood in the middle of my bedroom, gazing around with wide eyes. I hadn’t made my bed. In three years. And the walls were plastered with wakeboarding posters and snowboarding posters and surfing posters (I was going to learn to snowboard and surf someday, too). It all might have been overwhelming at first-not exactly House Beautiful. “Is this McGillicuddy’s room?” she asked. “What! No. McGillicuddy’s a neat freak. Also he collects Madame Alexander dolls.” She turned her wide eyes on me. “Kidding! I’m kidding,” I backtracked. Why did I have to make up stuff like that? My family was weird enough for real.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later... later there is uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box airplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

I was grinding away to the climactic moan backtrack when I caught my reflection in the club’s mirror, hips rotating, booty shaking. Years later, Grace described my smooth moves as a sad epileptic white girl’s imitation of a twerk. Harsh. Could anyone look sexy dancing to lyrics that include “Sucky, sucky. Me sucky, sucky”? I don’t think so.

Mud covered me from face to feet. I couldn’t straighten my body, however much I tried to. But I was alive. I was alive and I could do seventy push-ups in the mud with a freaking bazooka tied to my back.

Furious, the beast writhed and wriggled its iterated integrals beneath the King’s polynomial blows, collapsed into an infinite series of indeterminate terms, then got back up by raising itself to the nth power, but the King so belabored it with differentials and partial derivatives that its Fourier coefficients all canceled out (see Riemann’s Lemma), and in the ensuing confusion the constructors completely lost sight of both King and beast. So they took a break, stretched their legs, had a swig from the Leyden jug to bolster their strength, then went back to work and tried it again from the beginning, this time unleashing their entire arsenal of tensor matrices and grand canonical ensembles, attacking the problem with such fervor that the very paper began to smoke. The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F1) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n-dimensional orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out, fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore. But the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his impervious parameters, took his increment Δk to infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling through an x-axis and several brackets—but the beast, prepared for this, lowered its horns and—wham!!—the pencils flew like mad through transcendental functions and double eigentransformations, and when at last the beast closed in and the King was down and out for the count, the constructors jumped up, danced a jig, laughed and sang as they tore all their papers to shreds, much to the amazement of the spies perched in the chandelier-—perched in vain, for they were uninitiated into the niceties of higher mathematics and consequently had no idea why Trurl and Klapaucius were now shouting, over and over, “Hurrah! Victory!!

Camille said, “Your trouble is, you’re backtracking. I heard you, saying the Estates would save the country. Two years ago you said nothing was possible unless we got rid of the monarchy first. Which is it, which is it to be? No, don’t answer. And will there be an inquiry into the cause of these riots? No. A few people will be hanged, that’s all. Why? Because nobody dares to ask what happened—not Louis, not Necker, not even the Duke himself. But we all know that Réveillon’s chief crime was to stand for the Estates against the candidate put up by the Duke of Orléans.” There was a hush. “One should have guessed,” Charpentier said. “One never anticipated the scale of it,” Brissot whispered. “It was planned, yes, and people were paid—but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves.” “And that upsets your plans?

Adults tend to forget – or perhaps never appreciated in the first place if lifelong non-readers themselves – what a vital part of the process rereading is for children. As adults, rereading seems like backtracking at best, self-indulgence at worst. Free time is such a scarce resource that we feel we should be using it only on new things. But for children, rereading is absolutely necessary. The act of reading is itself still new. A lot of energy is still going into (not so) simple decoding of words and the assimilation of meaning. Only then do you get to enjoy the plot – to begin to get lost in the story. And only after you are familiar with the plot are you free to enjoy, mull over, break down and digest all the rest. The beauty of a book is that it remains the same for as long as you need it. It’s like being able to ask a teacher or parent to repeat again and again some piece of information or point of fact you haven’t understood with the absolute security of knowing that he/she will do so infinitely. You can’t wear out a book’s patience. And for a child there is so much information in a book, so much work to be done within and without. You can identify with the main or peripheral character (or parts of them all). You can enjoy the vicarious satisfaction of their adventures and rewards. You also have a role to play as interested onlooker, able to observe and evaluate participants’ reactions to events and to each other with a greater detachment, and consequent clarity sometimes, than they can. You are learning about people, about relationships, about the variety of responses available to them and in many more situations and circumstances (and at a much faster clip) than one single real life permits. Each book is a world entire. You’re going to have to take more than one pass at it.

Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea" Cold and final, the imagination Shuts down its fabled summer house; Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation Dwindles in the hour-glass. Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair Tangling in the tide's green fall Now fold their wings like bats and disappear Into the attic of the skull. We are not what we might be; what we are Outlaws all extrapolation Beyond the interval of now and here: White whales are gone with the white ocean. A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack Of kaleidoscope shells Probing fractured Venus with a stick Under a tent of taunting gulls. No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone That chucks in backtrack of the wave; Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on, A grain of sand is all we have. Water will run by; the actual sun Will scrupulously rise and set; No little man lives in the exacting moon And that is that, is that, is that. Sylvia Plath, Mademoiselle, August 1955.

She could be killed.” Severin slammed his fist on the desk. “So?” Lucien blinked. Severin could have happily strangled his brother at that moment. This willingness seemed to show in his darkening expression because Lucien hastily back-tracked. “I

he was moving across. He knew he could backtrack on land once he reached the opposite bank, but he didn’t have that much time. Focusing his sights on Ben, he kicked with everything he had. A large branch slammed into him, sending him under for a moment. When he surfaced again, disoriented, he saw Zeus behind him, paddling hard. He regained his bearings, then stroked and kicked with desperate effort. In despair, he saw that he hadn’t even reached the center of the creek. Beth saw Ben inching farther along the fraying rope bridge, and she dragged herself closer to the water’s edge. “Come on!” she shouted, sobbing now. “You can do it! Hold on, baby!

My princess," began Mara, then found she could not speak the crushing phrases. "His Highness sends his warmest regards," she finished. She had the satisfaction of seeing Ianni's face come back to life; the great dark eyes lost their look of suffering and turned hopefully toward the king. Mara turned to him too, well-pleased with her merciful little lie. But one look at his startled face froze the blood in her veins. What a fool she was! Of course, he had understood every word she said. "Son of Pharaoh, live forever!" she gasped. "I crave pardon-- I could not believe you meant to wound this princess, however lowly--" "You mean you forgot that I could understand," retorted Thutmose.

It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle. Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.

office, something that’s invisible to my vaunted powers. Crap. Where’s my gun? After backtracking, Myfanwy picked up her gun from the dust and listened carefully. Deathly silence. Feeling slightly absurd but still scared, she held her gun in two hands and jumped smoothly around the corner, landing in a position that implied she was prepared to open fire on whatever she saw. “Oh, thank God.” Not to worry, it’s not a weird monster. It’s just three rotting dead people, she thought as she threw up on her cute little gun. After wiping her mouth and then shaking the pistol to clear some vomit off it, she approached the corpses cautiously. All of them were dressed in purple garments, though they were now sodden in body fluids. Nasty.

It won’t take long. And you know what you can do in the meantime? You can tell my friend here all about your doll.” “What?” Bellamy shot her a look. “I’m coming with you.” “No extraneous activity for you. Doctor’s orders.” Bellamy rolled his eyes, then sighed and turned to the little girl. “So…” she heard him say as she hurried off. “What’s your doll’s favorite way to hunt? Does she like spears or bows and arrows?” Clarke grinned to herself as she imagined the look of confusion on the little girl’s face, then took another flight of stairs down and turned in the direction she assumed led to the bedrooms, but the layout of this floor was different than the one above. She backtracked and tried going the other way but ended up even more turned around. The

You’ve shifted the emphasis just enough from fear to love that your old reality has destabilized and the new reality of your soul is starting to break through. At this point, your life may malfunction and you may have to let go of goals, possessions, people, or parts of your lifestyle. You may lose whole aspects of your identity, your motivation and direction, and your comfortable habits. It’s important not to backtrack into more fight-or-flight reactions. What’s really happening is that your soul is saying, “You are not this old, limited self anymore. It’s time to discover who you really are and what you can do.” This is the point where the phoenix lights itself on fire and mysteriously turns to gold. It’s where you come face to face with the choice of who you really want to be. Excerpt From: Penney Peirce. “Frequency.” iBooks.

It was your first time?" Her head snapped up, eyes stabbing her sister. "Of course it was," Lisa backtracked at once, and then said, "Well, Fanny must have been wrong then. Or perhaps it is different for everyone." Suzette shook her head with disgust. "If you, who have known me all my life and know I have not been keeping company with men before this, doubts me, why would he not? He probably thinks I have been with half the royal navy." "Why would he think that? We live nowhere near the near the coast," Lisa said with confusion. Suzette glared at her and then shifted to get off the bed,crawling around her to do so. "Where are you going?" Lisa asked, standing up. "For a walk." "But I was going to read to you to cheer you up," Lisa protested. "I don't want to be read to," Suzette said grimly as she slipped her shoes on. "I could tell you a story," Lisa offered. "No." "I could sing,or-" "I want to be alone.

I'm sorry about...everything. And that." I pointed to her neck.               The small smile had more than one meaning. It had my inner guy perking to attention. "Girls don't generally complain about beard burn, do they? Isn't it supposed to be a way for guys to mark girls, claim them, be all romantic in a Neanderthal kinda way, like hickies?"               I arched an eyebrow at her. Oh, is that right. She blushed, furiously and adorably, and backtracked.               "I didn't mean you were trying to mark me, I just meant you didn't have to apologize."               I couldn't help myself. I leaned in, putting my hand on the wall behind her head. "How many hickies have you had?"               She licked her bottom lip. Again. "None," she breathed. She put a hand on my chest to keep me from coming closer.               I pursed my lips in approval. "That's a good answer."               "Why do you care?" she asked. It wasn't a demand that she know, it was more like she was genuinely interested. Why did I?               I

Why haven’t you told me that story before?” Simon paused, as if trying to decide how best to explain. “I don’t know . . . maybe because you and I don’t talk about those kinds of things. You’re the guy I talk to about a fun, random hookup. Or about some hot girl whose number I got while waiting in line at the deli on my lunch break. I guess I just didn’t think you’d understand something that’s not so, you know, shallow.” Vaughn blinked. No offense taken. Simon quickly backtracked. “I mean, not that I think you are shallow. Just that, well, lately, none of your relationships with women have had much substance, you know? And that’s cool; that’s your perspective—hey, I used to be in that place myself.” “Before you left and went to the deeper place.” Vaughn pretended to think about that. “Question: can I still hang out with you, now that you’re in this deeper place? Obviously, I’m used to the shallower stuff, but maybe I can wear a pair of water wings, or hold onto one of those pool noodles or something.” “I’m going to be getting shit for the ‘shallow’ comment for a while, aren’t I?

Bungie, like many large studios, dedicated a great deal of time to what could technically be called “preproduction” but what was really just the act of figuring out what their next game was going to be. That was one of the most challenging parts of making any game—narrowing the possibilities down from infinity to one. “I think that’s one of the things that plagued Destiny’s development,” said Jaime Griesemer. “We would work for a while, spend a lot of money in one direction, and then because there was this sort of impossible ideal of, ‘We’re following up the biggest game of all time, and this has to be the new biggest game of all time,’ there were several points in development where there was a total reset. And it wasn’t a graceful, ‘We go to prototype and that direction is wrong so we’re going to backtrack a little bit and go in a different direction.’ It was, I came back in from going on vacation for a week and everything I had worked on for a year was deleted. Unrecoverably, literally deleted. If I hadn’t had a copy on my laptop, it would’ve been gone forever. With no warning, no discussion, no nothing.

He had to backtrack immediately to account for the most famous and most acclaimed poet in America, Phillis Wheatley, who was, very unfortunately for Jefferson’s argument, unquestionably black. She had been brought to Boston as an enslaved African at the age of about six, learned English and Latin as a child, and began writing poetry as a teenager. Her published works earned accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Among her admirers were Voltaire, who praised Wheatley’s “very good English verse,” George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and even the naval hero John Paul Jones, who addressed her as “the celebrated Phillis the African favorite of the Nine [Muses] and Apollo” when he sent her some of his own verses. Dr. Rush cited her as a proof of black ability, listing her accomplishments when he wrote in 1775, “We have many well attested anecdotes of as sublime and disinterested virtue among them as ever adorned a Roman or a Christian character.”14 Franklin went to see Wheatley when she was in London, a literary celebrity on book tour. The acclaim irked Jefferson: “The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.”15

So they rolled up their sleeves and sat down to experiment -- by simulation, that is mathematically and all on paper. And the mathematical models of King Krool and the beast did such fierce battle across the equation-covered table, that the constructors' pencils kept snapping. Furious, the beast writhed and wriggled its iterated integrals beneath the King's polynomial blows, collapsed into an infinite series of indeterminate terms, then got back up by raising itself to the nth power, but the King so belabored it with differentials and partial derivatives that its Fourier coefficients all canceled out (see Riemann's Lemma), and in the ensuing confusion the constructors completely lost sight of both King and beast. So they took a break, stretched their legs, had a swig from the Leyden jug to bolster their strength, then went back to work and tried it again from the beginning, this time unleashing their entire arsenal of tensor matrices and grand canonical ensembles, attacking the problem with such fervor that the very paper began to smoke. The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F_1) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n-dimensional orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore. But the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his impervious parameters, took his increment Δk to infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling through an x-axis and several brackets—but the beast, prepared for this, lowered its horns and—wham!!—the pencils flew like mad through transcendental functions and double eigentransformations, and when at last the beast closed in and the King was down and out for the count, the constructors jumped up, danced a jig, laughed and sang as they tore all their papers to shreds, much to the amazement of the spies perched in the chandelier—perched in vain, for they were uninitiated into the niceties of higher mathematics and consequently had no idea why Trurl and Klapaucius were now shouting, over and over, "Hurrah! Victory!!

How is my English?” Tatiana asked Alexander in English. “It’s good,” Alexander replied in English. It was late morning. They were walking through the dense deciduous riverbank woods a few kilometers from home, with two buckets for blueberries, and they were supposed to be talking only in English, but Tatiana backtracked and said in Russian, “I’m reading much better than I’m talking, I think. John Stuart Mill is simply unreadable now instead of unintelligible.” Alexander smiled. “That’s a fine distinction.” He yanked up a couple of mushrooms. “Tania, can we eat these?” Taking them out of his hands and throwing them back on the ground, Tatiana said, “Yes. But we will only be able to eat them once.” Alexander laughed. She said, “I have to teach you how to pick mushrooms, Shura. You can’t just rip them out of the ground like that.” “I have to teach you how to speak English, Tania,” said Alexander. In English, Tatiana continued, “This is my new husband, Alexander Barrington.” And in English, Alexander replied with a smile of pleasure on his face, “And this is my young wife, Tatiana Metanova.” He kissed the top of her braided head and in Russian said, “Tatiana, now say the other words I taught you.” She turned the color of a tomato. “No,” she stated firmly, in English. “I am not saying them.” “Please.” “No. Look for blueberries.” Still in English. She saw that Alexander couldn’t have been less interested in blueberries. “What about later? Will you say them later?” he asked. “Not now, not later,” Tatiana replied bravely. But she was not looking at him. Alexander drew her to him. “Later,” he continued in English, “I will insist that you please me by using your English-speaking tongue in bed with me.” Struggling slightly against him, Tatiana said in English, “It is good I am not understand what you say to me.” “I will show you what I mean,” said Alexander, putting down his bucket. “Later, later,” she acquiesced. “Now, pick up your backet. Collect blueberries.” “All right,” he said in English, not letting go of her. “And it’s bucket. Come on, Tania. Say the other words.” He held her. “Your shyness is an aphrodisiac to me. Say them.” Tatiana, breathless inside and out, said, “All right,” in English. “Pick up your bucket. Let us go house. I will practice love with you.” Alexander laughed. “Make love to you, Tania. Make love to you.

I ran again, losing myself amongst my water-wolves. Some of the soldiers were taking to the sky, flapping upward, backtracking. So my wolves grew wings, and talons, and became falcons and hawks and eagles. They slammed into their bodies, their armour, drenching them. The airborne soldiers, realising they hadn't been drowned, halted their flight and laughed- sneering. I lifted a hand skyward, and clenched my fingers into a fist. The water soaking them, their wings, their armour, their faces... It turned to ice. Ice that was so cold it had existed before light, before the sun had warmed the earth. Ice of a land cloaked in winter, ice from the parts of me that felt no mercy, no sympathy for what these creatures had done and were doing to my people. Frozen solid, dozens of the winged soldiers fell to the earth as one. And shattered upon the cobblestones. My wolves raged around me, tearing and drowning and hunting. And those that fled them, those that took to the skies- they froze and shattered; froze and shattered. Until the streets were laden with ice and gore and broken bits of wing and stone. Until the screaming of my people stopped, and the screams of the soldiers became a song in my blood.

I have a funny story about your dad,” John says, looking at me sideways. I groan. “Oh no. What did he do?” “It wasn’t him; it was me.” He clears his throat. “This is embarrassing.” I rub my hands together in anticipation. “So, I went over to your house to ask you to eighth grade formal. I had this whole extravagant plan.” “You never asked me to formal!” “I know, I’m getting to that part. Are you going to let me tell the story or not?” “You had a whole extravagant plan,” I prompt. John nods. “So I gathered a bunch of sticks and some flowers and I arranged them into the letters FORMAL? in front of your window. But your dad came home while I was in the middle of it, and he thought I was going around cleaning people’s yards. He gave me ten bucks, and I lost my nerve and I just went home.” I laugh. “I…can’t believe you did that.” I can’t believe that this almost happened to me. What would that have felt like, to have a boy do something like that for me? In the whole history of my letters, of my liking boys, not once has a boy liked me back at the same time as I liked him. It was always me alone, longing after a boy, and that was fine, that was safe. But this is new. Or old. Old and new, because it’s the first time I’m hearing it. “The biggest regret of eighth grade,” John says, and that’s when I remember--how Peter once told me that John’s biggest regret was not asking me to formal, how elated I was when he said it, and then how he quickly backtracked and said he was only joking.

Sometimes it seems as though we are not going anywhere as we walk through the city, that we are only looking for a way to pass the time, and that it is only our fatigue that tells us where and when we should stop. But just as one step will inevitably lead to the next step, so it is that one thought inevitably follows from the previous thought, and in the event that a thought should engender more than a single thought (say two or three thoughts, equal to each other in all their consequences), it will be necessary not only to follow the first thought to its conclusion, but also to backtrack to the original position of that thought in order to follow the second thought to its conclusion, and then the third thought, and so on, and in this way, if we were to try to make an image of this process in our minds, a network of paths begins to be drawn, as in the image of the human bloodstream (heart, arteries, veins, capillaries), or as in the image of a map (of city streets, for example, preferably a large city, or even of roads, as in the gas station maps of roads that stretch, bisect, and meander across a continent), so that what we are really doing when we walk through the city is thinking, and thinking in such a way that our thoughts compose a journey, and this journey is no more or less than the steps we have taken, so that, in the end, we might safely say that we have been on a journey, and even if we do not leave our room, it has been a journey, and we might safely say that we have been somewhere, even if we don’t know where it is.

At Prim’s side was a woman with a politician’s face (supercilious, sanctimonious, vacuous, terrified, smarmy, disingenuous, small-minded, vengeful, coldhearted, opportunistic, petty, deceitful, evidence-ignoring, bullying, arrogant, smug, obnoxious, contemptuous, ignorant, reactionary, condescending, patronizing, blinkered, vacillating, corrupt, morally bankrupt, blackmailing, blackmailable, dodgy, wavering, backstabbing, bought, sold, stinking rich, unqualified, sleazy, teeth-capped, kneecapping, corporate-owned, hate-mongering, fear-mongering, button-pushing, deflecting, evading, brazening, hit-song-stealing, nostalgia-worshipping, distorting, no-tax-returning, tax-evading, offshore-holding, shady-business-partnering, election-stealing, arms-dealing, collateral-damage signing-offing, hypocritically family-value bleating but sexually deviant-ing, honest-forthright-honorable—a paragon-of-integrity [lying], spiteful, unreliable, Teflon-coated, Saran-wrapped, white-breaded, xenophobic, cynical, uncomprehending of irony-ing, witless, thin-skinned, insecure, unfulfilled, blindly ambitious, power-hungry, sadistic, self-righteous, incapable of contemplation-ing, prevaricating, privileged, pampered, Ivy League–educated [in something useless like political science, economics, or law], pompous, ego-centered, centered, narcissistic, shallow, bullshitting, manipulative, backtracking, quote-denying, what-climate-changing?, alternate-truth-ing, prejudice-feeding, hate-inciting, racketeering, blame-shifting, warmongering, autocratic, megalomaniacal, possibly sociopathic, blathering, self-serving, unreliable, cliquey, cagey, crafty, cunning, daft, dull, ethically destitute, irredeemable, oil-burning, fracking [but NIMBY], self-pay-raising, self-congratulating, self-aggrandizing, but all that was just first impressions so who can say?).

Of course, it's easy to be overly optimistic when it comes to Egyptian reform. The country has a history of false promises and backtracking dating to the 1970s.

Perspex - An In Depth Anaylsis on What Works and What Doesn't The history of the Perspex Sheet is entrancing. The story backtracks to 1843 when the primary acrylic harsh corrosive was made. Nonetheless, it wasn't until 1933 that the German physicist Otto Rohm patented and enlisted the model title plexiglas. This is crucial on the grounds that what is usually considered Plexiglas has gotten to be such a family unit phrase, for example Kleenex, that it might have been ignored that Plexiglas was beforehand a patented title. From that point acrylic glass was utilized for submarine periscopes and firearm turrets for planes. Since that time acrylic glass has changed into a household item. There is a extensive blended bag of employments for Perspex Sheets. A mixture of windows is produced out of them material incorporating flying machine windows, police home windows, and race auto windows. Utilizing Perspex sheets inside race autos will help make them lighter - and speedier than using glass. Advertising and store indicators are frequently produced out of coloured and clear acrylic and truly material materials are created out of acrylic sheets, because the thermoplastic might perspex sydney be folded. Moreover, Perspex Sheet are utilized as specialists mediums and moreover use for surrounding. Perspex sheets can likewise be made into furniture. Perspex Sheets have such a large mixture of employments. One other one of many uses of Perspex is on solar beds and other locations where UV rays are required. Perspex is also availed in UV grade which is mainly a type of Perspex that enables transmission of UV rays. It is largely utilized in locations where UV rays are required to penetrate.If you have an idea of how Perspex appears like, you may need a extremely onerous time making an attempt to image someone carrying a garment made out of it. That is where the coloured Perspex comes into play. It isn't solely used to make garments but additionally sneakers and luggage. There are truly two sorts of plastics.Thermoset that's a plastic which is structured into a perpetual shape,plus thermoplastic that's versatile and may very well be reshaped. Poly methyl methacrylate is a thermoplastic that's clear. PMMA is blandly reputed to be a glass acrylic. Several brand names are Plexiglas, Lucite and Perspex. PMMA is as a neater cost elective to polycarbonate (PC). An alternate revenue which P.M.M.A possess over COMPUTER is the unlucky deficiency of conceivably hurtful bisphenol A sub-units current in polycarbonate.

The Combat Perspex The historical past of the Perspex Sheet is entrancing. The story backtracks to 1843 when the primary acrylic harsh corrosive was made. Nonetheless, it wasn't until 1933 that the German physicist Otto Rohm patented and enlisted the model identify plexiglas. That is important on the grounds that what is usually considered Plexiglas has gotten to be such a household unit word, as an illustration Kleenex, that it might have been missed that Plexiglas was previously a patented name. From that time acrylic glass was utilized for submarine periscopes and firearm turrets for planes. Since that point acrylic glass has became a household merchandise. There's a extensive blended bag of employments for Perspex Sheets. A mix of home windows perspex sheet is produced out of them materials incorporating flying machine windows, police home windows, and race auto home windows. Utilizing Perspex sheets inside race autos will assist make them lighter - and speedier than utilizing glass. Advertising and store signs are incessantly produced out of colored and clear acrylic and really material materials are created out of acrylic sheets, as the thermoplastic may very well be folded. Furthermore, Perspex Sheet are utilized as specialists mediums and additionally use for surrounding. Perspex sheets can likewise be made into furnishings. Perspex Sheets have such a wide mixture of employments. Another one of many uses of Perspex is on sun beds and different places where UV rays are required. Perspex is also availed in UV grade which is mainly a type of Perspex that enables transmission of UV rays. It's mostly used in locations where UV rays are required to penetrate.In case you have an thought of how Perspex appears like, you might need a really arduous time trying to image someone sporting a garment constituted of it. That is where the coloured Perspex comes into play. It is not solely used to make clothes but in addition shoes and baggage. There are actually two sorts of plastics.Thermoset that's a plastic which is structured right into a perpetual form,plus thermoplastic that is versatile and may very well be reshaped. Poly methyl methacrylate is a thermoplastic that is clear. PMMA is blandly reputed to be a glass acrylic. Several brand names are Plexiglas, Lucite and Perspex. PMMA is as a better price elective to polycarbonate (LAPTOP). An alternate profit which P.M.M.A possess over PC is the unfortunate deficiency of conceivably hurtful bisphenol A sub-units current in polycarbonate.

I would send out some contests. “Here's some code. Here's the benchmark. Make it fast.” I sent our load balancer's header parsing. We were all writing crazy regexps that didn't backtrack and tried to capture things with the most efficient capture groups. And we were all competing, getting faster and faster and faster. Then one guy comes over the next day. He had written it all in C++ with XS, and so he was like, “I win.

annoyance ran over his face. “We’ve crossed that point, Lila. If you want to backtrack

The path of life on our planet and maybe many others does not need a divinity to thrive, it needs no excuse to live, owes no debt to the universe because it is a part of the universe, no driving force other than the primal forces of physics and chemistry are needed, those two sets created biology, and if you backtrack all of the life on the Earth, you inevitably end up looking at stardust.

And one can’t help but admire the skill of the Russian political class in playing mind games: it has persuaded the West that humiliating Russia would have dire consequences, and that back-tracking is not an option. However, those who think that Western resolve would only harden the Kremlin’s position could be wrong. Perhaps, at the outset, the Kremlin would indeed try to test the West’s limits. But the Soviet-era experience shows us that the Russian personalized regime as a rule respects force and will abide by enforceable agreements. On the contrary, the absence of external restraints encourages recklessness, which endangers the very existence of a system that has no mechanisms for self-correction or for assessing risk.

A person will know the quality of your listening by the backtrack or question that follows.

Cat, gray tabby, calm, watches large, black ant. Man, rapt, stands staring at cat and ant. Ant advances along path. Ant halts, baffled. Ant back-tracks fast—straight at cat. Cat, alarmed, backs away. Man, standing, staring, laughs. Ant changes path again. Cat, calm again, watches again.

If you want information,” he said in his low tones, “I am willing to take up my old connections and provide it. You need write to no one or speak to no one. It’s common enough for people to summon their own artisans for special projects.” He patted his satchel. “You are wealthy enough to enable me to sustain the cover.” “You mean I should order some jewelry made?” He nodded. “If you please, my lady.” “Of course--that’s easy enough. But to backtrack a bit, what you said about spies on both sides worries me. What if the Renselaeuses find out you’re here? Will they assume I’m plotting?” “I have taken great care to avoid their coverts,” he said. “The two who met me face-to-face last year are not in Athanarel. And none of the family has actually seen me.” Once again I sighed with relief. Then an even more unwelcome thought occurred. “If my movements are known, then other things have been noticed,” I said slowly. “Are there any I ought to know about?” He gave his nod. “It is known, among those who observe, that you do not attend any private social functions that are also attended by the Marquis of Shevraeth.” So much for my promise, I thought dismally. Yet Shevraeth hadn’t said anything. “So…this might be why Flauvic granted me that interview?” “Possibly,” he said. “I take it servants talk.” “Some,” he agreed. “Others don’t.” “I suppose the Merindar ones don’t.” He smiled. “They are very carefully selected and trained, exceedingly well paid--and if they displease, they have a habit of disappearing.” “You mean they’re found dead, and no one does anything?” He shook his head, his mouth now grim. “No. They disappear.” I shuddered. “So whatever I find out must be by observation and indirection.” “Well, if you can evaluate both sides without endangering yourself,” I said, deciding suddenly, “then go ahead. The more I think about it, the less I like being ignorant. If something happens that might require us to act, you can help me choose the correct thing to do and the way to do it.” He bowed. “Nothing would please me more, my lady,” he promised. “Good,” I said, rising to fetch my letter from the Marquise. “Here’s her letter. Read it--and as far as I care, destroy it.” I handed it to him, relieved to have it gone. “So, what’s in your bag? I will want something special,” I said, and grinned. “For someone special.

As I trod down the hall, I made and discarded plausible excuses. When I reached the tapestry I decided against speaking at all. I’d just take a quick peek, and if the livery was Merindar, then I’d have to hire someone to ride back and warn the Renselaeuses. I pulled my soggy cloak up around my eyes, stuck out my gloved finger, and poked gently at the edge of the tapestry. Remember the surmise I recorded on my arrival at the Residence that day in early spring--that if anyone were to know everyone’s business, it would be the servants? I glanced inside in time to see a pale, familiar face jerk up. And for a long, amazing moment, there we were, Meliara and Shevraeth, mud-spattered and wet, just like last year, looking at one another in silence. Then I snatched my hand back, now thoroughly embarrassed, and spun around intending retreat. But I moved too fast for my tired head and fell against the wall, as once again the world lurched around me. I heard the faint metallic ching of chain mail, and suddenly he was there, his hand gripping my arm. Without speaking, he drew me inside the bare little parlor and pointed silently at a straw-stuffed cushion. My legs folded abruptly, and I plopped down. “Azmus--” I croaked. “How could you--I sent him--” “Drink.” Shevraeth put a mug into my hands. “Then we can talk.” Obediently I took a sip, felt sweet coffee burn its way pleasantly down my throat and push back the fog threatening to enfold my brain. I took a longer draught, then sighed. The Marquis looked back at me, his face tense and tired, his eyes dark with an intensity that sent a complexity of emotions chasing through me like darting starlings. “How did you get ahead of me so fast?” I said. “I don’t understand.” His eyes widened in surprise, as if he’d expected to hear anything but that. “How,” he asked slowly, “did you know I was here? We told no one when I was leaving, or my route, outside of two servants.” “I didn’t know you were here,” I said. “I sent Azmus to you. With the news. About the Merindars. You mean you already knew?” “Let us backtrack a little,” he said, “if you will bear with my lamentable slowness. I take it, then, that you were not riding thus speedily to join me?” With his old sardonic tone he added, “Because if you were, your retreat just now is somewhat puzzling, you’ll have to admit.” I said indignantly, “I peeked in because I thought you might be one of the Merindars, and if so, I’d send a warning back to you. I mean, you if you were there. Does that make sense?” I frowned, shook my head, then gulped down the rest of the coffee. He smiled just slightly, but the intensity had not left his eyes. The serving maid came in, carrying a bowl of food and some fresh bread. “Will you have some as well?” she said to me. “Please,” Shevraeth said before I could speak. “And more coffee.” He waited until she went out, then said, “Now, begin again, please. What is it you’re trying to tell me, and where are you going?” “I’m going to Orbanith,” I said, and forced myself to look away from the steam curling up from the stew at his elbow. My mouth watered. I swallowed and turned my attention to pulling off my sodden gloves. “I guess I am trying to tell you what you already seem to know--that the Merindars are going on the attack, with hired mercenaries from Denlieff. But--why do you want me to tell you when you do already know all this?” I looked up from wringing out my gloves. “I am trying,” he said with great care, “to ascertain what your place is in the events about to transpire, and to act accordingly. From whom did you get your information?” The world seemed to lurch again, but this time it was not my vision. A terrible sense of certainty pulled at my heart and mind as I realized what he was striving so heroically not to say--nevertheless, what he meant. He thought I was on the other side.

The history of human nature: How far can we get away with being complete and utter bastards, before we have to backtrack?

In a RECESSION or slow-down, this makes economic conditions worse. If governments, businesses and households all have too much debt, and all set about repaying their debts at the same time, it’s an economic disaster. That’s why David Cameron had to backtrack on a speech he was planning to make to the Tory party conference in 2011: ‘The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit-card and store-card bills.’ It was pointed out that this was a genius formula for making the recession worse, so he had, very embarrassingly, to withdraw the lines from his speech.

Good thing life's a journey, even if you have to backtrack to find your way.

The universe story and the human story are a play of forces rational and nonrational, conscious and unconscious; of fate and fortune, nature and nurture. Forces of good and evil play out their tragedies and their graces—leading us to catastrophes, backtracking, mutations, transgressions, regroupings, enmities, failures, mistakes, and impossible dilemmas.

After a stint at community college, and with the encouragement of professors, Roberts applied to Berkeley and was admitted at age twenty-three. There was no box on the form to check that would indicate he was disabled, so, after his acceptance, he had to figure out how he would live on campus. Students with other disabilities had attended Berkeley and other colleges in the United States, but nearly all of Roberts’s body was paralyzed, so he would need assistance in an acute way, for things like getting from his bed to his wheelchair every day—the kind of help that exceeded dormitory norms. Berkeley administrators initially tried to backtrack and refuse him admission, citing past failed experiments with enrolling disabled students. Roberts went to see Dr. Henry Bruyn at the Cowell Hospital on campus. Bruyn had overseen the care of children in Roberts’s generation who’d contracted polio and lived with the aftermath of the disease. He agreed to work with Roberts to outfit a hospital room for his needs while on campus—as a makeshift, semipermanent approximation of a dorm room. Berkeley agreed, and Roberts arrived on campus, but expectations were low. The headline in Cal’s own newspaper read: “Helpless Cripple Attends UC Classes Here in Wheelchair.

When we express those locked-up emotions, our minds and our bodies find an entry into healing and hope. When we find ourselves angry because of our grief, we can try to backtrack to discover what emotion that anger might be a response to - pain, fear, frustration, surprise, confusion at an unfair situation. We will journey into our own souls, our own consciousness, and we will find we know ourselves better than we had before. Let the calm hand of grief come. It's not all as evil as you think. An honest expression of emotion - pain, emotional fatigue, sadness, regret, confusion - whichever emotion is a good and healthy way to honor ourselves. We have experienced a loss, a shock, a cause for grief.

Analysis, dream interpretation, self-knowing, exploration, all are undertaken because they are ways of backtracking and looping. They are ways of diving down and coming up behind the issue and seeing it from a different perspective. Without the ability to see, truly see, what is learned about ego-self and the numinous Self slips away.

I remember, when I was a kid, staring at road maps, the kind you bought at gas stations and carried in the glove box, and that were, for me at least, impossible to properly refold. I remember looking at all those intersecting lines representing roads laid over and carved through the earth, dirt tracks and superhighways, the insolent grids of the cities. I wanted to follow them all to the end. I remember thinking that if you could get hold of all the maps for the entire country, or even the hemisphere, and spread them out side by side, it would be obvious that every road leads to every other road, that everything is connected. The dull suburban lane on which I lived would carry me eventually to rocky paths in Patagonia and the rutted logging roads that cross Alaska. There were dead ends, of course, lots of them, but assuming you were free to backtrack, it was impossible, really, to get lost. You could follow any road in any direction and eventually, by however circuitous a path, get where you needed to go. Oceans notwithstanding. I don’t remember talking to anyone about this. As a child you learn to guard your thoughts, to hold close to ideas that seemed simple and self-evident and that you knew adults would scoff at. What counted as education seemed to mainly involve learning to walk in single file and otherwise keep quiet. School meant grown-ups telling you that things had to be done in a certain way, and in no other, that however many obvious and inviting paths might lead from one point to another, only one of them was right. The rest might as well not exist at all. To do well, to earn praise, you had to learn not to see them anymore.

I’m not Johnny. I don’t waver in my decisions. I don’t backtrack. I don’t put anything on your shoulders if I can help it. If I could do this part for you, I would.

Burroughs and Gysin had now extended cut-ups beyond tapes and collage and into the realm of personal relations. Burroughs now suspected that the entire fabric of reality was illusory and that someone, or something, was running the universe like a soundstage, with banks of tape recorders and film projectors. He was determined to find where the control words and images were coined. He was using cut-ups in an attempt to backtrack the word lines to find out where and when the conditioning had taken place, and more importantly, who was responsible. Suspicion fell on Time magazine’s enormous newspaper clipping morgue and the files of the FBI and the CIA. But they were more likely to be the source material for control, not the masters of it. However, with the aid of a great deal of majoun, Bill had finally determined that everybody was in fact an agent for a giant trust of insects from another galaxy, though, as usual with Burroughs, it is hard to tell how literally he meant this. However, he was certainly convinced that everyone was an agent for control and that the only way to find out who they really were was to cut them up.

As she descended below the floor level of the loft, her former partner in juvenile crime was revealed to her from scuffed paniolo boots, up a long, muscled body that appeared to go on forever, to a venerable black Stetson. His cowboy look was new to her and it suited him. When she backtracked to his Hawaiian-sky blue eyes, she swayed under the impact and abruptly sat down. Any stair step would do." Noelani Beecham, Pele's Tears

You only fall in love once, The rest are just endless rebounds.

My office is over here—” He stopped. Frowned. Looked about. Had to backtrack to the kitchen in order to find the various parties. Sola’s grandmother had her head in the Sub-Zero refrigerator, rather as if she were a gnome looking for a cool place in the summer. “Madam?” Assail inquired. She shut the door and moved on to the floor-to-ceiling cabinets. “There is nothing here. Nothing. What do you eat?” “Ah . . .” Assail found himself looking at the cousins for aid. “Usually we take our meals in town.” The scoffing sound certainly appeared like the old-lady equivalent of Fuck that. “I need the staples.” She pivoted on her little shiny shoes and put her hands on her hips. “Who is taking me to supermarket.” Not an inquiry. And as she stared up at the three of them, it appeared as though Ehric and his violent killer of a twin were as nonplussed as Assail was. The evening had been planned out to the minute—and a trip to the local Hannaford was not on the list. “You two are too thin,” she announced, flicking her hand in the direction of the twins. “You need to eat.” Assail cleared his throat. “Madam, you have been brought here for your safety.” He was not going to permit Benloise to up the stakes—and so he’d had to lock down potential collateral damage. “Not to be a cook.” “You have already refused the money. I no stay here for free. I earn my keep. That is the way it will be.” Assail exhaled long and slow. Now he knew where Sola got her independent streak. “Well?” she demanded. “I no drive. Who takes me.” “Madam, would you not prefer to rest—” “Your body rest when dead. Who.” “We do have an hour,” Ehric hedged. As Assail glared at the other vampire, the little old lady hitched her purse up on her forearm and nodded. “So he will take me.” Assail met Sola’s grandmother’s gaze directly and dropped his tone a register just so that the line drawn would be respected. “I pay. Are we clear—you are not to spend a cent.” She opened her mouth as if to argue, but she was headstrong—not foolish. “Then I do the darning.” “Our clothes are in sufficient shape—” Ehric cleared his throat. “Actually, I have a couple of loose buttons. And the Velcro strip on his flak jacket is—” Assail looked over his shoulder and bared his fangs at the idiot—out of eyesight of Sola’s grandmother, of course. Remarshaling his expression, he turned back around and— Knew he’d lost. The grandmother had one of those brows cocked, her dark eyes as steady as any foe’s he’d ever faced. Assail shook his head. “I cannot believe I’m negotiating with you.” “And you agree to terms.” “Madam—” “Then it is settled.” Assail threw up his hands. “Fine. You have forty-five minutes. That is all.” “We be back in thirty.” At that, she turned and headed for the door. In her diminutive wake, the three vampires played ocular Ping-Pong. “Go,” Assail gritted out. “Both of you.” The cousins stalked for the garage door—but they didn’t make it. Sola’s grandmother wheeled around and put her hands on her hips. “Where is your crucifix?” Assail shook himself. “I beg your pardon?” “Are you no Catholic?” My dear sweet woman, we are not human, he thought. “No, I fear not.” Laser-beam eyes locked on him. Ehric. Ehric’s brother. “We change this. It is God’s will.” And out she went, marching through the mudroom, ripping open the door, and disappearing into the garage. As that heavy steel barrier closed automatically, all Assail could do was blink.

Oh my God.   I just realized if I don’t do anything, he is probably going to come back and kill me. If I don’t go and make some amends, he is totally going to make some really dangerous machine and come back to kill me. What if he finds the dragon and comes back to kill me?   I can’t escape a dragon! I am not that strong!   I would have to live underground my whole life and I hate the underground.   That’s it, I am going to have to go and find it. I hate my life.   10:00 am I am so lost.   I thought that if I backtracked and followed the path from there, I would manage to find them, but it looks like I can’t because I don’t remember. Why do I fail at life? I think at this point, I should try and run away. As far away as possible. That seems like the best idea at this point.   Time to start running in the opposite direction.   12:30 pm I made some good progress but I am so hungry. I found some apple trees and I guess they’ll have to do for now. I can only hope that he doesn’t find me after all the trouble I am going through to hide from him.   Why am I so scared of Herobrine?

He held the phone up to his ear for a moment more. “Yeah. Me too,” he said in a softer voice.

His bath chamber across the main room was all that remained, so I backtracked and entered it. The extravagance to which I was accustomed within the Hytanican palace did not range so far as to include the depth and size of his bath, nor the unusual mosaic tiles set into the floor. But what struck me the most were the shelves filled with ointments and bandages, and the long table against the wall that was similar to what one would find in a physician’s examination room. He had in many ways grown up a prince, but this chamber was more telling of his past than all the finery in his wardrobe. When I returned to the parlor, I felt strangely cold. Narian had once more taken up his place on the sofa, and I went to sit at his feet, wanting to be closer to the fire. He swung around and put one leg on each side of me, then started to massage my back. After a few minutes, he slipped down behind me to wrap his arms around my waist, and I leaned against him. He was warm and safe and all that I wanted. At times I felt that there was no world outside of him, and it was the best feeling I ever had. This was one of those times. “Were you ever happy here?” I softly inquired. “Yes,” he answered after a moment of thought. “I was--here in the temple.” Though I had not handled seeing Miranna’s room very well, I again had a surge of curiosity about the Overlord’s Hall, which Narian had subtly referenced. But I did not ask him to take me there--seeing it would not help me, and it would not help him. He needed to forget that place. “Then tell me something about your childhood. Something pleasant.” I closed my eyes, feeling the vibration of his chest as he began to speak. “I remember when that mural on my wall was painted. I was perhaps six or seven. The High Priestess commissioned an artist, and gave her freedom to paint something colorful and unique, something that would amuse me. I was permitted to watch, but at that age…” “Watching wasn’t enough,” I guessed, and he laughed. “The artist was on a ladder, and she had her palette with her, but she’d left the majority of her paints on the floor. I was into them before she could say a word, and I spread paint everywhere. In my hair, on my clothes, the floors, the wall where she was trying to create her masterpiece, everywhere.” He was reminiscing now instead of just telling me a story, seeing it unfold in his mind. “I’d forgotten, honestly forgotten, that I’d been told not to touch the paints. Nan was furious--we were supposed to go to a banquet that night and I’d--” “Nan?” I asked, and he tensed for a moment. “That’s what I used to call the High Priestess, when I was young.” Smiling at the idea, I nestled against him and said, “Go on.” He continued the story, and I listened contentedly, eventually falling asleep in his embrace.

And it was no accident, in the late forties, that the makers of American policy, unwilling to backtrack with the public, began to try to isolate foreign policy decisions from public and Congressional control. The great decisions—the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine—that gave the earth a hope of eventual order were not instantly popular with the American people. There was no great attempt to sell them—it was significant that every historic decision of the Truman Cabinet was debated by Congress only after it had been made irreversible. The makers of foreign policy, not by accident, universally held Lockean notions of federal executive power; and, not by accident, they escaped the popular will.

If, as I believe, the conceptual structures we construct today are too complicated to be accurately specified in advance, and too complex to be built faultlessly, then we must take a radically different approach. Let us turn to nature and study complexity in living things, instead of just the dead works of man. Here we find constructs whose complexities thrill us with awe. The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built. So it must be with our software systems. Some years ago Harlan Mills proposed that any software system should be grown by incremental development.[11] That is, the system should first be made to run, even though it does nothing useful except call the proper set of dummy subprograms. Then, bit by bit it is fleshed out, with the subprograms in turn being developed into actions or calls to empty stubs in the level below. I have seen the most dramatic results since I began urging this technique on the project builders in my software engineering laboratory class. Nothing in the past decade has so radically changed my own practice, or its effectiveness. The approach necessitates top-down design, for it is a top-down growing of the software. It allows easy backtracking. It lends itself to early prototypes. Each added function and new provision for more complex data or circumstances grows organically out of what is already there. The morale effects are startling. Enthusiasm jumps when there is a running system, even a simple one. Efforts redouble when the first picture from a new graphics software system appears on the screen, even if it is only a rectangle. One always has, at every stage in the process, a working system. I find that teams can grow much more complex entities in four months than they can build.

Healing is not a straight and narrow road that leads from darkness to light. There's no sudden epiphany to take us from despair to serenity, no orchestrated steps to move us from hurting to healed. Healing is a winding mountain road with steep climbs and sudden descents, breathtaking views and breath-stealing drop-offs, dark tunnels and blinding exposures, dead ends and endless backtracks, rest stops and break downs, sheer rock walls and panoramic vistas. Healing is a journey with no destination, because healing is the journey of every lifetime.

The moon repeated her phases on the exact same solar calendar day once every nineteen years. And she had just turned nineteen! So nineteen years ago, at this time, the moon would have been new. She would have been just born, and her magic would have been deadly. So that explained the nurse. But the other times? She couldn't remember. All she could clearly think of was that once when she was very, very upset about killing a game hen- more than usual- she had gone to weep and look out the window for hours. The sky was as black as her mind and spirit felt, and the usually comforting stars were pinprick harsh, untwinkling. Each was a stab into her heart. There was no moon.

Nostrils flared, ears pricked, Gabriel asks me if people can mate with animals. I say it hardly ever happens. He frowns, fur and skin and hooves and slits and pricks and teeth and tails whirling in his brain. You could do it, he says, not wanting a single orifice of the universe to be closed to him. We talk about elephants and parakeets, until we are rolling on the floor, laughing like hyenas. Too late, I remember love—I backtrack and try to slip it in, but that is not what he means. Seven years old, he is into hydraulics, pulleys, doors which fly open in the side of the body, entrances, exits. Flushed, panting, hot for physics, he thinks about lynxes, eagles, pythons, mosquitoes, girls, casting a glittering eye of use over creation, wanting to know exactly how the world was made to receive him.

The Worshiper backtracked to place his hand over the Guardian’s broken heart. “Are you ready to sing?

After reaching the food box the animal may turn and explore a blind alley, or retrace the entire maze (sometimes without a single error). His return to the food box is usually at a higher speed than the first part of the run, and he eats enthusiastically—on the second time of reaching food. Behavior is determined by the central phase sequence, and this means that the sequence is recurrent as well as anticipatory. Similarly, “mental backtracking” is reported by the blindfold human subject learning a stylus maze (Woodworth, 1938, p. 143).

I wouldn't want this to turn into a generic Asian hodgepodge, for example. Or a brand where the Korean part is no longer core to the business. Or the branding is offensive. Remember when Abercrombie and Fitch had all those offensive Asian T-shirts a few years back? I wouldn't want that to happen." Wyatt slurped his straw. "Jessie, sometimes you really overthink it all. For a company your size, the offer is more than fair. You'll have so much money, you can go invest it somewhere and retire on a secluded beach. These guys, Rich and Tommy, they have vision! They make magic happen with any business they acquire. Their Persian Eats cookbook based on their Netflix series has held the number one spot on the bestseller list for three months. The author is this fancy Culinary Institute of the Arts instructor. Dudley something; I forget his name, some English dude. Tommy, didn't you tell me he was chomping at the bit to do a splashy Seoul Sistas cookbook?" My whole body tensed. "We already have one coming out. And did you just say a White dude would be writing a Korean Seoul Sistas cookbook?" He backtracked in the most Wyatt-like way. "I never said that exactly. And I didn't say he was White." "With a name like Dudley, he's not exactly a sista." The silence in the room was palpable. Wyatt asked, "So no deal? Any smart business leader would jump at this opportunity." My God. Was he serious? "No deal." I looked at Daniel, pleading for any lifeline he could throw me to get me out of there. He stood from his chair. "Rich, Tommy, as always, it's been a pleasure working with you these last few weeks, but my contract ends now, at five P.M. And Wyatt, I'm respectfully declining your offer of full-time employment." Wyatt's mouth formed a perfect O. "But... why?" "I have a new client to counsel. Jessie Kim. And effective immediately, we'll be declining your offer and evaluating all of our options for selling or retaining her business." I stood and pushed the chair back with my leg. "Thank you so much for finding time to meet with me, and it was great meeting you, Rich and Tommy." Shooting a death stare at Wyatt, I continued, "As a smart business leader in a new and growing category, it's best for me now to consider my options and explore alternatives.

BackTrack is like most Linux distributions in that it is free and open source. Perhaps its greatest asset is that it contains more than 300 tools designed to assist in security auditing.

It seems that evolutionary theorists have to do one of two things. They could backtrack and admit that we can trust what our minds tell us about things, including God. If we find arguments or clues to God’s existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he’s really there. Or else they could go forward and admit that we can’t trust our minds about anything. What is not fair is to do what so many evolutionary scientists are doing now. They are applying the scalpel of their skepticism to what our minds tell us about God but not to what our minds are telling us about evolutionary science itself.

Getting away and asking ourselves who we want to become, who we want our families to become, and then backtracking and choosing one little step that is doable, to implement. One little step at a time. If you want to be a woman who loves Jesus and trusts him, then you need to spend time with him. Open his Word and read, one verse at a time. One prayer at a time. If you want to be a mom who is present with her kids, then you may need to put your phone in the cabinet for an hour from 3 to 4 p.m. each day. If you want to have intentional time together as a family, you might spend snack time each afternoon reading a story with your kids. If you want to be a family who uplifts one another and cheers one another on, you might go around the dinner table one night a week and each of you say one thing you love about a certain family member. If you want to be a runner, you don’t sign up for a marathon tomorrow, but you do need to put some running shoes on and get outside and start running. Doesn’t have to be every day. Doesn’t have to be five miles at a time. It could be ten minutes twice a week, but that makes you a runner. You don’t have to aim for perfection, or 100 percent even. We’re not looking for A+’s. We’re simply learning to be the people we want to be—living in the 80 percent rule. Rhythms over goals. Intentionality over reacting. Being present over distraction. Grace over legalism.

What are you doing?” Mom’s eyes squinted and her nose was scrunched as she watched her husband. Her crazy husband. “Well,” Dad said, “I’m trying to triangulate where we are, to find out how to get where we want to go without backtracking. I know how much you hate backtracking.” Mom’s smile was sweeter than a double chocolate chip cookie. “That’s very thoughtful. I do hate backtracking. But you know what I hate even more?” Dad cocked his head. “When I burn the asparagus on the grill?” Mom ignored him. “Getting lost.

Rook knew the stories were in the experience, not on the Internet. He had a vivid memory and a notes system that delivered him back into the moment every time he pulled the frayed black ribbon of his Moleskine bookmark to part it to a lined page of quotes remembered and details observed. He worked rapidly from beginning to end of the articles as he wrote, drafting at first-impression speed, leaving gaps and reserving the fine work to be done later when he would move once again from front to back. He made numerous passes like that but always continuously, without any backtracking, for a sense of flow. He wrote as if he were the reader. It was also how he kept his writing from becoming too cute, which is to say, about him not the subject. Rook was a journalist but strove to be a storyteller, one who let his subjects speak for themselves and stayed out of their way as much as possible.

problem was that America had fought the war—as she had most of her wars—as a crusade, while Russia had fought first for survival, then for power. Crusades are usually inconclusive; it was no accident that Russia won the peace. And it was no accident, in the late forties, that the makers of American policy, unwilling to backtrack with the public, began to try to isolate foreign policy decisions from public and Congressional control.