Hawks Short Quotes

We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe

Each exists for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe.

The Duchess spoke, though saying what, I wasn’t sure. Hawke’s gaze remained fastened on mine as he stepped forward. “Both halves are as beautiful as the whole.” My lips parted on a sharp inhale. I couldn’t even look to see what the Duke’s reaction was, though I was sure it was nothing short of cataclysmic. Hawke placed a hand on the hilt of his broadsword and bowed slightly, his gaze never once leaving mine. “With my sword and with my life, I vow to keep you safe, Penellaphe,” he spoke, voice deep and smooth, reminding me of rich, decadent chocolate. “From this moment until the last moment, I am yours.

Running twenty-six miles is no fun. I think it was possibly an American who came up with the adage 'if it ain't hurting, it ain't working'. It would be nice to think that shortly after he uttered those words someone smacked him in the mouth by way of demonstrating how well it was working for him.

In short, the advent of super-intelligent AI would be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours we’re in trouble.

A short scuffle, and then out into the gloom, her grey crest raised and her barred chest feathers puffed up into a meringue of aggression and fear, came a huge old female goshawk. Old because her feet were gnarled and dusty, her eyes a deep, fiery orange, and she was beautiful. Beautiful like a granite cliff or a thunder-cloud. She completely filled the room. She had a massive back of sun-bleached grey feathers, was as muscled as a pit bull, and intimidating as hell, even to staff who spent their days tending eagles.

when another German scientist, Werner Heisenberg, formulated his famous uncertainty principle. In order to predict the future position and velocity of a particle, one has to be able to measure its present position and velocity accurately. The obvious way to do this is to shine light on the particle. Some of the waves of light will be scattered by the particle and this will indicate its position. However, one will not be able to determine the position of the particle more accurately than the distance between the wave crests of light, so one needs to use light of a short wavelength in order to measure the position of the particle precisely. Now, by Planck’s quantum hypothesis, one cannot use an arbitrarily small amount of light; one has to use at least one quantum. This quantum will disturb the particle and change its velocity in a way that cannot be predicted. Moreover, the more accurately one measures the position, the shorter the wavelength of the light that one needs and hence the higher the energy of a single quantum. So the velocity of the particle will be disturbed by a larger amount. In other words, the more accurately you try to measure the position of the particle, the less accurately you can measure its speed, and vice versa.

Don't be long on talk and short on execution

Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

Evil is always stupid and unimaginative. Creation is the hard thing. Destruction—evil—is easy and boring, the same short list of crimes and cruelties over and over.

Stephen Hawking has observed with a touch of understandable excitement, that one cannot “predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely!

I don’t see why one can’t simply rely on the telegram,” Whyborne said, eyeing the telephone with an air of distrust. “Why on earth must you talk to people when you can simply write a short message?

It is only the pathetic shortness of human life that gives each individual a sense of the permanence of his background. The land we all walk upon has been under the sea many times, and it will be submerged again.

Inside the temple Richard found a life waiting for him, all ready to be worn and lived, and inside that life, another. Each life he tried on, he slipped into and it pulled him farther in, farther away from the world he came from; one by one, existence following existence, rivers of dreams and fields of stars, a hawk with a sparrow clutched in its talons flies low above the grass, and here are tiny intricate people waiting for him to fill their heads with life, and thousands of years pass and he is engaged in strange work of great importance and sharp beauty, and he is loved, and he is honored, and then a pull, a sharp tug, and it’s…

Do the laws governing the universe allow us to predict exactly what is going to happen to us in the future? The short answer is no, and yes. In principle, the laws allow us to predict the future. But in practice the calculations are often too difficult.

Arin had taken position on the mountainside wall. He didn’t see a ship enter the harbor. But he saw a hawk--a small one, a kestrel--swoop over the city and dive toward the general. The man pulled a tube from its leg and opened it. He went still. He disappeared into the ranks of soldiers. The Valorian army stopped its assault. Then Arin’s feet were moving along the wall, racing to face the sea, and although he couldn’t have said that he knew what had happened, he knew that something had changed, and in his mind there was only one person who could change his world. Another hawk was perched on the seaside battlements. It eyed him--head cocked, beak sharp, talons tight on stone. Snow laced its feathers. The message it bore was short. Arin, Let me in. Kestrel

They are pursued by a pair of hawk-faced men dressed in black and white: both forbidding, both hungry, but one tall and slender, the other short and fat. Two reflections of the same soul in the cosmic house of mirrors, or uncanny coincidence? It is impossible to say.

The birds do not sing, clouds remain of rubber, glass, steel. A stone has lodged in the engine block, the process of rusting has begun. And then darkness, a cold wind, a shred of clothing fluttering where it is snagged on one of the doors which, quite unscathed, lies flat in the grass. And then daylight, changing temperature, a night of cold rain, the short-lived presence of a scavenging rodent. And despite all this chemistry of time, nothing has disturbed the essential integrity of our tableau of chaos, the point being that if design inevitably surrenders to debris, debris inevitably reveals its innate design.

E EACH EXIST FOR BUT A SHORT TIME, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe. But humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time.

WE EACH EXIST FOR BUT A SHORT TIME, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe. But humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time.

One boy, still aching from his battle the day before and newly educated in the mysteries of sex. One boy, now looking twelve instead of fourteen, his lashes dusting down thick upon his cheeks, the lids shuttering those extraordinary blue eyes; one boy with his hand loosely cupping a whore's breast, his hawk-scarred wrist lying tanned upon the counterpane. One boy in the final instants of his life's last good sleep, one boy who will shortly be in motion, who will be falling as a dislodged pebble falls on a steep and broken slope of scree; a falling pebble that strikes another, and another, and another, those pebbles striking yet more, until the whole slope is in motion and the earth shakes with the sound of the landslide.

Why may you not kiss me?” she had demanded. “Am I a corpse?” “Of course not.” “Do you find me less attractive now that weather and wind have scoured the bloom from my cheeks?” “Skaytha, it’s nothing like that. If anything you are more beautiful now than when we lived on Skyrl. Often enough I have no breath when I look at you. You rob me of any other thoughts.” “So you’re afraid my kisses will take what little brain you have left?” “I’m afraid the angels will do something I don’t want them to do if I fly in the face of their commands, commands I can only assume are divine as well as angelic.” “Did you ever think to ask them the reasons behind their demands?” “When it is an angel I just want to get out of the conversation alive or at least without being struck dumb. So I don’t prolong the chat.” “You might have wanted my kisses more than that. If you had any romance in you you’d have told them you were ready to fight ten legions of angels for my love.” Hawk had reached out to hold her. “If I’d told them that they might have taken me up on it. Angels are not just useful for gallant flourishes the moment you declare your intention to battle all comers for the woman you love. Angels burn like fire and blaze like a hundred suns – they strike fear in my heart.” She had pulled away from his embrace and jumped to her feet. “Oh, no, you don’t. If I’m not good enough to kiss I’m not good enough to take in your arms either. It’s angels or me. Make up your mind whom you fear more. Or love more.” “I don’t love the angels.” “Clearly you don’t love me either.” They had been in a tipi. She’d gone to the opening, lifted the flap, bent, and stalked away, passing by warriors of the tribe with her head as high as a goddess and her back as straight as the shaft of the spear. The chief had poked his head in. “All is well, Hawk?’ he had asked. Hawk had learned their tongue. “It couldn’t be better,” Hawk had responded. “Only being slain in battle would be greater than this.” The chief had thought this over and laughed. "That would bring you great honor." "I am in short supply of honor right now and such short supply never pleases a woman like her. Better to die at the end of a spear and have it for a few moments and win her back." The chief had nodded. "Sound wisdom. Would you like to join a raiding party against our enemy tonight?" "I couldn't be happier." (from The Name of the Hawk, Book 2)

There were all shorts of dreamt lights at the Barns: fireflies in the fields, stars tangled in the trees, orbs hanging in the long barn over his work, eternal wee candles in each of the windows that faced the backyard. The one in Adam's hand was too ferociously bright to look at directly; it was a sun. Gansey had asked Ronan to keep his mint plant alive while he road-tripped, and Ronan, unsure of how to keep plants alive inside, had dreamt the outside in.

In the medium term, AI may automate our jobs, to bring both great prosperity and equality. Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved. There is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains. An explosive transition is possible, although it may play out differently than in the movies. As mathematician Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, in what science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge called a technological singularity. One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders and potentially subduing us with weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

If I wanted ultimate honesty for him, I had to be prepared to do the same. It hurt to look deep inside—to give myself no room to hide and to come face to face with a girl I no longer recognised. But I did it. Because I was strong and brave and ready to give in order to receive. “No matter how screwed up and wrong the past few months have been, they’ve been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” Jethro sucked in a breath. “If a guardian angel had told me this would happen. If they’d come to me the night before you stole me and explained the atrocities I would live through, I would still have come with you.” A groan cut short as Jethro froze in place. “I would’ve waited for you with open arms. I would’ve gladly said goodbye to my life and let you torment me because it made me a better person—a stronger person—a person worthy of what I feel for you.” I stiffened. “So don’t tell me you wish you’d never met me, Jethro Hawk, because I would live a thousand debts just for the gift of having you love me.

Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities. The universe, according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history. The fact that the past takes no definite form means that observations you make on a system in the present affect its past. That is underlined rather dramatically by a type of experiment thought up by physicist John Wheeler, called a delayed-choice experiment. Schematically, a delayed-choice experiment is like the double-slit experiment we just described, in which you have the option of observing the path that the particle takes, except in the delayed-choice experiment you postpone your decision about whether or not to observe the path until just before the particle hits the detection screen. Delayed-choice experiments result in data identical to those we get when we choose to observe (or not observe) the which-path information by watching the slits themselves. But in this case the path each particle takes—that is, its past—is determined long after it passed through the slits and presumably had to “decide” whether to travel through just one slit, which does not produce interference, or both slits, which does. Wheeler even considered a cosmic version of the experiment, in which the particles involved are photons emitted by powerful quasars billions of light-years away. Such light could be split into two paths and refocused toward earth by the gravitational lensing of an intervening galaxy. Though the experiment is beyond the reach of current technology, if we could collect enough photons from this light, they ought to form an interference pattern. Yet if we place a device to measure which-path information shortly before detection, that pattern should disappear. The choice whether to take one or both paths in this case would have been made billions of years ago, before the earth or perhaps even our sun was formed, and yet with our observation in the laboratory we will be affecting that choice. In

Following their line of vision, he found the distraction. The damn tennis team, running the perimeter of the football field in some half-assed formation, following their fearless leader. They weren’t looking at the field, weren’t yelling or causing a scene. Just concentrating on keeping up with Chris. Having been a teenage boy himself, the draw was obvious. Teenage girls. Short shorts. No brainer. At thirty-four, he was past that. Except his eyes didn’t seem to get the “I’m Too Old For This” memo. They were tracking Chris like a hawk tracks a field mouse.

The Buried Bishop’s a gridlocked scrum, an all-you-can-eat of youth: ‘Stephen Hawking and the Dalai Lama, right; they posit a unified truth’; short denim skirts, Gap and Next shirts, Kurt Cobain cardigans, black Levi’s; ‘Did you see that oversexed pig by the loos, undressing me with his eyes?’; that song by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl booms in my diaphragm and knees; ‘Like, my only charity shop bargains were headlice, scabies, and fleas’; a fug of hairspray, sweat and Lynx, Chanel No. 5, and smoke; well-tended teeth with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke — ‘Have you heard the news about Schrodinger’s Cat? It died today; wait — it didn’t, did, didn’t, did…’; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond … Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; ‘Make mine a double’; George Michael’s stubble; ‘Like, music expired with the Smiths’; and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers…power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast — I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, ‘Has anyone told you you look like Demi Moore from Ghost?’; roses are red and violets are blue, I’ve a surplus of butter and Ness is warm toast.

Kerah!" "Opal, finally, you little puke," Ronan said. A creature capered from between the woods, a scrawny, hollow-eyed child. She wore an oversized cable-knit sweater and a skullcap pulled down low over her short white-blond hair. Someone might have mistaken her for a human girl if not for her legs, which were densely furred and ended in hooves. "I told you, that's Chansaw's word. You have lips. Call me Ronan," he told her. The little creature threw her arms around his legs and then pranced around him in a hectic circle, her hooves leaving divots. He lifted a foot. "That was my food, come on.

Your hair! You cut it all off!” She pulled off her own hood as she crossed the distance between them. Indeed, the long silver-white hair was now cropped short. It made him look younger, made his tattoo stand out more, and … fine, it made him more handsome, too. Or maybe that was just her missing him. “Since you seemed to think that we would be doing a good amount of fighting here, shorter hair is more useful. Though I can’t say that your hair might be considered the same. You might as well have dyed it blue.” “Hush. Your hair was so pretty. I was hoping you’d let me braid it one day. I suppose I’ll have to buy a pony instead.” She cocked her head. “When you shift, will your hawk form be plucked, then?” His nostrils flared, and she clamped her lips together to keep from laughing.

I'm sorry, for... not... protecting you.' His face blurred as I stared at him. 'The blood wasn't pouring from the wound as freely now. 'You have protected me. You still will.' 'I... didn't.' His gaze trekked over my shoulder to where Lord Mazeen stood. 'I... failed you... as a man. Forgive me.' 'There's nothing to forgive you for,' I cried. 'You've done nothing wrong.' His dulling eyes fixed on me. 'Please.' 'I forgive you.' I rocked forward, dropping my forehead to his. 'I forgive you. I do. I forgive you.' Vikter shuddered. 'Please don't,' I whispered. 'Please don't leave me. lease. I can't. I can't do this without you. Please.' His hand slipped from mine. I drew in air, but it went nowhere as I lifted my head, looking down at him. I frantically searched his face. His eyes were open, his lips parted, but he didn't see me. He didn't see anything anymore. 'Vikter?' I pressed down on his chest, feeling for his heart, for just a beat. That's all I wanted to feel. Just a heartbeat. Please. 'Vikter?' My name was whispered softly. It was Hawke. He placed his hand over mine. I looked at him and shook my head. 'No.' 'I'm sorry,' he said, gently lifting my hand. 'I'm so sorry.' 'No,' I repeated, my breath now coming in short, rapid pants. 'No.

Fortunate beyond measure… wise and provident in counsel, well-learned in law, history, humanity and divinity. He understood Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and High and Low-Dutch, besides his native language. He was of quick apprehension, judicious and skillful in nature, elegant in speech, sweet, familiar and affable in behaviour; stern to the obstinate, but calm and meek to the humble. Magnanimous and courageous above all the princes of his days; apt for war but a lover of peace; never puffed up with prosperity nor dismayed at adversity. He was of an exalted, glorious, and truly royal spirit, which never entertained anything vulgar or trivial, as may appear by the most excellent laws which he made, by those two famous jubilees he kept, and by the most honourable Order of the Garter, which he first devised and founded. His recreations were hawking, hunting and fishing, but chiefly he loved the martial exercise of jousts and tournaments. In his buildings he was curious, splendid and magnificent, in bestowing of graces and donations, free and frequent; and to the ingenious and deserving always kind and liberal; devout to God, bountiful to the clergy, gracious to his people, merciful to the poor, true to his word, loving to his friends, terrible to his enemies… In short he had the most virtues and the fewest vices of any prince that ever I read of. He was valiant, just, merciful, temperate, and wise; the best lawgiver, the best friend, the best father, and the best husband in his days.5

1. For the space of one entire month (from full moon to full moon), a single leaf from a Mandrake must be carried constantly in the mouth. The leaf must not be swallowed or taken out of the mouth at any point. If the leaf is removed from the mouth, the process must be started again. 2. Remove the leaf at the full moon and place it, steeped in your saliva, in a small crystal phial that receives the pure rays of the moon (if the night is cloudy, you will have to find a new Mandrake leaf and begin the whole process again). To the moon-struck crystal phial, add one of your own hairs, a silver teaspoon of dew collected from a place that neither sunlight nor human feet have touched for a full seven days, and the chrysalis of a Death’s-head Hawk Moth. Put this mixture in a quiet, dark place and do not look at it or otherwise disturb it until the next electrical storm. 3. While waiting for the storm, the following procedure should be followed at sunrise and sundown. The tip of the wand should be placed over the heart and the following incantation spoken: ‘Amato Animo Animato Animagus.’ 4. The wait for a storm may take weeks, months or even years. During this time, the crystal phial should remain completely undisturbed and untouched by sunlight. Contamination by sunlight gives rise to the worst mutations. Resist the temptation to look at your potion until lightning occurs. If you continue to repeat your incantation at sunrise and sunset there will come a time when, with the touch of the wand-tip to the chest, a second heartbeat may be sensed, sometimes more powerful than the first, sometimes less so. Nothing should be changed. The incantation should be uttered without fail at the correct times, never omitting a single occasion. 5. Immediately upon the appearance of lightning in the sky, proceed directly to the place where your crystal phial is hidden. If you have followed all the preceding steps correctly, you will discover a mouthful of blood-red potion inside it.

In the very midst of this panic came the news that the steamer Central America, formerly the George Law, with six hundred passengers and about sixteen hundred thousand dollars of treasure, coming from Aspinwall, had foundered at sea, off the coast of Georgia, and that about sixty of the passengers had been providentially picked up by a Swedish bark, and brought into Savannah. The absolute loss of this treasure went to swell the confusion and panic of the day. A few days after, I was standing in the vestibule of the Metropolitan Hotel, and heard the captain of the Swedish bark tell his singular story of the rescue of these passengers. He was a short, sailor-like-looking man, with a strong German or Swedish accent. He said that he was sailing from some port in Honduras for Sweden, running down the Gulf Stream off Savannah. The weather had been heavy for some days, and, about nightfall, as he paced his deck, he observed a man-of-war hawk circle about his vessel, gradually lowering, until the bird was as it were aiming at him. He jerked out a belaying pin, struck at the bird, missed it, when the hawk again rose high in the air, and a second time began to descend, contract his circle, and make at him again. The second time he hit the bird, and struck it to the deck. . . . This strange fact made him uneasy, and he thought it betokened danger; he went to the binnacle, saw the course he was steering, and without any particular reason he ordered the steersman to alter the course one point to the east. After this it became quite dark, and he continued to promenade the deck, and had settled into a drowsy state, when as in a dream he thought he heard voices all round his ship. Waking up, he ran to the side of the ship, saw something struggling in the water, and heard clearly cries for help. Instantly heaving his ship to, and lowering all his boats, he managed to pick up sixty or more persons who were floating about on skylights, doors, spare, and whatever fragments remained of the Central America. Had he not changed the course of his vessel by reason of the mysterious conduct of that man-of-war hawk, not a soul would probably have survived the night.

I’m going to say this once here, and then—because it is obvious—I will not repeat it in the course of this book: not all boys engage in such behavior, not by a long shot, and many young men are girls’ staunchest allies. However, every girl I spoke with, every single girl—regardless of her class, ethnicity, or sexual orientation; regardless of what she wore, regardless of her appearance—had been harassed in middle school, high school, college, or, often, all three. Who, then, is truly at risk of being “distracted” at school? At best, blaming girls’ clothing for the thoughts and actions of boys is counterproductive. At worst, it’s a short step from there to “she was asking for it.” Yet, I also can’t help but feel that girls such as Camila, who favors what she called “more so-called provocative” clothing, are missing something. Taking up the right to bare arms (and legs and cleavage and midriffs) as a feminist rallying cry strikes me as suspiciously Orwellian. I recall the simple litmus test for sexism proposed by British feminist Caitlin Moran, one that Camila unconsciously referenced: Are the guys doing it, too? “If they aren’t,” Moran wrote, “chances are you’re dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as ‘some total fucking bullshit.’” So while only girls get catcalled, it’s also true that only girls’ fashions urge body consciousness at the very youngest ages. Target offers bikinis for infants. The Gap hawks “skinny jeans” for toddlers. Preschoolers worship Disney princesses, characters whose eyes are larger than their waists. No one is trying to convince eleven-year-old boys to wear itty-bitty booty shorts or bare their bellies in the middle of winter. As concerned as I am about the policing of girls’ sexuality through clothing, I also worry about the incessant drumbeat of self-objectification: the pressure on young women to reduce their worth to their bodies and to see those bodies as a collection of parts that exist for others’ pleasure; to continuously monitor their appearance; to perform rather than to feel sensuality. I recall a conversation I had with Deborah Tolman, a professor at Hunter College and perhaps the foremost expert on teenage girls’ sexual desire. In her work, she said, girls had begun responding “to questions about how their bodies feel—questions about sexuality or arousal—by describing how they think they look. I have to remind them that looking good is not a feeling.

One possibility is that many of these universes are unstable and decay to our familiar universe. We recall that the vacuum, instead of being a boring, featureless thing, is actually teeming with bubble universes popping in and out of existence, like in a bubble bath. Hawking called this the space-time foam. Most of these tiny bubble universes are unstable, jumping out of the vacuum and then jumping back in. In the same way, once the final formulation of the theory is found, one might be able to show that most of these alternate universes are unstable and decay down to our universe. For example, the natural time scale for these bubble universes is the Planck time, which is 10−43 seconds, an incredibly short amount of time. Most universes only live for this brief instant. Yet the age of our universe, by comparison, is 13.8 billion years, which is astronomically longer than the lifespan of most universes in this formulation. In other words, perhaps our universe is special among the infinity of universes in the landscape. Ours has outlasted them all, and that is why we are here today to discuss this question. But what do we do if the final equation turns out to be so complex that it cannot be solved by hand? Then it seems impossible to show that our universe is special among the universes in the landscape. At that point I think we should put it in a computer. This is the path taken for the quark theory. We recall that the Yang-Mills particle acts like a glue to bind quarks into a proton. But after fifty years, no one has been able to rigorously prove this mathematically. In fact, many physicists have pretty much given up hope of ever accomplishing it. Instead, the Yang-Mills equations are solved on a computer. This is done by approximating space-time as a series of lattice points. Normally, we think of space-time being a smooth surface, with an infinite number of points. When objects move, they pass through this infinite sequence. But we can approximate this smooth surface with a grid or lattice, like a mesh. As we let the spacing between lattice points get smaller and smaller, it becomes ordinary space-time, and the final theory begins to emerge. Similarly, once we have the final equation for M-theory, we can put it on a lattice and do the computation on a computer. In this scenario, our universe emerges from the output of a supercomputer. (However, I am reminded of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when a gigantic supercomputer is built to find the meaning of life. After eons doing the calculation, the computer finally concluded that the meaning of the universe was “forty-two.”)

and live images were of a short, hawk-faced, and slender man, beardless, with a beak nose and distrustful eyes. This

First she saw light, the rising sun reflecting off something at the clearing’s edge. In that moment before she heard the voices, she confusedly thought she was seeing fireflies in the daytime, then realized it was silver brooches catching the light. No one had told her to expect the family, but there they were: Rising Hawk’s uncle, his parents, and assorted cousins, including Dream Teller, who gave Livy a tight smile she took for a peace offering. Rising Hawk lagged behind, carrying a scrawny deer over his shoulders, his eyes focused on the path. The others had the good sense and tact to pass on with a simple greeting, but Buffalo Creek Woman put her hands to Livy’s chest and with a stream of words, finally cut short by Cold Keeper, forgave her everything.

The rate of time flow perceived by an observer in the simulated universe is completely independent of the rate at which a computer runs the simulation, a point emphasized in Greg Egan's science-fiction novel Permutation City. Moreover, as we discussed in the last chapter and as stressed by Einstein, it's arguably more natural to view our Universe not from the frog perspective as a three-dimensional space where things happen, but from the bird perspective as a four-dimensional spacetime that merely is. There should therefore be no need for the computer to compute anything at all-it could simply store all the four-dimensional data, that is, encode all properties of the mathematical structure that is our Universe. Individual time slices could then be read out sequentially if desired, and the "simulated" world should still feel as real to its inhabitants as in the case where only three-dimensional data is stored and evolved. In conclusion: the role of the simulating computer isn't to compute the history of our Universe, but to specify it. How specify it? The way in which the data are stored (the type of computer, the data format, etc.) should be irrelevant, so the extent to which the inhabitants of the simulated universe perceive themselves as real should be independent of whatever method is used for data compression. The physical laws that we've discovered provide great means of data compression, since they make it sufficient to store the initial data at some time together with the equations and a program computing the future from these initial data. As emphasized on pages 340-344, the initial data might be extremely simple: popular initial states from quantum field theory with intimidating names such as the Hawking-Hartle wavefunction or the inflationary Bunch-Davies vacuum have very low algorithmic complexity, since they can be defined in brief physics papers, yet simulating their time evolution would simulate not merely one universe like ours, but a vast decohering collection of parallel ones. It's therefore plausible that our Universe (and even the whole Level III multiverse) could be simulated by quite a short computer program.

Jacquetta Hawkes famously wrote that 'Every age gets the Stonehenge it deserves', by which she meant that Stonehenge has been a Druid temple, a landing site for flying saucers, or an astronomical calendar, according to the interests of the times. The same could be said about our stories about Vikings, and they have been alternately, noble savages, raiders, marauders and rapists, peaceful traders, entrepreneurs, explorers, early democrats, or IKEA sales personnel, according to what we want them to be.

That the boy in short trousers was already the man they’d known, the man who had always got the picture, had always pulled the story from the jaws of defeat.

Atoms, elements and molecules are three important knowledge in Physics, chemistry and Biology. mathematics comes where counting starts, when counting and measurement started, integers were required. Stephen hawking says integers were created by god and everything else is work of man. Man sees pattern in everything and they are searched and applied to other sciences for engineering, management and application problems. Physics, it is required understand the physical nature or meaning of why it happens, chemistry is for chemical nature, Biology is for that why it happened. Biology touch medicine, plants and animals. In medicine how these atoms, elements and molecules interplay with each other by bondage is being explained. Human emotions and responses are because of biochemistry, hormones i e anatomy and physiology. This physiology deals with each and every organs and their functions. When this atom in elements are disturbed whatever they made i e macromolecules DNA, RNA and Protein and other micro and macro nutrients and which affects the physiology of different organs on different scales and then diseases are born because of this imbalance/ disturb in homeostasis. There many technical words are there which are hard to explain in single para. But let me get into short, these atoms in elements and molecules made interplay because of ecological stimulus i e so called god. and when opposite sex meets it triggers various responses on body of each. It is also harmone and they are acting because of atoms inside elements and continuous generation or degenerations of cell cycle. There is a god cell called totipotent stem cell, less gods are pluripotent, multi potent and noni potent stem cells. So finally each and every organ system including brain cells are affected because of interplay of atoms inside elements and their bondages in making complex molecules, which are ruled by ecological stimulus i e god. So everything is basically biology and medicine even for animals, plants and microbes and other life forms. process differs in each living organisms. The biggest mystery is Brain and DNA. Brain has lots of unexplained phenomenon and even dreams are not completely understood by science that is where spiritualism/ soul touches. DNA is long molecule which has many applications as genetic engineering. genomics, personal medicine, DNA as tool for data storage, DNA in panspermia theory and many more. So everything happens to women and men and other sexes are because of Biology, Medicine and ecology. In ecology every organisms are inter connected and inter dependent. Now physics - it touch all technical aspects but it needs mathematics and statistics to lay foundation for why and how it happened and later chemistry, biology also included inside physics. Mathematics gave raise to computers and which is for fast calculation on any applications in any sciences. As physiological imbalances lead to diseases and disorders, genetic mutations, again old concept evolution was retaken to understand how new biology evolves. For evolution and disease mechanisms, epidemiology and statistics was required and statistics was as a data tool considered in all sciences now a days. Ultimate science is to break the atoms to see what is inside- CERN, but it creates lots of mysterious unanswerable questions. laws in physics were discovered and invented with mathematics to understand the universe from atoms. Theory of everything is a long search and have no answers. While searching inside atoms, so many hypothesis like worm holes and time travel born but not yet invented as far as my knowledge. atom is universe, and humans are universe they have everything that universe has. ecology is god that affects humans and climate. In business these computerized AI applications are trying to figure out human emotions by their mechanism of writing, reading, texting, posting on social media and bla bla. Arts is trying to figure out human emotions in art way.

Do you have a girl?" "No." "Don't you get, well, hungry now and then?" "Damned hungry." "What do you do?" "Hunger, mostly." Maas uttered a short barking laugh. "My dear lad. Big and strong, and if I may say so, winning as you are?" "I'd rather be hungry than involved. My trouble is I don't know how to be casual. Even if it's a waitress, I have to make a goddess of her in my own mind, I don't know why.

Faith screamed louder than she’d ever screamed before. The sky devoured every bit of sound before it reached the ground. She could have pitied herself for at least another hour had she been given the chance, but screaming had turned her mind into a sheet of white noise. She started falling; and not having a lot of experience with the weight of her own body falling through open space, she panicked. Arms and legs were dangling in every direction, turning her sideways and upside down, tumbling through space. The top of the building she would soon hit was dark enough that she couldn’t say for sure how close she was to impact. And for one last, dreadful moment, she thought about letting it happen. It would be less painful. One moment, a split second, and it would be over. No more regrets about how she’d failed, no more guilt about broken relationships she’d willingly chosen not to fix. No more anger about how unfair it all was. Three thoughts kept her from dying that night. Faith. The meaning of her name haunted her like a ghost from another world, flying in the air all around her. There was something, not nothing, on the other side of death. An eternity in which everyone felt sorry about her tragic ending was not the kind of afterlife she looked forward to. Hope. As she plunged toward her death, she saw Dylan’s face the way he sometimes looked at her, and she couldn’t imagine leaving him behind. Something below the surface of her mind told her Dylan could heal all the terrible scars she carried. And she saw Hawk’s face, too. He could never replace Liz, but he had the intangible quality of being comfortable. She could sit in a room for ten hours and simply be with Hawk. He was easy that way, and she needed that. It could sustain her through the minefield of feelings she navigated on a daily basis. And in the end, there was the fire that threatened to overwhelm her. Revenge. For better or worse, the fuel that would keep her from death was vengeance. She would destroy the Quinns or die trying. It was the thing that cleared her mind and slowed her descent. Revenge got her to stop flailing around, center her mind, and come to an abrupt halt three inches short of plowing her face into the roof of a clothing store.

The least you can do is tell me why you didn't stop me,' he said before I could give in to the curiosity and reach out with my senses. I had no idea how I could answer when I didn't fully understand it myself. One side of his lips quirked up. 'I'm sure it's more than my disarming good looks.' I wrinkled my nose. 'Of course.' Another short, surprised-sounding laugh left him. 'I think you just insulted me.' Chagrined, I winced. 'That's not what I meant- 'You've wounded me, Princess.' 'I highly doubt that. You have to be more than well aware of your appearance.' 'I am. It has led to quite a few people making questionable life choices.

Why would you say that?' 'Are you seriously asking me that?' Yes I am. It doesn't make sense.' 'You don't make sense.' I hit his shoulder- or chest. Some extremely hard part of him. Hawke grunted. 'Ouch.' I so did not hit him hard enough for that. 'You're fine.' 'I'm bruised.' 'You're ridiculous,' I retorted. 'And it's you who makes no sense.' 'I'm the one sitting here being honest. You're the one hitting me. How do I not make sense?' 'Because this whole thing makes no sense.' Frustration rose swiftly through me, and I started to stand, but the hand on my hip stopped me. Or I let it stop me. I wasn't sure. And that was even more irritating. 'You could be spending time with anyone, Hawke- any number of people you wouldn't have to hide in a willow tree to be with.' 'And yet, I'm here with you. And before you even begin to think it's because of my duty to you, it's not. I could've just walked you back to your room and stayed out in the hall.' 'That's my point. It makes no sense. You can have a slew of willing participants in... whatever this is. It would be easy,' I said. Pretty Britta came to mind. I was sure he'd had her. 'You can't have me. I'm... I'm un-have-able.' 'I'm confident that's not even a word.' 'That's not the point. I'm not allowed to do this. Any of this. I shouldn't have done what I did at the Red Pearl,' I continued. 'It doesn't matter if I want.' 'And you do want.' His whisper danced over my cheek. 'What you want is me.' My breath caught. 'That doesn't matter.' 'What you want should always matter.' A short, harsh laugh left me. 'It doesn't, and that's another thing that isn't the point. You could-' 'I heard you the first time, Princess. You're right. I could find someone who would be easier.' His fingers traced the line of my mask from my right ear and along my cheek. I had no idea how he could see. 'Ladies or Lords in Wait, who aren't burdened by rules or limitations, who aren't Maidens I'm sworn to protect. There are a lot of ways I could occupy my time that don't include explaining in great detail why I'm choosing to be where I am, with whom I choose.' The corners of my lips started to turn down. 'The thing is,' he went on, 'none of them intrigue me. You do.' You intrigue me. 'It's really that simple for you?' I asked, wanting to believe him, and also not. His forehead rested against mine, startling me. 'Nothing is ever simple. And when it is, it's rarely ever worth it.

He was handsome in a subtle sort of way, more of a short and stocky guy.

Ariel did that magic trick where she twisted her hair into the towel and plopped it securely on her head. I think all women are born with the innate knowledge on how to do that but it still doesn’t make sense to me according to the laws of physics.

He was wearing white Adidas boxing shoes and long black satin shorts and another of his endless supply of “Black Mamba” T-shirts, this one with Kobe Bryant’s likeness on it. In comparison, I was the one who looked like the thug, in a Red Sox T-shirt cut to the shoulders and baggy gray sweatpants and sneakers to match. “Good news for you,” Hawk said, watching me move from side to side in front of the bag, “is that your workout clothes won’t never go out of fashion, on account of never having been in no fashion in the first place.” “You planning to review my workout along with my functional attire?” I said. “Don’t require much planning. You been letting your elbow fly out from underneath your shoulder lately when you throw your hook.” “You’re just pointing that out now?” “Been workin’ up to it, I know how sensitive you are ’bout what’s left of your form.

Science n’ Shit in a Hip-Hop Style with Stephen Hawking (Kick-snare, kick-kick snare). ‘Let me tell you my plan for the human race, well I would but I can’t, ‘Cos I can’t move me face, So my computerised voice is how I’ll go, I type with me eye to keep the flow We’re all gonna go live in outer space Where zero gravity will stop me dribbling all over the place I’ll tell y’all how I’ll get there: With some rockets built into me special wheel chair The moons of Jupiter, in perfect animation We’ll all live in a huge space station I’ll be able to dance and chase all the fanny And finally get me end away with me nanny.’ Science n’ Shit in a Hip-Hop Style with Stephen Hawking II ‘From the moons of Ganymede, Io & Titan, I’ll tell y’all somethin’ that’s sure to enlighten In space, there are galaxies nebula & stars And dying suns that are going super no-va But no anomalies can compare, To how much I wanna run my fingers through your hair Sir Patrick Moore, a true space oracle, With your knowledge of cheats and gorgeous monocle I’m coming out as gay, and I don’t give a hoot I’m the first fuckin’ vegetable that turned into a fruit Word.

here a short time, and then started for Jefferson Barracks, in a steam

I haven’t seen you in a couple of days. Are you avoiding me again?” “I should, but I haven’t been. I’ve had stuff going on. Does the general know you’re doing this?” he asked. “Of course. They’re his horses.” “Aw, Shelby,” he said, sounding a little miserable. He took off the tool belt and buttoned up his shirt. “What did he say?” “He said, ‘You be careful of that Black Hawk pilot. They have a reputation for abusing women.’” He shoved his shirt into his pants. “God,” he moaned. “Why don’t you go away and leave me alone before you get me shot.” She laughed. “He didn’t say that. He said, ‘Be sure to tell Luke that Plenty nips and bolts.’ So—Plenty, short for Plenty of Trouble, nips and bolts. You’ll have to pay attention.” “Bolts?” he asked a little nervously. “Not usually with a rider. But if you get off, keep the reins. She can be a handful when she acts up, but she’s a pretty good ride.” “Aw, man. I have a feeling this is going to be humiliating. Where are we going?” “How about upriver a ways to check out the turning leaves?” she asked. “Think you can handle that?” “I’ll give it a go,” he said.

Despite an icy northeast wind huffing across the bay I sneak out after dark, after my mother falls asleep clutching her leather Bible, and I hike up the rutted road to the frosted meadow to stand in mist, my shoes in muck, and toss my echo against the moss-covered fieldstone corners of the burned-out church where Sunday nights in summer for years Father Thomas, that mad handsome priest, would gather us girls in the basement to dye the rose cotton linen cut-outs that the deacon’s daughter, a thin beauty with short white hair and long trim nails, would stitch by hand each folded edge then steam-iron flat so full of starch, stiffening fabric petals, which we silly Sunday school girls curled with quick sharp pulls of a scissor blade, forming clusters of curved petals the younger children assembled with Krazy glue and fuzzy green wire, sometimes adding tissue paper leaves, all of us gladly laboring like factory workers rather than have to color with crayon stubs the robe of Christ again, Christ with his empty hands inviting us to dine, Christ with a shepherd's staff signaling to another flock of puffy lambs, or naked Christ with a drooping head crowned with blackened thorns, and Lord how we laughed later when we went door to door in groups, visiting the old parishioners, the sick and bittersweet, all the near dead, and we dropped our bikes on the perfect lawns of dull neighbors, agnostics we suspected, hawking our handmade linen roses for a donation, bragging how each petal was hand-cut from a pattern drawn by Father Thomas himself, that mad handsome priest, who personally told the Monsignor to go fornicate himself, saying he was a disgruntled altar boy calling home from a phone booth outside a pub in North Dublin, while I sat half-dressed, sniffing incense, giddy and drunk with sacrament wine stains on my panties, whispering my oath of unholy love while wiggling uncomfortably on the mad priest's lap, but God he was beautiful with a fine chiseled chin and perfect teeth and a smile that would melt the Madonna, and God he was kind with a slow gentle touch, never harsh or too quick, and Christ how that crafty devil could draw, imitate a rose petal in perfect outline, his sharp pencil slanted just so, the tip barely touching so that he could sketch and drink, and cough without jerking, without ruining the work, or tearing the tissue paper, thin as a membrane, which like a clean skin arrived fresh each Saturday delivered by the dry cleaners, tucked into the crisp black vestment, wrapped around shirt cardboard, pinned to protect the high collar.

The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life. As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.

The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life. As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.

The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life. As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.

The ghosts came to him, one by one, pleading for him to release them from their hellish purgatory. He saw each and every face, felt their terror penetrate his soul, cried tears of sorrow with them, told them that he wished that he could do more, could have done more. The young lovers, their lives taken before they could make any sort of connection, the swim shorts guy who had left behind a loving family, the homeless lady – what had she ever done to anyone to deserve such a horrendous and bloody fate? And they were stuck in this wet and dark place until what? Until Raven could release them? How the hell could he do that? It was as if his hands were bound by some invisible and yet immensely powerful force.

Gyth had me at his mercy. He was a thing, for I could not even call him a man. Loneliness had driven him crazy, turning him into the shadow of a man. An accident had made him a prisoner of this town, and now he had made me his toy.

Kit wore a smile that stretched across the harbor. “I have asked Whitney to be my wife.” My stomach leaked through my shoes. Whitney started clapping like a six-year-old. “And I said yes!” It’s happening. It’s really, really happening. I don’t think I moved a muscle. My brain shorted. My eyes locked in place. A corner of my mind agreed with Whitney. They really should’ve let me get more settled. “Kiddo?” Kit seemed equally paralyzed. Grin cemented in place, he held Whitney’s hand and watched me like a hawk. His fiancée’s hand. I’ll have to get used to that. I couldn’t speak. The awkward moment stretched. Three people, staring in silence across a tiny dining room. Sensing the tension, Coop padded to my side. I ignored him. Ignored everything. This is what Kit wants. This is what makes him happy. He was here first. “That’s . . . that’s . . .” Don’t blow this. Don’t ruin the moment for your father. “I’m really . . . very . . .” Whitney took a small step forward. Don’t. Stop. I can’t screw this up. “Tory?” Whitney spoke softly and sincerely. “Please know that I love your father very much, and—” Abruptly she cut off, eyes widening in alarm. “Sweetheart, you’re filthy.” Nose crinkling, Whitney reached for my mussed, tangled hair. “There’s dirt on your sleeves, and I can smell—” She’d crafted the perfect escape. Like a release valve forcing open. “Mind your own business!” Batting her hands away. “Ben’s car got stuck in the mud. Is that okay?” Laced with all the sarcasm I could muster. A part of my brain understood what was happening, but those cells weren’t driving. “God, you’re always butting in!” I stormed past them both, pounding up the stairs with Coop on my heels. “I don’t need a replacement mother!

His hand travels to the middle of my chest, resting his palm over my heart as he takes my hand, placing it over the exact same spot on his chest. I lean down, capturing his soft lips with mine. He kisses me slowly, achingly slow. His tongue drags along the length of mine before he angles his head and does it again with more force. The passion between us building, the heat between us, never more evident. What we do to each other is unimaginable. It’s chaotic, it’s wild, it’s nothing short of beautiful.

Well aware of how offensive I make myself, and with what loathing I may be regarded, in this sentimental age which pretends to be cynical, and in this poetical nation which pretends to be practical, I shall nevertheless continue to practice in public a very repulsive trick or habit--the habit of drawing distinctions; or distinguishing between things that are quite different, even when they are assumed to be the same. I cannot be content with being a Unionist or a Universalist or a Unitarian. I have again and again blasphemed against and denied the perfect Oneness of chalk and cheese; and drawn fanciful distinctions, ornithological or technological, between hawks and handsaws. For in truth I believe that the only way to say anything definite is to define it, and all definition is by limitation and exclusion; and that the only way to say something distinct is to say something distinguishable; and distinguishable from everything else. In short, I think that a man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

My entire body went rigid at the sight of the man dressed in all black. Every part of me rebelled at what I saw. It didn’t make sense. It was impossible. But I recognized the dark, buzzed hair, the hard-set jaw, and thin lips. Now I knew why his laugh sounded so familiar. It was the commander of the Royal Guard. Commander Jansen. “You’re dead,” I breathed, staring up at him as he drifted between the pillars. A dark eyebrow rose. “Whatever gave you that impression, Penellaphe?” “The Ascended discovered that Hawke wasn’t who he said he was shortly after we left.” What Lord Chaney had told me in that carriage resurfaced. “They said the Descenters infiltrated the highest ranks of the Royal Guard.” “They did, but they didn’t catch me.” One side of Jansen’s lips curved up as he strolled forward, his fingers skating over the side of a coffin. Confusion swirled through me as I stared up at him. “I…I don’t understand. You’re a Descenter? You support the Prince—?” “I support Atlantia.” He moved fast, crossing the distance in less time than it took a heart to beat. He knelt so we were at eye-level. “I am no Descenter.” “Really?” His superspeed sort of gave that away. “Then what are you?” The tight-lipped smile grew. His features sharpened, narrowed, and then he changed. Shrinking in height and width, the new body drowned in the clothing Jansen had been wearing. His skin became tanner and smoother. In an instant, his hair darkened to black and became longer, his eyes lightening and turning blue. Within seconds, Beckett knelt before me.

His chin lifted. “You can choose not to believe anything I’ve said, but you should so that what I’m about to say doesn’t come as such a shock to you. I will be leaving shortly to meet up with King Da’Neer of Atlantia to tell him that I have you.” My head jerked upright. “Yes. The King lives. So does Queen Eloana. The parents of the one you call the Dark One and Prince Malik.” Shocked, I couldn’t move as he turned to leave, but he stopped. And Hawke didn’t look back as he said, “Not everything was a lie, Poppy. Not everything.

Though there can be many variations, a peregrine’s day usually begins with a slow, leisurely flight from the roosting place to the nearest suitable bathing stream. This may be as much as ten to fifteen miles away. After bathing, another hour or two is spent in drying the feathers, preening, and sleeping. The hawk rouses only gradually from his post-bathing lethargy. His first flights are short and unhurried. He moves from perch to perch, watching other birds and occasionally catching an insect or a mouse on the ground.

While Wilbur watched, Orville Wright made the first powered flight, or rather a short hop of 36 meters lasting twelve seconds, above the sandy beach at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina on December 17, 1903. Then they switched places and completed three more short flights: the last, and the longest one, lasted fifty-nine seconds. Remarkably, almost four years went by before anybody else could fly a heavier-than-air machine for more than a minute.

The Queen had awakened him shortly after dawn, a call from Buck House. Her Majesty the Queen was fit to be tied.

Yes. Were you in here earlier today?” “I was with my parents, yeah. We came first thing in the morning to check out the new releases in the video game section for my dad.” “Okay,” said Hawk. “And did the lasers touch any part of you when you guys checked out?” Emily thought for a moment, and then remembered she had played with it before her father paid for the game. “Yeah, it did. The employee let me run my hand over the lasers a few times before she scanned the game. She told me there were lasers that read the price of the game and I didn’t believe her, so she let me put my hand over them. All the little laser lights formed a grid on my palm. It was pretty cool.” Cuddly laughed. “Pretty cool, and pretty enchanted!” “You mean those lasers are what brought me here?” Emily asked. Hawk turned to face her. “We believe that’s probably what did it. While none of us in the store are entirely sure, we do know it’s how you can get home and back to your normal size though.” “That sounds crazy. There’s no way that’s even possible,” said Emily. “You’re right,” said Cuddly sarcastically. “I guess the talking teddy bear and toy elf don’t know what they’re speaking about, is that it?” Emily remained silent. “Listen,” said Hawk as he walked toward her. “We only have a short journey ahead of us, and most of the time it’s easy to get people back to their homes. This happens quite often, you’d be surprised. But this time, it’s a little more difficult because you woke Officer Onslaught.” “What’s his deal?” Emily asked. “His deal is that he maintains the facility of Prelude. He’s actually a necessity for the business because he keeps a lot of the rodents out. Every now and again, we’ll get a rogue toy in here trying to sabotage the store, and he helps keep them out too.” “So he’s just doing his job,” said Emily. “Right,” said Cuddly. “He’s a robot though, so thinking ain’t exactly his strong suit. He’s can’t think independently. Just a cog in the machine, and you’re technically not supposed to be here so he’s trying to rid the store of you.” “What’s ‘a cog in the machine’ mean?” “It means he’s just a moving part to this store. He’s only valuable as long as he keeps up with the work he’s assigned. He’s a replaceable toy. The second he breaks down, one of the other Officer Onslaughts will take his place, maintaining the status quo.

On the other side of the hedgerow, on the road there appeared a short little man blowing a bugle and leading a long, tall cart drawn by a grey horse. It was Lambourdieu, a big shopkeeper of Cloyes who little by little had added hosiery, haberdashery, boots and shoes and even ironmongery to his original draper's business: a whole bazaar which he hawked around all the villages within a radius of fifteen miles or so. In the end the villagers found themselves buying everything from him, from saucepans to wedding-dresses. His cart opened up and folded flat, revealing rows and rows of drawers, like the display counters of a proper shop.

He came across from the pond, the young man and his fridge travelling over land and sea searching for a meaning and purpose in their lives. We speak of Tony Hawks, the Fridge Man. Tony Hawks who came to live amongst us for all but a short while, a Messiah of sorts. We felt ourselves not worthy to touch the hem of his fridge, but then we realised that he was but an ordinary man, his fridge but a little fridge, the son of a bigger fridge--the Big Fridge--the huge, gigantic Fridge in the Sky.

the imagination of the world. Since then, dozens of similar books and short stories have followed, and feature films with time travel themes remain extremely popular. It’s clear that the idea of time travel pushes our buttons in a significant way. It’s an idea that is just too intriguing an idea to ignore. What is also difficult to ignore are the real life cases of normal everyday people reporting strange encounters with slips, shifts and spontaneous journeys in time. It is also fascinating to note that as modern physics advances, a realization is developing to suggest that time travel may be something that is real and possible, and may already be happening. The idea of time travel also straddles the fringe theories of New Agers all the way over to hard-nosed science. The world’s greatest scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, are equally enamoured with time travel as is the common man on the street. Support for the possibility that time travel is real runs across a broad spectrum of human thought. Add to this the obvious fact that time travel is a highly entertaining concept – and you get a subject of endless fascination. We hope readers found this book to be an interesting and worthy contribution to time travel fact and

Ten Things I Need to Know" The brightest stars are the first to explode. Also hearts. It is important to pay attention to love’s high voltage signs. The mockingbird is really ashamed of its own feeble song lost beneath all those he has to imitate. It’s true, the Carolina Wren caught in the bedroom yesterday died because he stepped on a glue trap and tore his wings off. Maybe we have both fallen through the soul’s thin ice already. Even Ethiopia is splitting off from Africa to become its own continent. Last year it moved 10 feet. This will take a million years. There’s always this nostalgia for the days when Time was so unreal it touched us only like the pale shadow of a hawk. Parmenedes transported himself above the beaten path of the stars to find the real that was beyond time. The words you left are still smoldering like the cigarette left in my ashtray as if it were a dying star. The thin thread of its smoke is caught on the ceiling. When love is threatened, the heart crackles with anger like kindling. It’s lucky we are not like hippos who fling dung at each other with their ridiculously tiny tails. Okay, that’s more than ten things I know. Let’s try twenty five, no, let’s not push it, twenty. How many times have we hurt each other not knowing? Destiny wears her clothes inside out. Each desire is a memory of the future. The past is a fake cloud we’ve pasted to a paper sky. That is why our dreams are the most real thing we possess. My logic here is made of your smells, your thighs, your kiss, your words. I collect stars but have no place to put them. You take my breath away only to give back a purer one. The way you dance creates a new constellation. Off the Thai coast they have discovered a new undersea world with sharks that walk on their fins. In Indonesia, a kangaroo that lives in a tree. Why is the shadow I cast always yours? Okay, let’s say I list 33 things, a solid symbolic number. It’s good to have a plan so we don’t lose ourselves, but then who has taken the ladder out of the hole I’ve dug for myself? How can I revive the things I’ve killed inside you? The real is a sunset over a shanty by the river. The keys that lock the door also open it. When we shut out each other, nothing seems real except the empty caves of our hearts, yet how arrogant to think our problems finally matter when thousands of children are bayoneted in the Congo this year. How incredible to think of those soldiers never having loved. Nothing ever ends. Will this? Byron never knew where his epic, Don Juan, would end and died in the middle of it. The good thing about being dead is that you don’t have to go through all that dying again. You just toast it. See, the real is what the imagination decants. You can be anywhere with the turn of a few words. Some say the feeling of out-of-the-body travel is due to certain short circuits in parts of the brain. That doesn’t matter because I’m still drifting towards you. Inside you are cumulous clouds I could float on all night. The difference is always between what we say we love and what we love. Tonight, for instance, I could drink from the bowl of your belly. It doesn’t matter if our feelings shift like sands beneath the river, there’s still the river. Maybe the real is the way your palms fit against my face, or the way you hold my life inside you until it is nothing at all, the way this plant droops, this flower called Heart’s Bursting Flower, with its beads of red hanging from their delicate threads any breeze might break, any word might shatter, any hurt might crush. Superstition Reviews issue 2 fall 2008

At age twelve, his first job was as a railway newspaper boy, hawking wares to passengers on a Midwest rail line. But Edison soon realized he could make more money selling his own newspaper. The preteen began reporting and publishing the Grand Trunk Herald, a gossipy conglomeration of short articles about railroad employees, regular passengers, and bits of news about popular stops and amenities to be found there.

Hamstrung as I am with shortness and a tendency to roundness, which I need to watch like a hawk, I certainly don’t look the part.

Their close grazing, in concert with that of sheep, reduced the short sward to a thin crust of roots over sand. Where the grazing was worst, sand blew into drifts and moved across the land.

Life's Path by Maisie Aletha Smikle Life is a path we must travel Life is a book we must read Your path is yours My path is mine Imaginary paths they are Carved for all Some paths are long Some paths are short Along our paths we must go To reach the end we must Paths may be rocky Paths may be paved Paths may have detours Paths may have cul-de-sacs Turn around at the cul-de-sacs Re-route at the detours For on your path you must return Don't hurry to reach the end Don't stop at the path's bend That is not where it ends Along the path may be thieves Lurking waiting to steal What you have gathered and accumulated And saved along life's journey Along life's path may be starving vultures Hoping for misfortunes Hovering for carcasses Hawking distractions hoping for destruction Along life’s path may be good Samaritans Wishing and hoping for the very best To succeed at the Creator's tests And hoping always you’d be at your utmost best Along life’s path there is One Who wants to accompany you Take Him with you Til your journey ends

But facts fall short of truth, because truth includes the yearnings of the human heart—

For You is one of the most important books ever to trace the career of Bruce Springsteen. Compiled by Lawrence Kirsch, the book features the words and photos of Springsteen fans from all over the world. The majority of the photos have never been published before, and are nothing short of amazing. Tom Cunningham, The Bruce Brunch, 105.7 The Hawk

For one awful, long moment she is hanging head-downward, wings open, like a turkey in a butcher’s shop, only her head is turned right-way-up and she is seeing more than she has ever seen before in her whole short life. Her world was an aviary no larger than a living room. Then it was a box. But now it is this; and she can see everything:

Egbunu, I must say that it wasn’t that he responded this way to every woman’s voice, but her voice sounded strangely familiar to him. Although he did not know it, I knew that it reminded him of his mother. At once he saw a plump, swarthy woman who looked his age. She was sweating in the hot sun, and the sweat shimmered along her legs. She carried a tray filled with groundnuts on her head. She was one of the poor—the class of people who had been created by the new civilization. In the time of the old fathers only the lazy, indolent, infirm, or accursed lacked, but now most people did. Go into the streets, into the heart of any market in Alaigbo, and you’ll find toiling men, men whose hands are as hard as stones and whose clothes are drenched in sweat, living in abject poverty. When the White Man came, he brought good things. When they saw the car, the children of the fathers cried out in amusement. The bridges? “Oh, how wonderful!” they said. “Isn’t this one of the wonders of the world?” they said of the radio. Instead of simply neglecting the civilization of their blessed fathers, they destroyed it. They rushed to the cities—Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano—only to find that the good things were in short supply. “Where are the cars for us?” they asked at the gates of these cities. “Only a few have them!” “What about the good jobs, the ones whose workers sit under air conditioners and wear long ties?” “Ah, they are only for those who have studied for years in a university, and even then, you’d still have to compete with the multitude of others with the same qualifications.” So, dejected, the children of the fathers turned back and returned. But to where? To the ruins of the structure they had destroyed. So they live on the bare minimum, and this is why you see people like this woman who walk the length and breadth of the city hawking groundnuts.

Two minutes and thirty-five seconds. I watched the clock this time. Counted it out in my head. I promised myself I wouldn’t, that I wasn’t the type to care about such trivial things…but is unsatisfying sex really that trivial when you’re considering spending your life with the person delivering? He loves me. Patrick made it a point to tell me consistently. He was the first to say it. When I was enjoying the beginning stages of our relationship, he told me he was falling for me already. It flattered me; I felt honored to be loved by someone of his caliber. He was handsome in a subtle sort of way, more of a short and stocky guy. His mom always said he was a meat-and-potatoes kind of boy, whatever that meant. But it was his kind, brown eyes and that loving smile that drew me in.

Tell me about the conversations you and your brother escaped? The ones that drove you to the caverns. Tell me why you refuse to take the throne even when you know your brother won't be fit to do it when you free him,' I demanded. 'Tell me why you thought it was okay in the first fucking place to kidnap me and use me as random before you even knew me!' Frustration crowded my throat. 'Tell me why it never occurred to you to mention the Joining. Tell me about Gianna, Casteel. Does she care for you? Does she want this engagement? Do you care for her? He exhaled roughly, shaking his head, but I wasn't done. 'Tell me why you never told me the truth about Spessa's End until I was here? Was it because you didn't trust me with that information? Tell me about her. The one you loved and lost because of the Ascended. Tell me what happened to her. Will you even say her name?' My chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, and my anger overwhelmed my senses, blocking out his emotions completely. 'Tell me how you can stand to be near me when I represent the people who took so much from you. Tell me why you really came to my room tonight. Tell me something that matters. That is real.' Casteel's chest rose with a heavy breath. 'You want something real?' 'Yes.' 'I came to your room tonight to learn if what you said at dinner was true. That I was the first person to ever seen you. That I was the first thing you ever chose for yourself. That you chose me when you knew me as Hawke, and even after you learned the truth, you still chose me,' he growled, his eyes luminous. 'I came here tonight to learn if you really felt like you were betraying Vikter and Rylan, all the others and yourself. I came here to see if that'd changed. Was all of that real, or were you just pretending?' I took a step back, entirely too exposed, and it had nothing to do with the ridiculous nightgown. I hadn't expected him to go there. I wasn't sure why, but I hadn't. He shook his head as he barked out a short, humourless laugh. 'Yeah. Silence. As usual. That's why there was never a reason to tell you any of those things you've demanded from me.' I stared up at him, hands and arms trembling. 'I don't know what you want from me.' 'Everything,' he bit out between clenched teeth. 'I want everything.

trading at $10 when you just shorted it at $2 a few days before? I learned that lesson the hard way. It turned out that I was risking $8 to make $2, which is not a good way to make money over the long term. To add injury to insult, a penny stock might appear to be liquid one day, and the next day, the liquidity dries up and you are confronted by a $2 bid/ask spread. Or the bid might completely disappear. Imagine owning a stock for which there are now no buyers. Stay away from all stocks under $10. Also stay away from trading newsletters that hawk penny stocks. The owners of these newsletters are often paid by the companies themselves to hype their stocks. Or they may take a position in a penny stock, send out an email telling everyone to buy it, and then sell their stock at a much higher price to these amateur buyers. Watch the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" if you’d like to see a famous example of the decadent lifestyle and fraud that often surround penny stocks. Viewer discretion is advised. 3. Don’t short stocks. If you are an advanced trader, feel free to ignore this rule. If you are not, I would seriously encourage you not to ignore this rule. In order to short a stock, you must first borrow shares of the stock from your broker. You then sell those shares on the open market. If the stock falls in price, you will be able to buy back those shares at a lower price for a profit. If, however, the stock goes up a lot, you may be forced to buy back the shares at a much higher price, and end up losing more money than you ever had in your trading