SAT Words

Trump's victory was fueled by fatigue with sanctimonious identity politics, which became state religion under Democratic administrations.

Paglia presents herself as a willing academic pariah

A Navvab or Nawaab (Urdu: نوّاب‎), is an honorific title ratified and bestowed by the reigning Mughal Emperor to semi-autonomous Muslim rulers of princely states in South Asia. The primary duties of a Nawab was to uphold the sovereignty of the Mughal Emperor alongside with the administration of a certain province.

I haven't seen Xah in this newsgroup before, so for those of you who don't know him from the Perl or Python or other newsgroups he infects, Xah Lee is a particularly insidious troll, and if you feel you must reply to him, please follow up only to the newsgroup where you read him, to reduce the number of flamewars that get crossposted (which is the Xah troll's main method of trolling).

to her credit in that thread we have “rested” and “restive”, which are near antonyms that looks like synonyms. We had fun in that thread with near synonyms that looked antonyms. Can we compile the reverse or in that vein here?

A dynasty is a sequence of rulers considered members of the same family. Historians traditionally consider many sovereign states' history within a framework of successive dynasties, e.g., China, Ancient Egypt and the Persian Empire. Much of European political history is dominated by dynasties such as the Carolingians, the Capetians, the Bourbons, the Habsburgs, the Stuarts, the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs. Until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty; that is, to increase the territory, wealth and power of family members.

A dynasty is also often called a house (e.g., House of Saud and House of Windsor), and may be described as imperial, royal, ducal or comital depending upon the chief title borne by its rulers. Dynasty is also used to refer to the era during which a family reigned, as well as events, trends and artifacts of that period (e.g. “Ming dynasty vase”). In such cases, often “dynasty” is dropped, while the name is used adjectively; e.g., Tudor style, Ottoman expansion, Romanov decadence, etc

Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. The word's origin is from Greek words μῖσος (misos, “hatred”) and ἄνθρωπος (anthrōpos, “man, human being”).

Legal commentators point out that while the indictment may be correct and Megaupload might have acted as a criminal conspiracy as claimed, a number of points in the indictment are based upon selective interpretations and legal concepts (described in one article as “novel theories” of the law) and could be challenged in court. An L.A. Times analysis stated that the author was “struck by how far the indictment goes to find something nefarious”; likewise a Techdirt analysis concluded that while the founder of Megaupload had a significant history of “flouting the law”, evidence has potentially been taken out of context or misrepresented and could “come back to haunt other online services who are providing perfectly legitimate services”. Both analyses concur that other evidence could show criminality; the concerns were not irrefutable.

“A sentimentalist”, Oscar Wilde wrote Alfred Douglas, “is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.” James Baldwin considered that “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel… the mask of cruelty”.

Cairo was the code name for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996 (Cairo was also the codename of Windows NT 4.0). Its charter was to build technologies for a next generation operating system that would fulfill Bill Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips."[1] Cairo never shipped, although portions of its technologies have since appeared in other products.

Public reaction to the scandal in Britain was swift. On 6 July, 2011 British prime minister David Cameron announced to parliament that a public government inquiry would convene to further investigate the affair.

“Men in general are the 'funnier sex.” … No. It is not due “in part” to how men and women are socialized. It is due entirely to how men and women are socialized. Oh, but “psychology” says men are the funniest? Well, I guess we're done here! It certainly couldn't be that women just shut up and laugh because we're trained from birth that we're supposed to be pleasant, pliable, and inoffensive, and that we should pander to men at all times lest we be labeled an undesirable. No, the obvious explanation is that every time a woman tries to tell a joke, an invisible dream-catcher telescopes out of her vagina and snatches it from the air. Science.

The deepening slide in Facebook Inc.'s stock is fueling talk once considered implausible on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in India from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies. At various times it has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behaviour of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.

It is a parable that has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore. The tale is also well known in Europe. In the 19th century the poet John Godfrey Saxe created his own version as a poem. Since then, the story has been published in many books for adults and children, and interpreted in an ever-increasing variety of ways.

Bonfires were set on street corners as groups of people, many in Canucks jerseys, threw temporary fencing at [police] officers in riot gear. A mounted police squad tried to regain control among a cluster of federal buildings, while unrest spread to the Granville Mall nightclub zone and the Robson Street shopping district.

The most prevalent single-winner voting method, by far, is plurality (also called “first-past-the-post”, “relative majority”, or “winner-take-all”), where each voter votes for one choice, and the choice that receives the most votes wins, even if it receives less than a majority of votes.

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur. As a rule, saboteurs try to conceal their identities because of the consequences of their actions. For example, whereas an environmental pressure group might be happy to be identified with an act of sabotage, it would not want the individual identities of the perpetrators known.

The show's central character is John Ross “J.R.” Ewing Jr., a greedy, scheming oil baron played by Larry Hagman (a Fort Worth native). J.R. was only intended to be a supporting character when the show premiered, as the series was originally based around J.R.'s brother Bobby and his new bride, Pam. However, J.R.'s machinations became popular with viewers and he quickly became the focus of the series.

Research on sex and psychology investigates cognitive and behavioral differences between men and women. … Because social and environmental factors affect brain activity and behavior, where differences are found, it can be difficult for researchers to assess whether or not the differences are innate. Studies on this topic explore the possibility of social influences on how both sexes perform in cognitive and behavioral tests.

Alien Resurrection is a science fiction film released in 1997 by 20th Century Fox and the fourth installment in the Alien franchise. Directed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the film is based on a screenplay by Joss Whedon. With a budget of $70 million, Alien Resurrection was the first film in the Alien series to be filmed outside of England, at Fox studios in Los Angeles, California.

[on sword-fighting video game] “How will this be different than Soul Caliber?” you ask. …

Low-latency, high-precision motion controller: Critical to a satisfying sword fight is fast, accurate response. This is especially important for CLANG given the depth and complexity of moves that are used in real sword arts. Initially, CLANG will make use of a commercial, third-party, off-the-shelf controller that anyone can buy today

Depth: Roundhouse swings and crude blocks just aren't enough. Real sword fighting involves multiple attacks delivered from different stances, pommel strikes, grappling, feints, and parries.

Expandability: Implementing the longsword style will oblige us to construct a toolkit that can then be used -- by us, or by others -- to create other examples of what we're calling MASEs (Martial Arts System Embodiments). If your thing is Japanese kenjutsu or Viking sword-and-board, then in principle CLANG should support it.

Verbosity (also called wordiness, prolixity and garrulousness) in language refers to speech or writing which is deemed to use an excess of words. Adjectival forms are verbose, wordy, prolix and garrulous. An example are the expressions “in the vicinity of” (which can be replaced with “near”) and “in order to” (which can be replaced with “to”).

In 2006, the executive committee of the Sport Accord, formerly known as the General Association of International Sport Federations GAISF, accepted the application of the International Dragon Boat Federation IDBF as the sole world sporting federation which organises and recognises the majority of the world's dragon boat crews, now from more than 70 countries, and that convenes the world championships for this paddling sport.

Freedom fries is a political euphemism for French fries used by some people in the United States as a result of anti-French sentiment during the controversy over the U.S. decision to launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq. France expressed strong opposition in the United Nations to such an invasion. Some frowned upon the French position, leading to campaigns for the boycotting of French goods and businesses and the removal of the country's name from products.

An official hall of fame exists at the International Table Tennis Federation Museum. A Grand Slam is earned by a player who wins singles crowns at Olympic Games, World Championships, and World Cup. Jan-Ove Waldner of Sweden first completed the grand slam at 1992 Olympic Games. Deng Yaping of China is the first female recorded at the inaugural Women's World Cup in 1996.

In the novel, Cosette's mother Fantine places her under the guardianship of the Thénardiers, where she is severely mistreated. They beat her, starve her, and force her to perform heavy labor in their inn. Under the Thénardiers' care, she is described as “thin and pale,” wears rags for clothing, and she has chilblains on her hands as well as bruised and reddened skin. The narrator also states that “fear was spread all over her.”

While later under the care of Jean Valjean, Cosette's appearance completely transforms as she grows older. She becomes very beautiful, healthy, well-attired and educated. She later falls in love with Marius Pontmercy. Cosette has chestnut brown hair, beautiful eyes, rosy cheeks, pale skin, and a radiant smile.

William “Bill” Boyd Watterson II (born July 5, 1958) is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which was syndicated from 1985 to 1995. Watterson stopped drawing Calvin and Hobbes at the end of 1995 with a short statement to newspaper editors and his readers that he felt he had achieved all he could in the medium. Watterson is known for his views on licensing and comic syndication, as well as for his reclusive nature.

[Hunger Games fiction universe] An escort is a citizen of the Capitol whose main duty is to accompany the tributes (“escort”) tributes of their assigned district and teach them how to behave properly. … The only known escort is Effie Trinket, the District 12 escort. Effie Trinket is a kind and peppy escort who cared for tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark while they dwelled in the Capitol. She would always make announcements to prepare and get ready for the day ahead of them.

The 14 million dromedaries (one-humped camel) alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in Northern Africa, Middle East). The Horn of Africa region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide peripatetic Somali and Ethiopian people with milk, food and transportation.

The Bactrian camel (2-humps) is now reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, mostly domesticated. About 1,000 wild Bactrian camels are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage.

One week before the film's release, Disney removed an embargo on reviews of the film. John Carter received mixed reviews from critics. As of May 5, 2012, it holds a 52% rating on the film-critics aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes based on 207 reviews; its consensus is, “While John Carter looks terrific and delivers its share of pulpy thrills, it also suffers from uneven pacing and occasionally incomprehensible plotting and characterization.”

Nepeta cataria (catnip) are known for their behavioral effects on the cat family, not only on domestic cats but also big cats. N. cataria is used as a recreational substance for pet cats' enjoyment, and catnip and catnip-laced products designed for use with domesticated cats are available to consumers. Not all cats are affected by catnip. The common behaviors when cats sense the bruised leaves or stems of catnip are rubbing on the plant, rolling on the ground, pawing at it, licking it, and chewing it. Consuming much of the plant is followed by drooling, sleepiness, anxiety, leaping about and purring. Some will growl, meow, scratch, or bite the hand holding it. Some cats will eat dried catnip; often eating too much can cause cats to be aggressive, typically making them hiss.

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Derivative but charming and fun enough, Disney's mammoth scifier is both spectacular and a bit cheesy.”

The Times reported on Blair's journalistic misdeeds in an unprecedented 7,239-word front-page story on May 11, 2003, headlined “Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception.” The story called the affair “a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.” On the NPR radio show “Talk of the Nation”, Blair explained that his fabrications started with what he thought was a relatively innocent infraction: using a quote from a press conference which he had missed. He described a gradual process whereby his ethical violations became worse and contended that his main motivation was a fear of not living up to the expectations that he and others had for his career.

Pulp magazines (often referred to as “the pulps”) are inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long. Pulps were printed on cheap paper with ragged, untrimmed edges.

The term pulp derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. Magazines printed on higher quality paper were called “glossies” or “slicks”. In their first decades, pulps were most often priced at ten cents per magazine, while competing slicks were 25 cents apiece. Pulps were the successor to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines are best remembered for their lurid and exploitative stories and sensational cover art. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considered descendants of “hero pulps”; pulp magazines often featured illustrated novel-length stories of heroic characters, such as The Shadow, Doc Savage and The Phantom Detective.

A “front organization” is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations. Front organizations can act for the parent group without the actions being attributed to the parent group.

Front organizations that appear to be independent voluntary associations or charitable organizations are called front groups. In the business world, front organizations such as front companies or shell corporations are used to shield the parent company from legal liability. In international relations, a puppet state is a state which acts as a front (or surrogate) for another state.

The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds (vocal cords) are the primary sound source. Generally speaking, the mechanism for generating the human voice can be subdivided into three parts; the lungs, the vocal folds within the larynx, and the articulators. The lung (the pump) must produce adequate airflow and air pressure to vibrate vocal folds (this air pressure is the fuel of the voice). The vocal folds (vocal cords) are a vibrating valve that chops up the airflow from the lungs into audible pulses that form the laryngeal sound source. The muscles of the larynx adjust the length and tension of the vocal folds to ‘fine tune’ pitch and tone. The articulators (the parts of the vocal tract above the larynx consisting of tongue, palate, cheek, lips, etc.) articulate and filter the sound emanating from the larynx and to some degree can interact with the laryngeal airflow to strengthen it or weaken it as a sound source.

The vocal folds, in combination with the articulators, are capable of producing highly intricate arrays of sound. The tone of voice may be modulated to suggest emotions such as anger, surprise, or happiness. Singers use the human voice as an instrument for creating music.

Cholera is an infection in the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse, watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking water or eating food that has been contaminated by the feces of an infected person, including one with no apparent symptoms. … Worldwide, it affects 3–5 million people and causes 100,000–130,000 deaths a year as of 2010. Cholera was one of the earliest infections to be studied by epidemiological methods.

For hackathons that last 24 hours or longer, especially competitive ones, eating is often informal, with participants often subsisting on food like pizza and energy drinks. Sometimes sleeping is informal as well, with participants sleeping on-site with sleeping bags and the like.

Equity feminism and gender feminism are terms coined by scholar Christina Hoff Sommers in her 1992 book 〈Who Stole Feminism〉?, which she uses to distinguish between what she describes as two ideologically distinct branches of modern feminism. Sommers is herself a strong advocate of what she calls equity feminism, and opposed to what she calls gender feminism. Since the publication of her book, the terminology has become widespread in feminist literature, even if not all agree with her advocacy of the equity model.

China has made significant progress in modernizing its military since the early 2000s. It has purchased advanced Russian fighter jets, such as the Sukhoi Su-30, and has also produced its own modern fighters, most notably the Chengdu J-10 and Shenyang J-11. China is furthermore engaged in developing an indigenous stealth aircraft, the Chengdu J-20. China's ground forces have also undergone significant modernisations, replacing its ageing Soviet-derived tank inventory with numerous variants of the modern Type 99 tank, and upgrading its battlefield C3I systems to enhance its network-centric warfare capabilities. …

Apocalypticism is the religious belief that there will be an apocalypse, a term which originally referred to a revelation of God's will, but now usually refers to belief that the world will come to an end time very soon, even within one's own lifetime.

As with all energy drinks, Rockstar can cause jitteriness, anxiety, and high blood sugar levels. If mixed with alcohol it may also mask the level of alcohol intoxication. Because of the diuretic effect of caffeine, Rockstar can exacerbate dehydration. There are no known side-effects if used in moderation.

Ecuador must be one of the most exciting places on Earth right now, in terms of working towards a new development paradigm. It shows how much can be achieved with political will, even in uncertain economic times. … A major turning point came with the election of the economist Rafael Correa as president. After taking over in January 2007, his government ushered in a series of changes, based on a new constitution (the country's 20th, approved in 2008) that was itself mandated by a popular referendum. A hallmark of the changes that have occurred since then is that major policies have first been put through the referendum process. This has given the government the political ability to take on major vested interests and powerful lobbies.

Apple quietly lifted part of Steve Jobs' famous “reality distortion field” on Sunday, switching out a statement that claimed its Mac computers were completely immune to viruses with a less-forward statement: “It's built to be safe.” … Andy Hertzfeld, a former Apple engineer currently with Google, explains that Jobs' “reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.” Spin played a big role in Apple's marketing strategy, but Apple has little to stand on by calling its Macs completely watertight when, simply, they are not.

He was in some respects a quintessential British amateur, dipping his intellect into different areas. He achieved a high level of competence in pure mathematics, and used that as his professional base. His contributions in traditional mathematics were certainly perfectly respectable, though not spectacular. But in every area he touched, there was a certain crispness to the ideas he developed -- even if their technical implementation was sometimes shrouded in arcane notation and masses of detail.

The majority of mantises are ambush predators. They camouflage themselves and stand perfectly still. Then they just wait for their prey to stray too near. When a target does get close enough, the mantis then lashes out at remarkable speed, in fractions of the time it takes people to blink. Some ground and bark species, however, pursue their prey. Prey items are caught and held securely with grasping, spiked forelegs. The praying mantis usually holds its prey with one arm between the head and thorax, and the other on the abdomen. Then, if the prey does not resist, the mantis will eat it alive. However, if the prey does resist, the mantis will eat its head first, and then carry on with the body in peace. Unlike some exoskeleton predators, the praying mantis does not suck the fluids out of its victims body, but chews it in a manner similar to the way mammals do; however, its jaws close sideways, and not from the top or bottom like mammals' mouths. It will devour most of its victim but is known to leave a few limbs. Chinese praying mantises have been found to gain benefits in survivorship, growth, and fecundity by supplementing their diet with pollen.

ATHENS -- From the sprawling districts of Athens to tiny far-flung islands, Greeks turned out on Sunday to vote in elections that once again are seen as a referendum on the country's continued use of the euro.

The other main legend concerns the poignant saga of a Chinese court official named Qu Yuan, also phoneticised Ch'u Yuen. It is said that he lived in the pre-imperial Warring States period (475-221 BC). During this time the area today known as central China was divided into seven main states or kingdoms battling among themselves for supremacy with unprecedented heights of military intrigue. This was at the conclusion of the Zhou (Chou) Dynasty, which is regarded as China's classical age during which Confucius (Kongfuzi) lived. Also, the author Sun Tzu is said to have written his famous classic on military strategy The Art of War during this era.

After attending an April 20, 1832, concert for charity, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini, Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard. Some, such as Sigismond Thalberg and Alexander Dreyschock, focused on specific aspects of technique (e.g. the “three-hand effect” and octaves, respectively). While it was called the “flying trapeze” school of piano playing, this generation also solved some of the most intractable problems of piano technique, raising the general level of performance to previously unimagined heights. Liszt's strength and ability to stand out in this company was in mastering all the aspects of piano technique cultivated singly and assiduously by his rivals.

M. Liszt's playing contains abandonment, a liberated feeling, but even when it becomes impetuous and energetic in his fortissimo [dynamics], it is still without harshness and dryness. […] [He] draws from the piano tones that are purer, mellower and stronger than anyone has been able to do; his touch has an indescribable charm. […] He is the enemy of affected, stilted, contorted expressions. Most of all, he wants truth in musical sentiment, and so he makes a psychological study of his emotions to convey them as they are. Thus, a strong expression is often followed by a sense of fatigue and dejection, a kind of coldness, because this is the way nature works.

[Adult Video News] lambasted Hustler [porn mag] for having the temerity to question AVN's awards.

Sony's $3 billion Hollywood debacle is the latest in a series of setbacks for Japanese firms in the U.S.

He visualizes the landscape of Pauline's and Juliet's minds as a fetid garden, where fairytale plots of courtly love and castle intrigue blot out their edgy lives at home and school. The girls' vision of Borovnia utterly mesmerizes them. Anyone who would break the spell -- like Pauline's sweet, anxious mum -- must be a witch. Must be sentenced to death.

…In all likelihood, Frost was not trying merely to evade the question but to chide his questioner into thinking for himself.

… the dreamer concocted his vision of grandeur…

i don't have any misgivings in marrying her

… expounded my ideas forthwith.

…But those authors have been a select group, who both have had something to say, and have been fluent enough to say it more or less cogently.

It's a seedy, cynical world view: people are motivated by greed, stupidity and sexual avarice.

belligerent, pugnacious

I consider it required research for my critique of her manifesto…

temerity, audacity, nerve, cheek, gall

After a seven-year hiatus,…

pretentious, grandiose, puffy, stuffy, bloated

… many people of protean interests,…

etiquette, propriety, decorum

The church's ideals of family, for example, strike me as, by turns, heroic, profound or quaint.

The judge commended the jury for their patience and hard work.

Americans now wallow in the horror and gore and take a guilty delight in killer's eluding capture.

…Insert pithy maxim here…

… she was hoping to remind the world of her randy reputations…

He is the ultimate repository of arcane information.

…which squeamish readers may find hard to get through without wincing…

“By day they [vampires] walk around unassuming then boom! By night they turn into monsters.”

When Hubert Selby Jr. wrote the book [Last Exit to Brooklyn] that inspired this movie 25 years ago, it was attacked in some quarters as pornographic, but it failed the essential test: It didn't arouse my prurient interest, only sadness and despair.

…his father and two cronies played cards.

public hangings and lynchings…

They [smilies or emoticons] have since become (depending on your point of view) either an essential part of the on-line messaging process, a minor irritation, or a confounded nuisance that pollutes the world's communications channels.

his [Bart Simpson] ripostes “Eat my shorts” became T-shirt slogans.

Later, another stipend enabled him to attend Brooklyn's Pratt Institute…

the indomitable Captain James Tiberius Kirk from the original TV series [Star Trek]…

Sony's Hollywood foray began, as so many sour business deals do, with bold rhetoric and grand strategies.

That predicament seems likely to change in the next few years, as scientists learn more about the biochemistry of behavior.

Gregory's plight attracted national attention and even reached the podium of G.O.P. convention, where conservative Pat Buchanan cited the case in his attack on Hillary Clinton…

Died. Paul Darber, 93, historian emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

Never has there been a politician so candid about his own mendacity as Earl Long, the fabled drinking, carousing and hog hunting 1950s Governor of Louisiana.

Repentant drinkers, meanwhile, are helping organize Alcoholics anonymous groups on campus.

Almost every college graduate can spin at least a few tales about a boisterous night of carousing that culminated in slugging shots of tequila at sunrise or tossing drained kegs into the president's pool.

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.

“If people want cheesecake, they don't want ‘lite,’” he says. “They come to our restaurant to mow.”

Stanisław Lem was awarded an honorary membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) in 1973 despite being technically ineligible. SFWA Honorary membership is given to people who do not meet the criteria for joining the regular membership but who would be welcomed as members. Lem, however, never had a high opinion of American science-fiction -- particularly the works of Harlan Ellison -- describing it as ill thought-out, poorly written, and interested more in making money than in ideas or new literary forms. After his American publication, when he was eligible for regular membership, his honorary membership was rescinded. Some of the SFWA members apparently intended this as a rebuke, and it seems that Lem interpreted it thus, but the organization's official line is that honorary membership is only extended to people who are not eligible for regular membership. After his American publication, Lem was invited to stay on with the organization with a regular membership, but declined.

In many other cultures it's just the reverse: the rich are fat and the poor are emaciated. Anthropologist George Armelagos of Emory University calls it the Henry the Eighth syndrome, referring to the corpulent King of England who lived so well off the labor of his peasantry. “Think about how many people had to work to make the King the size that he was,” says Armelagos. Being rotund is still a sign of prosperity and prestige in Polynesia and parts of Africa.

Over dinner, a taciturn staff gave him a quick primer on how to direct a movie.

Or maybe, as its detractors contend, Therapeutic Touch is a form of New Age mumbo jumbo, a no-touch laying on of hands that has no legitimate place in medicine.

a canny (movie) producer.

That answer is probably just as good as the so called “correct” answer, which always seemed a bit contrived to me.

Here is where NeXT's doleful record cannot be entirely exonerated by the biological metaphor, which is after all a figure of speech, not an explanation.

avert, obviate, forestall

partiality, penchant, prejudice, proclivity, propensity

There are lots of apocryphal stories floating on the internet. For example, i was reading an article on the story of casino in the early days (http://www.quatloos.com/gamble/parhedg.htm); about how they murdered a man who was using some nuclear-physicist kids's stratagem to win away some 10 million dollars. Urban legends are either completely baseless, or distorted true stories.

capricious, volatile, mercurial, whimsical

disdainful

sublime

… the university had ignored decades of constitutional law and abrogated its responsibility as a center for free inquiry.

dominant, predominant, preponderant, paramount, preeminent, supremacy, preponderance, pre-eminence

abutting, adjoining, juxtaposed

He believed that art must be analyzed for both its overt and covert meaning: Beneath its explicit content there exists a vast reservoir of latent social and psychic information.

thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife

censurable, reprehensible

i took a cursory reading of the book.

Note: The first and fully accepted meaning of deprecate is “to express disapproval of.” But the word has steadily encroached on the meaning of depreciate. It is now used, almost to the exclusion of depreciate, in the sense “to belittle or mildly disparage,” as in He deprecated his own contribution. In an earlier survey, this newer sense was approved by a majority of the Usage Panel.

exuberant, vivacious, sparkling, effervescent

His [moralist] ostensible method [for improving men's behavior] is moral exhortation; his real method (if he is orthodox) is a system of economic rewards and punishments.

To make enjoyment the chief end of research was to corrupt the research, for then one acquired “a greed or lust for learning, a profligate appetite for knowledge… Such as study of science sprang from a prior concern for self as the center of things rather than a concern for seeking out, amid all surrounding natural phenomena, the presence of God and His glory.” -- Blaise Pascal.

Why are we so obsessed with privacy? Jarvis blames rapacious privacy advocates—“there is money to be made in privacy”—who are paid to mislead the “netizens,” that amorphous elite of cosmopolitan Internet users whom Jarvis regularly volunteers to represent in Davos. On Jarvis's scale of evil, privacy advocates fall between Qaddafi's African mercenaries and greedy investment bankers. All they do is “howl, cry foul, sharpen arrows, get angry, get rankled, are incredulous, are concerned, watch, and fret.” Reading Jarvis, you would think that Privacy International (full-time staff: three) is a terrifying behemoth next to Google (lobbying expenses in 2010: $5.2 million).

The strictures [of a religion] involving family and divorce were fine print that I was too young to care about.

unscrupulous

foment, abet

…further soul searching and the insertion of more caveats.

…or they [emotions] were seen as the ineffable ingredients of the human spirit, too elusive for capture.

Martina Navratilova brought her surgically repaired knees, prescription eyeglasses and fragile psyche this year to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club for a sentimental valedictory on tennis' most hallowed turf.

In addition to illustrated stories by Gord, JG-Leathers and other notable pervs [perverts], you'll also find high-quality art from the brushes and pens of such hallowed names as Stargraves, Benson, Kagan and Adrian Langley.

“I'm warning you: don't be divisive in this meeting.”

Muasher said Jordan “made it very clear to everyone in the United States government and around the world” that Chalabi is divisive.

stop pestering me with your abstruse theories…

Dresses are often designed to accentuate the curvaceous female body.

the shortness of her skirt exacerbated my nerdiness of demeanor

TV is obtrusive, obnoxious too. A muted TV can be unobtrusive.

smorking is a vice. Coveting thy neighor's wives is a classic, biblical vise.

talking and talking. e.g. missionaries are vociferous. They vociferously compaign for the beliefs in the Christian God and conflicting varieties of principles.

“watershed victory” -- prominent, decisive.

the onslaught of a heart attack

thank god we live in this quite, little, pissant, redneck, podunk, jerkwater, greenhorn, one-horse, mudhole, peckerwood, Right-wing, whistle-stop, hobnail, truck-driving, Old-fashioned, hayseed, inbred, unkempt, out-of-date, out-of-touch, white-trash, kick-ass mountain town.

examples abound in this doc, demostrating the prowess of my readship

that idea has been rehashed to death

for younsters, exams are remittent cause of anguish, so is love.

Renascence is period where renascence abound. Also: renascent, rebirth

literarily, wounds are inflammatory.

mother admonished her son for smoking

weapon storehouse or the like

i haven't done weight lifting for years, and my muscles have atrophied

i went to college under the auspices of my uncle

he balked at my idea

berate at children

bilateral symmetry

cry of a goat

blithely licking at her ice cream.

his belly bloats like a baloon

a writer of cogency

dumb people deflect attacts, bright people reflect on attacts. Religious people crumble and genuflect.

i was on the phone for over 5 hours, and near the end it's dreary and drudgery

Perl and Unix are disservices to the computing world

the girth of her belly during pregnancy is …

your grandiloquent sexual fantasy comes true

the object extruded through the surface.

my first performance at the theater was a flop

Nobel Price laureate

death: the ultimate nirvana

… peasants in communism … the laboring class

e.g. The Great Wall, The Pyramid

The storm remitted its fury

admission and remission

splurge yourself and buy a diamond

subvert government, subversive group

the world is full of unkempt things. Unkempt desk, unkempt house, unkempt lady, unkempt sex life …

he went ballistic ever since i critized him

unwittingly, i made a joke

such and such criminal is on parole…

she provided me with amenities…

don't you have any penance?

he is a helmsman, i'm the driver of the ship

monolithic penis envy

… i can only skim, no time to peruse…

“forensic science” -- what a hateful phrase! It refers to the collection of techniques based on sciences that “proves things under law” mostly in criminal courts. For example, examing corps (autopsy) to determine cause of death, finger prints … are forensic sciences.

she had me enthralled…

I must think of a way to mollify my wrath

“I wish a divorce because our marriage is not consummated”

a criminal without contriteness

brain and brawn

abate your indulgence…

a newbie…

try not to impersonate your brother

consorship stymies the nutrients for ideas

the difference between an opera and a soap opera, is the difference between passion and maudlinness.

… technical parlance …

this is not the time for promoting morale

the gist of this list is in fact not about English vocabulary, but me.

For a family of underachievers, the Simpsons have achieved quite a bit. In the show, Homer has been a monorail conductor and a baseball mascot; he won a Grammy (for Outstanding Soul, Spoken Word or Barbershop Album) and survived eating a deadly blowfish.

My PhD dissertation was entitled Prescriptive Kanji Simplification.

scratching tin against glass would be very strident

accretion of knowledge

something smells odious

disseminate information

dissipate energy and be spent, aptly as men in the process of procreation.

i was exasperated by that fire siren, dreaming the songs of Sirens.

stupid people construe lampoons as insults

placate me

he made a compendium of syntactically ambiguous English phrases

you are reading a spoof of spoof

her big-blue eyes is a salient feature

Taiwan -- the purveyor of computer memory chips.

big-tents (circus) has itineraries

perturb is the keyword in the science of Chaos theory.

gorge inordinate amount of fish

she was subpoenaed by the court, what a stroke of luck

his rant was rather bland

I will take my usual approach and estimate what I can -- as opposed to researching the results of detailed studies. It's part of the process of personal mastery of the big-picture issues, while also providing a sanity-check. In exploring useful reactions to the looming peak oil crisis (or pick your favorite rationale for weaning ourselves from fossil fuels), an appropriate strategy is to assess ballpark capacities of the various options. Some will prove to be orders-of-magnitude more prodigious than we need, others will be marginal, and many will show themselves to be woefully inadequate to match the required scale. So the goal is to perform this crude sorting process into abundant, useful, and waste of time.

The meme originated in 2008 on the Internet forum site 4chan and later gained prominence on the social news website reddit. It experienced an upsurge in popularity in 2009.

Webmasters face a number of situations where it's helpful to redirect users to another page. Unfortunately, redirects left open to any arbitrary destination can be abused. This is a particularly onerous form of abuse because it takes advantage of your site's functionality rather than exploiting a simple bug or security flaw. Spammers hope to use your domain as a temporary “landing page” to trick email users, searchers and search engines into following links which appear to be pointing to your site, but actually redirect to their spammy site.

The ambassador looked haggard. He coughed a lot and had to interrupt the conversation to get some water. Like so many American diplomats around the world, Murphy would have to explain to his foreign counterparts why the embassy's internal assessments of German politicians were so much harsher than its public statements. This is a challenge for diplomats, whose job requires them to preserve as perfect a façade as possible.

The Internet is a dangerous place for kids. Sickos hover in chat rooms, pornographic sites titillate, cyberbullies lurk. But last month, the enemy assumed an unexpected form: mom.

Hubris, though not specifically defined, was a legal term and was considered a crime in classical Athens. It was also considered the greatest sin of the ancient Greek world. That was so because it was not only proof of excessive pride, but also resulted in violent acts by or to those involved. The category of acts constituting hubris for the ancient Greeks apparently broadened from the original specific reference to mutilation of a corpse, or a humiliation of a defeated foe, or irreverent “outrageous treatment” in general.

look at those holistic men, holistically eschewing rationalism.

fuck is colloquial term for copulation

the incident exacerbated her hernia

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers -- shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle -- to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

What if we were instead to learn from those people who have taken the arduous, difficult, and ultimately joyful journey from obesity to health?

With just half a dozen close friends online, she has a strict regimen to remain invisible on the web. Each night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox.  She has no physical hard drive and boots her computer from a microSD card. “I could hide this card anywhere or chew into a million pieces in a few seconds,” she says by e-mail. She keeps her operating system on a USB stick and uses a virtual machine (VM) to carry out her online shenanigans.

The New York Times asked an expert in online search, Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media in New York, to study this question, as well as Penney's astoundingly strong search-term performance in recent months. What he found suggests that the digital age's most mundane act, the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world of “black hat” optimization, the dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating.

On an Internet that can feel as if it's inhabited largely by belligerent know-nothings, Quora is a place where the average citizen is an intelligent, well-informed person -- and where, in a Lake Wobegon–like effect, most everybody seems to be above average.

The header-based Do Not Track system appeals because it calls for an armistice in the arms race of online tracking. Currently, advertisers constantly invent new ways of tracking consumers and security researchers work to block this tracking with new technology. A header-based Do Not Track model sends out a signal with every online communication indicating a user's preference not to be tracked. This puts the onus on the tracking companies to comply with Do Not Track mechanisms -- rather than on the user to discover and counter every type of possible online tracking.

Privacy advocates have been calling attention to issues of pervasive online tracking for some time. Often intertwined with the issue of behavioral targeting, online tracking refers to the difficult-to-elude mechanisms by which most or all of our reading and other activities on the Web are recorded by third parties, without our knowledge or permission.

The technical details of online tracking are multifarious. They include traditional HTTP cookies as well as flash cookies and many other kinds of supercookies, web bugs, JavaScript trackers, HTTP Referrers, and fingerprinting. And new ways to track browsers will continue to be invented. Even consumers who take steps to delete their cookies or use private browsing mode remain unable to prevent third parties from observing their clickstreams.

The glistening moistly sheen, the softness of organic carnality, the tenderness of maternal confidence -- a horror of sexual irresistibility.

Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times wrote that “Mr. Grisham, a criminal defense attorney, writes with such relish about the firm's devious legal practices that his novel might be taken as a how-to manual for ambitious tax-law students.”

The US release garnered a generally positive reception (although tepid comparing to the director's past works). It received a score of 70 out of 100 from film critics according to the review aggregator Metacritic and holds an average rating of 65% by film critics on the review ranking site Rotten Tomatoes. Yahoo! Movies gave the film a B grade based on critical consensus. It has grossed over $78 million worldwide. It was also the third highest grossing non-English language film in 2006 after Apocalypto and Pan's Labyrinth.

Richard Corliss of Time magazine praised the film's lurid operatic aspect and states: “this is high, and high-wire, melodrama…where matters of love and death are played at a perfect fever pitch. And grand this Golden Flower is.” Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times states: “In Curse of the Golden Flower Mr. Zhang achieves a kind of operatic delirium, opening the floodgates of image and melodrama until the line between tragedy and black comedy is all but erased.” Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times describes the film as: “A period spectacle, steeped in awesome splendor and lethal palace intrigue, it climaxes in a stupendous battle scene and epic tragedy” and “director Zhang Yimou's lavish epic celebrates the gifts of actress Gong Li while weaving a timeless tale of intrigue, corruption and tragedy.” Andrew O'Hehir of Salon states: “the morbid grandiosity of Curse of the Golden Flower is its own distinctive accomplishment, another remarkable chapter in the career of Asia's most important living filmmaker.”

English Americans (occasionally known as Anglo-Americans, although this may have a wider linguistic meaning) are citizens or residents of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England.

According to American Community Survey in 2009 data, Americans reporting English ancestry made up an estimated 9.0% of the total U.S. population, and form the third largest European ancestry group after German Americans and Irish Americans. However, demographers regard this as an undercount, as the index of inconsistency is high, and many, if not most, people from English stock have a tendency to identify simply as Americans or, if of mixed European ancestry, nominate a more recent and differentiated ethnic group. …

In the 1980 United States Census, … around 26.34% of the total population and largest reported group which, even today, would make them the largest ethnic group in the United States.

Schmidt, according to associates, lost some energy and focus after losing the China decision. At the same time, Google was becoming defensive. All of their social-network efforts had faltered. Facebook had replaced them as the hot tech company, the place vital engineers wanted to work. Complaints about Google bureaucracy intensified. Governments around the world were lobbing grenades at Google over privacy, copyright, and size issues. The “don't be evil” brand was getting tarnished, and the founders were restive.

In his letter to an editor in 1975 titled “How do we tell truths that might hurt?”, which was critical of several programming languages contemporaneous with COBOL, computer scientist and Turing Award recipient Edsger Dijkstra remarked that “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.”

• those proclaiming they have liberated content or put the free tools into the workers' hands have merely commodified relationships and driven companies relentlessly to having to sell ads or sell lists of people to data mine -- ultimately technocommunism subverts and perverts what it invades with lies about being for the public's good, and harms the public interest.

Pressure was mounting back in the US to “kill Assange”. The period of the most heated vitriol on US and Canadian television coincided with the issuing of both EAWs, the INTERPOL Red Notice, and the release of the US diplomatic cables (see Timing of EAW and INTERPOL Red Notice).

I recently noted how conventional cost accounting inexorably focuses executives' attention on increasing short-term profits by cutting costs.

Afterward, Ann demands a divorce from John. In the ensuing argument, John gleans that Ann has been to Graham's, and that she made a video. He hits Graham and locks him out of the house, then watches Ann's tape. In it, Ann says she has never felt any kind of “satisfaction” from sex. After Graham asks if she ever thinks of having sex with other men, she admits she has thought of Graham.

Others used it to blast New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez's ongoing attempts to repeal a state law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain a driver's license. The governor has put the repeal, which was defeated in the regular session earlier this year, on the agenda for a September special session. “Most are just working to support their families and to take away their driver's license would be detrimental to that,” Parker said.

Bruce William Boxleitner (born May 12, 1950) is an American actor, and science fiction and suspense writer. He is known for his leading roles in the television series How the West Was Won, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Scarecrow and Mrs. King (with Kate Jackson), and Babylon 5 (as John Sheridan in seasons 2–5, 1994 to 1998). He is also known for his role as the eponymous character of the innovative Walt Disney Pictures film Tron, a role which he reprised in the 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy.

The book gives a revisionist take on some details of Microsoft's history and the relationship between Mr. Gates and his former partner, the two of whom have long been viewed as cordial if not close friends. The book has created a rift between Messrs. Gates and Allen, say people who know both men. In the book's acknowledgments section, Mr. Allen thanks Mr. Gates along with 17 other people for "general and logistical assistance."

When a person's sanity is at balance, when human passion is raging, no etiquette must get in the way.

Some trolls have become nearly as famous as the blogs to which they attach themselves, in a curious, parasitical kind of relationship. Jeffrey Wells, author of Hollywood Elsewhere, is a former columnist on the LA Times who has been blogging inside stories about movies for 15 years. For the last couple of years his gossip and commentary has been dogged by the invective of a character called LexG, whose 200-odd self-loathing and wildly negative posts recently moved Wells to address him directly: “The coarseness, the self-pity and the occasional eye-pokes and cruel dismissiveness have to be turned down. Way down. Arguments and genuine disdain for certain debaters can be entertaining, mind. I'm not trying to be Ms Manners. But there finally has to be an emphasis on perception and love and passion and the glories of good writing. There has to be an emphasis on letting in the light rather than damning the darkness of the trolls and vomiting on the floor and kicking this or that Hollywood Elsewhere contributor in the balls…”

Tom Postmes, a professor of social and organisational psychology at the universities of Exeter and Groningen in his native Netherlands, and author of Individuality and the Group, has been researching these issues for 20 years. “In the early years,” he says, “this online behaviour was called flaming. And then that became institutionalised. Among friends, the people who engaged in this activity were actually quite jocular in intent but they were accountable to standards and norms that are radically different to those of most of their audience. Trolls aspire to violence, to the level of trouble they can cause in an environment. They want it to kick off. They want to promote antipathetic emotions of disgust and outrage, which morbidly gives them a sense of pleasure.”

Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels and trespass to land.

Trespass to the person, historically involved six separate trespasses: threats, assault, battery, wounding, mayhem, and maiming. Through the evolution of the common law in various jurisdictions, and the codification of common law torts, most jurisdictions now broadly recognize three trespasses to the person: assault, which is “any act of such a nature as to excite an apprehension of battery”; battery, “any intentional and unpermitted contact with the plaintiff's person or anything attached to it and practically identified with it”; and false imprisonment, the “unlawful obstruction or deprivation of freedom from restraint of movement.”

Trespass to chattels, also known as trespass to goods or trespass to personal property, is defined as “an intentional interference with the possession of personal property… proximately causing injury.” Trespass to chattel, does not require a showing of damages. Simply the “intermeddling with or use of… the personal property” of another gives cause of action for trespass. Since CompuServe Inc. v. Cyber Promotions, various courts have applied the principles of trespass to chattel to resolve cases involving unsolicited bulk e-mail and unauthorized server usage.

Trespass to land, the form of trespass most associated with the term trespass, refers to the “wrongful interference with one's possessory rights in property.” Generally, it is not necessary to prove harm to a possessor's legally protected interest; liability for unintentional trespass varies by jurisdiction. “At common law, every unauthorized entry upon the soil of another was a trespasser”, however, under the tort scheme established by the Restatement of Torts, liability for unintentional intrusions arises only under circumstances evincing negligence or where the intrusion involved a highly dangerous activity.

In 2011, the federal government aims to shut down top illegal websites and to secure legislation that will enable funding for U.S. embassies to monitor American intellectual property internationally. For example, President Obama discussed enforcement of intellectual property rights with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Alongside Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Obama urged Jintao to take action against consumers who purchase Microsoft software and other counterfeit DVDs and CDs for only a fraction of the cost online or in public markets. Other European countries and Japan have also addressed this growing problem in China, where the authorities hesitate to arrest counterfeiters due to the fact that such products may possibly bolster local economies.

Be grateful that amidst the insufferable hype surrounding journalism both on and off the Web, your friends at Suck can be counted upon to stick with writing about items of genuine interest to some of the sharper net surfers out there. Because, trust us - if our narcissism were measured in MB instead of Mb, we could provide ample entertainment solely in the form of self-satisfied behind-the-scenes hijinks at Suck HQ. … Y'see, at Suck, we cast our critical gaze towards more than the general slapstick routinely offered by the Internet community - we also pay close attention to our “referer” logs. So, when we started logging hits originating from links on Time-Warner's Pathfinder, we quickly tooled on down to their media morass for some spry reconnaissance. What we found left us both surprised and amused.

Olivia Wilde as Quorra, a program, adept warrior and confidante of Kevin Flynn in The Grid. Flynn refers to her as his "apprentice," and has imparted volumes of information to her regarding the world outside of The Grid, which she longs to experience for herself. Wilde describes Quorra as being like Joan of Arc, a child warrior, with innocence and optimism, led by some greater power. Her hairstyle was also influenced by singer Karen O. Wilde also explained that although "[Quorra] could have just been another slinky, vampy temptress" it was important for her to appeal to both men and women. She and Kevin Flynn are depicted as recreational Go players.

A few ingredients in Larry Page's stew of traits stand out unmistakably. He is brainy, he is confident, he is parsimonious with social interaction. But the dominant flavor in the dish is his boundless ambition, both to excel individually and to improve the conditions of the planet at large. He sees the historic technology boom as a chance to realize such ambitions and sees those who fail to do so as shamelessly squandering the opportunity. To Page, the only true failure is not attempting the audacious. “Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it's very hard to fail completely,” he says. “That's the thing that people don't get.”

Founded in 2003 by 15-year-old Christopher Poole, 4chan, the online hangout for millions of young people, unwittingly spawned the group Anonymous, which sprang to the defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange last December, attacking and taking down MasterCard's and Visa's Web sites. Does the anti-Facebook ethos of one of the Web's largest active forums represent a movement or just mayhem? Vanessa Grigoriadis peers into 4chan's “hive mind,” a primordial soup of teenage-male angst and cute cat photos.

now, i sally forth, to supermarket, in the name of food. With, severe glee, that i have enough $ to cover it. I LIVE!

And he will have to rid himself of a proclivity most engineers have: they are really bad at things they can't measure.

He has become a minor celebrity among geeks worldwide, who read his blog religiously. Impressively, he has also succeeded where small armies of more conventional public-relations types have been failing abjectly for years: he has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world, and especially to the independent software developers that are his core audience

Bruce Sterling defines argot as “the deliberately hermetic language of a small knowledge clique… a super-specialized geek cult language that has no traction in the real world.” For example: “He philosophized and recited baseball statistics in a Brooklyn argot that was fast-fading.”

That sounds like a lot of work. Besides, if a hurricane comes sweeping up in here, maybe it’s, like, a sign. A sign that we should take less stock in material possessions and shit and, like, return to motherfucking nature. Relinquish the trappings of overfed American society and make like beasts. It could be, like, a return to Eden, man. A primitive reawakening… A reordering! Yeah, man, a fucking reordering of corporate society or some such shit. Businessman ripping free from the chains of suits and shackles of cufflinks and ties, the plebs rising up from the ashes of soiled money and sodden silks -- the debris of the higher-ups -- and taking their rightful places as the makers of this world.

Most people don't really bother to study communism, in theory or practice, but have a basic sense of it: communism was a good idea, but it was implemented by bad people. Of course, study of the ideas and the practice of these ideas will lead you to exactly the opposite conclusion -- it was a bad idea and that's why it attracted bad people who implemented it for ill. But most people don't stick around that long, and they have a powerful reason not to do so: abject fear of being called a McCarthyite. So deeply ingrained are the lessons of McCarthyism, that people deeply fear even debating communism, even saying anything critical about it, for not only of appearing politically incorrect, but of actually contributing to some unfair prosecution or punishment of a person with leftist beliefs. On Twitter, if you even use the word “Marxist” or “Communist,” a guy with an account called RedScareBot with a Joe McCarthy icon on his account will come around and apprehend you, trying to name and shame you even for raising the topic.

It's not hard, but it will take at least an hour of practice before you become proficient enough to use the keyboard regularly. For the first few days, my words per minute dropped precipitously.

Because snakes vary from one country to another, first aid methods also vary. As always, this article is not a legitimate substitute for professional medical advice. Readers are strongly advised to obtain guidelines from a reputable first aid organization in their own region, and to be wary of homegrown or anecdotal remedies.

Myotoxins are small, basic peptides found in snake venoms, such as in that of certain rattlesnakes. This involves a non-enzymatic mechanism that leads to severe muscle necrosis. These peptides act very quickly, causing instantaneous paralysis to prevent prey from escaping and eventually death due to diaphragmatic paralysis.

The first myotoxin to be identified and isolated was crotamine, from the venom of Crotalus durissus terrificus, a tropical South American rattlesnake, by Brazilian scientist José Moura Gonçalves, in the 1950s. Its biological actions, molecular structure and gene responsible for its synthesis were all elucidated in the last two decades.

It's similar in many ways to the pervasive spirit in NYC's tech community today. Last week, we interviewed dot.com legend Josh Harris, who went from being a bona fide New York City millionaire to bootstrapped artist with a harrowing vision of the future. This got me thinking about how many other great stories from that era need to be told.

The debate is controversial and contentious due to the implications of not raising the debt ceiling, political ideologies, long-term debt concerns, and competing plans to address these concerns.

At issue is that the failure to extend the limit may leave the federal government unable to pay all its obligations, including paying interest on existing debt, a default that could have serious repercussions. This would probably include causing panic in bond markets and damaging the economic recovery from the Great Recession. Such a crisis could throw the United States back into a recession.

Over time, the balance of power between the various Mexican cartels shifts as new ones emerge and older ones weaken and collapse. A disruption in the system, such as the arrests or deaths of cartel leaders, generates bloodshed as rivals move in to exploit the power vacuum. Leadership vacuums sometimes are created by law enforcement successes against a particular cartel, thus cartels often will attempt to use law enforcement against one another, either by bribing Mexican officials to take action against a rival or by leaking intelligence about a rival's operations to the Mexican government or the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). While many factors have contributed to the escalating violence, security analysts in Mexico City trace the origins of the rising scourge to the unraveling of a longtime implicit arrangement between narcotics traffickers and governments controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which lost its grip on political power starting in the late 1980s.

The fighting between rival drug cartels began in earnest after the 1989 arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo who ran the cocaine business in Mexico. There was a lull in the fighting during the late 1990s but the violence has steadily worsened since 2000.

Are Googlers the Minions of Google Marketing?

Melancholia is a 2011 science fiction drama film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland. The narrative revolves around two sisters in dispute while the life of the planet is threatened as a rogue planet approaches, portending a deadly collision.

When we think of handwriting, we often assume a script, a regularized way to make letters, to which all writers adhere in order to aid communication. A famous early script is Roman square capital, which looks exactly as you imagine it: monumental u's in the shape of our modern v's and no spacing between words. It was written with a stylus and chiseled onto the sides of buildings.

Proclaiming the virtuousness of one way of forming a “j” over others is a trope that occurs throughout handwriting's history. For instance, early Christians jettisoned Roman scripts they deemed decadent and pagan. In their scriptoria, monks developed Uncial to replace Roman scripts. An internecine battle ensued when Irish monks developed a variation on Uncial that traditionalists deemed an upstart, quasi-heretical script.

Mayer, in red, with Chef Gary Danko (middle), and 100 Mile Month champs Photo by Googler Wesley Chan Last Monday evening, in the backyard of her Silicon Valley home, Marissa Mayer stood before a crowd of 200 fellow Googlers and their significant others, fed them roast quail and herb-crusted roast bison loin, and feted them for going mobile.

Steve Jobs, plans to create a new building for Apple. The building is a giant circle, 4 stories high. With capacity to host 12k people. Here's his presentation to the Cupertino City Council, at [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M ]

Steve Jobs now looks gaunt. He's 50 something. 10 yrs older then me. I watched him since 1990. We all get old.

Perry has revealed that she was inspired to write the track after running naked through a park with her friends. According to Music Rooms, Perry claims that after a wild night of partying and streaking, she wrote the song about her antics and what she remembered the next day. Perry revealed: “There's nothing better than an impromptu dance party with my friends. My track ‘Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)’ is a song about debauchery because I had one of those nights in Santa Barbara. We went out to this place called Wildcat and got crazy,” Perry admitted: “We had a couple of beers and danced until we died, then brought the party back to the hotel room.” She added: “Most of that song is actual truth, apart from the ménage à trois… unfortunately!

…

The Washington Post said that “Over strummy guitars and zigzagging keyboards, Perry recounts an evening of debauchery with no repercussions, her innocent transgressions (streaking, skinny-dipping) mentioned in the same breath as more serious trouble (mysterious bruises, a blackout), but … [when] it's time for Perry to reflect on her 3 a.m. follies, she stiffly sings, “That was such an epic fail.” It sounds like a clueless parent's attempt to speak teenager.”

The number ⅇ is of eminent importance in mathematics, alongside 0, 1, π and ⅈ. All five of these numbers play important and recurring roles across mathematics, and are the five constants appearing in one formulation of Euler's identity.

The play is one of the few in the Shakespeare canon where the majority of the text is written in prose. The substantial verse sections, nevertheless, are used both to achieve courteous decorum, on the one hand, and impulsive energies, on the other.

Obi-Wan unravels a diabolical plot that leads to the discovery that the ex-Jedi Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) is part of the insurrection.

Henry's mutation more fully manifests during adolescence, providing greater strength and agility, and although his powers allow him to briefly excel in athletics during his remaining time at school, he soon attracts the animosity of his fellow students and other non-mutant humans. As he seeks refuge, he is approached by Professor Charles Xavier, who invites him to study at “Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters”.

“The police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call -- unless they get a warrant,” Judge Danny Boggs wrote in the 98-page opinion. “It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an [Internet service provider] to surrender the contents of a subscriber's emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search.”

WikiLeaks is a publisher of documents that people can submit anonymously. After WikiLeaks released a trove of classified government diplomatic cables last year, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the U.S. was pursuing an "active criminal investigation" of WikiLeaks.

Chief of Naval General Staff Admiral Nagano, a former Navy Minister and vastly experienced, later told a trusted colleague, “I have never seen the Emperor reprimand us in such a manner, his face turning red and raising his voice.”

After the Great Recession that left many countries on the edge of bankruptcy, declined the economy, and caused massive unemployment, a Canadian anti-consumerist magazine called Adbusters proposed a peaceful demonstration against the current leadership, U.S. politics and lack of repercussions to prevent or do effective changes in global financial crisis. The demonstration is leaderless, although it was originally proposed by Adbusters magazine. The hacktivist group Anonymous encouraged its followers to take part in the protest, which increased the attention it received. Other groups followed, typically of anti-capitalist and leftist persuasions, including the NYC General Assembly and U.S. Day of Rage. Supporters of ending the Federal Reserve have also attended.

SAT preparation is a highly lucrative field. Many companies and organizations offer test preparation in the form of books, classes, online courses, and tutoring.

In the prequel trilogy, Palpatine is a middle-aged politician of the Republic who rises to power through deception and treachery. As the Senator of Naboo and later the Supreme Chancellor, he outwardly behaves like a well-intentioned and loyal public servant, yet underneath his affable public persona lurks his true identity: Darth Sidious, a Dark Lord of the Sith. As both Palpatine and Sidious, he sets into motion a series of events—including the Clone Wars—which ultimately destroys the Jedi Knights and the Republic, allowing him to usher in the Galactic Empire, a brutal authoritarian regime.

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

Shark fin soup dates back to China's Ming Dynasty. The popularity of shark fin soup rose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as standards of living began to improve. The delicacy was coveted by emperors because it was rare, delicious, and required elaborate preparation. Holding both culinary and symbolic significance, the dish is popular at important occasions such as weddings, banquets, and important business deals. It symbolizes wealth, power, prestige and honor. This staple of gourmet Chinese cuisine is a show of respect, honor, and appreciation to the guests.

Too late. I didn't even read the ‘ILOVEYOU’ part, recalls Guepiere, whom history would record as, if not Patient Zero, then surely one of the earliest victims in a global pandemic. Only when I opened [the attachment] did I realize there was a problem. Indeed, it was a bigger problem than anybody, probably even its mischievous creator, could have imagined as computers everywhere tumbled like so many dominoes. Once again that scourge of the Internet age -- a computer virus -- had struck. Silently, lethally, without even a hint of a warning fever, it raced around the world at light speed, clogging communications and bringing both commerce and politics to a halt.

Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy. Those laws may discourage blasphemy as a matter of blasphemous libel, vilification of religion, religious insult, or hate speech.

Avalon's family upbringing was tumultuous. His mother sold marijuana for a living (which Avalon began doing as well) and his father was a heroin addict. He was raised Orthodox Jewish. By the time he was out of his teenage years he had prostituted himself in order to get money to support his heroin addiction. He spent time as a prostitute and drug dealer before finding success in music. By his early 20s, Avalon got married, had a daughter, and moved to Portland, Oregon.

Three species of elephant are universally recognized: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant and the Indian or Asian elephant; some researchers also postulate the existence of a fourth species in West Africa.

But beyond the verdict of the courts, what the Subic rape incident did was expose the lopsidedness of the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement. The VFA, which was ratified by the Philippine Senate in 1999 (but not by the US Senate), sets the legal framework for the treatment of visiting US troops.

The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them, and whose work was characterized by inventiveness of metaphor (these involved comparisons being known as metaphysical conceits). These poets were not formally affiliated; most of them did not even know or read each other. Their poetry was influenced greatly by the changing times, new sciences and the new found debauched scene of the 17th century.

Many sources are against both automatic use and automatic avoidance of the serial comma, making recommendations in a more nuanced way (see Usage and subsequent sections).

According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), Tiangong 1 is an 8.5-metric-ton “space laboratory module”, capable of docking with manned and autonomous spacecraft. The Shenzhou 8, Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 spacecraft are expected to dock with it during its two-year operational lifespan.

Some contemporary press outlets suspected a cover up. An editorial in the Long Beach Independent wrote, “There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair and it appears that some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion on the matter.” Speculation was rampant as to invading airplanes and their bases. Theories included a secret base in northern Mexico as well as Japanese submarines stationed offshore with the capability of carrying planes. Others speculated that the incident was either staged or exaggerated to give coastal defense industries an excuse to move further inland.[8]

Kirk Honeycutt, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, said “Along with such usual Almodóvar obsessions as betrayal, anxiety, loneliness, sexual identity and death, the Spanish director has added a science-fiction element that verges on horror. But like many lab experiments, this melodramatic hybrid makes for an unstable fusion. Only someone as talented as Almodóvar could have mixed such elements without blowing up an entire movie.” Honeycutt continued: “The film's design, costumes and music, especially Alberto Iglesias' music, present a lushly beautiful setting, which is nonetheless a prison and house of horror. Almodóvar pumps his movie full of deadly earnestness and heady emotions.” David Gritten notes Almodóvar “reaches out tentatively into unexplored genre territory—horror … Yet despite squirm-worthy moments … the promise of horror gives way to Almodóvar's broader, familiar preoccupations: identity, blood ties, disguises and genetic traits.” According to Gritten, “A list of the story's various elements—date rape, murder, secrets, lies, mystery parents, gender ambiguity, unbreakable emotional bonds—confirms The Skin I Live In as essentially a melodrama. Yet Almodóvar's story-telling is nowhere near as shrill as it once was: as a mature artist, he has refined his skills to a point where these soap-opera tropes assimilate smoothly into a complex whole…. Typically for Almodóvar, it all looks ravishing, thanks to production designer Antxon Gómez and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine. All three men have the gift of investing mundane objects with a unique sheen; here even surgical instruments, about to be used malevolently, assume a dreamy, otherworldly quality. The Skin I Live In is the work of a master near the top of his game.”

One could see, and somehow not quite see, the movie in this story of a fashionable yet conscientious physician and his wife whose nine-year marriage has produced an adored child, genuine mutual affection and a growing sexual restlessness. Everything depended on its realization. Cruise's character, Dr. William Harford, is in some ways a dim and passive fellow, self-victimized and hard to care for. His wife Alice would have been easy to play either ditsy or bitchy. But there is in Cruise a kind of passionate watchfulness and in Kidman a desperate and touching candor, and they keep drawing us past the narrative's improbabilities to its human heart. As for Kubrick, he is typically unsentimental and tough-minded, but his tracking shots are as unselfconscious as ever, gracefully enfolding us in his story.

“Acquired immune deficiency syndrome” or “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome” (AIDS) is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The illness interferes with the immune system making people with AIDS much more likely to get infections, including opportunistic infections and tumors that do not affect people with working immune systems. This susceptibility gets worse as the disease continues.

HIV is transmitted in many ways, such as anal, vaginal or oral sex, blood transfusion, contaminated hypodermic needles, exchange between mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. It can be transmitted by any contact of a mucous membrane or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid that has the virus in it, such as the blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid, or breast milk from an infected person.

Bushmeat initially referred to the hunting of wild animals in West and Central Africa and is a calque (loan translation) from the French “viande de brousse”. Today the term is commonly used for meat of terrestrial wild animals, killed for subsistence or commercial purposes throughout the humid tropics of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. To reflect the global nature of hunting of wild animals Resolution 2.64 of the IUCN General Assembly in Amman in October 2000 referred to “wild meat” rather than “bushmeat”. A more worldwide term is “game”.

In the Harry Potter series created by J. K. Rowling, magic is depicted as a natural force that can be used to override the usual laws of nature. Many fictional magical creatures exist in the series, while ordinary creatures sometimes exhibit new magical properties in the novels' world (owls, for instance, can deliver post and, to an extent, understand humans). Objects, too, can be enhanced or imbued with magical property. The small percentage of humans who are able to perform magic are referred to as witches and wizards, in contrast to the non-magical Muggles.

Hermione Jean Granger (/hərˈmaɪ.əni ˈdʒiːn ˈɡreɪndʒər/) is a fictional character and one of the three protagonists (the other two being Harry Potter and Ron Weasley) in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. She initially appears in the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as a new student on her way to Hogwarts. After being saved in the girls' bathroom from a mountain troll by Harry and Ron, she becomes close friends with them and often uses her quick wit, deft recall, and encyclopaedic knowledge to help them. Rowling has stated that Hermione resembles her at a younger age, with her insecurity and fear of failure.

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's quest to overcome the evil dark wizard Lord Voldemort, whose aim is to subjugate non-magical people, conquer the wizarding world, and destroy all those who stand in his way, especially Harry Potter.

In ancient China, an emperor was considered the Son of Heaven. The scion and representative of heaven on earth, he was the ruler of all under heaven, the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven, his commands considered sacred edicts. A number of legendary figures preceding the proper imperial era of China also hold the honorific title of emperor, such as the Yellow Emperor and the Jade Emperor.

The American Civil War (1861 to 1865) was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America (“the Confederacy”); the other 25 states supported the federal government (“the Union”). After four years of warfare, mostly within the Southern states, the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was outlawed everywhere in the nation. Issues that led to war were partially resolved in the Reconstruction Era that followed, though others remained unresolved.

Monsoon is traditionally defined as a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation, but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea. Usually, the term monsoon is used to refer to the rainy phase of a seasonally-changing pattern, although technically there is also a dry phase.

They begin to exhibit the power to read minds when expedient, or to force people to do things against their will. The latter is accompanied by an alien glow in the children's eyes. There have been a number of villagers' deaths since they were born, many of which considered unusual (such as the drowning of an expert child swimmer), and it is the opinion of some that the children are responsible. This is later confirmed when they are shown making a man crash his car into a wall, killing him and then forcing his suspicious brother to shoot himself.

Chen's finding is that if you divide up a large number of the world's languages into those that require a grammatical marker for future time and those that don't, you see an interesting correlation: speakers of languages that force grammatical marking of the future have amassed a smaller retirement nest egg, smoke more, exercise less, and are more likely to be obese. Why would this be? The claim is that a sharp grammatical division between the present and future encourages people to conceive of the future as somehow dramatically different from the present, making it easier to put off behaviors that benefit your future self rather than your present self.

Chen's paper has yet to be accepted for publication, but it's already generated a lot of press of the sort that's festooned with flashing lights. For example, in his popular blog, Andrew Sullivan headlined the story with the pronouncement “Why Greeks Haven't Saved for a Rainy Day”. A facetious headline, no doubt. But before someone suggests that the European Union should make bailouts of troubled countries contingent on their retiring their grammatical tense markers, it's worth taking a reality check about the ways in which language can or can't affect the thoughts and behaviors of its speakers.

The Umbrella Corporation is a fictional international pharmaceutical company in the Resident Evil universe [a scifi movie and video game], that serves as one of main antagonists in the series. Founded in the late 1960s by prominent British royal descendants Ozwell E. Spencer and Edward Ashford, it is portrayed in the games as a major international player in pharmaceutical goods and medical supplies, along with more clandestine operations utilizing genetic engineering, their legitimate status being only a front for their secret research of bio-organic weapons, developed through the use of an unique virus discovered by the company founders shortly after World War II.

[movie review of 〈How to Train Your Dragon〉] Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 stars out of 4, stating that: “It devotes a great deal of time to aerial battles between tamed dragons and evil ones, and not much to character or story development. But it's bright, good-looking, and has high energy”. Claudia Puig of USA Today gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying “It's a thrilling action-adventure saga with exhilarating 3-D animation, a clever comedy with witty dialogue, a coming-of-age tale with surprising depth and a sweetly poignant tale of friendship between man and animal.”

Self-esteem and narcissism are often interrelated but don't always go hand in hand. Some psychologists believe that narcissists -- those who have a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration, as well as a lack of empathy -- unconsciously inflate their sense of self-importance as a defense against feeling inadequate. Not enough empirical research has been produced to confirm that link, although Mehdizadeh's study seems to support it. Because narcissists have less capacity to sustain intimate or long-term relationships, Mehdizadeh thinks that they would be more drawn to the online world of virtual friends and emotionally detached communication.

… a possible inspiration for the Beast was Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair, a companion of pulp hero Doc Savage. Both are possessed of an apelike appearance and are brilliant scientists. Before becoming more erudite in later issues, McCoy also used a great deal of slang in his early appearances much like Monk.

The oldest putative case of the then-unknown syndrome [of HIV/AIDS] was thought to be in 1959, when David Carr, a 25-year-old British printer who had served in the Royal Navy between 1955 and 1957 (but apparently not in Africa), sought help at the Royal Infirmary of Manchester.

From Prada to Nada is an American romantic comedy film directed by Angel Garcia and produced by Gary Gilbert, Linda McDonough, Gigi Pritzker and Chris Ranta. The plot was conceived from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. The screen play was adapted by Luis Alfaro, Craig Fernandez and Fina Torres to be a Latino version of the English novel, where two spoiled sisters who have been left penniless after their father's sudden death are forced to move in with their estranged aunt in East Los Angeles.

A Renaissance man, McCoy is well-versed in many fields including languages (fluent in English, German, French, Latin, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, and Russian as well as the fictional language Latverian), literature, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, history, art and art history, anthropology, linguistics, and music, as well as in political science and economics with a special affinity for science and technology and a penchant for quoting literary classics. His vast scientific knowledge ranges from theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, differential equations, nanotechnology, anatomy, biomedicine, analytical chemistry, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering to the construction of a hyper-magnetic device. An electronics expert, he often repairs Cerebro and makes upgrades to the Danger Room settings.

The flooding has inundated about six million hectares of land, over 300,000 hectares of which is farmland, in 58 provinces, from Chiang Mai in the North to parts of the capital city of Bangkok near the mouth of the Chao Phraya. It has been described as “the worst flooding yet in terms of the amount of water and people affected”. Seven major industrial estates have been inundated by as much 3 meters (10 feet) and estimated it will be around for 40 days.

Thanksgiving in North America had originated from a mix of European and Native traditions. Typically in Europe, festivals were held before and after the harvest cycles to give thanks for a good harvest, and to rejoice together after much hard work with the rest of the community. At the time, Native Americans had also celebrated the end of a harvest season. When Europeans first arrived to the Americas, they brought with them their own harvest festival traditions from Europe, celebrating their safe voyage, peace and good harvest. Though the origins of the holiday in both Canada and the United States are similar, Americans do not typically celebrate the contributions made in Newfoundland, while Canadians do not celebrate the contributions made in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

(Geometry) Riemann was the first one to do extensive work generalizing the idea of a surface to higher dimensions. The name manifold comes from Riemann's original German term, Mannigfaltigkeit, which William Kingdon Clifford translated as “manifoldness”. In his Göttingen inaugural lecture, Riemann described the set of all possible values of a variable with certain constraints as a Mannigfaltigkeit, because the variable can have many values.

In February, while discussing New Jersey's newly amended income-tax law, which allows the rich to pay less (proportionally) than the middle class, Christie was asked about Warren Buffett's observation that he paid less federal income taxes than his personal secretary, and that wasn't fair. “He should just write a check and shut up,” Christie responded, with his typical verve. “I'm tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check -- go ahead and write it.”

According to unnamed sources in the mid 1980s, the CIA created an intelligence unit in Haiti, known as SIN, whose purported purpose was anti-drug activity, but was in reality “used as an instrument of political terror”, and was heavily involved in drug trafficking. The members of the unit were known to torture supporters of populist leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and threatened to kill the local head of the DEA who had investigated them and exposed their operations. According to one U.S. official, the unit was trafficking drugs and never produced any useful drug intelligence.

Generally, mantises protect themselves by camouflage and concealment. When directly threatened, many mantis species stand tall and spread their forelegs, with their wings fanning out wide. The fanning of the wings makes the mantis seem larger and more threatening, with some species having bright colors and patterns on their hind wings and inner surfaces of their front legs for this purpose. If harassment persists, a mantis may strike with its forelegs and attempt to pinch or bite. As part of the threat display, some species also may produce a hissing sound by expelling air from the abdominal spiracles. When flying at night, at least some mantises are able to detect the echolocation sounds produced by bats, and when the frequency begins to increase rapidly, indicating an approaching bat, they will stop flying horizontally and begin a descending spiral toward the safety of the ground, often preceded by an aerial loop or spin.

3D films have existed in some form since 1915, but had been largely relegated to a niche in the motion picture industry because of the costly hardware and processes required to produce and display a 3D film, and the lack of a standardized format for all segments of the entertainment business. Nonetheless, 3D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s driven by IMAX high-end theaters and Disney themed-venues. 3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s, culminating in the unprecedented success of 3D presentations of Avatar in December 2009 and January 2010.

Cubrilovic peeked into the extension's source code and found the private certificate, which Yahoo! uses to sign the application to prove it is genuine and unaltered. The result, he says, is that a miscreant could forge a malicious extension that would be verified by Google's web browser as coming from Yahoo!

Bogdan and his arms-dealer cousin inform Ethan that Hendricks will be in Mumbai. Hendricks facilitated the sale of a defunct Soviet military satellite to Indian telecommunications entrepreneur Brij Nath.

A black operation or black op is a covert operation typically involving activities that are highly clandestine and often outside of standard military protocol or even against the law.

The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers -- 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups -- who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand immediate cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant.