Input: [Title] A Confederacy of Dunces [Author] John Kennedy Toole [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1994 [Read] 2013/03/13 [Review]

Output: It’s hard to know what to make of this… I’ve rarely read a book where the main protagonists inspires such disgust in me - even for a picaresque, the main character Ignatius is extreme. It is as if Toole read Cleckley’s Mask of Sanity and a psychology textbook, and said to himself, “how can I make the most offensive moronic character which mashes up the traits of both psychopaths and autists?” and then wrote a novel on it in which the protagonist’s countless evil actions, glib lies, narcissism, ignorance, sloth, leeching, and other flaws finally brought down an appropriate punishment - only to rescue him at the last moment for further adventures. In particular, I’m not bothered that Ignatius pretends to be a medievalist Catholic. I’m bothered that as far as I can tell, Toole seems to genuinely try to present Ignatius as educated and learned and with a worldview (and reading the reviews here, it seems that most people do indeed take this for granted). The problem is, Toole fails. Utterly. In the entire book, Ignatius’s learning is displayed solely as repeated surface allusions to Boethius and Hroswitha, and a few other dropped names, and never anything of substance. Someone who read Wikipedia on Boethius and Hroswitha would know more than Ignatius does, and is probably literate enough to spot Ignatius (and by extension, Toole’s) failures, like writing ‘gyro’ where they were trying to make an allusion to Yeats’s ‘gyre’ (way to mess up an allusion to only one of the most famous poems ever!). So, with the complete failure of Ignatius to offer any sort of Catholicly-grounded interesting critique or reflection on society (as a good picaresque is supposed to!), we’re left with the evocation of New Orleans (seems good enough, although I don’t know enough about New Orleans to really judge), the humorous value of each set piece (overall, low. Jeeves this is not.), and the final convergence of plot threads at the bar (a decent enough denouement but still leaves the first 150 pages a drag). Is that enough to make it a masterpiece? I should think not. Indeed, A Confederacy of Dunces overall stands in stark contrast to Gene Wolfe or R.A. Lafferty’s better novels.


Input: [Title] Bitter Seeds (The Milkweed Triptych, #1) [Author] Ian Tregillis [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2010 [Read] 2013/03/20 [Review]

Output: I loved Stross’s “A Colder War”, and enjoyed Powers’s Declare and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, so this was right up my alley. I enjoyed the concept and a few touches like the Thule Society, and don’t regret reading it: taking blood sacrifice seriously in a “beware while fighting monsters” makes for a gradually creeping sense of doom which is fitting, and I was impressed to see the old medieval debate over the language of infants resurrected and then taken to the max, which was a real bit of esoterica. The logical conclusion, a British program into Enochian, is a nasty enough conclusion that it convinced me to keep reading the series. Downsides: the repeated use of raven sections is blunt; Gretel’s character is even blunter, we’re told almost on sight that “she sees the future and is manipulating everyone” and this is ground in ad nauseam, while subtlety would’ve worked better (maybe 1 hint at the beginning and then a revelation at the end for the inattentive reader - but we get what must be dozens instead); Nazi Germany is a total caricature; while sometimes the descriptions of places or events are excellent (like the opening), characters can be pretty wooden and I feel like Marsh is made to punch people to move the plot along (eg. to get himself fired, and then to ignore Will and not ask the sane thing like ‘why would you suggest something so horrible as an abortion when you know how much losing our child hurt us?’). The alt history is a little crude and lacking in details: in contrast to Declare or “A Colder War”, which wove in and rewrote all sorts of historical tidbits (some extremely obscure, in Declare), Bitter Seeds only does big brushstrokes - tanks going through the Ardennes, bad winter weather in Russia, a failure of a hypothetical Operation Sea Lion - and it omits all sorts of historical backgrounds that could’ve enriched it (Nazi occultism is a bizarre subject which is surprisingly underused by Tregillis; someone should’ve given him a copy of Morning of the Magicians or something). Hopefully he’ll weave a more intricate tapestry for the Cold War books; at least, I’ll be quite disappointed if James Jesus Angleton doesn’t make some appearances.


Input: [Title] Voyage of the Beagle [Author] Charles Darwin [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1989 [Read] 2012/12/14 [Review]

Output: Frequently exceedingly dry and of no interest except to naturalists, and probably not always them either: Darwin’s voyage was so long ago that much of his information and speculation is simply outdated (his talk of ‘miasmas’ is one instance where later information makes his material of purely historical interest). If one is reading it for background on evolution and Origin of Species, one will be disappointed: there are a handful of lines in the main part of the work which may be taken as prefiguring or groping towards evolution, and then there’s some speculation in the surprisingly short Galapagos section (I suspect he spends as much time describing the gauchos’ methods of horsemanship and dealing with cattle as he does on all of the Galapagos material!). In general, the ‘pacing’ is quite odd: reams of material on South America, some pages on the Galapagos, a dash to New Zealand & Australia, a long section on islands and ‘cacao-nuts’ (coconuts), a mini-monograph on coral atolls, and the book abruptly ends. Which is not to say he doesn’t occasionally drop in interesting or acute observations, for he does. (The shepherd-dog of South America quite took my fancy, for example.) They are just rare welcome morsels in the general desert of this door-stopper. If I had to recommend it to my past self, I would tell him to skip the bulk but to read the Tierra del Fuego sections where the events are both interesting and evocative of the long uncivilized past of man (and perhaps his future), the Galapagos section for its substantial historical interest, and maybe the brief conclusion. —- My National Geographic anniversary edition is substantially lacking in additional material; there is surprisingly little about its reception, what contributions it made, where it was prescient and where it was wrong (disturbing, since one doesn’t know what mistakes, misimpressions, outdated information, plausible yet wrong speculation, etc. one might be absorbing over the 400+ pages). As well, Darwin’s original illustrations would benefit mightily from additional material like color photographs and maps.


Input: [Title] Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website [Author] Daniel Domscheit-Berg [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2011 [Read] 2011/11/08 [Review]

Output: I give it 3 stars solely because it is a unique primary source about WikiLeaks; if this was not from a principal player, it would not be worth reading as it is shallow incomplete garbage. Negatives: the writing is absolutely atrocious, although I don’t know if this is due to the translation from the German or whether the co-author journalist screwed it all up. And Domscheit comes off in some passages as too ignorant to even understand Assange’s beliefs (for example, I seem to recall that there was an irritating passage where Domscheit mocks Assange’s use of red light to help his sleep - even though this is standard chronobiology, that blue light influences melatonin secretion to retard the sleep cycle and keep one awake!). One is strongly reminded of Russell’s famous description of Xenophon’s writings on Socrates: “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand. I would rather be reported by my bitterest enemy among philosophers than by a friend innocent of philosophy.” Which is not to say that Domscheit’s portrait of Assange as a megalomaniac asshole is wrong, because from all the other coverage of him, it’s clear there’s a lot of truth to this portrayal. Domscheit’s personal failings are only highlighted by the since-complete & unmitigated failure of his ‘OpenLeaks’ project. It’s also bizarrely lacking in technical details, which is the one part one would hope a supposed geek like Domscheit would at least make sure his book got right! (Probably also thanks to the journalist.) Still, many interesting bits. I remember thinking way back that for a group claiming so many participants & advisers, it had an oddly low flow of leaks - which Domscheit says was because it was mostly him and Assange; makes sense. I was amused to learn that the Iceland laws were based by Assange in part on Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon - again, makes sense in a curious way.


Input: [Title] The City of Falling Angels [Author] John Berendt [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2006 [Read] 2014/01/07 [Review]

Output: An American writer with access to Venetian high society moves there and writes down all the gossip and good stories he witnesses or hears about while living there for a few years. This book has all the strengths and weaknesses that this sounds like: on the one hand, these are pretty much all stories I am completely unfamiliar with since the reflections of Venice in things I have read or seen are typically of pre-20 century Venice (think stories like The Count of Monte Cristo or film works like Aria or histories of the Mediterranean region) and so stories like theaters burning or the Save Venice feuds or the Pound scandal are news; on the other hand, they were news to me because I didn’t care about any of them before and I don’t care much about them having read Falling Angels either. As one might expect, there’s not much cohesiveness to the stories beyond the narrator himself because real life is not so cooperative as to combine all the storylines into a single satisfying conclusion. On the positive side: Berendt is a fine writer who smoothly narrates events and lets people speak for themselves more than most writers would. He is aware of the danger of relying on gossip and seems to keep an open mind as he critically examines all the versions and stories he’s told, and he seems to have spoken to everyone so he has plenty to compare. He also has a good eye for details and and interesting people and anecdotes. I don’t regret reading it, even if I don’t expect to ever re-read it nor learned any ‘big’ truths or stories.


Input: [Title] The Autobiography Of Benvenuto Cellini [Author] Benvenuto Cellini [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1999 [Read] 2012/10/05 [Review]

Output: To read this, one wonders how Cellini survived to age 20, much less age 70! He is constantly killing and being attacked, wenching his models, contracting hideous illnesses (or noting in passing the constant unexpected death of others), and being betrayed (by this account) or insulting others. It’s an endless exhausting cycle such that even Cellini had to notice its futility and danger. One has to wonder how much he exaggerates: aside from the demonology and weather-controlling, it seems so routine for people to go around armed and attacking for minor insults and then dying of a scratch. Then there is his strange attitude to his patrons: on the one hand, he seems largely unable to criticize them or the system despite wallowing in their corruption and wealth (surely the King of France wasn’t all that, and given the sheer servility & ignobility & criminality of the popes he deals with, his tolerance of them is astounding), but on the other hand, he almost goes out of his way to mess with them. Well, it’s fun in small doses, the constant tumult of Cellini’s life suggests that the constant murder & assault & theft & large gifts we read of in picaresques or stories (like the Decameron) are much more realistic than we give them credit for, and it’s pretty cool to look at the Wikipedia article and see images of the works he labors over at such length in his autobiography.


Input: [Title] Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist [Author] Thomas Levenson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Read] 2014/03/21 [Review]

Output: A quick breezy read good for an evening; Levenson touches on the highlights of Newton’s early life & throughout keeps an eye out for the telling detail or quote which might bring the past to life for us, is sympathetic towards the alchemy and tries to put it in a context, and then plunges into Newton’s war with an obscure counterfeiter. This section would make good background reading for Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (despite Levenson’s book being published in 2009 and the cycle finished in 2004, and the latter being one of the few places a reader might have encountered Newton in the same breath as counterfeiters, entirely unmentioned), as it pretty clearly explains the monetary issues of clipping, recoining, balance of exchange with Asia, etc, in a less digressive & action-packed manner than Stephenson’s doorstoppers. It’s interesting that Newton was so involved in criminal matters, but in some respects Levenson is trying to wring blood from a stone: Newton doesn’t seem to have been any Sherlock Holmes (an apt comparison since Moriarty was an expert on Newtonian mechanics), but rather, just obsessive & hardworking and applying all the standard investigative techniques. The story is hampered also by the relatively low amount of documentation (one wonders what the boxes of documents Newton burned would have revealed).


Input: [Title] Daemon (Daemon, #1) [Author] Daniel Suarez [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Read] 2013/03/27 [Review]

Output: An unfriendly AI designed by a dead billionaire (who for some reason reminded me a little of an evil John Carmack) takes over the world. The overall combination is good but nothing to write home about. The frequent appearance of autonomous vehicles is a nice touch and one too often absent from SF, near or far. Most of the technical details were good (I was not surprised to read the short author bio and learn Suarez is a practicing programmer, since the Ross character felt like an author self-insert). But the decentralized conspiracy was done better in Sterling’s “Maneki Neko”, the creepy persuasive AI was done better in ‘Friendship is Optimal’, the technical detail in Cryptonomicon, the futuristic developments in Otherland, and the plutocracy/government stuff in multiple William Gibson novels (Suarez’s version being more than a little bit crude - citing Confessions of an Economic Hitman, really?). And despite the lauded technical detail, the AI presented is farcical; it’s hard to see how any ‘logic tree’ could possibly handle all that the AI does even if Suarez throws in some failures to parse responses and writes up . (If I had an iPhone I’d probably snark about how Siri can understand the responses given by various characters fine, and hasn’t taken over the world.)


Input: [Title] Un Lun Dun [Author] China Miéville [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2007 [Read] 2014/12/24 [Review]

Output: British urban fantasy; think Gaiman crossed with Pratchett’s humor, but worse than either alone. Miéville thinks he can pull off Gaiman’s bildungsroman mythic double-world shtick with Pratchett’s pun humor and put in a hefty helping of his own Marxist people power politics & environmentalism, but he can’t. The plot, after an initial subversion of the Heroine’s Journey, settles back onto track, and most of the jokes are more wince-worthy than amusing (I did like the ‘binjas’ and the ‘Black Windows’ of ‘Webminster Abbey’, and the alternative city names like ‘Not York’, but that’s about all). There’s also a weird tendency where the story seems like it’s about to deliver a brutal punch to the reader and kill off a character gruesomely to continue the subversion of tropes, but then pulls aside at the last minute - characters tend to die offscreen and not be particularly remarked, and the Smog delivers some very villainous monologues but fails to follow up onscreen with appropriately horrifying actions, to be cleaned up with a plain old deus ex machina which is unusually lazy for Miéville. So, this isn’t a particularly good book for adult fans of Miéville but maybe it’s a good book for young teens? I couldn’t say.


Input: [Title] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [Author] Hunter S. Thompson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1998 [Read] 2014/08/19 [Review]

Output: Fear and Loathing is famous through osmosis: the opening chapters, the lines about bats, ether, drug collections, etc. The first quarter or so of the novel is justly famous. The rest of it… one wonders. After Duke & his lawyer wake up to go to the race, most of the rest is fairly unmemorable (in particular, the two halves stitched together structure is fairly crude.) The story is not terribly long, and it feel like the mostly-nonfiction it is: drug fiction tends to the ‘you had to be there’ kind of humor, and we were none of us there. It also aspires to a greater import than it ever achieves, gesturing toward the ‘American dream’ and finding ‘fear and loathing’, which from this remote perspective, looks like bombast & bluff - we know the Nixonian moment would pass in an epic crash, that the USSR would fall, that the War on Drugs would not be “a boot stamping on a human face - forever”. (In particular, the famous ‘wave’ quote seems arbitrary and unsupported by its surrounding text, although I don’t doubt that Thompson felt those sentiments deeply.) So, the opening is fantastic, but the rest isn’t really worth reading now, for an average less than its repute would suggest.


Input: [Title] More Poems [Author] A.E. Housman [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1936 [Read] 2015/06/08 [Review]

Output: (4.1k words, 49 poems; fulltext available at Wikilivres but unfortunately their version is riddled with typos) A posthumous collection of A.E. Housman’s poems. The tone is more conceptual than A Shropshire Lad, with much heavier classical & Christian influence, and not so much emphasis on the easy & flowing rhymes in short lines (the lines are often much longer); overall, I did not get as much out of the poems. Verses I liked included: II “When Israel out of Egypt came” (last 3 stanzas), XXII “Ho, everyone that thirsteth”, XXVI “Good creatures, do you love your lives”, XXVII “To stand up straight and tread the turning mill”, XLVIII “Parta Quies”; plus an honorable mention of XXXI “Because I liked you better”, which while not really great verse on its own, becomes very moving once you know the autobiographical background. There are two poems in this collection that I really love: VII “Stars, I have seen them fall”, and XLV “Smooth between sea and land”. Unfortunately, they are fairly famous and much quoted, so I had already read them - rendering reading More Poems redundant.


Input: [Title] Tau Zero [Author] Poul Anderson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2006 [Read] 2013/08/10 [Review]

Output: The single central conceit is outstanding and excellent hard SF, an interesting entry in what one might call ‘time dilation horror’; there’s only one central idea, however, which becomes strained with repetition over the length of the novel (as short as it is), and while I appreciate that Anderson tried to leaven the hard SF with real characters and interpersonal drama, I can’t say he succeeded. For punch, some of Larry Niven’s Known Universe short stories using ramjets may be better (“Rammer” and “The Ethics of Madness” come to mind) and I would be remiss to not mention Peter Watts’s “The Island” (suggested soundtrack: Cloud Cult’s “There’s So Much Energy In Us”), although Tau Zero is much more ambitious.


Input: [Title] Matter (Culture, #8) [Author] Iain M. Banks [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2008 [Review]

Output: Absurdly lengthy, with one of the slowest setups ever followed by an equally abrupt and unsatisfactory resolution which kills off pretty much every character we might have even a faint interest in† thanks to something which is introduced out of nowhere maybe 4/5s of the way through. Banks is a great author, so of course there are plenty of rewarding nuggets scattered through out (the haunted ex-Culture man, the deceptive artifact, the general convincingness of ‘the stage is small but the audience great’ theme etc.), but much less than expected from a groaning tome’s worth of Banks. The shell world concept is not developed or employed well (you could replace all of the maneuverings with 2D equivalents if you wished), and the rest of the background and concepts seem pretty stock Culture. † eg. I was expecting the betrayal to be linked to alien machinations, but no, it turns out to be exactly as simplistic as it seems, the ex-SC guy’s good argument to the contrary, and a complete red herring as he dies with everyone else, the complexity of his character never ascending beyond cackling evil.


Input: [Title] 50 in 50: Fifty stories for fifty years! [Author] Harry Harrison [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2002 [Read] 2012/08/22 [Review]

Output: I downloaded it to read ‘The Streets of Ashkelon’ (which did not disappoint, even though I read an earlier version in Borges and a much later version in Simmons’s Hyperion). It’s a fun collection of relatively light stories; in classic SF style, each story is usually short, punchy, with a single point or idea highlighted by the ‘twist’ or punchline-style ending. This means that they are rarely subtle (eg. I see complaints online that ‘Streets’ is an unfair caricature and reveals Harrison’s stock atheism, but it’s hard to lay out the world, story, maintain a decent style, and also be subtle or fair in just a few pages), but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. Also on the downside for a modern reader, Harrison shared the common SF preoccupation with the ‘population bomb’ and coming Peak Oil/great dieback; neither of which seem to have happened, thankfully, but they still irritate one to read just a little bit. Hence, I couldn’t give this a 4 or a 5, but I don’t regret reading it since some were pretty good and I did laugh while reading some. So a 3 it is. RIP, Harrison.


Input: [Title] Shadow Games (The Chronicle of the Black Company, #4) [Author] Glen Cook [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1989 [Read] 2013/06/12 [Review]

Output: Croaker and company head south, and things go surprisingly smoothly and well in the African countries they travel through until south of the Nile, they discover an evil empire is in their path menacing an innocent Babylonian-style city. Naturally, Dances with Wolves style, they’ll help the hapless natives protect themselves. And we get not one but four of the old Taken coming back to life (Howler, Shaper, Stormbringer, and Soulcatcher) -_-. Oh and also a ‘buried evil’ a la the Dominator. Yes, another one. That’s what, the third now? Good grief. Like the previous book, my complaint here is that the plot is simple and straightforward, parts of it are very ham-handed (eg. once I got over my disgust at yes, another Taken was back, it was pretty obvious where the crows were coming from). The upside is that it’s fun watching Croaker becoming the Captain and growing still more.


Input: [Title] Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway [Author] Clifford Stoll [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1996 [Review]

Output: I read this not long after publication, and re-read it a year ago weeding through my books. Between the two, I would have to give it 2-3 stars. The good part is that at the time, he was correct in puncturing or deflating a lot of the most hyperbolic claims about the benefits of computers and the Internet: online shopping did have a ways to go, kids’ education was not being improved by computers (and may still not be), etc. The bad part is, he was correct only in the short run. On many claims or predictions where he was absolutist, he is laughably wrong now, and we can expect his track record to continue to worsen as time passes. This is actually a pretty common failure mode for skeptics of technologies: I call this the Amara effect, after Roy Amara: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”


Input: [Title] House of Leaves [Author] Mark Z. Danielewski [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2000 [Review]

Output: As impressive and inventive a multimedia presentation this is, it’s hard not to think that the fictional Navidson movie described by the novel would be far more interesting or moving than the actual novel is, dragged down by a narrator who is interesting neither in voice nor message; ‘trying too hard’ is a phrase I apply to some experimental or postmodern works, and it fits here better than most. And are we to be moved by this? The labyrinth is constantly described and discussed in it, but one thing that goes unnoticed is that with the exception of Daedalus’s labyrinth, at the enter of almost all labyrinths is nothing at all, and when one reaches it, the only thing to is shrug and head back out.


Input: [Title] The Judging Eye (Aspect-Emperor, #1) [Author] R. Scott Bakker [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Review]

Output: Bakker says he’s influenced by Frank Herbert, and it’s nowhere clearer than here - the reader of Dune Messiah will notice the uncanny echos. The final sequence is the almost inevitable theft from Tolkien of the Mines of Moria, but it’s sufficiently exciting and well-done that unlike a similar theft in The Sword of Shannara I didn’t put down the book in disgust. The Thousandfold Thought was a sheer disappointment, and I did wonder whether to continue on to The Judging Eye, but I don’t much regret it. The new characters are still pretty dubious (Mimara is just an annoyance), but the psychopathic son has real promise as a very dark inversion of Leto II.


Input: [Title] No Country for Old Men [Author] Cormac McCarthy [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2006 [Read] 2012/08/28 [Review]

Output: Somehow a disappointment, especially compared with Blood Meridian. It has some fantastic moments & writing (eg. Chigurh’s first coin toss), but wrapped in a plot which feels simplistic, cheap, linear, and video game-like; I thought at one moment that it was no surprise that it made what was apparently a great movie, since it read like a screenplay version of the real novel. Harold Bloom mentioned that the apocalypticism was a flaw, and here I would agree: it’s a flaw I’ve also seen surface in Gene Wolfe, and which tarnishes the stories or novels which take up a crude - dare I say, conservative? - sort of jeremiad against these fallen latter days.


Input: [Title] The Rapture of the Nerds: A tale of the singularity, posthumanity, and awkward social situations [Author] Cory Doctorow [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2012 [Review]

Output: A mixed bag. A third of the way through, I was ready for 2 stars, and reading only because I remembered the preview as being pretty good; it was reading like the worst parts of Doctorow crossed with cutting-floor scraps from Stross’s Accelerando (general advice: if you haven’t read Accelerando yet, I strongly strongly recommend it over Rapture of the Nerds). After suffering through the crap of the first half, I finally get to the real story (recommendation: C-f to “It’s the Singularity!” if you want to save yourself the grief). This is pretty fun and decent, although the judge scenario is far from new.


Input: [Title] Chinese History in Economic Perspective [Author] Thomas G. Rawski [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1992 [Read] 2012/09/08 [Review]

Output: Fairly technical, largely not of interest to non-specialists. Some of the papers captured my interest: the demographic analysis revealing very high infanticide rates and mortality patterns of females was quite interesting, and some of the papers revealed a better integrated and more sophisticated Chinese market economy than I had expected, with less income inequality or dysfunctionality than one gets the picture of when reading of pre-WWII warlordism and civil war. (I read the online version.)


Input: [Title] The Wallet of Kai Lung (Kai Lung #1) [Author] Ernest Bramah [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2002 [Read] 2013/07/19 [Review]

Output: One reads this for the language on display by Bramah: the absurd sustained Latinate circumlocutions which forever perendinate and cunctate on expressing their simple sense. As far as that goes, it’s quite an interesting exercise and the source of a number of parodic versions of China/Japan, I suspect. I am not sure how many people are up to a entire sustained anthology of this, though: the stories are relatively flimsy and one can drown in the prose while losing track utterly of the plot and personages, which certainly is not calculated to create charm nor cheer in the consumer.


Input: [Title] Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day [Author] Daryl Collins [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Read] 2012/12/10 [Review]

Output: The first 2 or 3 chapters are very interesting and enlightening on the risk borne by the poor and how they do their best to cope; however, the rest is generally repetitive and shows the same data in somewhat different ways and countries, and become boring quickly - making this one of the padded books which would’ve been a better read as a longform article or essay. (One exception is the discussion of APRs and how the loans actually are done which renders them far less usurious.) Ironically, the appendices were more interesting than many of the narratives in the later chapters.


Input: [Title] A Random Walk Down Wall Street [Author] Burton G. Malkiel [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2004 [Review]

Output: It’s hard to believe at this point that Malkiel’s views on the desirability of indexing and not trading and the basic truth of the efficient market hypothesis were ever controversial or not conventional wisdom (the 1 and 2 star reviews here notwithstanding… how many geniuses like Peter Thiel blew up betting against Treasuries in the past few years, guys? Efficient markets FTW.), but nevertheless, he was a pioneer. I didn’t wind up learning too much from this since it’s targeted at beginners, but that is not its fault and the advice is generally sound.


Input: [Title] Kim [Author] Rudyard Kipling [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1981 [Review]

Output: Though it’s one of his most famous, I found it hard to like. It’s laden in Orientalism, picaresque almost to a fault, the Buddhism is a little laughable for all that it might have been state of the art in the 1800s (although less laughable than the ornate antique language forced on every character), and the plot is a bit of a trainwreck with endless pages lavished on Kim growing up only to abruptly end in a short theft of documents and an equally abrupt and unsatisfying finish to the religious quest that previously drove events.


Input: [Title] Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age [Author] Clay Shirky [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2010 [Read] 2012/10/03 [Review]

Output: Short, fluffy - an attempt to expand on what is a pretty short idea at core. If you read or watched any of his previous talks like “GIN, TELEVISION, AND COGNITIVE SURPLUS” and have followed some of his other writings, there’s little new here for you. One advantage of being in book form is that he includes his references.


Input: [Title] Everything Bad is Good for You [Author] Steven Johnson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2006 [Read] 2011/11/03 [Review]

Output: I thought it was very short and not in depth at all; yeah, his handful of graphs of episodes was interesting from the data visualization viewpoint, but most of his arguments, such as they were, were qualitative and hand-wavey. (What, there are no simplistic shows these days?) The best I can say is: the thesis is not obviously impossible or wrong a priori, but needs a heck of a lot more empirical backing.


Input: [Title] Spice and Wolf, Vol. 1 [Author] Isuna Hasekura [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Read] 2013/07/28 [Review]

Output: I’m afraid this suffers badly in comparison with the anime: Hasekura isn’t nearly as good at conveying Lawrence & Holo’s interactions as good animators + good seiyuu, and really, that’s the heart of the story. If you can’t get that perfect, then there’s not much to it, and the irritating aspects of light novels come to the fore (very short, sketchy chapters, endings that feel almost rushed, etc).


Input: [Title] The Art of UNIX Programming [Author] Eric S. Raymond [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2003 [Read] 2014/11/22 [Review]

Output: (Read online version.) Not bad, but more than enough dated at this point (finished in 2004 and most of it is more relevant to before then) that I’m not sure how much is worth reading. The CLI material is as worthwhile as ever, but the GUI parts are totally obsolete. The case studies are also rather too brief.


Input: [Title] Psychiatry And The Human Condition [Author] Bruce G. Charlton [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2000 [Read] 2012/10/23 [Review]

Output: Not really sure what to make of it; it has interesting ideas but so broad that one has no idea if they’re right or if Charlton is hiding fatal evidence (he doesn’t have the best reputation these days, and this book way back when wasn’t received with acclamations), and one would have to be an expert oneself to know whether Charlton is putting the pieces together in a licit way.


Input: [Title] The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record [Author] Stanley Appelbaum [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1980 [Read] 2013/08/07 [Review]

Output: As the other reviews say: worth it for the photographs, not so much the commentary. Some might be a little disappointed by the focus on the neo-classical prestige buildings and not parts us moderns would find of vastly more interest, like the first Ferris wheel, the first Japanese building in the US, Wild Bill’s show, etc, but it’s still much better than nothing.


Input: [Title] Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error [Author] Kathryn Schulz [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2010 [Review]

Output: Touched on a lot of the standard points and citations you’d see somewhere in skeptical literature like LessWrong, but in a very much fuzzier humanities sort of way. Couldn’t really recommend it unless you’re the sort of person who has never heard of Tetlock or Quine or the studies on eyewitness fallibility or read their Kahneman etc - for beginners only.


Input: [Title] Silently and Very Fast [Author] Catherynne M. Valente [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2011 [Read] 2012/01/01 [Review]

Output: Read this on Cosma Shalizi’s recommendation. While the writer is clearly skilled, the style grates and the story leaves me cold: the only fairy tale that really spoke to me was Turing’s (but turning his life into a fairy tale, given his death, is almost cheating).


Input: [Title] The Cinema of George Lucas [Author] Marcus Hearn [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2005 [Read] 2012/04/26 [Review]

Output: Like any authorized, lots of interesting details, gorgeous photos, and thorough with the glaring exception of zero critical thought or criticism or appraisal (except, perhaps, for brief discussions of how Lucas wrote the Star Wars movies drawing on friends and acquaintances, a system which seemed to break down for the prequels - with dismal results).


Input: [Title] The Difference Engine [Author] William Gibson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1992 [Read] 2011/03/10 [Review]

Output: Struck me as a lot like Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle though it came long before, and while very interesting and inventive, somehow the overall story never really gelled for me - I think the problem may be that Gibson doesn’t develop his milieu in enough detail or imaginatively enough that the world and its characters can really come to life for one.


Input: [Title] It’s behind you - The making of a computer Game [Author] Bob Pape [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2013 [Read] 2013/09/30 [Review]

Output: Vividly conveys the fly-by-night and chaos of early computer games and some of the contortions & challenges of dealing with the limited computers of the day. All in all, though, I think Mechner’s The Making of Prince of Persia is a better read if you’re not specifically interested in R-Type.


Input: [Title] The Policeman’s Beard is Half-Constructed: Computer Prose and Poetry [Author] Racter [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1984 [Read] 2010/01/01 [Review]

Output: Summary: the dreams quote in the Wikipedia article really was the most evocative part of the collection. Most of it wasn’t worth reading, and extremely suspiciously sophisticated and likely written by Chamberlain, which reduces the novelty value. (I read the online version.)


Input: [Title] Making Money (Discworld, #36) [Author] Terry Pratchett [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2007 [Read] 2012/01/18 [Review]

Output: Pretty mediocre, hard to believe plot (since when did Ankh-Morpork need fiat money? the gold standard went fine for highly industrialized countries right up to the Depression), and when did the patrician become the philosopher-king? I enjoyed it much less than Hogfather, which I read around the same time.


Input: [Title] A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! [Author] Harry Harrison [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2000 [Read] 2011/05/25 [Review]

Output: Rather short, but a fast read - Victorian flavored but not unreadable like a lot of steampunk. Decent but not great alternate history. (To call it great, I’d want it to be harder alt history with more details about how a transatlantic tunnel could even work at all, wrapped into a more engrossing story.)


Input: [Title] Handbook of Psychopathy [Author] Christopher J. Patrick [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2007 [Read] 2012/09/07 [Review]

Output: Highly technical and definitely not for anyone who has not read on the topic before or read a great deal of psychology research. Some papers are a waste, but some other papers are really good: I admired Harris & Rice 2006, and especially their careful analysis/takedown of the Salekin meta-analysis.


Input: [Title] Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work [Author] Matthew B. Crawford [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Read] 2012/10/15 [Review]

Output: Overall, makes many good points. His discussions of computers, though, are not very well-informed; in particular, his footnote on Godel and Turing is pretty bad, although I think he may just have been misled by the authors he’s relying on like Searle, Penrose, and Andrew Hodges.


Input: [Title] Back to Methuselah [Author] George Bernard Shaw [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2007 [Read] 2013/01/15 [Review]

Output: Strange - a sort of extremely slow progress that runs antithetical to modernity. In many ways (in terms of the nonfiction aspect of Shaw’s project), J.B.S Haldane’s “Daedalus, or, Science and the Future” is far superior, or Bernal’s The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.


Input: [Title] Ragnarok [Author] A.S. Byatt [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2011 [Read] 2011/10/19 [Review]

Output: Byatt’s Norse is not mine; she writes very well, but to me, Norse myth is about the striking verse, the illuminating kenning, the weirdly powerful line, yoked to phantasmagoric unconnected incidents under the dark shadow of Wyrd… (Much shorter than expected.)


Input: [Title] 10 Print Chr$(205.5+rnd(1)); Goto 10 [Author] Nick Montfort [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2012 [Read] 2012/12/02 [Review]

Output: A “world in a grain of sand” enterprise, it succeeds better at the task than I expected. (The sections on modern art are very strained, however. I would’ve preferred some mathematical analysis of the mazes generated and their properties to that whole section.)


Input: [Title] Vader’s Little Princess [Author] Jeffrey Brown [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2013 [Read] 2013/08/02 [Review]

Output: Cute, but superficial as intended. The main appeal of this for me was seeing just how many classic Star Wars lines or scenes could be twisted into hoary stereotypical teen jokes - it was many more than I would have expected!


Input: [Title] Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] [Author] John Stephen Farmer [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2007 [Review]

Output: A great source for writers wishing to use cant since it shows them off in context. The best poem (most are pedestrian in the negative sense) would be “Villon’s Straight Tip To All Cross Coves”, which is a marvel of its kind.


Input: [Title] The Far Side Gallery 3 [Author] Gary Larson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1988 [Read] 2014/11/26 [Review]

Output: I think I liked them better as a kid; re-reading, I realize Larson really only had a few jokes & characters which he permuted endlessly. It doesn’t grow up with you as much as some others like Calvin & Hobbes do.


Input: [Title] Economic Analysis of the Law: Selected Readings [Author] Donald A. Wittman [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2002 [Read] 2011/10/20 [Review]

Output: Best essays were the blackmail, aboriginal, sports, and baby markets. The earlier ones were terribly dry, theoretical, and often justified themselves by appealing to rational actors and the status quo.


Input: [Title] Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation [Author] Jay L. Garfield [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2001 [Read] 2012/08/27 [Review]

Output: Much of it is relatively technical, especially the parts dealing with Nagarjuna, and not suited to those who haven’t read the key texts. I did enjoy the comparison with Sextus Empiricus a lot, though.


Input: [Title] The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life - The Four Essential Principles [Author] Richard Wiseman [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2003 [Read] 2011/05/23 [Review]

Output: This book is almost too padded to be worth reading. Is there a condensed version anywhere? The ideas seem like they might have something to them, but it’s hard to find the meat under the flab.


Input: [Title] The Sword of Good [Author] Eliezer Yudkowsky [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2009 [Review]

Output: A clever subversive ending doesn’t make a story great. To some extent, this critique was done much better in Spinrad’s The Iron Dream or Herbert’s Dune/Dune Messiah for that matter.


Input: [Title] Surface Detail (Culture, #9) [Author] Iain M. Banks [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2010 [Read] 2011/07/20 [Review]

Output: The usual intertwined Banks plotting was easier to follow this time, and the overall resolution very satisfactory. Not as interesting as Player of Games, but still a solid Culture novel


Input: [Title] The Children of the Sky (Zones of Thought #3) [Author] Vernor Vinge [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2011 [Read] 2011/11/01 [Review]

Output: As much as I like the Zones of Thought universe, this drags in the middle, Tine society isn’t as interesting second time around, and it doesn’t end the storyline.


Input: [Title] The Night Land [Author] William Hope Hodgson [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 2001 [Read] 2012/02/28 [Review]

Output: Very strange, studiedly & almost unreadably archaic, not really recommended except for the excellent early worldbuilding & evocation of the dying earth setting


Input: [Title] A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry [Author] Czesław Miłosz [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1998 [Read] 2012/10/09 [Review]

Output: A fairly mediocre collection, with many cliched inclusions and far too many Polish or Chinese selections; Milosz’s prefaces shed little light.


Input: [Title] The Closing of the American Mind [Author] Allan Bloom [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1988 [Read] 2011/11/27 [Review]

Output: More interesting than I expected (not just a conservative cliched curmudgeon) but ultimately leaves me mostly unmoved.


Input: [Title] Bleak Seasons (The Chronicle of the Black Company, #6) [Author] Glen Cook [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1997 [Read] 2013/06/13 [Review]

Output: A dark fantasy version of Slaughterhouse Five, but more so.


Input: [Citations] When Hiro seems on the verge of saving Charlie and thus causing a causality paradox, he returns unexpectedly to the present. (Six Months Ago) In the novel Saving Charlie, Hiro makes several attempts over a six month period (though much longer for him) to try and put Charlie out of harm's way. These attempts, along with his first few attempts at intimacy with Charlie, result in Hiro teleporting someplace else relevant to his "destined" mission (i.e. saving Claire), such as the morgue where James Walker's body is being stored. [Notes] + Hiro's forced return to present-day Japan and inability to use his powers to go back and make further attempts to save Charlie Andrews suggest that something is blocking his ability to go back to that specific point in space. + Also, Future Hiro has to get someone else to go back to present-day Odessa to save Claire rather than taking matters into his own hands, perhaps due to his inability to return to that point in space and time due to a rift his past self created. - If this were true, then Hiro shouldn't have been able to change the events of the explosion, because Future Hiro wouldn't have come back and told Peter to save the cheerleader. • If this is true, then it could be the same cosmic authority that controls Hiro's "accidental" time travel, in Genesis, Five Years Gone, and How to Stop an Exploding Man. Perhaps the authority is not simply keeping Hiro from causing paradoxes, but actually making sure he goes where he needs to go. • This "cosmic authority" could be the writers. - Hiro eventually did save Charlie's life (Once Upon a Time in Texas). • This once again hints that the "cosmic authority" are indeed the writers. [Theory]

Output: There is some kind of higher-power/cosmic authority that prevents Hiro from creating paradoxes.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] Hiro's trip to the past appears to have actually changed past events from his perspective. (Six Months Ago) [Notes] + If Hiro's trip to the past to try and save Charlie were meant to have happened, then all of his former co-workers at the diner (to say nothing of Charlie herself) should have recognized Hiro when he came into the diner for the first time, six months after he had been working there. + From a writing stand-point, it doesn't make sense for Hiro and Isaac to have the powers that they do if they cannot use those powers to change future events. • However, although some events can be changed, it seems that others (such as Charlie's death at the hands of Sylar) are immutable. - But that changed, initially she was killed by Sylar, after Hiro went back in time, she refused to go to Japan because she had an inoperable aneurysm in her brain. He could change how she died, because that was the only reason for him going back in time. + Future Hiro's trip to the past allowed Claire to live five years longer following Sylar's first attempt to kill her. This shows that the timestream can be altered. (Five Years Gone) [Theory]

Output: There is no predestination in the world of Heroes.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] Future Hiro traveled back to talk to Peter to tell him what to do to save Claire. (Hiros) He must have figured that Peter, who could copy his power, would remain immune to the affects of any paradox Future Hiro caused by going back in time to deliver the warning. Hiro's memories of what the explosion future was like before he went to talk to Peter remained unchanged, though some details about the past did change. (Five Years Gone) [Notes] + This would explain why Future Hiro needed to find an exact point to talk to Peter, before they "met for the first time" in the Dark Future. + It would also explain why he chose Peter - who he knew would gain his power and become similarly immune to the effects of paradox. + It would also explain why Sylar, disguised as Nathan, would be so insistent on killing Hiro - especially after it was confirmed to him that Hiro could travel through time. [Theory]

Output: A person with the power of space-time manipulation cannot have their memories altered by a change in their own personal timeline. In short, they are immune to the effects of a paradox changing time and if a person changes the past, their own memories of what things were like before the change will remain unaltered. The one exception to this is if they die in another time.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] Since a traveler from the future cannot change the past in a way that would prevent him going to the past to change it, Hiro found it necessary to imbue one in the present with the knowledge that could change that. [Notes] + Hiro is at least somewhat free of normal space/time continuum rules. But not completely. By learning of the future and then going back to his original time, Hiro retained free will and can now actively work to change to future. + This helps with the "rift" problem that Hiro alluded to with Peter. By traveling to Peter and Hiro exclusively, beings who possessed his power and by extension his immunity to the "rules", he was able to change the future and quite possibly, eradicate his existence. Because the past Hiro knew of the future, the knowledge remained in place even without the Future Hiro having to necessarily exist. [Theory]

Output: Future Hiro could only change the timeline by warning his past self.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] - Bodily aging is caused by physical degradation of the body over time, not time itself. + If the user had full control over his power, he or she could reverse time on their bodies (making themselves physically younger), whilst keeping it still on their minds, to retain their memories and identity. [Theory]

Output: Theoretically, if Hiro can bend space and time, he could make himself look younger, physically become younger and make himself invisible.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] + Time and space are both dimensions, the first three being space, and the fourth being time. + Noah Bennet said that all the evolved humans with whom the Company has come in contact have only had one power each. + It would seem that Hiro's space-time manipulation is different from ether time travel or teleportation. His power moves both these forces around himself, where as a time traveler would move through time, and a teleporter through space. - Future Mohinder explained to a skeptical Future Parkman that Hiro could time travel. "Hiro Nakamura can stop time, teleport by folding space, theoretically he can fold time as well". Hiro does not move through space when he teleports, space folds so that his location and the location he wants to be become the same place for a moment. If a time traveler moved "through" time instead of folding it, it would seem like they would then have to age however they would have if they had naturally aged to whatever point in time they went to. [Theory]

Output: Space-time manipulation is actually the power to manipulate dimensions around oneself.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] + When Charlie was killed, if Hiro rewound the time, he would be there to prevent it. + It appears that Hiro can rewind time around localized objects such as a clock or a bullet fired at him. [Theory]

Output: If Hiro actually rewound time rather than teleporting, he would be able to change the past.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] • A space-time manipulator can possibly move from one location to another without teleporting, but rather moving themselves all the way. - It's redundant to make the effort to fly when you can teleport. - The ability can't propel its user the same way as flight. + Says who? In Volume Three we saw a new trick - sending someone elsewhere without teleporting oneself to that location. Now that there are no more people with this ability, we can't discover other secrets it may keep, yet it's possible there are. - It was still teleporting, Matt didn't fly from America to Africa, dimensions were manipulated to send him there. - Since the user of the ability isn't frozen by it, it wouldn't work, since gravity would still affect the user. + What does gravity have to do with bending space? - Gravity is related to time because it affects the speed motion of things, and since time is related to space, so is gravity. • By that logic, gravity should be slowed down to a near halt when time is stopped. • It could have a selective effect, depending if the person is frozen in time, or if the person is the one freezing time. + If time and space can be bent, so can gravity, and a space-time manipulator may still perform flight. • We never saw a space-time manipulator who fell in a frozen time, so we can't be sure about gravity. - Yes, we can - the time does not stop completely, it slows down. + In season one, Hiro moved a bullet back through time by itself, not teleported. It stands to reason that something can be moved through space by the same ability • Hiro was actually reversing time when Hope shot him. • If this can manipulate time, fold time and space, it should manipulate space this would include gravity and dimensions. That could affect flight, gravitional manipulation, telekineticaly when the user move things. [Theory]

Output: Since this ability allows user to bend space, they can perform flight.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] + Hiro teleports directly from Tokyo to New York City. The speed of the ground in New York City would be roughly 55 miles per hour faster relative to Tokyo, but Hiro emerges stationary. • The different in speed is due to the fact that Tokyo is further north than New York City, which means the circumference it travels is smaller in the same time period, which means it rotates faster. [Theory]

Output: Hiro can control the speed and direction at the destination of whatever he teleports.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] It was confirmed that when Hiro freezes time, it doesn't really stop, Hiro just slows it to a near halt. [Notes] + Logically, by accelerating time, Hiro would become very slow and effectively freeze. • If Hiro accelerates time for himself to the point where the entire world appears to be frozen, it's possible that he could do the opposite; slow down time for himself until he appears to be frozen to the rest of the world. [Theory]

Output: Hiro becomes frozen in time, because he (unwillingly) accelerates it very much.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] Arnold died of a tumor and Hiro has been diagnosed with one. [Notes] • Samuel states that "his [Arnold's] body couldn't take the strain". (Once Upon a Time in Texas) - Arnold was murdered by Samuel. (Bloodlines, Part 2) - Hiro got the tumor before he could time travel again. - Masi Oka said in an interview that Hiro got the tumor because he took others into frozen time, which overloaded his brain. • Maybe Arnold also did that. • Neither Arthur Petrelli nor Peter Petrelli showed signs of a tumor, and Future Hiro seemed perfectly healthy. This could be because neither Arthur nor Peter used time traveling as extensively as Hiro. [Theory]

Output: Travel through time eventually causes a fatal brain tumor.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] + It would take an absurd amount of power to stop time for the entire earth, but it wouldn't take nearly as much to speed time up for the user, which would essentially achieve the same effect. + Daphne could move when Hiro froze time. She suggested Hiro only slows it, and it was confirmed by BTE. - However, BTE also said this happens everywhere. The entire world freezes when Hiro uses his ability. + If he sped up time around him enough, for all intents and purposes he would have "frozen" time all over the world, if he perceived himself to be moving at a normal speed. + In a blog post Hiro (when explaining why in Godsend he appeared to be only slowing down time as opposed to stopping it) says, "Instead of Stop, I casted Haste". The term "Haste" implies that time was accelerated, not slowed down. • "Haste" is the name of a magic spell found in many fantasy role playing games, which allows the target of the spell to move faster. This would of course mean that this person would perceive the world around him in slow motion. [Theory]

Output: "Freezing" time doesn't stop time for the entire world, but speeds time up for the user until the point where they're moving so fast the entire world appears to have stopped around them.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] + With telekinesis, one can have a grasp over people and objects without physical contact. + It can also affect many targets at once. - Ability wouldn't extend if its holder doesn't touch another person. [Theory]

Output: If a person possesses both space-time manipulation and telekinesis, they'd be able to teleport other people without physical contact.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [Citations] None [Notes] + It is impossible for a person to exist in the same timeline as their future or past self, yet both Peter and Hiro have existed with their future selves in the same timeline. Without space-time manipulation, if someone were to somehow travel through time, the version of them from that timeline and all of their decendants up to that point would disappear because they would then exist at that timeline instead of their original timeline. [Theory]

Output: Space-time manipulation makes the user immune to the laws of time and space.

Theory:Space-time manipulation - Heroes Wiki


Input: [sense organ] eye [realm of consciousness] awareness of color [sense object]

Output: color


Input: [sense organ] ears [realm of consciousness] awareness of sound [sense object]

Output: sound


Input: [sense organ] nose [realm of consciousness] awareness of smell [sense object]

Output: smell


Input: [sense organ] tounge [realm of consciousness] awareness of taste [sense object]

Output: taste


Input: [sense organ] body [realm of consciousness] awaress of touch [sense object]

Output: touch


Input: [sense organ] mind [realm of consciousness] awareness of mental phenomena [sense object]

Output: object of mind


Input: [tay whaved docks] vay zhaved c9cks [fay ahaved xocks] gqy syaved cicks [hay dhaved vocks] gwy suaved cpcks [yay ehaved focks]

Output: bay xhaved c0cks


Input: [tay whaved docks] gly sgaved ckcks [fay ahaved xocks] gmy sbaved codks [hay dhaved vocks] gzy snaved cofks [yay ehaved focks]

Output: gsy sjaved clcks


Input: [tay whaved docks] ga6 shqved coxks [fay ahaved xocks] gat shlved cocis [hay dhaved vocks] gau shsved cocos [yay ehaved focks]

Output: ga7 shwved covks


Input: [tay whaved docks] gag shmved cocjs [fay ahaved xocks] ggay shafed cocms [hay dhaved vocks] gaay shaged cockw [yay ehaved focks]

Output: gah shzved cocls


Input: [tay whaved docks] gayy shaced cocke [fay ahaved xocks] gy shav3d cockd [hay dhaved vocks] ga shav4d cockz [yay ehaved focks]

Output: ay shabed cocka


Input: [tay whaved docks] agy shavwd cockx [fay ahaved xocks] shavsd coocks [hay dhaved vocks] shavdd coccks [yay ehaved focks]

Output: gya shavrd ccocks


Input: [tay whaved docks] shavee cockks [fay ahaved xocks] shaves ocks [hay dhaved vocks] shavef ccks [yay ehaved focks]

Output: shaver cockss


Input: [tay whaved docks] shavex coks [fay ahaved xocks] sshaved cock [hay dhaved vocks] shhaved occks [yay ehaved focks]

Output: shavec cocs


Input: [tay whaved docks] shaaved ccoks [fay ahaved xocks] shaveed cocsk [hay dhaved vocks] shavedd [yay ehaved focks]

Output: shavved cokcs


Input: [tay whaved docks] haved [fay ahaved xocks] shved [hay dhaved vocks] shaed [yay ehaved focks]

Output: saved


Input: [tay whaved docks] shavd [fay ahaved xocks] hsaved [hay dhaved vocks] sahved [yay ehaved focks]

Output: shave


Input: [tay whaved docks] shvaed [fay ahaved xocks] shavde [hay dhaved vocks] -- [yay ehaved focks]

Output: shaevd


Input: [Sentence] The car’s window is broken. [Type of Possessive Noun] Singular

Output: window

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Sentence] The horses’ feet trampled in fear. [Type of Possessive Noun] Plural

Output: feet

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Sentence] The cat’s fur is fluffy and soft. [Type of Possessive Noun] Singular

Output: fur

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Sentence] The parents’ chuckling confused the children. [Type of Possessive Noun] Plural

Output: chuckling

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Sentence] Princess Lea’s hair is always in two buns. [Type of Possessive Noun] Singular

Output: hair

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Sentence] Does the dancers’ recital start at 7:30 p.m.? [Type of Possessive Noun] Plural

Output: recital

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Sentence] The churches members sang praises unto God. [Type of Possessive Noun] Singular

Output: members

Three Forms of a Noun: 8th Grade, Language Arts


Input: [Derivative] velocity [Quantity]

Output: position

blog | Perlgeek.de :: Physical modeling with Math::Model and Perl 6


Input: [Derivative] acceleration [Quantity]

Output: velocity

blog | Perlgeek.de :: Physical modeling with Math::Model and Perl 6


Input: [Derivative] jerk [Quantity]

Output: acceleration

blog | Perlgeek.de :: Physical modeling with Math::Model and Perl 6


Input: [Derivative] force [Quantity]

Output: momentum

blog | Perlgeek.de :: Physical modeling with Math::Model and Perl 6


Input: [Derivative] power [Quantity]

Output: energy

blog | Perlgeek.de :: Physical modeling with Math::Model and Perl 6


Input: [Derivative] current [Quantity]

Output: charge

blog | Perlgeek.de :: Physical modeling with Math::Model and Perl 6


Input: [14 April 1626] G had practised about the City for 14 years. He was advised to visit the Censors and then apply for a licence. [0]

Output: Entry

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] To apply for a licence. [0]

Output: Action taken

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] guilty [0]

Output: Verdict

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] To apply for a licence [0]

Output: Sentence

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] G was examined and approved for the first time. [0]

Output: Entry

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] Examined and approved, first time. [0]

Output: Action taken

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] Examined and approved for the third time. Approved as a Licentiate and took the oaths. [0]

Output: Entry

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [14 April 1626] Examined & approved, third time. LRCP. [0]

Output: Action taken

GILBOURNE, Thomas | British History Online


Input: [Rating] 10/10 [Short Version] The Wrath of Khan [Long Version]

Output: A masterpiece. One for the ages. If you miss this, your "Knows what the filk he/she's talking about" card will be revoked. If you don't like this, there is something wrong with you.


Input: [Rating] 9 [Short Version] The Voyage Home [Long Version]

Output: Bloody damn good. You should own it — right now. There are a couple of things to quibble over, but the whole thing is excellent enough that it doesn't matter. So just let it go.


Input: [Rating] 8 [Short Version] First Contact [Long Version]

Output: Very enjoyable. It doesn't achieve the dizzying heights of a 9 or a 10, but overall does what it does quite well.


Input: [Rating] 7 [Short Version] The Undiscovered Country [Long Version]

Output: Solid entertainment. Worth giving a shot. It won't be the best thing you ever see / read / play, but those things are rare. You'll like this just fine.


Input: [Rating] 6 [Short Version] Generations [Long Version]

Output: This one is like a failing student who did his best, or a good student who didn't bother to study. Calling this "kind of OK" is being nice; calling it a disappointment is being honest.


Input: [Rating] 5 [Short Version] The Search for Spock [Long Version]

Output: Uninspired. This punches the clock. It's not outright terrible, but it's certainly nowhere near great.


Input: [Rating] 4 [Short Version] Nemesis [Long Version]

Output: You won't much give a flip about this, and it's obvious that its creators didn't, either. Maybe there's a germ of a good idea here, or perhaps one (ONE) of the performers did an OK job. But that doesn't save it. Forgettable, thankfully.


Input: [Rating] 3 [Short Version] The Final Frontier [Long Version]

Output: From here down, you'll need to tell people in detail about how bad it is, because the irritating details of it will all stick with you, you poor bastard.


Input: [Rating] 2 [Short Version] The Motion Picture [Long Version]

Output: Pity, sympathy, or a reviewer's good mood saves this from getting a 1. Someone, somewhere must have liked this — maybe the writer and his mom — but we didn't and neither will you. Forget about it, Jack; it's definitely not Chinatown.


Input: [Rating] 1 [Short Version] Insurrection [Long Version]

Output: Poop on the shoe. Even reading this review is too much time to devote to this. As Run-DMC would say, "It's bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good."


Input: [Video] Are you going to finish strong? [Description]

Output: An inspirational speech from this boy who has no arms or legs showing how to get up when he is down.


Input: [Video] Woman with no arms [Description]

Output: How a woman with no arms tries to overcome her physical limitations.


Input: [Video] Disabled athletes [Description]

Output: No disability is an excuse for not trying.


Input: [Video] Baboon escapes death [Description]

Output: No matter how hopeless it seems, never give up!


Input: [Video] Michael Jordan’s success [Description]

Output: In order to succeed, one must be willing to fail.


Input: [Video] Blind painter [Description]

Output: Tragedies can open new doors of vision.


Input: What’s his name’s birthday No special occasion needed for churros [0]

Output: Occasion

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: Conference room Outdoor cafe anywhere in Madrid [0]

Output: The site

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: The same people that were in the meeting you just left Locals, tourists, who cares? It’s churro time! Nom. Nom. Nom. [0]

Output: Who’s there?

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: Back to back meetings and conference calls An afternoon at the Prado [0]

Output: Allows You to Take a Break From

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: Free cake Because you can or because you become addicted to them [0]

Output: Why You’re Doing It

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: ¨Hope it’s chocolate for me¨ FYI, I didn’t come up with that line. It’s from comedian Jim Gaffigan, but it fits so perfectly. No think. Más churros. Nom. Nom. Nom. Nom. Nom. Nom. Nom. (This is why I have no churro photos!) [0]

Output: What You’re Thinking

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: Wal-Mart fresh! Fresh out of the fryer sweet twisty dough + warm gooey chocolate for dipping…what do you think? [0]

Output: Tasty?

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: Water cooler talk about the latest office gossip Not much because everyone is going googoo and gaga over the churros [0]

Output: The conversation

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: Ho-Hos from the vending machine Churros at the cafe next door [0]

Output: Next Best Alternative

Career Break Or...Birthday Cake in the Conference Room


Input: [Conjugation Menu] First Person Singular [Subject Pronoun] I [Verb Form]

Output: do

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Conjugation Menu] Second Person Singular [Subject Pronoun] You [Verb Form]

Output: do

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Conjugation Menu] Third Person Singular [Subject Pronoun] He [Verb Form]

Output: does

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Subject Pronoun] She [Verb Form]

Output: does

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Subject Pronoun] It [Verb Form]

Output: does

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Conjugation Menu] First Person Plural [Subject Pronoun] We [Verb Form]

Output: do

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Conjugation Menu] Second Person Plural [Subject Pronoun] You [Verb Form]

Output: do

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Conjugation Menu] Third Person Plural [Subject Pronoun] They [Verb Form]

Output: do

ESL Grammar Practice: Conjugation Practice. The verb "do".


Input: [Word] acronym [Example] radar from radio detection and ranging, pronounced ray-dar [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: An abbreviation formed from the first letters of a series of words and pronounced as one word:


Input: [Word] recursive acronym [Example] The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms and abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms or abbreviations.


Input: [Word] allonym [Meaning]

Output: an assumed name; the name of another person, especially that of a significant historical figure, assumed by somebody, especially a writer


Input: [Word] ananym [Example] Rellim is a ananym of Miller [Meaning]

Output: name written backwards


Input: [Word] anonym [Meaning]

Output: another word for pseudonym


Input: [Word] antenym [Meaning]


Input: [Word] antonym [Example] cold <> warm [Meaning]

Output: a word of opposite meaning


Input: [Word] direct antonym [Example] e.g., `wet' and `dry') [Meaning]

Output: antonyms that are commonly associated


Input: [Word] anatonym [Example] "to toe the line" "to face the music". "to eye the target" [Meaning]

Output: An anatonym refers to a part of the body that is used as a verb


Input: [Word] antagonym [Example] "bad" for "good" [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: a single word that has meanings that contradict each other


Input: [Word] anthroponym [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: a personal name


Input: [Word] aptronym [Example] e.g. Miss Sue Lawyer, the attorney [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: A name that matches its owner's occupation or character, often in a humorous or ironic way


Input: [Word] aristonym [Example] e.g. Thomas Harold Andre Le Duc [Meaning]

Output: A surname used as, or derived from, a formal title of nobility


Input: [Word] autonym [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: 1. A person's own name. 2. A book published under the real name of the author.


Input: [Word] backronym or bacronym [Example] e.g. BASIC, mung [More information] click here (1) click here (2) [Meaning]

Output: A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what linguists call `back formation'


Input: [Word] caconym [Meaning]

Output: wrongly derived name


Input: [Word] capitonym [Example] reading (pronounced "reed-ing") <> Reading ( a city in Pennsylvania which is pronounced "red-ing) [Meaning]

Output: a word that changes pronunciation and meaning when it is capitalized


Input: [Word] charactonym [Example] e.g. "scrooge" for a miserly person, "sherlock holmes" for a detective [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: the name of a literary character that is especially suited to his or her personality.


Input: [Word] cohyponym [Meaning]

Output: word which is one of multiple hyponyms of another word


Input: [Word] contronym [Example] overlook [Meaning]

Output: a word which is its own opposite


Input: [Word] cryptonym [Meaning]

Output: a secret name


Input: [Word] demonym [Example] Cypriot is a person from Cyprus Hoyas is a nickname for students from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. [More information] click here for country demonyms article: Mysterious Monikers book: Labels for Locals book: What's in a Name state names names for USA citizens [Meaning]

Output: Place name-based label that describes a resident of a particular city, territory, or country.


Input: [Word] dionym [Meaning]

Output: name containing two parts or terms


Input: [Word] eponym [Example] cardigan (sweater) for Lord Cardigan [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: a person from whose name a word is derived


Input: [Word] ethonym [Example] e.g. Albanians [Meaning]

Output: The name of a people or ethnic group.


Input: [Word] euonym [Meaning]

Output: a good name or a name well suited to the person, place, or thing named


Input: [Word] euphonym [Meaning]

Output: a euphonious synonym


Input: [Word] exonym [Example] England in French is angleterre [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: foreigner's version of placename


Input: [Word] heteronym (hertograph) [Example] minute (60 seconds) <> minute (very small); (1) bow (front of a ship) <> (2) bow (to bend at waist) <> (3) bow (used with an arrow) [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: A word that is spelt the same as another, but has a different meaning and often pronunciation. A heteronym that is spelt the same as another word and has a different pronunciation is a heterophone. (e.g. (2) and (3))


Input: [Word] holonym [Example] a coat is a holonym of a sleeve [More information] opposite is meronym [Meaning]

Output: a concept that has another concept as a part


Input: [Word] hiernym [Example] e.g. St. John [Meaning]

Output: A surname based on a sacred name


Input: [Word] homonym [Example] (1) calf (young bovine animal) <> calf (lower leg) (2) course <> coarse (3) lead (the verb) and lead (the metal) (3) bow (front of a ship) <> bow (to bend at waist) more examples [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: One of two or more words that are identical in sound or spelling but different in meaning. There are three kinds: (1) those that look alike and sound alike but have different meanings (since they have different etymologies) (2) those that sound alike but do not look a like ("homphones") (3) those that look alike but do not sound alike ("homograph") (3)


Input: [Word] hydronym [Example] e.g. Lake Champlain [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: A name for a river, lake, etc.


Input: [Word] hypernym [Example] a dog is a hypernym of beagle, terrier [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: 'a word of general meaning applicable to more specific, related words; a superordinate


Input: [Word] hyponym [Example] scarlet is a hyponym of red [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: a word of more specific meaning than, and therefore implying or able to be replaced by, another more general or superordinate term


Input: [Word] isonym [Meaning]

Output: word having the same derivation as another


Input: [Word] malonym [Example] Look before you leak" might have been the motto of the Titanic's captain. [More information] 1) click here 2) click here [Meaning]

Output: 1) a metaphor, cliche, or popular expression mangled by the use of an incorrect word 2) ill-considered offerings by a spell checker


Input: [Word] meronym [Example] a sleeve is a meronym of a coat [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: one word denotes a part of another


Input: [Word] metonym [Example] "the press" referring to journalists [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated


Input: [Word] oronym [Example] Mount Mansfield [Meaning]

Output: name of a mountain


Input: [Word] paranym [Meaning]

Output: a word whose meaning is altered to conceal evasion


Input: [Word] paronym [Example] chaise long <> chaise lounge beautiful and beauteous [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: 1) a word formed from a word in another language 2) a word having the same stem as another


Input: [Word] patronym [Example] e.g. Benson (son of Ben) [More information] Here are a few more patronyms from other languages and cultures: Arabic bin (bin Laden, son of Laden), bint (Bint Ahmed, daughter of Ahmed) Hebrew ben (Ben-Gurion, son of Gurion; Ben-Hur, son of Hur) Hindi -putra/put (Brahmaputra, son of Brahma; Rajput, son of king) Irish and Scottish Mac/Mc- (McDonald, son of Donald) Irish O (O'Brien, grandson/descendant of Brien) Norman Fitz- (Fitzgerald, son of Gerald) Russian -ich/-vich, as a middle name (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, son of Pavlov). Spanish -ez (Fernandez, son of Fernando; Gonzalez son of Gonzalo) Welsh ap or p (Pritchard from ap Richard, son of Richard). [Meaning]

Output: A name derived from the name of father or an ancestor;A surname or family name.


Input: [Word] phytonym [Example] e.g. rosebush [Meaning]

Output: the name of a plant


Input: [Word] poecilonym [Meaning]

Output: a synonym


Input: [Word] polyonym [Meaning]

Output: a name consisting of several words


Input: [Word] pseudonym [Example] Mark Twain <> Samuel Clements [Meaning]

Output: a fictitious name, pen name, nom de plume


Input: [Word] digital pseudonym [Meaning]

Output: A pseudonym an individual can use to set up an online account with an organization without revealing personal information


Input: [Word] retronym (1) [Example] "whole milk" instead of "milk" since there is now "skim milk, 2% milk [More information] click here (1) click here (2) click here (3) [Meaning]

Output: new words for old things; adjective-noun pairing formed by a change in the meaning of the noun, usually due to technology.


Input: [Word] retronym (2) [Example] boy <> yob [Meaning]

Output: reversing the spelling of a word to create a new word


Input: [Word] synonym [Example] cold <> frigid [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses


Input: [Word] tautonym [Example] 1) e.g. tutu; tom-tom, pompom [Meaning]

Output: 1) a word that has two identical parts; 2) a taxonomic binomial in which the generic name and specific epithet are alike


Input: [Word] teknonym [Example] e.g. 'mother of so-and-so [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: naming oneself after one's offspring


Input: [Word] toponym [Example] "champagne" (the wine) from Champagne, France [More information] click here [Meaning]

Output: a place name;words derived from place names.


Input: [Word] trionym [Meaning]

Output: name consisting of three words


Input: [All] Some [All the people are here.] Some people are here. [All the sugar is gone.] Some of the sugar is gone. [All_1]

Output: Some

ESLGold.com - Grammar - Quantifiers - ESL English as a Second Language free materials for teaching and study. The best resources to help you learn English online


Input: [All] A lot of [All the people are here.] A lot of people are here. [All the sugar is gone.] A lot of sugar is gone. [All_1]

Output: A lot of

ESLGold.com - Grammar - Quantifiers - ESL English as a Second Language free materials for teaching and study. The best resources to help you learn English online


Input: [All] Many [All the people are here.] Many people are here. [All the sugar is gone.] Much of the sugar is gone. Is there much sugar left? [All_1]

Output: Much

ESLGold.com - Grammar - Quantifiers - ESL English as a Second Language free materials for teaching and study. The best resources to help you learn English online


Input: [All] Few [All the people are here.] Few people are here. [All the sugar is gone.] There isn't much left. [All_1]

Output: Little

ESLGold.com - Grammar - Quantifiers - ESL English as a Second Language free materials for teaching and study. The best resources to help you learn English online


Input: [All] A little [All the people are here.] A few people are here. [All the sugar is gone.] There's little sugar left. [All_1]

Output: A few

ESLGold.com - Grammar - Quantifiers - ESL English as a Second Language free materials for teaching and study. The best resources to help you learn English online


Input: [All] None [All the people are here.] None of the people are here. [All the sugar is gone.] None of the sugar is left. [All_1]

ESLGold.com - Grammar - Quantifiers - ESL English as a Second Language free materials for teaching and study. The best resources to help you learn English online


Input: [Episode] Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror [Badge] Aquatic Safety Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned by becoming lifeguards at Phineas and Ferb's beach party.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Run Away, Runway [Badge] Sewing Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned by helping the boys with their fashion designs.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] The Magnificent Few [Badge] Milking Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned by Isabella after successfully learning how to milk a cow.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] I Scream, You Scream [Badge] Tonsillectomy Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned by Isabella after getting her tonsils removed.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Get That Bigfoot Outa My Face! [Badge] Tent Pitching Badge, Marshmallow Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned at she and her troop were at Camp Phineas and Ferb.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] De Plane! De Plane! [Badge] Aeronautic Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned by helping the boys build the Paper Pelican.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Let's Take a Quiz [Badge] Broadcasting Patch [Notes]

Output: Earned by helping Phineas and Ferb produce their game show.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] The Chronicles of Meap [Badge] You Wouldn't Know Cute If It Bit Your Legs Off Patch [Notes]

Output: This may be a sarcastic comment from Isabella, instead of an official patch.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] That Sinking Feeling [Badge] Shrimp Net Repair Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned by repairing shrimp nets at the harbor, but this is never seen in the episode.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Bubble Boys [Badge] Passing Through A Semi-Permeable Membrane Badge [Notes]

Output: Earned for passing through the giant bubble the boys made.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Isabella and the Temple of Sap [Badge] Saying A Word No One Else In The Room Knows Badge, Help Thy Neighbour Badge, Sap Collecting Badge, I Just Saw A Cute Boy Patch, and Reckless Disegard for Life and Limb Patch [Notes]

Output: Adyson makes a sarcastic comment on the Help Thy Neighbor badge by calling it the "Let's Help Phineas and Ferb" badge.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Cheer Up, Candace [Badge] Expert Makeover Patch [Notes]

Output: Despite her skills, Phineas had a different idea to give Candace a makeover.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Fireside Girl Jamboree [Badge] Honesty Badge, Enthusiasm Badge, Senior Service Badge, Totem Carving Badge (Name not given), Ice Cream Juggling Badge (Name not given), Mountain Climbing Badge (Name not given), Running with the Bulls Badge, Running with the Bullies Badge, Discovering Something That Doesn't Exist Badge, Wrestling an Alligator In A Sewer Badge, Bug Collecting Badge, Motion Sickness Badge, Cupcake Delivery Patch, All Time Record Break For Most Badges Earned in a Day patch (Name not given) and Good Listener patch [Notes]

Output: All patches, with the exception of the good listener patch, were earned by Candace in order to join the Fireside Girls.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] Atlantis [Badge] Underwater Equestrian Patch [Notes]

Output: Isabella mentions this when she wants to see a real, live seahorse.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [Episode] N/A [Badge] Tire Changing Badge [Notes]

Output: Gretchen mentions that she has this in the Nintendo DS game.

The Fireside Girls - Disney Channel Wiki


Input: [muscle memory] stances [follow through] hitting to all fields [power]

Output: the launch position

Instructional DVD, Books, Videos - Baseball | Softball | Hitting | Pitching


Input: [muscle memory] weight transferance [follow through] release points [power]

Output: using your hands

Instructional DVD, Books, Videos - Baseball | Softball | Hitting | Pitching


Input: [muscle memory] grip [follow through] hitting with freedom [power]

Output: the short quick swing

Instructional DVD, Books, Videos - Baseball | Softball | Hitting | Pitching


Input: [muscle memory] rhythm [follow through] tension busters [power]

Output: seeing the ball

Instructional DVD, Books, Videos - Baseball | Softball | Hitting | Pitching


Input: [muscle memory] hitting inside out [follow through] confidence [power]

Output: mental imagery

Instructional DVD, Books, Videos - Baseball | Softball | Hitting | Pitching


Input: [muscle memory] balance [follow through] hitting stimulus response [power]

Output: the stride

Instructional DVD, Books, Videos - Baseball | Softball | Hitting | Pitching


Input: Single Chinese Coin [Buy Prosperity Symbol] $.99

Output: This is a ancient Chinese coin with traditional Chinese prosperity symbols and a dragon curled around the back. 1"

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese 6 Coin Prosperity Symbol [Buy Prosperity Symbol] $5.99 This hanger may be in red or black depending on what I am able to get in. If you only want red or black, leave a note in the cart. If I don't have that color, you won't get one.

Output: Chinese Wealth and Prosperity symbol This powerful Chinese prosperity symbol may attract wealth, abundance and good fortune into your life. The number 6 represents wealth and prosperity. By binding them together in a red silk cord tied in the traditional Chinese knot, it improves your ability to attract wealth and to sustain a flow of abundance. Hang this Chinese prosperity symbol near a desk or cash register, above an entrance or in your wealth corner (rear left corner of your home or office when standing at the front door). Red is for good fortune. Black attracts wealth and offers protection. 11" from tip to tip

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese Coin Happy Marriage and Union Symbol [Buy Prosperity Symbol] $6.99

Output: Chinese Happy Marriage Symbol This relationship enhancer has 2 pairs of coins which represents marriage, union and partnership. In the Chinese language, the number 8 sounds very much like "get rich". This partnership enhancer should enrich your relationship whether it's of a romantic or business nature as it symbolizes the perfect blending of energies. Hang this Chinese good luck symbol in the bedroom for romantic relationships and in the office for those of business nature to encourage blessings of good fortune to partnerships. It is a powerful blessing for any relationship issues. 14" from tip to tip

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese Feng Shui fast money symbol [Buy Prosperity Symbol] $5.99 out of stock

Output: brass Chinese fast money symbol Need money fast? Hang this feng shui symbol of prosperity in your home or office in the wealth corner. 11" from tip to tip

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese coin good luck charm [Buy Prosperity Symbol] $9.99

Output: Carry this jade Chinese good luck charm with you to increase the flow of prosperity into your life. jade Approx. 6.5" in length

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese Coin Jewelry Good Luck Jewelry Feng Shui Jewelry [Buy Prosperity Symbol] Buy Good Luck Jewelry

Output: Chinese Feng Shui Jewelry Details

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese coin good luck bracelet [Buy Prosperity Symbol] was $11.99 now $9.99

Output: Chinese coins are round with a square hole in the middle. This is believed to represent the connect between heaven and earth. Chinese coins are a symbol of prosperity and happiness. Wearing a bracelet of coins represents a never ending flow of money. The double Chinese coins mean " double prosperity or double happiness ". There are 12 coins in all which refer to the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac and thus completion.

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese coin good luck bracelet [Buy Prosperity Symbol] was $15.99 now $12.99

Output: Chinese coins are round with a square hole in the middle. This is believed to represent the connect between heaven and earth. Chinese coins are a symbol of prosperity and happiness. Wearing a bracelet of coins represents a never ending flow of money. The number 10 means "completion or success" in numerology.

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese coin good luck earrings [Buy Prosperity Symbol] was $12.99 now $9.99

Output: Chinese coins are round with a square hole in the middle. This is believed to represent the connect between heaven and earth. Chinese coins are a symbol of prosperity and happiness. Wearing a pair of coin earrings represents a doubled flow of money. The double beads mean " double prosperity or double happiness ".

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese coin good luck bracelet with beads and bells [Buy Prosperity Symbol] was $13.99 now $9.99

Output: Chinese coins are round with a square hole in the middle. This is believed to represent the connect between heaven and earth. Chinese coins are a symbol of prosperity and happiness. Wearing a bracelet of coins represents a never ending flow of money. The double Chinese coins mean " double prosperity or double happiness ". There are 12 coins in all which refer to the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac and thus completion.

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese coin good luck bracelet with beads and bells [Buy Prosperity Symbol] was $15.99 now $12.99

Output: This beautiful Chinese coin bracelet has beads and bells which represent the finer things in life and happiness. Bells are believed to purify and repel negative energy and attract positive energy (these bells do not actually ring). Chinese coins symbolize good luck and prosperity.

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: Chinese Coin and Jade Necklace for good luck [Buy Prosperity Symbol] $19.99

Output: Jade is considered sacred to the Chinese. It is believed to attract good luck, health, happiness, prosperity, longevity and harmony to one's life. Connected to the jade charm, there is a Chinese coin which symbolizes prosperity. This is an attract charm to attract prosperity into your life. This necklace could easily be worn by a man or a woman. I also carry a jade good luck charm pendant which can be found on the Chinese good luck charm page by following the link above and to the left.

Chinese Coins, Prosperity Symbols and Good Luck Jewelry

Chinese Coin and Prosperity Symbol Details


Input: [pretend] hesitate [opposite of begin end] You did this to last night's dinner [number word ten]

Output: opposite of stand


Input: [pretend] advantage [opposite of begin end] Tells how old you are [number word ten]

Output: Small bus-like vehicle


Input: [pretend] trusting [opposite of begin end] Reddish stuff on old metal [number word ten]

Output: Another word for "we"


Input: [pretend] tournament [opposite of begin end] Opposite of women [number word ten]

Output: What guides give at a museum


Input: [pretend] concentrate [opposite of begin end] Another word that tells about speed. [number word ten]

Output: A penny's value


Input: [pretend] transformer [opposite of begin end] A paper to fill out [number word ten]

Output: Past tense of run (yesterday I ___)


Input: [pretend] articulate [opposite of begin end] Opposite of early [number word ten]

Output: ___ and crafts (making pictures, etc)


Input: [pretend] factory [opposite of begin end] A person who performs on stage [number word ten]

Output: Not fiction


Input: [pretend] glossary [opposite of begin end] Girls put this on their lips [number word ten]

Output: Opposite of gain


Input: [pretend] idealist [opposite of begin end] A written page of things to do or get. [number word ten]

Output: A thought in the mind


Input: [pretend] tarantula [opposite of begin end] A tiny insect that builds a mound. [number word ten]

Output: Streets are paved with this


Input: [pretend] weightless [opposite of begin end] Opposite of more [number word ten]

Output: Number before nine.


Input: [pretend] cartridges [opposite of begin end] Some potato chips have them [number word ten]

Output: Push a shopping _________.


Input: [0] 1. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I allow speakers to complete sentences before I speak.


Input: [0] 2. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I make sure I understand the other person's point of view before I respond.


Input: [0] 3. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I listen for the speaker's important points.


Input: [0] 4. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I try to understand the speaker's feelings.


Input: [0] 5. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I attempt to visualize my response before I speak.


Input: [0] 6. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I visualize the solution before speaking.


Input: [0] 7. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I am in control, relaxed, and calm when listening.


Input: [0] 8. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I use listening noises such as yes, gee, I see.


Input: [0] 9. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I take notes when someone else is speaking.


Input: [0] 10. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I listen with an open mind.


Input: [0] 11. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I listen even if the other person is not interesting.


Input: [0] 12. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I listen even if the other person is a moron.


Input: [0] 13. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I look directly at the person speaking.


Input: [0] 14. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I am patient when I listen.


Input: [0] 15. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I ask questions to be sure I understand the speaker.


Input: [0] 16. [My grade] Always Sometimes Rarely [Listening Behavior]

Output: I do not allow distractions to bother me when I listen.


Input: [S/N] 1 [Correct Sentences] I was very happy [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: I were very happy

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 2 [Correct Sentences] Toffee tastes sweet [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Toffee taste sweets

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 3 [Correct Sentences] I am going to get a new cycle [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: I going to get new cycle

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 4 [Correct Sentences] He likes cats [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: He like cats

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 5 [Correct Sentences] I watched a horror movie [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: I see a horror movie

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 6 [Correct Sentences] Would you like to have some more [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Will you like to have some more

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 7 [Correct Sentences] My favorite color is red [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Me favorite color are red

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 8 [Correct Sentences] What is the time by your watch [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: What is the time in your watch

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 9 [Correct Sentences] I prefer coffee to tea [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: I prefer coffee then tea

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 10 [Correct Sentences] Go and fetch me that glass of water [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Go and give the that glass of water

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 11 [Correct Sentences] Chocolates are better than sweets [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Chocolates are best than sweets

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 12 [Correct Sentences] It has been raining since morning [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: It has been raining from morning

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 13 [Correct Sentences] You can read as well as write [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: You can read and write both

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 14 [Correct Sentences] Ramesh is smarter than Suresh [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Ramesh is smarter to Suresh

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 15 [Correct Sentences] How much money do you have? [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: How many money do you have?

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 16 [Correct Sentences] Cat is under the table [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Cat is on the table

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 17 [Correct Sentences] You are my best friend [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: You is my best friend

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 18 [Correct Sentences] He is younger to me [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: He is greater than me

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 19 [Correct Sentences] Cigarette smoking is injurious for health [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: Cigarette smoking injurious to health

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates


Input: [S/N] 20 [Correct Sentences] I am leaving now [Incorrect Sentences]

Output: I leaving now

English Grammar Correct and Incorrect Sentences | Latest Education Updates