text:
More than 45 years after he became famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers and earning the wrath of President Richard Nixon and his plumbers, Daniel Ellsberg is again a focus of public consciousness. The hit movie _The Post_ reprises part of the Pentagon Papers story, reminding older Americans (and explaining to younger viewers) how Ellsberg’s decision to reveal a top-secret history of duplicitous US policy in Indochina changed the course of the Vietnam War and American history. And shortly before _The Post_ premiered early in January, Ellsberg’s latest book, _The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner__,_ was published to significant national media attention.

In the book, Ellsberg chronicles his early career as a RAND Corporation analyst deeply involved in the crafting of American nuclear war plans in the 1960s—plans that were meant to be more controlled and discriminating than earlier versions but, he came eventually to understand, were actually blueprints for the obliteration of civilization. “Working, conscientiously, obsessively, on a wrong problem, countering an illusory threat, I and my colleagues at RAND had distracted ourselves and helped distract others from dealing with the real dangers posed by the mutual superpower pursuit of nuclear weapons—dangers which we were helping make worse—and from real opportunities to make the world more secure,” Ellsberg writes. “Unintentionally, yet inexcusably, we made our country and the world less safe.”

Since the 1970s, Ellsberg has been deeply involved in efforts to reduce world nuclear arsenals and eventually eliminate them altogether. He and I spoke at length earlier this year about how the danger of nuclear weapons might be conveyed more effectively to the general public. What follows is an edited transcript of parts of that wide-ranging conversation. __

JOHN MECKLIN: For those few people in the world who haven’t read your book yet, why did you write it now?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I drafted the first part of the book really 40 years ago, just after the [Vietnam] war ended in 1975. My publisher then said they would sell 1,400 copies, which meant that they would not publish it. Really, I tried a couple of other times. There was no interest in publishing.

I spent all my time trying to help build an anti-nuclear movement, like the anti-war movement. My full-time job was in work on the bilateral nuclear weapons freeze and various other things. I was getting arrested in civil disobedience actions, 87 times up till now. I was doing that and getting interviewed a lot and speaking on this subject all the time but with no national attention, whatever, to either the arrests or the lectures or the interviews or anything like that. Many people thought I just disappeared all that time. Actually, I was being pretty active in getting a lot of local coverage, but no national coverage at all.

Then, I actually worked on a project called Manhattan Project II. The idea was that between 1992 and 1995, the 50th anniversary of the Manhattan Project, we would do something to undo the Manhattan Project and at least develop a program for dismantling the doomsday machines. Actually, we did get a pretty good program, but almost none of it has come close to being enacted. That was back in 1995.

Then, I wrote my book _Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers_. Then, I turned to this book, essentially. Actually, finally, to cap that story off, this book was rejected by, I think it was 17 other publishers and finally seized on by Bloomsbury enthusiastically. That’s how it came about now.

JOHN MECKLIN: It’s interesting. One wouldn’t think that somebody as famous as you would have such a hard time getting this published.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: On this subject. Look, I had a very high-level agent at one point who said, “Dan, I won’t represent you on a nuclear book, period.”

JOHN MECKLIN: Why do you think that is?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Because a book with the word “nuclear” in the title was thought to be poison. As far as I can tell, I’m getting a very good reception now. And coverage. I can’t do better, really. I guess I have to thank Trump for that. He’s focused people now on the possibility of nuclear war and the possible imminence of nuclear war. I think at this very moment, just by coincidence, in a way, the book has gotten attention.

JOHN MECKLIN: It’s gotten a lot of attention.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It’s not as though there have been no books. There have been marvelous books, like Eric Schlosser’s _Command and Control_, a wonderful book. It did, in fact, get a lot of attention, but unfortunately, I think most of the attention went to how to make it a little less likely that nuclear accidents will occur, which is indeed a problem. But the big problem is sending off the entire arsenal of either the US or Russia, which, again, with nuclear winter, which we know about now, has the potential for ending most human life, if not all of it.

In the case of a large war, war that’s escalated to the size of our larger attack options—some of which I was involved in writing guidance for in 1961 and which have remained the same ever since, by all testimony—it wouldn’t make any difference which side went first, the result would be the same in either case. It would not result from the blast or the fallout, but from the smoke that would cover the whole globe in a way that intense fallout would not.

JOHN MECKLIN: The major media tend to almost never actually confront or describe the actual effects of a major nuclear war. Why do you think that is?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: That’s hard for me to say, really. I certainly agree with you. I would say they have been shockingly derelict in reporting this. I can’t give an answer. I haven’t been able to ask their editors what’s going on

But it’s a very interesting question. My speculative answer would have to be that the major media have always supported basically—until quite recently perhaps—our basic nuclear arsenals. Insane as they are; they’re unjustifiable, if you really look at them critically. And yet they’re treated as though they are reasonable responses to the nuclear era, which they are not. Nothing reasonable about them at all.

You would not have these arsenals, in the US or elsewhere, if it were not the case that it was highly profitable to the military-industrial complex, to the aerospace industry, to the electronics industry, and to the weapons design labs to keep modernizing these weapons, improving accuracy, improving launch time, all that. The military–industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about is a very powerful influence. We’ve talked about unwarranted influence. We’ve had that for more than half a century.

JOHN MECKLIN: But nuclear planners inside the US government have to know that a few hundred nuclear warheads would deter anyone from attacking.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yes, they have said that. It’s a radical statement from the point of view of our actual arsenal. Yet, when you think about it, if you talk about deterring attack, think hard. Hundreds of weapons? Are we kidding here? Would it take hundreds of operational weapons to deter a US attack using thermonuclear weapons in North Korea or Iraq or Iran—or would it take one? One might not be so reliable in terms of the possibility of eliminating it in a first strike, but how about 10, or could we get up to 30? But hundreds? Hundreds of US cities on retaliation, let’s say, or dozens, scores? That’s absurd. What I’ve been saying here and what hasn’t been brought up in the past is these radical proposals of going down to 300 or 200 [nuclear warheads]—the US government doesn’t get close to supporting them—but [the proposals] themselves are enormously greater than could be justified by the one objective of deterring nuclear attack.

Hundreds of weapons—first of all, unless they’re somehow all managed to be far from cities to burn, give you nuclear winter or a form of nuclear winter or nuclear famine. Even aside from that, the blast and the fallout and the radiation are of continental scale, basically, in their exterminating effects.

How then do we get to the thousands? I’ll go all the way back now to 1949 and ’50, when the Russians first got nuclear weapons. Suddenly, we acquired all of their possible airfields as possible targets, and then the Russian missiles [were made part of the US nuclear targeting plan]. If you want to have reliability—because our early missiles were far from reliable—you get at least two warheads for every warhead you’re going after over there. Then, more [warheads] than that, if it’s hard targets you’re talking about.

There’s only one little caveat on this process of targeting: How are you really going to keep them from having dozens, scores, or even hundreds of warheads left, as in sub-launched missiles, for example? You’re not, which means that this first-strike effort, this disarming effort, is itself a real hoax when it comes to the goal of limiting damage. You’re not going to limit damage. It’s been infeasible for the US since the Russians had a significant number of sub-launched missiles, as I say in the book, and that was the mid ‘60s. That was half a century ago.

I would say that our damage-limiting, counterforce-decapitating, highly accurate, fast-launched weapons—air-launched weapons and ICBMs and increasingly accurate sub-launched missiles, but particularly the ICBMs, which are themselves vulnerable to attack—have been totally anachronistic from a military point of view for over half a century. They can hit Soviet ICBMs or Russians ICBMs and command and control. Wonderful! Does the US survive that attack? No. It doesn’t survive attack from even a fraction of the Soviet or Russian sub-launched missiles.

What’s it all for? It is for [military] service share of the budget. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Grumman, Northrop. Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, as one after another official has put it, from James Baker to others. Profits, as I say, jobs, and campaign donations. It’s embedded in all 50 states of the union, one way or another, in the various expenditures, and very hard to get rid of. Almost impossible. I just don’t see that you can say it’s impossible.

By the way, Chalmers Johnson, just before he died, who had written three books now on our empire of bases, said to me, “It’s impossible to change that. It’s too widely spread. It’s too embedded in our political and economic systems.”

That’s not an unreasonable answer or a crazy answer. The point is, though, that at this moment, no one can prove, and he couldn’t prove, that it can’t change. Things had looked impossible to change—like the Berlin Wall, in the short run and the mid-run—did fall. The USSR, the Warsaw Pact, did collapse. Nelson Mandela did come to power in an election without a violent revolution. No one would have said that was possible years earlier, to my knowledge. Things that don’t look possible can happen.

I would also say that no significant change has occurred at all, and we are maintaining this mad policy. But it is being done, again, in the absence of almost any public awareness or debate. In the last several elections—but let’s take the last one in particular—nuclear winter, of course is not mentioned. But there’s really no dispute that came up significantly about the arms budget, about the nuclear budget, or any of the rest of it. That’s hardly an excuse, but it’s an explanation in a way for no media discussion of it, except in the _Bulletin of Atomic Scientists_, thanks a lot. Your role is essential but not sufficient, it would seem.

JOHN MECKLIN: In terms of over the last year and a half, I see a huge increase in public interest in this subject. Every time the president says something like “fire and fury,” the _Bulletin_‘s analytics go through the roof. We get 10 times the readership we normally would.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Oh, really? That’s interesting. However, sorry to say, I wish it were 100 or 1,000 times.

JOHN MECKLIN: It’s a significant number of people, but the question is how do those people become politically active, something that actually has an effect on nuclear policy?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I wish I knew. Certainly, nothing I’ve been part of has done that adequately. The [nuclear] freeze, in a way, was aiming so moderately, so modestly, so low on simply stopping where we were, that it did get very broad support. But then I discovered something in 1984. We had something like 87 percent support or something like that for the freeze.

I don’t think you can get 87 percent of the public anytime—including right now—to tell you who the vice president of the United States is, so that was amazing. Yet, in 1984, they voted for Reagan. Wait a minute. I did little calculations. I thought, as best I could, it means that an awful lot of people who supported the freeze voted for Reagan. Maybe more than half. What’s going on in here?

It’s obvious to me from that result in ’84, from which I had quite a depression, that people who supported the freeze had nevertheless voted for Reagan because their priorities were different. Again, jobs or economic concerns or whatever. And patriotism, militarism. That was depressing. The depression turns out not to have been unrealistic, either.

I don’t have the answer to your question. I just know that impossible things have happened and that’s what I think we have to hope for.

JOHN MECKLIN: I wanted to ask you one more question.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Sure.

JOHN MECKLIN: This is just pure curiosity. Seemingly out of nowhere, it became Daniel Ellsberg time in America. _The Post_ comes out, your book is published, there are things on PBS.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Those were coincidences.

JOHN MECKLIN: The movie and the book just came out at the same time by coincidence completely?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Not entirely. In the large, yes, but the publisher actually put pressure on me when they learned the movie was being rushed out by the end of the year for Oscar consideration and for political reasons. They urged me to move my own deadline, which had been extended time after time by that time for years even, from this spring to try to get it out in early December, so it was to be around the same time as the movie.

That put me under tremendous physical pressure to do it at my age, and I was spending all-nighters, which is my wont when it comes to finishing something but I’m not really up to it at 86 there. It was hard on me, but the point, in answer to your question, they did want to get it out a few months earlier, sooner rather than later, in order to take advantage of being along with the time of _The Post_, the movie, which, of course, doesn’t deal with this issue at all and could have, but it doesn’t.

JOHN MECKLIN: Okay. Real last question. I think more Americans should probably know what nuclear targeting plans are like.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Oh, they should know. What I get from a book like Schlosser’s, a great book, and even decades before that, Fred Kaplan’s book, _Wizards of Armageddon_, and books like Janne Nolan’s excellent book, _Guardians of the Arsenal_, and work by Scott Sagan, and Hans Kristensen from the Federation of American Scientists—what I realize here is that year after year and decade after decade, people who have access to these plans have the same reaction that I did in ’61. Which is: “Ye gods, we can do better than this. We don’t have to have a plan that hits every city in Russia and China,” which it was then and remained for quite a while, by the way. I’ve always felt that it was not really in humanity’s interest to destroy the command and control, centralized, of a major nuclear power, if that left the world with scores, dozens, hundreds, even of surviving nuclear weapons that are under decentralized control. How do you ever stop the nuclear war under those conditions?

My point is, yes, people who’ve looked at [nuclear targeting plans], they make the same changes in the plans that I did. They never had any effect on the actual prospects of a war. You can’t really get the Air Force, or for that matter probably now the Navy, from targeting what they think of as military targets in the cities. The cities do burn anyway. They can’t take seriously at all the idea of not destroying the centralized command control of Moscow. By the way, Russia, it turns out, has always had the same point of view as our [military] services.

We’ve always—whatever these planners, starting with me and ever after say— aimed far too low to try to improve the workings of what is inevitably and inexorably a doomsday machine. We don’t even affect what it will do, let alone whether it would make much difference if our actual proposals were implemented. I was just rereading Schlosser on that point the other day. That was the point that came through to me. All these people are making the same adjustments to the plan that I tried to in 1961 and ’62.

I was participating in plans—it’s true for my plans as well—for something that is only euphemistically called mass murder. “Mass” doesn’t entirely convey that we’re not talking about a massacre in a historic sense here, but we’re talking about the annihilation of tens, hundreds of millions of people. And really billions of people. That’s not an exaggeration; even aside from the smoke [that causes nuclear winter], you’re talking billions of people. Mass murder doesn’t quite convey that, because there is no human language that conveys it.

We don’t have language, and we don’t have concepts. I think going back to your earlier question of why doesn’t the media or the public get this? In a way, I’m not sure humans are able to absorb emotionally or even cognitively what our current [nuclear targeting] plans would actually do, if they’re carried out.

I think what one aspect here is that hardly any informed analysis of these situations has conveyed how insane and immoral this planning actually is. That’s what I wanted to try to convey in my book.

By the way, I notice that you have an article in the current issue on eliminating the land-based missiles, which should have been done half a century ago and every year since and hasn’t been done and isn’t about to be done, even though former Secretary of Defense [Bill] Perry has strongly called for that, as has General James Cartwright, former head of Strategic Command, and I think General Lee Butler, former of the first head of Strategic Command, last head of SAC, has also called for that, getting rid of the ICBMs.

What can I say that can possibly have any political influence comparable to the former Secretary of Defense and the former head of Strategic Command? And they have no effect, as if they hadn’t said anything. It’s not too hopeful. With my book, I’m just trying, doing what I can.

question: What made Daniel Ellsberg famous?

answer: The leaking of the Pentagon Papers

question: Who is the dialogue between?

answer: Daniel Ellsberg and John Mecklin

question: What does Ellsberg's book highlight?

answer: His career as an analyst involved in crafting Nuclear war plans.

question: What did Ellsberg eventually realize?

answer: That the war plans he was helping create were the blueprints for the obliteration of civilization.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer:
Daniel Ellsberg became famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers over 45 years ago. Now he has published a book that chronicles his career as a RAND Corporation analyst deeply involved in crafting American Nuclear war plans in the 1960s.
Ellsberg eventually realized that these were blueprints for the obliteration of civilization. As he became deeply involved in efforts to reduce world nuclear arsenals, Ellsberg has a conversation with John Mecklin about how the danger of nuclear weapons might be conveyed more effectively to the general public.


split: train

text:
Texas Longhorns freshman wide receiver DeAndre McNeal hasn't been a big part of the offense this season, but if his one-handed catch in practice is any indication, that could change soon:

  -Snag the money at the highest point. #Finessin #Hookem #LetsRide pic.twitter.com/paQqJ2CNkv

  — The DeAndre McNeal6⃣ (@tbhmcNEal) November 4, 2015

The 6'1, 236-pounder has one carry for nine yards this season, but is yet to make his first catch as a Longhorn, despite the promise from a member of the coaching staff that he would receive the first touch against Notre Dame in the opener if he committed. And though McNeal missed the Iowa State game due to a football injury, it looks like he's healthy once again.

With play caller Jay Norvell promising to play more young players after expressing frustration with the blocking effort and senior leadership of his players, McNeal could see more reps against Kansas. If the Longhorns are able to jump out to an early lead, it would be even easier for Norvell to justify playing more of the freshmen and sophomores.

McNeal was a consensus four-star prospect out of high school who was considered the nation's No. 20 athlete by the 247Sports Composite rankings. His pledge to Texas last December with Mesquite Poteet teammate Malik Jefferson helped set the stage for the impressive finish to the 2015 recruiting class.

question: Who is DeAndre McNeal?

answer: He is a freshman wide receiver for the Texas Longhorns.

question: What are McNeal's physical attributes?

answer: He is 6'1" tall and weighs 236 pounds

question: Who is the Longhorns' coach?

answer: Jay Norvell

question: What are McNeal's stats for the season?

answer: One carry for nine yards.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Texas Longhorns coach Jay Norvell says that freshman wide receiver DeAndre McNeal may play a big part in the offense this season. Norvell is frustrated with the blocking effort and leadership of his players, which is why McNeal could see more playing time against Kansas. McNeal, the 6'1, 236-pound consensus four-star prospect out of high school, has one carry for nine yards this season but is yet to make his first catch as a Longhorn.


text:
Cast iron bells can become unifying symbols for a community. Their distinct clarion call draws together those within earshot towards a shared experience. The Nepean Bell became such a symbol when it was first hung and rung back in 1896 from the old town hall in Westboro. As the seat of government of Nepean Township moved south-west, then east, the bell went with it. This bike tour visits the three locations the Nepean Bell has occupied since its arrival in our region. It is also a ride along a number of wonderful bike paths in the western end of town through varied terrain. The purple line is a return shortcut to get to the starting point.

Our tour begins in front of the old Town Hall building in Westboro located at 345 Richmond Road where the Nepean Bell began its public life. The building was designed by architect Moses Chamberlain Edey and opened in 1896 as the Town Hall building for the Township of Nepean.

[]
Old Town Hall in Westboro. Note the empty bell tower.
The eastern portion of Nepean Township was annexed by the city of Ottawa in 1950, however the old town hall continued to serve as Nepean Township’s headquarters until 1966. Once the construction of new headquarters were completed further west in Bells Corners the township authorities took the beloved bell with them. There they installed the bell on the front lawn in a sculpted tripod base. Each leg was a different height, meant to represent a member of the traditional nuclear family, i.e. mother, father and child. The image of this sculpture became the logo for the City of Nepean until The Great Ottawa Amalgamation of 2001. The logo is still evident on street signs, park signs, etc throughout the former city of Nepean. Note – the name Bells Corners far predates the arrival of the Nepean Bell.

[logo]
City of Nepean logo
To get to the Nepean Bell’s second home at the intersection of Old Richmond Road and Robertson Road in Bells Corners I headed over to the path that runs along the south side of the Sir John A Macdonald Parkway and followed it as far as the intersection that passes under the parkway and onto the Ottawa River Pathway.

[]
Path along Sir John A. MacDonald Driveway…. and underpass to get to the Ottawa River Pathway.
I followed the Ottawa River Pathway all the way to Britannia Bay. There I crossed Carling at the lights and got on to the Watts Creek Pathway. Where Watts Creek Pathway crosses Holly Acres Road is a bit tricky, as the path continues a short ways up quiet Aero Drive. This link is barely visible from Holly Acres Road.

[]
White arrow shows where Watts Creek Pathway pathway continues a short way Aero Drive, as seen from Holly Acres Road
Watts Creek Pathway meanders through a wooded area before crossing Corkstown Road. Once across Corkstown Road the path follows a new paved section that goes along the edge of some baseball fields to get to lights across Moodie Drive. This new section of path is a great improvement on the previously poorly maintained path that was regularly flooded.

[]
Section of Watts Creek Pathway from Corkstown to Moodie
I continued along Watts Creek Pathway for a spell before turning on to the Greenbelt Pathway West. The Greenbelt Pathway is a packed gravel surface that rolls through a wonderful assortment of woods and fields before and after it crosses Corkstown Road and goes under the Queensway.

[]
Greenbelt Pathway just south of the Queensway
[]
Greenbelt Pathway meandering through cedars
The Greenbelt Pathway West meets up with the Trans-Canada Trail which I followed to Fitzgerald Road. I turned right onto Fitzgerald, then left on to Robertson Road at the lights. Robertson Road is a busy street with lots of traffic. It also has a bike lane between Fitzgerald and Moodie Drive.

[]
Bike lane along Robertson Road
I turned right onto Moodie which also has a bike lane that goes only as far as Hadley Crescent. I rode along Hadley Crescent, then Tanglewood Drive, then Old Richmond Road to get to the second stop of the Nepean Bell at the corner of Robertson Road and Richmond Road. The building which was built to serve as the township headquarters in 1966 only lasted until 1988 when it was demolished and replaced it with a mini-mall.They had already moved to the Nepean City Hall at 101 Centrepointe Drive.

[]
Second stop of the Nepean Bell – 3825 Old Richmond Rd
I then wove my way through residential streets of the Lyndwood Village neighbourhood, which has a fine selection of mid-century-modern home designs.

[]
Lovely Lyndwood Village
This brought me to Bruin Road beside Bell High School. Bruin Road gets you over highway 416 to the Bruce Pit. I took the path around the northern perimeter of Bruce Pit.

[]
Path around Bruce Pit
Next I dipsy-do’d along a combination of paths and residential streets to get to the bike path that cuts diagonally along a hydro pole right-of-way to Centrepoint Drive.

[]
Centrepoint Pathway
Once arrived at Centrepoint Drive, I rode around to the front of the old Nepean city hall to discover the Nepean Bell installed in the middle of a mini round-a-bout. I gave it a ring and it sounded great!

[]
Nepean Bell resting place
Et voila!

question: Does the Nepean Bell still exist?

answer: It may be implied that the bell still exists.

question: Why was the image of the sculpture of a traditional nuclear family chosen as the logo?

answer: This information can't be found.

question: What is the motive behind this tour?

answer: The motive of this tour is to visit all the places the Napean Bell has occupied.

question: What are the narrator's emotions after seeing the bell?

answer: It may be implied that the narrator feels happy after ringing the bell.


text:
„Purge it!“ Ramsey looked down to the screen. His fingertips hovered above a small rectangle which would unleash hell. Again, the sharp voice cut through the mayhem on the bridge. „Commander, I need your acknowledgement. Purge it!" Since the spaceship was already shaking from missile hit after missile hit, nobody noticed his trembling hand.
His gaze wandered a little higher to the massive observation window. The curvature could clearly be seen, seperating ground and heaven. Ramsey remembered being down there once, sitting in a space port with some friends from the academy and listening to an interesting history talk.

He had purged a moon six months before. There were riots on the small colony Triton-4, and Benson had ordered the same command. It was just a small colony. But together with the eight other colonies on the moon they were building a new jumpgate in Neptun's orbit. The first one was fully operational and orbiting Uranus, about 12 billion spacemen had already traveled to their new homes a few dozen lightyears away. It was a slow process, and an expensive one. Luckily the people on the surfaces volunteered for the hard work – at least all the officers told so.

But now he was in doubt. A big fleet of construction ships was hovering near the sun, ready to install the solar panels for the giant Dyson sphere. Ramsey hadn't fully grasped the concept, but it was something like a bubble around the sun. It would still let some light pass through, but could harness the energy and solve all their energy problems.
Somehow, the people down their didn't like that and broke the 70 year long peace by blowing two of the construction ships up. Things escalated quickly and a week later the Omega's weapon systems were programmed to destroy 500 million km², ready to tansform the surface into a billowing, red-glowing mass.

Their spaceship was built for only one thing: Annihilating surfaces. With a length of 327 meters it carried an arsenal of the most devastating weapons ever created, and after its deployment the third world war came to a grinding halt. That was 90 years ago, and while much bigger ships were built, all of them combined still couldn't match the unique firepower of the Omega.
It was a tool of peace and stability, his captain said. Ramsey remembered watching the surface of Triton evaporate under their glowing beams and heavy bombardement, but he didn't feel peaceful at all.

"Shield system critical", the computer voice rattled. They could sustain the attack for another minute, maybe two. Unless he touched the small rectangle. But he couldn't do it. "Captain, this is insane. We can't decide the fate of 9 billion people." - "We can, and we must. As they shot our unarmed construction ships down, they knew what they did. And you know what to to, acknowledge my order and purge those surfacemen!" Captain Benson clenched her fist. "Commander, now!"
Surely she was right. Her orders came directly from the artificial intelligence, and it had never been wrong. If he touched the rectangle, he would be the hero of the day and the war was over. But if he didn't, the missiles from the surface would break their shield in a few seconds and then their armored hull in a few more. There was no more time to think. His finger jerked down.

In a millisecond, the computer scanned his DNA and initalized the launch process. "Authentication phrase", chattered the computer voice. Ramsey stared through the observation window at the soft glow of the atmosphere.   The authentication phrase glared in his thoughts like the sun. He chose it a long time ago, as he visited the planet. It was after a history talk – maybe an hour long and illustrated with lots of pictures. Beautiful pictures from the ancient times. Their history. Slowly, he uttered the authentication phrase. "Earth ... is ... beautiful."

title: I don't like happy ends [~650 words]

question: Summarize the source of tension in the story.

answer: Commander Ramsey is in charge of a spacecraft, and the sole purpose of this spacecraft is to purge large surfaces. Though the Commander has done this before, his order to purge a planet or moon (it is not entirely made clear in the story) comes as a surprise to his subordinates. Ramsey and his crew are in danger due to some missiles headed their way, and their only defense is to purge what they are looking at-possibly the sun, it seems.

question: Summarize the theme of this story.

answer: The theme of this story is the price of winning. The numbers thrown out in this story are massive-in the trillions-and Ramsey is saddled with the task of trying to conceive of ending that many lives in order to persevere. This is an extremely high cost, but it also seems that lives in space are numerous and expendable-the Commander thinks about how billions were able to escape his last purge.

question: Explain the meaning behind the authentication phrase.


text:
Far off in the distance it hovered. Solemnly it approached. Slowly it descended.

Ray's fight or flight response was beginning to take control of his system as the dying star formerly known as Sol crept its way from sight. Why his designers put such a damned human response in him Ray would never know, not for lack of curiosity, but for the simple fact they were all dead. Murdered. By his hands.

His existence alone was proof that mankind had reached a level of intellect few had dreamed of - and even less had deemed possible before they destroyed themselves - As this whimsical thought brushed through Ray's organic based CPU his sympathetic nervous system triggered the adrenal gland to dump more epinephrine into his bloodstream - and Ray ran.

His rational thought processes diminished. His legs screamed for oxygen. His heart pounded. For the next twenty minutes Ray sprinted. Sprinted away from the source of his fear. Something incomprehensible. Something much more frightening than the armies he had faced before. Worse than even the largest artillery shelling he had ever been the target of. More fearsome than he himself was.

Though Ray was designed to be an unstoppable death monger for the 'radical' Cyo-Organics; Designed for nothing in the world to stop him or frighten him. Designed to crush all those who fought against the belief of integrating biology and machine.

"Hah. Religious wars."

The concept eluded him as he thundered onwards.

"Damn humans."

"ZAAAAAAAAP" the sound of a thousand arcs of electricity suddenly came into being in his ears. The sound kicked his slowing Adrenal gland back into high gear as he was reminded why he was running. Them. The others. He had no name for them. Only fear of them and no time to contemplate what they wanted with him except perhaps his destruction. So he ran.

After he had completed his tasks of eliminating the opposing continents Ray had become...well...bored. He was an organic machine - designed for destruction. Armed with the highest tech available to the researchers. The EMP affixed to his back and powered by his core allowed him to easily subdue all attempts of defense in his conquest. The Gauss cannon embed in his arm's skeletal structure made short work of dispatching the then defenseless forces, and his nanotech skin created a armor capable of deflecting all attacks. Physical and electrical. He was even guarded against telekinesis - his designers had thought of it all. Except what to do with him when his mission was complete - The one hiccup that cost them all.

Suddenly Ray became aware of a sense of weightlessness as all of his senses snapped to this change in reality. He immediately attempted to run faster but was only treading air. His gaze shifted upwards to it. Them. The ones who put such fear into his body. Immediately he was racked with nerve-jarring shakes as this feeling of fear reached limits he had never dreamed of. He was being drawn into the gaping maw of their craft. An oblong affair so completely pitch black it seemed to not exist. However, it existed to Ray. As a fear so prevalent he could feel it. Taste it. So nightmarish in its quality his body rejected it and he vomited...

Lights. Bright lights. That was his first experience back in the waking world.

"What the he-" suddenly he could not speak. His mouth worked. He was sure of his words. He knew how to put the two together. Nonetheless, he couldn't.

"We have been watching you."

A thundering voice. A voice of immense power and knowledge. A voice to strike fear.

"We have seen what you have done."

Where was it coming from?

"Worry not."

Ray felt immediate relaxation course through his body. Palpable. Calming. It lifted him up and set him in a sea of peace as the waves gently rocked his anxiety away. He began to have a sensation of a presence. It was the owner of the voice. For some reason he no longer felt the blistering fear and anxiety of before. Only tranquility. The presence instilled a knowledge to him. A knowing of their relationship. They had been watching this third planet of Sol for eons. They had set it in motion. They had nudged here. Prodded there. Created the circumstances that had led to his creation. They had a name. They had a face. They were his father. His mother. His brothers. They had created all of humanity as an end to a goal. Ray himself.

"We have a job for you."

As they flooded his mind with images and descriptions Ray, the ultimate creation of destruction, smiled. His face a reflection of the joy their proposition brought to him. He contemplated all the new blood to be shed.

"I'm looking forward to it."

*Critique welcomed*

title: The Others - The End of A Race [Sci-Fi] [First Story]

question: What does the text say about the war before the start of the story?

answer: It was some kind of religious war between one faction which was against integrating biology with machines and another side which was presumably in favor of it called the "Cyo-Organics." It is implied that the aliens may have intervened on Earth to set the war in motion.

question: What does the text say about the main character?

answer: The main character is some kind of organic and mechanical hybrid named Ray. He was designed to fight in a religious war before the story began, but after the war he became bored and turned on his own creators. He has an EMP affixed to his back, a Gauss cannon embedded in his arm, and nanotech skin capable of deflecting all attacks; he is also guarded against telekinesis. It is revealed at the end of the story that the aliens he has been running from altered events on Earth to lead to his creation so that they could recruit him for some job.

question: Summarize the conflict in the story.

answer: Ray is running from an alien craft. He doesn't have a name for the beings inside, and he doesn't know what they want, but he believes they are hostile. When they catch him, they reveal that they want to recruit him for a job, and he agrees.

question: What does the text say about the aliens' reasoning for choosing Ray.


text:
[The Fort Lauderdale Flamingos captured the Florida Lacrosse League Open Division championship for the first time in nearly a decade. From left, in front: Matt Stango and Mario Ventiquattro; second row: Shaun McDonald, Pat Brothers, Doug Harding, Joey Askerberg and Brendan Gleason; third row: Leon Rosenberg, Steve Wax and Matt Taulane; and back: Mike MacDonald, Terry Baker, Pat Gaughn, Todd Adler, Chuck Harreys, Chris Anterio, Clark Appleby, Clem McNally, Tim Fuchs, Joey Bellando, Tucker Schwarz and Mike Kopek. Not pictured: Matt Bellando, Steele Stockskill, Bobby Calhoun, Storm Stockskill, Dustin Goss, Matt Jones and Eric Schmidt.]

The Fort Lauderdale Flamingos captured the Florida Lacrosse League Open Division championship for the first time in nearly a decade. From left, in front: Matt Stango and Mario Ventiquattro; second row: Shaun McDonald, Pat Brothers, Doug Harding, Joey Askerberg and Brendan Gleason; third row: Leon Rosenberg, Steve Wax and Matt Taulane; and back: Mike MacDonald, Terry Baker, Pat Gaughn, Todd Adler, Chuck Harreys, Chris Anterio, Clark Appleby, Clem McNally, Tim Fuchs, Joey Bellando, Tucker Schwarz and Mike Kopek. Not pictured: Matt Bellando, Steele Stockskill, Bobby Calhoun, Storm Stockskill, Dustin Goss, Matt Jones and Eric Schmidt. (photo/courtesy)

The Fort Lauderdale Flamingos last won the Florida Lacrosse League Open Division in 2009, and after nearly a decade they were finally able to add another title to the trophy case after surging past the host Orlando Geckos, 15-5.

The Flamingos got their start in Fort Lauderdale in 1974 and have cultivated a rich tradition in the sport. They have now won a total of 15 Florida Lacrosse League Open Division championships. There were 10 teams competing in the division, with the top eight advancing to the playoffs. Many of the players have college lacrosse experience with a few former professional players on the teams.

The Flamingos earned the top seed in the tournament and took down the Treasure Coast Scorpions, 8-4, in the quarterfinals. In the semifinals match against the Hogtowne Club, the Fort Lauderdale team prevailed 14-8 to set up the decisive showdown against the Geckos. The Geckos took down the Jacksonville Armadillos in their semifinal match.

Mike Kopek has been a member of the Flamingos for a decade. He was a rookie when the club last secured the league crown in the Open Division.

"There is no coach on this team. It's a collection of guys who work together for a common goal," Kopek said. "This is a very competitive league."

The Flamingos have made it to the final game four of the last six years, only to come out on the short end. Winning this championship was extra special and some of the players really had to step up their game to achieve the conquest.

Mario Ventiquattro played collegiately for the Ohio State University Buckeyes , and then went on to play professionally for the Ohio Machine and the Florida Launch in Major League Lacrosse .

Morning Update Newsletter

Weekdays

Start your day with the top stories in South Florida.

"Mario is a spectacular player and a great guy," Kopek said. "He willed us to the championship victory. He took over the game and either scored or assisted on our first eight goals. That is the best game I have ever seen him play. He had that look in his eyes and wasn't going to let us lose another championship."

Flamingos goalkeeper Pat Brothers was stellar between the pipes, earning him the game Most Valuable Player award. Attacker Tim Fuchs had an outstanding game scoring six goals and two assists, while Ventiquattro had five goals and five assists.

All of the Flamingos players handled their roles with determination and executed their playmaking to perfection.

"This is my sixth year playing with the Flamingos and prior to this game I was 0-4 in championship games," said Ventiquattro, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. "It's pretty cool because guys are still competitive and it meant a lot to the guys who have been around for a while. Lacrosse players are like family. The ride home from Orlando was very pleasant after winning the championship."

The roster of the champion Fort Lauderdale Flamingos includes Matt Stango (Stevenson), Mario Ventiquattro (Ohio State, Ohio Machine, Florida Launch), Shaun McDonald (Lynn), Pat Brothers (Lemoyne, Lynn), Doug Harding (Bentley), Joey Askerberg (Limestone), Brendan Gleason (Albany), Leon Rosenberg (Lehigh), Steve Wax (Hofstra, Drexel), Matt Taulane (Bellarmine), Mike MacDonald (Bentley), Terry Baker (Notre Dame), Pat Gaughn (Connecticut College), Todd Adler (Cornell), Chuck Harreys (Wittenberg), Chris Anterio, Clark Appleby (Dickenson), Clem McNally (Tufts), Tim Fuchs (Virginia), Joey Bellando (Florida), Tucker Schwarz (Merrimack), Mike Kopek (Central Michigan), Matt Bellando (Stony Brook, LIU Post, Florida Launch), Steele Stockskill (Hofstra, Florida Launch), Bobby Calhoun (Tampa) and Storm Stockskill (Jacksonville).

-   Lacrosse
-   Florida Launch
-   Ohio State Buckeyes
-   Ohio Machine
-   Major League Lacrosse

question: Who did the Fort Lauderdale Flamingos win against?

answer: The Flamingos won against the Orlando Geckos.

question: How many games have the Flamingos won so far?

answer: The Flamingos have won a total of 15 games so far.

question: Which team did the Flamingos challenge in the semi-finals?

answer: The Flamingos played against the Hogtowne Club.

question: Who did the Geckos challenge in the semi-finals?

answer: The Geckos won against Jacksonville Armadillos.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer:
The Fort Lauderdale Flamingos won the Florida Lacrosse League Open Division championship against the Orlando Geckos. Many of the players have college lacrosse experience.

The Flamingos took down Hogtowne Club in the semi-finals, while the Geckos took down the Jacksonville Armadillos.

The Flamingos won the title again after nearly a decade.


text:
This is a rough idea and this is the first draft. There are probably a lot of errors, but my eyes need to look at something else for a while. In the meantime, it would be nice to have some feedback from a fresh perspective. Cheers.

Bridge

A man walks east along a dirt road. He carries a leather pack and inside is a stale loaf of bread wrapped in butcher paper, a few apples tied together with a handkerchief, and a metal canteen filled with warm water. His lips are chapped from the heat and his frugal rationing. On his journey he passes several towns, but he never stays the night, always sleeping far off the road and past the outskirts. Each morning he wakes in the cool darkness and walks slowly toward the dim glow in the east. He hasn’t spoken a word in months and hasn’t needed to.

Eventually, the man comes to a bridge that leads over a large body of water. He stops before it and looks to the north. A large metropolis glowing with revelry consumes the horizon. He turns to the south and sees a vast desert fading into a mirage. He faces the bridge again and wanting neither the city nor the desert, decides to cross. The sun sets behind him as he makes it to the other side. He pulls off the road and sleeps until the dark morning.

The man is startled awake by the brilliance of the sun. He has slept in later than he had intended to. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and gathers together his things, but then he stops. Something in the west catches his eye, or rather the lack of something. The bridge is gone. No evidence of its existence remains. He sees the shore of where he’s been as a thin, tan line upon the sea. The metropolis looks like a spec. Alarmed, but unshaken, the man picks up his pack and continues east, leaving the vanished bridge behind him.

He walks for several hours until finally he hears the crashing of waves. He scales a small hill, following the sound. At its summit, the man looks out into an endless ocean. The bridge he had crossed that was no longer there had led him to an island. The great expanse of the desert and the sensory overload of the metropolis don’t seem so unappealing anymore. He stands there for some time, staring east into the void. Finally, he decides to turn around. The man starts walking west.

It isn’t until the next day that the man reaches the other side of the island. He finds the spot where the bridge had been and decides to set up camp. “Perhaps the bridge will reappear just as it has disappeared.” The man didn’t believe his own mouth, but hope would be enough to keep him going. He fashions a shelter out of branches and large palm leaves. He digs a pit with his hands and starts a fire. Then, he waits.

After several days, his bread and apples spent, the man starts building a boat, but with his increasingly weak condition, his labor is slow. At night, when the earth is cool, he eats the bugs and worms crawling and squirming in the grass and leaves. By the time the man finishes the boat, he is malnourished and hosting lice and ticks. His fatigue spreads to his mind, and despite all of this, he sets off into the water with nothing more than his oar. He paddles with vehement strokes, every other one in time with a thin, raspy exhale. Before he is even halfway across, the sun starts to sink. He fights to keep his eyes open, but the darkness takes him. With the last of his energy, the man falls over the side of the boat and into the water asleep.

It is mid afternoon when he wakes in the sand, the waves forcing salt into his mouth and nostrils. He coughs violently, but silently. He looks around him, wondering how he was still alive or if he was alive at all. When he sees his shelter, he knows he is alive or condemned to Hell or both. He staggers to his feet and walks toward it. The coals are still warm in the fire pit.  He sits next to it, almost not breathing. He leans against a tree and looks up. Hanging from its branches are several large melons. The man gets up quickly. He manages to get one down by throwing a rock at it. With another, he cuts open the melon and presses it into his face. He sucks its moisture and starts to laugh. He gathers some more and sleeps well.

A few days pass and the tree is bare. The night comes and the man eats bugs. With his boat lost, he fashions another in his starvation and casts out. When tossed to the water and washed to shore, the man wakes among dead fish. He eats them over a period of a week. Days following, he begins to starve. He sees the line of where he came from on the horizon, and in his weakness, fashions a boat to set out into the treacherous waters only to brought back half-dead.

He would wait for the bridge forever.

title: [Bridge] (Draft 1)

question: Where is the man heading?

answer: He doesn't seem to have a plan until he sees the bridge. The man then decides to go to the large metropolis on the other side of it.

question: Based on the first paragraph, what type of person does the man seem to be?

answer: He seems to be a loner or a vagabond.

question: Why did the man sleep later than he intended to?

answer: It's possible he had been exhausted.

question: How does the bridge disappearance change the man?

answer: The man became malnourished and weak as he waited for the bridge to return.

question: How is the reader supposed to feel when reading " the man falls over the side of the boat and into the water asleep"?

answer: It's possible the reader is supposed to feel like that is the end for the man.

question: How does the man feel when he wakes up alive?

answer: He wonders if he is alive or condemned to hell because he's still stuck on the island.


text:
_PROSTITUTE_ () also known as _SLAIN BY LIFE_ () is a 1927 Soviet silent drama film directed by Oleg Frelikh.[1][2]

Plot

The film is set in Moscow during the mid 1920s, heyday of the New Economic Policy, or NEP. Some live the high life while others barely survive. A young girl, Lyuba lives with her elderly Aunt Barbara. The aunt abuses the girl, and later, “sells” her to a neighbor and kicks her out of the house. But Lyuba does not stay in the street for long, she is sheltered by a woman she meets, who turns out to be a brothel madam. The madam also imposes a contract of adhesion upon the girl.

The Tyrkin family lives next to Aunt Barbara. Pyotr Tyrkin works for the businessman-butcher Kondratiev. Tyrkin's everyday life is well-adjusted. His wife Vera keeps house and raises their two young children. Working for Kondratiev brings a regular income. Tyrkin is killed when drunk. Left without a livelihood, Vera is forced by the situation to give herself to the butcher (the boss of her deceased husband), and then to sell her body.

On the street she meets with the veteran prostitute Manka. Manka tells Vera that when she worked as a maid, she was seduced by the son of the mistress. After getting kicked out of the house by the mistress for having relations with her son, she became homeless. On the street she came to work at a whorehouse and contracted a venereal disease from which she is still recovering.

Vera is unable to earn money by prostitution. Both of her children fall seriously ill. In desperation she tries to commit suicide by throwing herself into an ice-hole. But she does not succeed and is rescued. Among the saviors is Lyuba who managed to escape from the brothel and now works in a sewing workshop at a venereal dispensary. She has a new boyfriend is Shura who is a member of the Komsomol. The brothel keeper does not want to just let Lyuba go. She threatens to tell Shura all about her past. So, the teary-eyed girl tells Shura everything herself. Shura sympathizes with her and helps to write a letter to the prosecutor. The police break up the den.

Lyuba and Shura are happy. Life is getting better for Vera too because Shura helps her get a job as a railway points operator and her children begin to go the kindergarten. Manka is housed in a venereal hospital.

Cast

-   Olga Bonus as Aunt Varvara (as O. Bonus)
-   Mark Donskoy
-   L. Krasina
-   Ivan Lagutin as Vasiliy Dmitrich (as I. Lagutin)
-   Aleksandr Ledashchev
-   Vera Orlova
-   E. Sheremetyeva
-   Pavel Tamm as Kondratiev - the butcher (as P. Tamm)
-   E. Toeplitz
-   Elisaveta Yarosh Elisaveta Yarosh ... Lyuba
-   Vasili Yaroslavtsev as Peter Stupin (as V. Yaroslavtsev)

Interesting Facts

-   “Prostitute” shares the glory of being the first Belarusian feature film together with “Forest Story”. Work on the film “Prostitute” started earlier and it was also released first in the all-union movie theaters, but “Forest Story” was shown in Minsk first.[3]
-   Despite the film's success with the audience, the critics of that time did not receive the film too positively, and some saw in it the influence of the “bourgeois pseudo-scientific German films”.[4]
-   A circulaire dated 1937 from “Belgoskino” reported to Boris Shumyatsky in Moscow, the head of the main department of the film industry of the USSR about neutralizing “enemy” films. The ban for the film “Prostitute” was motivated by the fact that the film was seen as being “politically incorrect”.[5]
-   A significant episode (by the length of the film) is dedicated to the lecture “about the dangers of prostitution and social ways of getting rid of it.” The lecture uses the statistics available at the time and simple animation.
-   The intertitles are in three languages, Russian, English and Chinese.

[Prostitute (Slayed by Life) 1927]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

title: Prostitute (1927 film)

question: When is the film set in?

answer: The film is set in the mid 1920's.

question: How many languages were the intertitles written in?

answer: The intertitles were written in three languages.

question: Who played Aunt Varvara?

answer: Olga Bonus played Aunt Varvara.

question: What other film shares the honor of being the first Belarusian feature film?

answer: "Forest Story" shares the honor of being the first Belarusian feature film.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The Belarusian film "Prostitute" tells the story of a family and their neighbors struggling to survive in a challenging economic situation. It was one of the first Belarusian feature films, and was released in 1927. The film was banned by the USSR, claiming it was "politically incorrect."


text:
The hopeless prayers from the begging mortals on The Planet beneath the weak and wide-awake Oracle stung Him as He wept to the chirps of songbirds flying through the sky around. The Oracle could not hold His composure any longer. The clouds crashed together, and downward lightning broke through horizons of soils that had been left untouched for millions of years. The Oracle stepped down onto The Planet, looked about His creation, and took a large uneven breathe. Today, His masterpiece looked beautiful to Him, but as He began echoing through the muse of the fractured and beaten, asking His creatures that He created long ago to eye, and listen for one final time, His brief-bliss ended. 'I am sorry My children, but today is the End of Days. The promise I made for you, a life in eternal peace and joy, has been broken. I cannot care for you anymore, and your prayers will no longer be answered. You will all forget what was, and will no longer be' said The Oracle. He planned on whispering the message to the mortals, but their petrified and war-torn faces made it seem that He had screamed like The Mad One did during the first-false-apocalypse. The drums of ambient mist subsided through and in between dark dens, crests and villages, and all that moved east and west with the rivers and winds cried for mercy, but no answer was returned as the Mighty One ascended back to His shattered throne. The words The Oracle spoke kissed the entire world to sleep, and The Good Teacher the mortals called him millenniums ago, ended His love in a mere moment. The Oracle wept at his closing remarks, as He never wanted to leave them dying in fear.

The Planet fell through an endless-expansion towards the entropic boundary, and flashed out of existence. The Oracle followed just behind The Planet, and into The Void underneath the entropic-boundary, where He met its Gatekeeper, standing perpetuate and looking away. 'I’m sorry, My good one. I need Your friendship now, more than ever. I am dying, and so are You. We have to leave. We must end this. Please, forgive Me.' said The Oracle. The Gatekeeper turned and looked at Her Brother with a flavor only the Masters of Sorrow would know. She stared with vehemence at Her Brother’s weak posture. She dreamed of this day. She wanted revenge. She walked like venom over to Her Brother, who turned away like a cowardice lamb about to be slaughtered. But as she peered into her small younger Brother, who shook and looked indifferent from any other poor mortal boy, She knew that Their Work was absolute, finished and over. Her fury subsided, and with a silent ease, leaned Her bloodied head on Her Brother’s shoulder, and as soft as She could without collapsing, cried for the first time since Her sentence. 'Let’s go home friend. Let’s start over. Your eternal punishment is over' said The Oracle in scattered breathes. The Void vanished in beat with time’s outro, and the two Creators left the remaining fabric pulsing, flowing, and isostatic. The Oracle and The Gatekeeper exited the testing chamber with Their heads hung down, each with distinct scents of misery. But before the Two ended Their experiment, They looked into each-other’s divine eyes, nodded and hugged once more. 'I promise no more pain' whispered The Oracle into His Sister’s ear, and in a shine and great flicker, the room disappeared, Their constructed existence ceased, and the hum of all that ever was in Their Universe laughed back into eternity. The Creators’ long simulation had ended, and They were on their way back Home to deliver their findings.

title: [Critique Wanted] "The End of the Experiment" (635 words)

question: Does The Planet survive?

answer: No.

question: Who are the Oracle's children?

answer: The Oracle's children are all that exists on The Planet.

question: Where does the Oracle go to?

answer: The Oracle goes to The Gatekeeper.

question: Why did The Gatekeeper seek revenge from her brother?

answer: This information can't be found.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer:
The Oracle weeps to the chirps of the birds on The Planet. He walks to his creation and apologetically says it is the end of days. The winds cried for mercy but Oracle didn't answer.

The Planet fell towards the entropic boundary and goes out of existence.


text:
There was once a town by the name of Jarte. Jarte was set in the middle ages. It was self sufficent and didn't hold any ties or trades with any other place. When the town was created, people understood that you couldn't fuck about and do whatever the hell you pleased, you had to listen and take orders if you wanted to survive, otherwise a bear would eat your face.

The town was settled near a forest with a huge lake in the middle. The townspeople would often go to swim in the lake, since they were basically peasants and their lives were terrible and hard, they needed entertainment. That's why they had sex and went swimming during their free time. There was also a theater, but no one went there since that goat died in there. That's a different story though, so I won't get into it.

Eventually, as the town grew and houses were built and people were made by process of sexual intercourse and crops were grown, hierarchy developed. Certain people did the work and took orders, certain people both gave and took orders, and certain people simply gave orders. There was a royal family who was considered higher than the others because they were more handsome. And because of their handsomeness and charm, people listened to them. And the ugly people with dirt on their faces who didn't bathe or wear make up, did the work and took orders. The Royal family was spoilt as fuck and got everything handed to them, everyone respected them because they were authority and you had to.  The folks in the middle got angry at being looked down upon by the ones at the top so they took their frustrations on the lower working class. And after a hard day of work, the peasants would go home and take their frustrations out on their kids. And the kids couldn't wait until they were old enough to fuck with others. Such was the way of the town of Jarte.

Things continued after the town had been settled and it stayed like that for a few decades. Not much change happened, people went on with their lives. But one day, something went wrong. Something that shocked the town. It was a saturday, and after a week of working everyone went to the lake. Some people stayed home of course, but most went to the lake to relax and have some fun before starting work again. It was nighttime and people were laughing and eating and swimming. The kids splashed at each other and played in the water.

Suddenly swords were drawn. The soldiers told everyone to get the fuck home. They all screamed and ran home like "what the hell is going on??" The soldiers told everyone to stay at home and strict rules were put on the town. Rumors quickly spread about how the royal family had drowned at the lake, and they were suspicious that someone had rebelled against them, destroying the order and hierarchy that was necessary for society to function.

A funeral was held for four members of the family. The king and queen and their two daughters. The only one who survived was their fat son, who was too fat to swim and had decided to stay home. He was shocked to hear his family died, but was happy as fuck that he was now king.

Now, one of the peasant familys, a family of four, had a teenage boy who was suspected of drowning the family. He was 17 and worked with his father in the mines. The soldiers for the king had broke into their cottage and dragged the boy, kicking and screaming, outside. The family was shocked, but the soldiers announced that he was the one who murdered the family, and he should be punished.

He was executed in front of the entire town, his head chopped off with a motherfucking sword. They soldiers warned the townspeople that order was important, and anyone who disobeys or is violent against someone in a higher position of power shall be executed in the same way. The mother and father and brother of the boy went home crying.

Of course, that poor boy hadn't been the one who drowned the royal family. They had died because of their own stupidity. But the soldiers had to make sure order was maintained, so they made an example out of one of the workers.

When the family went home, the father beat the younger kid. He was twelve, and his father beat the living shit out of him, making him bleed and breaking a few of his teeth, screaming "WHY COULDN'T HAVE IT BEEN YOU? YOU'RE USELESS, YOU DON'T WORK! WHY WASN'T IT YOU?"

A fortnight after that, sick of his father and mother's cruelness and sick of being unwanted, the boy ran away from home. He snuck into the forest and went back to the lake, even though it was banned after they royal family had drowned. He went into the lake, hoping to drown himself and put himself out of his misery. He had no one to talk down to, no one to take his frustrations on. He was the youngest of a peasant family. He swam to the bottom and was prepared to die, when he saw something shiny. It was a stone, and it was shiny as fuck. Didn't even look like a rock. He swam to it, and came back up, just to get a look at it.

He held the stone in his hand. It was bright silver and glimmered under the light of the rising sun. He had forgotten all about his suicide now. He was just angry. He wasn't sad, he was angry. Angry at the royal family and the soldiers who were obviously ruining this town. They did nothing. They didn't work, the peasants did, yet they got all the food and big houses and THEY rules US to preserve "order."

If this was order, the boy thought, then he didn't want it. And, since he was prepared to die anyway, he might as well go out with style.

The boy ran back into town and the soldiers and townspeople saw him.

"Oh god, that boy! What the fuck!"

"Doesn't he know that he shouldn't have been in the forest? Holy fuck!"

One of the soldiers, who was escorting the fat boy as he went around, dressed in his bullshit royal clothes, looking smug as fuck, saw the boy. "Hey you! What do you think you're doing?"

The boy looked at the fat boy who was now king of the town. They both looked at each other. Both were twelve, both lived in the same town, yet they had come from entirely different worlds.

"FUCK YOU!" The peasant boy shouted, and threw the rock at the king, who bled from his forehead and died instantly, right there on the ground.

The soldiers took the peasant boy and executed him and his parents in front of the entire town. And then...

Everyone stood there, looking at each other. What were they to do now? The king was dead. Whose orders would the soldiers follow? What would happen? They stood there like robots, not knowing what to do without a master to follow orders from. They stared at each other, confused as fuck.

The silver rock that had been used to kill the king started moving. It cracked open, and from inside came a unicorn.

It wasn't a rock at all, it was an egg.

The unicorn flew out of the egg, leaving a trail of shiny glitter behind. It hovered in the sky over the townspeople.

*You fools!* the unicorn boomed, *Order and hierarchy aren't necessary in society! That's bullshit! It's about love and happiness!*

The unicorn threw up a rainbow and suddenly the town changed. The great castle for the royal family turned into a cottage like the peasants', because equality. And all the townspeople and soldiers became naked, because love and nature. The mines collapsed because useless labor is dumb, and the crops turned into marijuana.

Everyone danced naked and swam in the lake and fucked and smoked weed. Everyone was happy and love spread through the air.

*A fortnight later...*

A bald eagle comes down and stands on the ruins of the city. It has burned down and there is nothing but rubble left. Everyone died because the crops were replaced with weed and order and hierarchy was gone, so there was no motivation to work.

The bald eagle shed a single tear.

title: I wrote this story today. It's about a rock.

question: How is the town of Jarte characterized?

answer: The town of Jarte is characterized by being a place where people couldn't fuck around and do whatever the hell they pleased. It was a place that you had to take orders to survive.

question: What emotions is the author trying to evoke with this story?

answer: The emotions that the author is trying to evoke with this story are fear, intensity, and gore.

question: What would have happened if the boy had not run away from home?

answer: If the boy had not run away from home, then the boy would have had to endure his father and mother's cruelness and sick of being unwanted for a very long time and not be able to be put out of his misery.

question: What was the boy's train of thought when he was preparing to die?

answer: The boy's train of thought when preparing to die was to go out with a bang/style.


text:
In response to the loss of the strategic al-Faw Peninsula during the Iran–Iraq War, the Iraqis pushed into Iran to seize the strategic Iranian city of Mehran to trade for the strategically important territory. Saddam was able to seize the city in May 1986, for the third time. He then offered to trade it for al-Faw, but instead of negotiating, the Iranians recaptured the city in June 1986, humiliating Saddam.

Background

On February 10, 1986 Iran launched a successful surprise amphibious assault, (what became known as the first Battle of Al-Faw), across the Shatt al-Arab (_Arvand rud_ in Persian) waterway and seized the strategic al-Faw Peninsula. The Iraqi units in charge of the defenses were mostly made up of poorly trained Iraqi Popular Army conscripts that collapsed when they were suddenly attacked by the Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) forces.

The battle

Immediately after the Iranian capture of Al-Faw, Saddam declared a new offensive against Iran, Al Defa Al Muthaharraka (Arabic for The Dynamic Defense), designed to drive deep into Iran. The Iranian border city of Mehran, Ilam Province on the foot of the Zagros Mountains was selected as the first target. This city was situated on an important road leading into Iran. On May 15–19 the Iraqi Army's II Corps supported by helicopter gunships captured the city. Saddam then offered the Iranians to exchange Mehran for Al-Faw.[1] The Iranians rejected the Iraqi offer. Iraq then continued the attack attempting to push deeper into Iran. However, Iraq's attack was quickly smashed by Iranian AH-1 Cobra helicopters with TOW missiles destroying an unspecified amount of Iraqi tanks and vehicles.[2]

Iranian troops using mountain warfare built up their forces on the heights surrounding the city. On June 30, they launched OPERATION KARBALA 1, recapturing the area by July 3.[3] Saddam ordered the Republican Guard to retake the city on July 4, but their attack was thoroughly defeated. The Iraqi losses were so heavy the Iranians managed to capture some territory inside of Iraq as well. Iraq's defeats at al-Faw and at Mehran was a severe blow to the prestige of the Iraqi regime. The western powers including the U.S. also became more determined to prevent an Iraqi loss.[4]

Aftermath

After the defeat, Saddam and the Baath Party held an “Extraordinary Congress” and decided on a full mobilization of the Iraqi Popular Army.[5] Enlisting men as old as 42, the regime initiated a total call-up of available manpower in 1986. At the time the government feared that calls for the mobilization would lead to draft riots, but the response was good: young men – even college students – reported without incident. The fact that the public answered the call, indicated that Iraqis feared invasion during the war.[6][7]

Order of battle

Iraq

Iraqi Army

-   2nd Corps
    -   17th Armored Division
        -   70th Armored Brigade
        -   59th Armored Brigade
        -   705th Infantry Brigade
-   433rd, 417th, 425th Infantry Brigades
-   1st Commando Brigade, Commando Battalion of the 40th Infantry Division

_Reinforcements sent:_

Republican Guard

-   1st Mechanized
-   4th and 5th Infantry Brigades
-   3rd Special Forces Brigade
-   2nd and 10th Armored Brigades

Iraqi Army

-   35th Infantry Division
    -   71st, 72nd, 3rd Infantry Brigades
-   501st, 113th, 95th, 118th, and 108th Infantry Brigades
-   24th Mechanized Brigade
-   2nd, 3rd, and 5th Commando Brigades, Commando Battalion of the 20th Infantry Division, Commando Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division
-   65th Special Forces Brigade
-   763rd, 110th, 15th, 766th, 217th, 238th, 53rd, 247th, and 489th Artillery Battalions

Iran

-   Najaf Headquarters

        Commanded by Mostafa Izadi

    -   27th Muhammad Rasulullah Division

            6 infantry battalions, 1 tank battalion

    -   17th Ali ibn Abi Talib Division

            Commanded by Gholamreza Jaafari
            3 infantry battalions, 1 tank battalion

    -   5th Nasr Division

            3 infantry battalions

    -   25th Karbala Division

            Commanded by Morteza Ghorbani
            4 infantry battalions, 1 tank battalion

    -   10th Sayyed-osh-Shohada Division

            3 infantry battalions

    -   41st Sarallah Division

            Commanded by Qassem Soleimani
            4 infantry battalions, 1 tank battalion

    -   21st Imam Reza Independent Brigade

            2 infantry battalions

    -   15th Imam Hassan Independent Brigade

            5 infantry battalions

    -   662nd Beit-ol-Moqaddas Independent Brigade

            2 infantry battalions

    -   38th Zolfaghar Independent Armored Battalion

            1 tank company

    -   2 artillery battalions from IRGC, 4 artillery battalions from Army

-   Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

title: Battle of Mehran

question: Describe the aftermath of the battle.

answer: The aftermath of the battle lead to a full mobilization of the Iraqi Popular Army. The regime had initiated a total call-up of available manpower. The aftermath really showed that the Iraqis feared invasion during the war.

question: What discipline would find the Battle of Mehran the most important to study?


text:
FILIPE BENTO (born September 12, 1969) is an Angolan former footballer and manager who played in the Segunda Liga, Segunda Divisão, Portuguese Third Division, and the Canadian Professional Soccer League.

Career

Bento began his career in 1993 with S.C. Espinho in the Segunda Liga.[1] Throughout his time in Portugal he played in the Segunda Divisao with F.C. Infesta, Lusitânia F.C., A.D. Ovarense, and A.D. Sanjoanense. He also played in the Portuguese Third Division with São João de Ver, and Valecambrense. In 2004, he went abroad to the Canadian Professional Soccer League to play with the Vaughan Shooters.[2] In 2006, he retired from competitive football in order to serve as the assistant coach to the Shooters.[3] In 2010, he was appointed the head coach for the organization, where he secured the Shooters a regular season title.[4]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

title: Filipe Bento

question: Who is Felipe Bento?

answer: an Angolan former footballer and manager who played in the Segunda Liga, Segunda Divisão, Portuguese Third Division, and the Canadian Professional Soccer League

question: When did Felipe Bento begin his career?

answer: 1993

question: When was Felipe Bento born?

answer: September 12, 1969

question: What Canadian team did Felipe Bento play with?

answer: the Vaughan Shooters

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: Felipe Bento is an Angolan former footballer and manager who played in the Segunda Liga, Segunda Divisão, Portuguese Third Division, and the Canadian Professional Soccer League.


text:
A small study has found evidence that religious and spiritual experiences activate the reward circuits in our brains in a similar way to love, sex, gambling, drugs, and music.

The research on 19 Mormon subjects found that, when they were asked to "feel the spirit", their brains lit up in a very familiar way - almost as if they'd taken a hit of a drug, or listened to their favourite song.

To be clear, this was a very small study, involving only 19 young Mormon adults, so we can't read too much into the results just yet, because despite the headlines out there, there's not enough evidence to claim that "This is your brain on God."

But they're among the first results to show how individuals' brains respond to the idea of God, providing a fascinating insight into the important role religion plays in human mood and decision-making.

"We're just beginning to understand how the brain participates in experiences that believers interpret as spiritual, divine or transcendent," said lead researcher Jeff Anderson from the University of Utah.

"In the last few years, brain imaging technologies have matured in ways that are letting us approach questions that have been around for millennia."

Whether you subscribe to religious beliefs or not, it's undeniable that religion has been a major shaping force on human society throughout the ages. So understanding the way it makes people feel provides important insight into one of the biggest influencers on our species.

To get an idea of what was going on, the researchers worked with 19 members of the Mormon church aged under 40, including 7 females and 12 males. All of them described themselves as devout and had completed one or two years of full-time missionary work.

They were put in an fMRI scanner and shown a variety of content meant to get them to "feel the spirit" - an important aspect of the religion that refers to a feeling of peace and closeness with God in oneself and others. These feelings are what Mormons base a lot of their decision-making processes on.

The hour-long fMRI exam included:

-   6 minutes of rest
-   6 minutes of watching a video detailing the Mormon church's membership statistics
-   8 minutes of literature quotations falsely attributed to Mormon and world religious leaders
-   8 minutes of reading familiar passages from the Book of Mormon
-   12 minutes of watching church-produced video of family and Biblical scenes
-   Another 8 minutes of quotations.

Throughout, participants were asked to describe what they were experiencing.

Almost universally, they reported a response similar to an intense worship service, including feelings of peace and physical sensations of warmth. Many were in tears by the end of the scan, the researchers note.

Their brains were being scanned the whole time, and the results showed an interesting pattern. The regions that lit up were part of the reward circuit of the brain, which researchers also know is stimulated by things like drugs, junk food, and sex.

[1-thisisyourbr]Jeffrey Anderson

This part of the brain is known as the nucleus accumbens, which is also referred to as the 'reward centre', because it controls feelings of addiction and plays a role in the release of the 'feel-good' hormone dopamine.

To investigate further, the team asked participants to push a button when they felt a peak spiritual feeling, and the brain scans showed that peak neurological activity occurred about 1 to 3 seconds before they pushed the button.

Their heart rates also sped up, and breathing deepened at the same time.

"When our study participants were instructed to think about a saviour, about being with their families for eternity, about their heavenly rewards, their brains and bodies physically responded," said team member Michael Ferguson.

Other regions that lit up were the medial prefrontal cortex - a region associated with tasks involving valuation, judgement, and moral reasoning - and also parts of the brain involved in focussed attention.

Again, it's important to note that this is just one small study on one particular religion - we have no evidence as yet if the brains of people in other religions would react in the same way.

But this is one of the first studies to look into the neuroscience of western spiritual practices, and it's just the start of the project the University of Utah team has planned.

In the future, they hope to find out more about how religion affects the human brain - seeing as it's one of the most important driving forces in many people's lives.

"Religious experience is perhaps the most influential part of how people make decisions that affect all of us, for good and for ill," said Anderson. "Understanding what happens in the brain to contribute to those decisions is really important."

The results have been published in _Social Neuroscience._

question: What does the story say about the relationship between the study participants and the researchers who conducted the study?

question: What does the text say about rewards?

answer: Rewards are mostly referenced in relation to what is known as the "reward circuits" of the brain. These circuits are activated when people participate in things like sex, love, gambling, or music. Rewards are also mentioned in reference to heavenly rewards that are anticipated by the religious believers in the text.

question: What does the text say about the power of religious belief in the human brain?

answer: Religious belief activates brain circuits associated with things like love, sex, and drugs. It also activates areas of the brain such as judgement,  moral reasoning, and focused attention.

question: Summarize the process of the fMRI for the people in this study.

answer: Participants were put in an fMRI scanner for an hour. They were shown a variety of audio-visual content and were asked to think about particular religious topics. They gave manual feedback by pressing a button at certain times to assist the researchers in identifying the correlations between when they felt something and when their brains showed activity.


text:
The creative team behind NBC’s new musical theater series, “Rise,” is taking some artistic license with the show’s protagonist, who was inspired by a real-life drama teacher.

“Rise” follows Lou Mazzuchelli (played by Josh Radnor) as he helps revitalize the high school theater department in a working-class town. The series is based on Michael Sokolove’s 2014 book, _Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater_.

Mazzuchelli, in turn, is loosely based on Lou Volpe, who was the drama director at Harry S. Truman High School in Levittown, Pennsylvania, before retiring in 2013. There has been one critical change: Although Volpe came out as gay late in his career, Mazzuchelli will be portrayed on “Rise” as a straight family man.

Executive producer Jason Katims explained the decision to change the sexuality of his main character at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour on Tuesday.

“I hope and believe that we carry a lot of [Volpe’s] spirit into the show. We took that as inspiration,” Katims said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. However, the former “Friday Night Lights” writer and executive producer added, “I felt like I needed to make it my own story.”

“With Lou’s family, there’s a lot of reimagination — not just if he’s gay or straight, but the family structure,” Katims continued. “It was important to honor the source material, but to also make it my own so we’d be able to lean into it.”

News of the change angered some people, who accused the “Rise” team of “straight-washing” the lead character.

  The straight showrunner Jason Katims decided he needed to make the real life teacher, who was closeted and came out later in life, straight so that HE could connect to the story. GET. FUCKED.

  — Laurence "Laura Dern" Barber (@bortlb) January 10, 2018

  Hi, @JasonKatims, you don't need to want to fuck the same people as your protagonist to be able to relate to them. Having a gay male lead on a major network would've been huge—your erasure of that aspect of the story is a huge fucking shameful letdown.https://t.co/mGQ8cOoydA

  — Alicia Lutes (@alicialutes) January 10, 2018

  Straight-washing the stories of LGBTQ+ people is nothing new (shout out to @historyisgaypod), but more than disappointing in the year 2018. https://t.co/hpUkYY649m

  — LGBT Fans Deserve Better (@LGBTFansDB) January 10, 2018

  If you’re a straight writer who can’t write a gay character, maybe the character isn’t the one who needs to change. Gay writers have written straight characters since they were doing it in pictographs. pic.twitter.com/R81Ok1ssyy

  — Jeremy C. F🦊x (@JeremyCFox) January 10, 2018

Other critics wondered why a straight man would be as determined to stage the 2006 musical “Spring Awakening” ― which broke fresh ground for its portrayal of teenage sexuality, including a relationship between two male teens ― as Mazzuchelli is in the first season of “Rise.”

Katims stressed Tuesday that “Rise” will explore LGBTQ themes with some of its other characters. One student (played by Ellie Desautels) identifies as transgender, while another (played by Ted Sutherland) is being raised in a conservative religious household while coming to terms with his sexuality.

“Those stories resonated with me as a storyteller,” Katims said, “and I wanted to lean into that.”

Catch a sneak peek at the series, which debuts March 13, in the trailer above.

UPDATE: Katims, along with executive producers Jeffrey Seller and Flody Suarez, released the following statement to Entertainment Weekly Jan. 13 regarding the controversy:

  The misinterpretation by some of what we’ve done with this show goes against what we fundamentally believe and who we are as individuals. We are firmly committed to LGBTQ inclusion, and most of all, are excited for the community to see ‘Rise,’ which we believe portrays positive depictions of LGBTQ characters and stories on broadcast television with honesty and sensitivity. To that end, we worked with GLAAD on the show’s LGBTQ storylines to ensure they are told with respect and authenticity.

Calling all HuffPost superfans!

Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter

question: What is "Rise" about?

answer: It follows the story of Lou Mazzuchelli as he helps revitalize the high school theater department in a working-class town.

question: Explain the controversy around "Rise" briefly.

answer: The producers decided to portray the protagonist as a straight family man. The real character who inspired the protagonist had come out as gay, which prompted many people to accuse the producers of "straight-washing".

question: What's the gist of the criticism against the backlash?

answer: The producers explain that there are other LGBTQ stories and characters portrayed in the show with care and sensitivity.

question: What is the director's take on the situation?

answer: They think the criticisms are fundamentally against who they are as individuals. They claim support for LGBTQ wholehartedly.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: The creative team of NBC's new musical theater series, Rise, is taking some artistic license with the protagonist, who was inspired by a real-life drama teacher. Lou Mazzuchelli, who came out as gay late in his career, will be portrayed as a straight family man. This decision fueled a backlash on allegations of "straight-washing" the lead character. The show's executive producers explained that there are many LGBTQ characters and stories in the show, and the backlash goes against who they are as individuals.


text:
"I had been driving for a long time. I still remember the calm sky: clouds were gathering up around the sun as it was getting ready to be tucked behind the green hill of trees. It wasn't bright orange but instead, the mellow type. The type that the sun turns just as it sets. There were hills covered with trees everywhere. That's why it was my favorite road. The drive was smooth, the hills were covered with trees, and it was a road going uphill and around the mountains. It all eventually led to my favorite scenic spot outside the city."

"What made it so special?" She said in a very intrigued tone.

"I could see the whole city from this one place. Not only that, but I could see the sun set. It make me feel relaxed. Calm. Pensive. It was the one place where I could just look and think about anything I wanted to, without distractions. A place where I could think"

"About what?" She said curiously.

"Stuff" I said.

" Henry, It doesn't help keeping it in. If you talk about it, it'll help. So tell me, what was it that you couldn't stop thinking about?" She said

She was right. I couldn't keep it in forever, but I wanted to. I was never the one to talk about my feelings openly yet, I was the one who could always get others to spill their emotions in a split second. Ironic isn't it? I guess it was a new feeling. I've always felt like I didn't need anyone to talk about my feelings; as if I could do it by myself. Sort of like playing self psychologist. It was fun. It got me thinking.  But it didn't work. Perhaps this was the perfect way to open up, but I couldn't. It was hard and I was scared.

"Henry, what's bothering you?" I knew I had to start at some point.

" I don't know, a lot of things" Well that was a stupid answer.

" Like what? How are things at home?" That's when I knew things were getting serious, this session was about to hit on something emotional.

" Things are well. Nothing's different or off. Still doing my chores, eating my dinners and doing my homework." I wasn't lying.
"How's your social life then? Friends treating you alright?"

" Yeah, friends are treating me well. Not being bullied or anything. School is fine too by the way. My dog's birthday was the other day in case you wanted to know."

I was getting kind of annoyed. I don't know where this conversation was going anymore.

" Finish telling me about that day at the hill when you couldn't stop thinking?"

Why was she going back to the drive?

" I just couldn't stop thinking. I had arrived at the place, sat in the car and watched the sun set and the moon rise. I was listening to music and just thinking, then I went home."

" About what Henry?"

" Life"

" What about life?" She said obscurely.

"How difficult it is to go through it as a teenager. All these emotions and hormones. It sucks"

Wow. I might as well tell her I'm on my period. I sound like a girl complaining about her problems, It feels good. No, no it doesn't. What's wrong with me?

" What do you mean what's wrong with you Henry?"

Oh god, did I just say that out loud?  Now this is really wrong.

" I don't know."

" Henry, can I tell you something?"

" Yeah sure" I was getting more annoyed.

" I know it's hard opening up. Sometimes we don't want people knowing how we feel because we fear judgment and even worse, weakness. But you have to trust me; I'm here to help you. I'm here to guide you through and not judge you. People need people in order to survive and be happy. You can't keep being like this. Open up to me and see how good it feels. If you don't feel better after this session then we can stop."

Well that's a deal. Talk about some bogus feelings and be off the hook after, I can do this.

" Okay then."

" So tell me, what are you scared of?"

" I'm scared of failure."

" What about failure scares you?"

" The disappointing part."

" Disappointing who?"

Really? We're going to play twenty-one questions? I can't keep doing this.

“Disappointing everyone."

" Why do you care about what others think of you?"

" I don't"

" Then why does disappointing others scare you?"

" That's different"

"How so?"

"Because disappointing the ones I love is different than caring about what other people think."

" But if you didn't care about what others think, then disappointing others wouldn't matter because you wouldn't care if you disappoint them."

There was a silence.

" So why do you care about what others think about you?"

" I guess it's because I don't want to seem like something less than what I am."

“Anything less?"

 “Like, I don't know. I just don't like disappointing others because, I just don’t. I, I guess I do care about what people think. I’m scared that if I disappoint them, then they’ll think less of me and I’ll no longer be the person they thought I was but instead, some loser who couldn’t amount to anything.”

My heart started racing. My eyes began feeling heaving and I could no longer control my breathing.

“ I just don’t want to be a somebody. I want to be much more. Everyone makes me up to be this kid who is super smart and talented and I’m scared of giving that up. I don’t want them to think I can’t amount to anything because I failed at something. I feel so much pressure to keep doing what I’m doing.”

Stop. Don’t do this. I’m not about to cry. It felt like word vomit. Feelings spilling everywhere like a glass of milk being spilled on the kitchen tile floor.

“ I feel alone. I feel like if I talk about what’s wrong then people will no longer think I’m that smart kid but instead some whiny teenager and I don’t want that. I don’t want to feel inadequate. I don’t want people to see me as the guy with problems. The moment you tell someone your problems, they automatically remember that every time they see you and I hate that. I don’t want that to be me.”
It was over. Tears were dripping down my face like there was no tomorrow. All these thoughts were racing in my head and it was only making me cry even more.

“ There there, it’s alright. Here’s some tissues, clean yourself up.” She said as she reached over to hand me the box of Kleenex.

“ Well our time is up. I’ll see you tomorrow at the same time. Just remember that you’re not alone and that there is always someone waiting to hear your story. Don’t worry about what they think of you because if they are true friends then they will be by your side no matter what. On the other hand, I’m always here for you as well. I know I’m leaving you all opened up, but that’s good. You just let it all out and need time to process what just happened. It’s all a process. I’m glad you opened up to me Henry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And just like that, the session was over. The next thing I knew I was back home, sitting on my bed looking up at the ceiling thinking about tomorrow. I can’t believe I opened up. I felt better, a little, but better. Maybe this was the start of something new. Maybe. Or maybe this is all some mind game. Which, in that case, I won’t let her win.

title: Just Over The Valley

question: What makes the author's favorite scenic spot so special?

answer: You can see the whole city from one place.

question: What is the narrator's name?

answer: Henry

question: Where is Henry?

answer: Probably in a therapy session.

question: What does Henry fear?

answer: He's afraid of failure.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: Henry, a teenage boy, opens up to a therapist about his fear of failure. He seems to have it all-everyone thinks that, according to him-but inside, he feels at an existential loss.