Mostrando resultados por autor "Stephen Donald" en Todas las categorías

Klis would be their first failure and it would mark the end of their conquest. When the first Mongol envoy entered its city walls, he offered its citizens the same thing Mongols offered every conquest - tribute or extermination. Its city inhabitants would refuse the former to brave the latter and they would survive. Mongol hordes once marched from the Far East into Europe. There, they encountered their first breaking point at the fortified city of Klis.

Every stellar rise deserves a cosmic fall. Inhumanly callous and ruthlessly selfish, he made a fortune in predatory mortgage loans prior to the economic collapse of 2008. In its calamitous aftermath, executive handlers staged him for a corporate patsy and left him to answer alone for their collective crimes. Facing financial ruin and certain incarceration, his reduced prospects force him to move his family into a rat-infested bungalow. In the aftermath of his ruin, one man’s family confronts an epic plague of vermin when they move into a modest country home. They have all the benefits of ...

On a brilliant fall afternoon, a powerful blast of energy erupted from the cosmos, burned across the solar system, and laid waste to every living thing on Earth. Notice was short and defense impossible. From the lowliest to the loftiest, none survived. This phenomenon, they called the Radiance. Curiously, however, none died, either. Instead, thereafter the hapless victims of that unavoidable catastrophe wandered the planet in a discorporate, ethereal state of existence. This, they called The Lingering. In time, as the effects of the apocalyptic radiation dissipated through the course of ...

Humankind knows countless destinations, whether of mountain, river, meadow or lake. Each domain offers a unique experience, and, so, each attracts visitors with common yet specific interests. Of all destinations, sandy beaches may provide the archetypal candidate for recreational pursuits, and merest mention of the locale invites visions of loungers, cocktails and palm fronds stirring before a moist ocean breeze. Travel there now to wade through a surging surf toward a sanctuary beach, but be warned and beware... both treasure and tragedy beckon from shores of silver seas. Weather violent ...

Matriculating across that stage, nothing betrayed the Texas sand behind his ears, though his stiff, high collar hid a neck roasted red by long hours spent laboring beneath August sunshine. Indeed, years of careful study and patient attention had polished away the roughest facets of his country-born demeanor with a doctoral degree, but he would always be Charles Ray McCormick, white trash. Learning from the invariably negative example set forth by his errant, wayward siblings, Ray avoided the pitfalls of youth via intervention of a well-meaning mentor and pursuit of an academic career. ...

He can't avoid the stench. It's everywhere… in his food… in his clothing… his home… his office. Everything swims in the odor of feces and he can't possibly know if it's all in his mind or if the entire world has gone to shit! Sometimes the brain gets cross-wired. What happens when everything smells really, really bad?

This course provides a detailed executive-level review of contemporary topics in graph modeling theory with specific focus on Deep Learning theoretical concepts and practical applications. The ideal student is a technology professional with a basic working knowledge of statistical methods. Upon completion of this review, the student should acquire improved ability to discriminate, differentiate, and conceptualize appropriate implementations of application-specific ("traditional" or "rule-based") methods versus deep learning methods of statistical analyses and data modeling.

In the limitless expanse of the cosmos, intelligence need not be confined to water-filled flesh. For every form of imagination, there is an embodiment of it out there in the void. On this world in this system, everything may be uniquely alive, from the rocks to the sandstorms. How does one conquer the wind? It is an alien intellect in the shifting sands of a waterless planet. Journey here to die. Or be reborn.

Every day, we confront ourselves in mirrors of various shapes and sizes. We stare into them and our reflection stares back. Within these visions, everything about our reflection is backward, opposite, and reversed. Laws of physics prevent one side from emerging into the other, but we all wonder how far those renditions of reality might go. We wonder about life on the other side. How far does our mirror's reflection imitate reality? If we could crossover to the other side, what might happen when in the twain we and our reflections meet?

Like an onion, his plan for her conquest is multi-layered and complex. First, he must educate himself, then he must use that education to accumulate wealth. Finally, he must find a way to enter into her life as an equal. In the meantime, he can always jog alongside her in the park, just another stranger on the trail. In truth, he loved her from first sight and determined to have her despite his poverty and her wealth. Fortunately, he is a very clever young man.

Declared missing-in-action while serving in Afghanistan, her eldest son's disappearance left a massive whole in this mother's life. Her misery cannot be assuaged by human sympathy or the keepsakes of memories. Although he is certainly dead, she refuses to speak of it and insists he is still alive somewhere out there in the world. On her deathbed, she reveals to her family that he has been calling her every Friday when it rains. A mother's love for her children may transcend time. When it does, who can determine where reality ends and desperate fantasy begins? Only she and her son know the ...

Black eyeliner. Black lashes. Black lips. Black hair. Through it all, peers the white cake face of Darling Girl Jones, orphan. From time to time, she awakens in her academy dorm room to find an ethereal spirit haunting her bed. Never disturbing, always intriguing, such an event is a certain promise of ghoulish adventure and mortal danger. Although today is a special day at her Academy because today is Christmas Eve - and that means all-you-can-eat pancakes with real maple syrup - Darling Girl's holidays are never so easy and a ghost with a serious problem is certain to spoil her fun!

He's the proverbial grumpy old man and he ruthlessly keeps his hit-lists. You had better hope he never jots your name down in his notebook, because he'll make you the object of his obsessive ire and his dissatisfaction is notoriously relentless. Unfortunately, today is his last day on Earth... and god just made the list!

While the vast majority perishes in quiet anonymity, a tour of any national monument quickly reveals countless names carved into stone. These names generally identify three classes of people; scribe, conquered and conqueror. Indeed, if anything, life is an endless series of contests, large and small, but these stone-graven records typically ignore the latter for the former. Too often, history overlooks the struggles of mundanity, which perhaps better define those who endure. Pause a reflective moment to ponder the future – anticipate all the boastful elite to be immortalized there. ...

Everyone loves a good joke, but nobody enjoys being subjected to the fun. Pranks are an especially childish form of delight, perhaps because they are the ultimate expression of prurient sadism, which we must disavow as civilized adults. We, the same civilized adults who teach our beloved youth the art of warfare while stockpiling an obscene surplus of thermonuclear weapons. Now that is funny! So, tease a guilty moment to titillate your secret sadist today. Giggling, it whispers. Of spoiled affluence and nothing better to do; of grotesque victimization that makes monsters from innocent ...

Several of the best human hypocrisies are immortalized in catechisms. We say “violence never solved anything” when history repeatedly teaches us otherwise, and once we prematurely labeled an entire, global war as “The War to End All Wars” long before we recorded its half-formed outcome. Dynasties fall. Empires rise. In marble, granite and concrete, we immortalize these events, large and small, and we celebrate the human beings named heroes there. Rightly so. Pause a moment before The Wall – let your finger trace names in stone. From pits of despair and summits of glory, they ...

Within realms of the unknown, superstition stalks. Primitives see god in a rainbow, but they also suspect a deadly serpent beneath every unturned stone. Ignorance and fear sometimes unite to inspire us or spare us, but more often this demonic duality serves to light the torches of enraged mobs. Indeed, history tells stories of witches burned alive amid great celebrations. We know these things happened. We also know witchcraft is a figment. Fearlessly now, step away from the staid, known world that shelters you. Venture into lands of conundrum and enigma to witness ciphered matters of mind. ...

Rascals, rapscallions, villains and varlets; all terms of a bygone era intended to describe the guy in the black hat, that perverse character of low virtue and strayed morality who forever ties the distressed damsel to cold, steel rails. Gasp! Within fictional fantasies, they are always guys and damsels, and they must wear black. In reality, we still mostly read about bad ‘guys’, but the women tend to fight back now, often with devastating effect. Tonight, the devil laces thigh-high boots over fence-net stockings before taking a turn through town. Be warned and beware. Of evil delight ...

Champions come in all shapes and forms. The same is true of cowards. Most of us line up somewhere between these two extremes of potential, but none of us eagerly anticipate having to prove ourselves in a crossfire. In fact, most notable acts of heroism are not the results of well-considered, carefully laid plans. Rather, these are often spontaneous yet deliberate demonstrations of selflessness occasionally on display when normal human beings must confront life-threatening risk. Take a deep, calming breath now before you dare gaze into the face of death. Trembling, heed its heckling catcalls...

Disinfectants, detergents, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and homicides – everything a human being needs to clear his or her lot and start fresh in life, clean and pure, and it all waits at the press of a finger. Some of us love a good disaster, but we watch from a safe distance and it always happens to someone else… somewhere else… never here. Never us. Distended bellies and skeletal children are always the misfortune of others. Stop and wonder why. Your preferred answer no doubt leaps easily to mind, but the truth is probably quite different, because pestilence comes in all ...