Muna has never seen his father, and only knows that he is a samurai with a chrysanthemum tattoo on his shoulder. He meets a likable ronin named Takanobu on a ship which Muna was hiding on. Later on, after Muna and Takanobu have gotten off the ship, they are in the city and go exploring. Muna loses track of where Takanobu goes, and eventually gets lost. At night, Muna still isn''t able to find Takanobu and is wandering around when a girl finds him and invites Muna in for supper. Later on Muna learns that the girl''s name is Akiko and is the daughter of a sandal-maker. After supper, Muna stays the night. Finally, Muna finds Takanobu asleep next to a fence. As Takanobu takes care of Muna, he finds him a job cleaning stables. But one New Years a fire occurs at the Red Dog where Takanobu met Muna and sent him to do an errand. On the errand, he is told by someone that a man named "Plum Face" is dead, who was a person Muna knew. He is also told that Takanobu is "dead." Muna faints from the noxious fumes of the fire and is badly burnt, unable to wake up. Later on, Muna is found by a man named Fukuji, who is the master swordsmith of the capital. Muna stays with Fukuji, doing house chores and other "women''s work". One day when Muna was outside, he saw a man dressed as a monk who seemed to be following exactly what he did. When Muna pulls a trick on the man, he finds out that he is Takanobu. Takanobu is happy to see Muna again, and asks him to do one favor. Takanobu wants Muna to steal a sword from Fukuji and give it to him. He convinces Muna to give him the sword by saying that he is Muna''s father. But when Muna brings the sword to Takanobu, he says he wouldn''t give it to Takanobu unless he said he was Muna''s father. When Takanobu didn''t answer, Muna attacked. Muna runs away to the woods, and eventually buries the sword in front of a neglected shrine. At the same time, Fukuji, who woke up, wonders where Muna has gone. Suddenly, a visitor comes to Fukuji and tells him that he is Muna''s father. Fukuji realizes that the visitor is Takanobu. When Takanobu who never died claims that he is Muna''s father, Muna must choose between fulfilling his "father''s" wishes or proving his loyalty to Fukuji.

The Sign of the Chrysanthemum

In 1994, the Marines are testing a new missile, but after the launch it mysteriously disappears and it''s clear that if the rocket reaches civilian areas they will be in big trouble. Carol Dawson, a journalist, is alerted by an unusual sight of whales in the Miami area, and decides to go and write about it. Armed with special equipment provided by her friend, Dr. Dale Michaels from MOI (Miami Oceanographic Institute), goes to investigate the rumors of a missing missile belonging to the Marines and that could be behind the mysterious whale behavior lately. She hires the services of Nick Williams and Jefferson Troy, owners of a little boat so she can get to the Gulf of Mexico and investigate closer if a missile has something to do with all of the above. They end up finding an unknown artifact, bringing a lot of doubts about its nature, and even if it''s part of a lost treasure that could be worth millions. Old friends of Williams and Troy noticed the finding and just like the old times, they want to steal it from them. In the background of the story, the author talks about a submarine snake civilization on a planet called Canthor, and how they were struggling to stay alive due to new threats into their ecosystem. It''s revealed later in the story that the artifact found in the sea is actually a cradle that contains seeds with altered superhumans, which were extracted from earth millions of years ago and were altered so they could live with other species (including the submarine snakes) on earth. The spaceship that carries the cradle is manned by robots/cyborgs and has hidden itself on Earth''s ocean floor to make repairs. Dawson, Williams and Troy found the damaged ship in the bottom of the sea while looking for the missile, and were asked to gather materials so the ship can be repaired and it could go back to its mission. Before leaving earth, the ship asked the humans to keep the cradle because it would enormously help the human race to have such superhuman seeds to develop faster and better through time, but in the end the humans refuse in order to avoid future wars between the human and superhumans.

Cradle

The Hardy boys learn a case of counterfeit money is somehow intertwined with a national security case their dad is working on. Frank and Joe help prevent 14-year-old cyclist Ken Blake from getting killed in an accident. As they help the boy up they see he is delivering an envelope to Victor Peters, a name that means something to the Hardys later on in the book. The Hardys learn that their friend Chet Morton has been tricked when asked to make change for what turned out to be a counterfeit twenty dollar bill, something that the police later confirm is becoming more common in their town of Bayport. Later, Joe is awakened by a clattering sound and sees a mysterious figure bicycling away from the Hardys'' home. While investigating the disturbance a note is found that reads, "Drop case or else danger for you and your family." The Hardy boys are not sure if this threat refers to the counterfeiting case that Frank and Joe are investigating or another case their detective dad, Fenton Hardy, is trying to solve. The Hardys go with Chet, who wants to apply for a job at Elekton Controls, a missile-development company, but are told by Mr. Markel, one of Elekton''s security guards, that there are no openings. Before leaving, they notice a bike that looks similar to the one ridden by Ken Blake and that is likely to have been used by the person who left the threatening note. Mr. Docker, an Elekton maintenance man, tells them that Ken does odd jobs for the company, but that he is not there at that time, even though Joe is certain he saw Ken looking out an adjacent old watermill''s window at them. The Hardys, their girlfriends, Iola Morton and Callie Shaw and Chet go nearby to have a picnic but an arrow is shot at them with an attached note reading, "Danger. Hardys beware." The Hardy brothers receive a gift of a motorboat they call The Sleuth, and show it to their friend, Tony Prito. Tony says the construction supply yard he is working at for the summer has become the latest to receive counterfeit money used to pay for lumber by a boy matching the description of Ken Blake. The Hardys take The Sleuth to the mill to investigate and find the mill wheel starting and stopping. Soon, they are attacked and left without gas in their new boat. They recover and get back to investigating by finding Ken who says he thinks someone has used his bike the same night that Joe saw someone bicycling from the Hardy''s home. Markel and Docker pull Ken away and then a suspicious vehicle leaves Elekton. Later, the same suspicious vehicle gets away before an explosion at Elekton. Frank and Joe are terrified that their dad is inside the burning building. He was in the building but survived the explosion revealing that he was there to stop the attack after realizing there is a pattern to similar type attacks going on around similar companies in the United States. Eager to learn more from Ken, the Hardys soon find that Ken has been released from Elekton. The Hardys find him at a boarding house and he explains that the bricks and lumber bought with the counterfeit money were being used for a project at the mill. Frank and Joe return to the old mill and realize that the wheel mill is set up to act as a signaling device for the people living inside; an electric-eye stops the flow of electricity to the wheel. It acts as a warning to those inside that someone is approaching the mill. Going inside the mill at a time when they know no one else is there, they discover a secret room hidden by the lumber bought with counterfeit money. In the secret room, they find the tools used to make the fake money, but before they can get away the villains return to the mill. Frank and Joe escape through a tunnel but are captured by Docker and Markel. Victor Peters arrives and these three villains reveal that Docker shot the arrow at the girlfriends and Markel used the bike to deliver the note to the Hardys'' home. Docker and Markel also explain that, without the knowledge of Victor Peters, they allowed another villain, Paul Blum, into Elekton to attack the place, which is the case that Fenton Hardy was investigating. Blum reveals that he is working for other countries who wish to stop United States missile development. Frank and Joe take advantage of an opportunity and overtake the villains. The book ends with the police arresting all the villains and the expectation of the Hardys'' next case when "they were called upon to solve the mystery of The Missing Chums."

The Secret of the Old Mill

* Part I - A new Theory of Scroll Origins *#The Qumran Plateau *# The Manuscripts of the Jews *# 1947; The First Scroll Discoveries *# The Qumran-Essene Theory: A paradigm reconsidered *# The Copper Scroll, the Masada manuscripts, and the Siege of Jerusalem *# Scroll origins: Rengstorf''s Theory and Edmund Wilson''s response * Part II - Science, Politics, and the Dead Sea Scrolls *# The Temple Scroll, the Acts of Torah, and the Qumranologists'' dilemma *# Power Politics and the Collapse of the Scrolls Monopoly *#:This chapter discusses Géza Vermes'' involvement in the purchase of photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Oxford University under the condition that they only be shown to scholars selected by the official editorial team that controlled access to the scrolls. Golb states that "Vermes could not possibly have avoided knowing of the financial agreement that facilitated the transfer of photographs" (p.&nbsp;236), and that Vermes'' statement of November 8, 1991, "directly contradicted the position taken by him and the [Oxford] Centre in the [London] Times correspondence published three months earlier" (p.&nbsp;237). The chapter also describes how Vermes used the media "to promote his support for the traditional Essene hypothesis," but showed "disdain" for the similar use of the media by Dr. Robert Eisenman to promote a different view (p.&nbsp;241). *# Myth and Science in the World of Qumranology *# The deepening Scrolls Controversy *# The New York Conference and Some Academic Intrigues *# The importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls?

When two boys find a mysterious ad in a newspaper asking for two young boys to build a spaceship, they quickly construct one out of old tin and scrap wood, and bring it to the advertiser. This man is the mysterious Mr. Bass, a scientist living in an observatory who goes unnoticed by most of the townspeople for some reason. He shows the boys a previously undetected satellite of the earth, the eponymous planet, that can only be seen with a special filter he has concocted. He gives them some special fuel he invented to power their spaceship, and tells them to fly to the mushroom planet (after getting their parents'' permission). He warns them that their trip will only be successful if they bring a mascot. When it is time for launch, they grab a hen at the last moment for a mascot, and rocket into space. They wake up on the mushroom planet, a small, verdant world covered in soft moss and tree size mushrooms. They quickly meet some residents of the mushroom planet, small men with large heads and slightly green skin, the cousins of the mysterious Mr. Bass. They tell the boys that their planet has had a crisis and everyone is slowly dying. The boys meet up with the king of the planet, the Great Ta, and end up solving the natives'' problem, before returning to Earth. The mushroom people''s crisis was a lack of sulfur. They resolved this with their mascot hen, as chicken eggs have a high sulfur content.

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

A Malthusian catastrophe on Earth has been averted by the invention of teleportation, called the "Ramsbotham jump", which is used to send Earth''s excess population to colonize other planets. However, the costs of operating the device mean that the colonies are isolated from Earth until they can justify two-way travel. Because modern technology requires a supporting infrastructure, more primitive methods are employed — for example, horses instead of tractors (because tractors cannot reproduce themselves). Rod Walker is a high school student who dreams of becoming a professional colonist. The final test of his Advanced Survival class is to stay alive on an unfamiliar planet for between two and ten days. Students may team up and equip themselves with whatever gear they can carry, but are otherwise completely on their own. They are told only that the challenges are neither insurmountable nor unreasonable. On test day, each student walks through the Ramsbotham portal and finds him or herself alone on a strange planet, though reasonably close to the pickup point. Rod, acting on advice, chooses to equip himself with hunting knives and basic survival gear rather than high-tech weaponry, on the grounds that the latter is dependent on the infrastructure required to maintain it and can easily become a crutch. The last advice the students receive is to "watch out for stobor." On the second day, Rod is ambushed and knocked unconscious by a thief. When he wakes up, all he has left is a spare knife hidden under a bandage. In his desperate concentration on survival, he loses track of time. Eventually he teams up with Jacqueline "Jack" Daudet, a student from another class whom he initially mistakes for a male. When she tells him that more than ten days have elapsed without contact, he realizes that they are stranded. They start recruiting others for the long haul and Rod becomes the de facto leader of a community that eventually grows to around 75 people. Rod has no taste for politics or administration, and is happy to have Grant Cowper, an older college student and born politician, elected "mayor". Grant proves to be much better at talking than getting things done. Despite disagreeing with many of Grant''s policies, Rod supports him. Grant ignores Rod''s warning that they are living in a dangerously hard-to-defend location and that they should move to a cave system he has found. When a species previously thought harmless suddenly changes its behavior and stampedes through their camp, the settlement is devastated and Grant is killed. Rod is subsequently put back in charge. Heinlein tracks the social development of this community of educated Westerners deprived of technology, followed by its abrupt dissolution when contact with Earth is reestablished. After nearly two years of isolation, the culture shock experienced by the survivors highlights for them, and the reader, the pain and uncertainty of becoming an adult, by reversing the process abruptly -- Each of the students goes from being a personally self-responsible member of an autonomous community back to being a youth with little authority or responsibility in the home culture. All of the students go back willingly except for Rod, who has great difficulty reverting from the status of head of a small, but sovereign state to a teenager casually brushed aside by the adult rescuers. However, his teacher (and now brother-in-law) and his sister persuade him to change his mind. His teacher also informs Rod that his warning against "stobor" ("robots" spelled backwards) was just a way of personalizing the dangers of an unknown planet - to instill fear and caution in the students. Years later, Rod is briefly depicted accomplishing his heart''s desire; the novel''s ending finds him preparing to lead a formal colonization party to another planet.

Tunnel in the Sky

The book is framed as the reminiscence of an old man recalling the year he discovered love. It is written as a first-person narrative. The novel opens with the protagonist, Hilary, a sixteen-year-old boy arriving at a grim East Anglian boarding school in 1962 after being twice expelled from previous institutions. He has no interest in study, no aptitude for sports and a great dislike of both pupils and teachers. He compares the school to a prison and finds life there unbearable. While slacking on a school cross-country run, he meets Finn, who lives alone in a beachside shack and sustains himself by fishing and working at the market. Hilary thinks Finn has an ideal life, and admires and envies him. He begins to visit the silent, enigmatic boy, and they are able to spend some afternoons together. He lies to his parents and the school so that he can stay at the shack during the Easter holidays. On one visit to Finn, Hilary realizes his friend is ill, and suspects he may have given the other boy glandular fever, which had spread through the school several weeks before. He tries to look after Finn himself but after a while becomes frightened and calls the emergency services. Finn runs away from the shack but Hilary later finds him in hospital. Both schoolboys and adults misunderstand the innocent nature of their friendship, particularly when it is discovered that Finn is only fourteen, two years younger than Hilary, and is actually a girl. He leaves the school and does not see Finn again for many years. Eventually he returns to the coast, stays in Finn''s by then abandoned shack, and realizes his dream of "becoming" Finn.

What I Was

The first month of the tour is spent in the countryside of Armagh, where Charles’ battalion make their presence felt by ending all British Army contact with the locals and pursuing a deliberately more aggressive stance than the previous garrison unit. The month is mainly boring, with most days spent carrying out menial tasks in barracks or conducting patrols. However, towards the end of the period an anti-vehicle mine meant for Charles’ regular Land Rover patrol to an electricity sub-station destroys an electricity board van minutes before Charles arrives. Seeing his first explosion, as well as finding the scattered body parts of a man who should have been him and his soldiers, brings the realities of his situation home to him and increases his thoughts that he should never have joined the army: something which he must tackle throughout the book. In moving to Belfast for the remaining three months of the tour, things take a turn for the worse – something Charles thought couldn’t happen after the endless boredom and sporadic fear of Armagh. Billeted in a working factory which produces bottles 24 hours a day, his company’s quarters are ridiculed by the entire Belfast garrison as the worst in the city. The floor given over to officers for accommodation, dining and radio watch-keeping consists of ‘rooms’ created only by cardboard separations. As well as the deprivations of the location, Charles finds the customs of army life difficult to understand and get used to, especially as they seem to have no logic behind them. The officers and men of his battalion learn to deal with the pressures and squalor of urban guerrilla warfare by drinking, making mischief and engaging in sexual orgies. Charles, always aloof from his brother officers and institutionally separated from his men, finds it hard not to constantly question his own competency and worth, both as an officer and a human being. Having been involved in two riots, he is moved to Battalion Headquarters after the Press Relations Officer (PRO) has a negligent discharge and shoots himself in the foot. Charles shares his room with the Adjutant, and sets about ensuring that the battalion is seen in a good light by the press. This task is complicated somewhat by his Commanding Officer’s hatred of the press and idiosyncratic way of doing things, but Charles finds living in the police station which houses HQ much more bearable than the grim surrounds of the factory. More escapades follow, with Charles being involved in heart racing riots and close scrapes with members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, as well as comic activities with his brother officers. During this time, Charles begins writing indirectly for The Times. His job as PRO leads him into contact with The Times cowardly and drunkard Northern Ireland correspondent Beazley, who pays Charles and his Lance Corporal photographer to write and send his dispatches, thus allowing himself to avoid danger and sit in his hotel bar. Charles’ slightly more pleasant life at HQ ends abruptly, however, with the bombing of the police station. The adjutant is killed and their room destroyed, leading Charles to be sent back to the Factory but still in his role as PRO. More brilliantly described riots and arms finds occur, while Charles realises that he both enjoys and excels at journalism through his arrangement with Beazley. Charles resolves to leave the army, and eventually amasses enough money to buy himself out of his contract which runs for another few years. His resignation is accepted, and he gains permission to leave on his battalion’s return to England. The climactic scene of the book involves Charles and his CO in a gun battle with some young IRA gunmen. Fighting through an alley, Charles fires at point blank range and misses his target several times, before hitting his mark and killing the teenage boy. Charles’ reaction to his first kill is necessarily short, the battalion is preparing to leave Ireland and return home. The novel ends with Charles, for the first time in the novel, being completely at ease, enjoying a parachute drop into England and revelling in the fact that all he has to worry about is the drop itself.

A Breed of Heroes

The story follows a group of orcs who always find themselves on the front lines of battle against the carefully prepared and always triumphant forces of good. The orcs decided to organize themselves and fight back. As a satire of high fantasy the novel mocks most of the conventions of the genre from using traditional villainous races, orcs, as the protagonists, to having the noble characters have much less than noble motivations and secrets. The opening of the book plays up the orc warleader sent to reclaim a weapons cache in preparation for the ''Last Battle'' between good and evil, which is well on its way. They are assisted by a pair of halflings whose cute demeanor is contrasted with extremely violent acts. The orcs uncover a dragon''s hoard of modern military weaponry, which is endowed with a geas that transforms their minds into replicas of the stereotypical United States Marine Corps mindset, during the Vietnam War. Gentle continues the storyline through the Last Battle and the orcs'' integration into society, along with a military threat that rivals the orcs themselves.

Grunts!

Six emotionally-disturbed teenage boys are sent from their homes throughout the United States by their affluent parents to Box Canyon Boys Camp near Prescott, Arizona, as the camp''s slogan was "Send us a boy - we''ll send you a cowboy", and the parents hoped that the camp would mature the boys. Each having originally been assigned to one of the six cabins, they are quickly outcast by the other campers, and find themselves together in one cabin. After a contest between the six cabins sorts out the pecking order, their cabin naturally lands in last place. The boys, in accordance with the camp rules, do manage to raid all of the superior cabins and conquer the trophies of the higher ranking cabins in order to advance in rank, but they use badly-executed subterfuge that is looked down upon by the other campers. Five of the six cabins were named after various Native American tribes and awarded mounted animal heads corresponding to each of the cabins'' ranks, which are, from highest to lowest ranks: *Apache - bull buffalo *Sioux - mountain lion *Comanches - black bear *Cheyenne - bobcat *Navajo - pronghorn *Bedwetters - chamberpot All of the Bedwetters refer to each other by last names in the book and movie, including the two Lally brothers, who are referred to as Lally 1 and Lally 2, although their first names are mentioned in the book. An unpleasant confrontation between the boys and their counselor ends with Teft breaking into their counselor''s footlocker, and because of the whiskey, beer, cigarettes and pornography found in the footlocker, they blackmail the counselor, who is called "Wheaties", into taking them to a ranch where they witness a canned hunt of surplus bison that had been rounded up from the surrounding area. The hunters (who won their spots at that hunt via lottery) sat or stood along a fence, while shooting at the fenced-in, nearly-tame bison. When the boys return, disgusted at the slaughter, they decide to break out of camp that night to stop the canned hunt. They ride horses into town, where Teft hotwires an old truck. After a ride into Flagstaff, Arizona on U.S. Route 66, they enter an all-night eatery to get food, but are accosted by two redneck "hippie" types, who follow the boys away from the restaurant and force them over, where they discover that the truck is hotwired. Teft pulls a .22 caliber rifle from the back of the truck and shoots out a tire on the car driven by the men harassing the boys, then orders the men to start walking or they can "wear earrings." Cotton and the other boys climb back into the truck and continue their journey to the ranch, but run out of gas just before reaching their destination. They walk the rest of the way and make their way through the fence maze on the ranch until they get the exit gate open so the bison can escape. However, the bison are content and have no intention of escaping, until Teft hotwires a state-owned truck and Cotton drives into the herd of buffalo while blowing the truck''s horn, which alerts the hunters that are camped out nearby. Cotton drives the truck through the herd of buffalo and over the edge of the Mogollon Rim to his death, which ends the book as the hunters surround the other boys.

Bless the Beasts and Children

The story begins with Xander and Jacob hunting gruskers, strange plant-eating creatures. Later, Jacob reveals that he wants to go to Teiresias in hopes of meeting the other escaped Seers. Delaney sells her eyes to buy his passage aboard the Odessa, commanded by Captain Bennet. Jacob becomes acquainted with the crew, but is wary of Folgrin, a businessman with strange eyes who seems suspicious. Aboard the ship, they go into Otherspace, a place encountered by entering a wormhole, and Jacob discovers that he is able to move during Otherspace, while others are rendered immobile. When the ship crashes on Maker''s Drift, a dark, neglected planet surrounded in superstition, only Bennet, Folgrin, and Jacob survive. After Jacob meets a strange couple, he and Bennet buy passage aboard a passenger liner to Teiresias, a strange planet where one half of the planet receives sunlight and the other is dark, cold, and barren. At Teiresias, Jacob eventually meets Avery, another Blinder who received vision. Jacob is taken to a base on the dark side of Teiresias where he meets the other Blinders who received sight and escaped.

OtherSpace

A game in the sense of Conway is a position in a contest between two players, Left and Right. Each player has a set of games called options to choose from in turn. Games are written {L|R} where L is the set of Left''s options and R is the set of Right''s options. At the start there are no games at all, so the empty set (i.e., the set with no members) is the only set of options we can provide to the players. This defines the game {|}, which is called 0. We consider a player who must play a turn but has no options to have lost the game. Given this game 0 there are now two possible sets of options, the empty set and the set whose only element is zero. The game {0|} is called 1, and the game {|0} is called -1. The game {0|0} is called , and is the first game we find that is not a number. All numbers are positive, negative, or zero, and we say that a game is positive if Left will win, negative if Right will win, or zero if the second player will win. Games that are not numbers have a fourth possibility: they may be fuzzy, meaning that the first player will win. * is a fuzzy game. A more extensive introduction to On Numbers and Games is available online.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Sign of the Chrysanthemum

By Katherine Paterson

Cradle

By Arthur C. Clarke

The Secret of the Old Mill

By Franklin W. Dixon

Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls?

No Author Listed

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

By Eleanor Cameron

Tunnel in the Sky

By Robert A. Heinlein

What I Was

By Meg Rosoff

A Breed of Heroes

By Alan Judd

Grunts!

No Author Listed

Bless the Beasts and Children

No Author Listed

OtherSpace

No Author Listed

On Numbers and Games

No Author Listed