To get rid of the error, they should have added, "...insofar as this Magisterium is in full conformity with Tradition."
Yes, indeed, ABL wasn't infallible. ABL is quite mistaken here. It is the MAGISTERIUM and the MAGISTERIUM ALONE that is the authentic interpreter of Tradition. As many priests have since pointed out, we cannot say that we oppose Tradition to the Magisterium without essentially becoming Protestants. Where we have issues is where MAGISTERIUM OPPOSES MAGISTERIUM. It is absolutely Catholic to give religious submission to the entire teaching of the Magisterium. Period. End of story. If anyone says otherwise, then either they do not understand the term "religious submission" or they're not Catholic.
You repeat this often and I thank you for that. For me, a light bulb moment and launch pad for follow up.
Once we agree that we can't set up an opposition between Tradition and Magisterium, then upon being confronted with apparent contradictions between pre-V2 Magisterium and post-V2 Magisterium, the issue then becomes whether we apply the hermeneutic of continuity or hermeneutic of rupture.
We have a strict obligation to TRY applying the hermeneutic of continuity as much as we possibly can. This hermeneutic of continuity must be the default for Catholics.
It's only as the LAST POSSIBLE RESORT when no such hermeneutic can conceivably be applied to discrepancies that we must say that there has been a rupture.
And what's funny is that I think the Vatican would perfectly agree with this line of thinking.
The SSPX/resistance R&R position has created a third alternative for itself, a Magisterium which is continuous but has few tears in it here and there. Something akin to a Magisterium with a doctrinal hernia.
The True Magisterium and the authentic Tradition of the Church are never opposed to one another, in that they are one integral entity. Thus when there is a conflict, it is from a departure from either one that is the cause.
Only the Truth can claim Magisterial authority and there cannot be two Magisteriums. The one which introduces novelty is easily indentified as the false one which does not come from the Church.
The conciliar church is not the Catholic Church, and the conciliar "magisterium" is not the Catholic Church's Magisterium.
The word "magisterium" is being used equivocally. There is really only one Magisterium and that is the authority derived from the attribute of infallibility which Jesus Christ endowed His Church. That is always and everywhere infallible either in its Ordinary and Universal or its Extra-ordinary mode of expression. Tradition is never "opposed" to this Magisterium because both have the same author, GOD. It has been rarely used from the time of Vatican II until the present inclusively, such as when Pope John Paul II declared the impossibility of women ordination which was an exercise of the "Universal and Ordinary" magisterium of the Church and therefore the decree was an infallible judgment of the revelation of God.
The personal magisterium of the pope, called his ordinary magisterium or ordinary authentic magisterium, is the teaching of the pope grounded in his grace of state. This can be opposed to the Magisterium of the Church and to Tradition. And to say this is not "essentially becoming Protestants." The essential difference between a Catholic and a Protestant concerns the principles used in making judgments of conscience. Every Catholic is morally required to do his best to form a true and certain conscience before every act and then his obliged to conform his acts to that conscience even if it should ultimately prove to be erroneous. The Catholic conscience is based upon objectively known criteria. The Protestant conscience is based upon whatever criteria the Protestant chooses which are neither objective nor consistent.
When you say, that "It is absolutely Catholic to give religious submission to the entire teaching of the Magisterium," you can only be speaking about the qualified and conditional religious submission to the ordinary magisterium of the person of the pope based upon his grace of state. It must be qualified because it is not necessarily free from error. This is exactly what Fr. Fenton and the other pre-Vatican II theologians cited in the document sent by Fr. Waters to the CDF confirm.
The submission of the mind and will, (i.e.: the soul), to revelation of God is submission to God on the authority of God and this is done without any qualification whatsoever. Every other submission is always and necessarily qualified. This is the Protestant position which claims the rights of conscience to qualify the revelation of God. It is nothing be an earlier edition of Religious Liberty.
The 1989 Profession of Faith is a creedal profession in which every single proposition is a dogma, a formal object of divine and Catholic faith, except for this specific addendum in question. This non-dogmatic proposition demands submission in a Catholic Creed of the "mind and will," or as Lumen Gentium says, submission of the "soul," without qualification whatsoever to man as man. This is just another false god.
Indeed this is quite true. But Tradition also admits of interpretation, just as Sacred Scripture does. It was the Prots who first started claiming that the Magisterium contradicted Sacred Scripture. But what they failed state was that it was their INTERPRETATION of Scripture that was opposed by the Magisterium's INTERPRETATION of Scripture. Similarly with Tradition. Like Sacred Scripture, Tradition admits of interpretation, and only the Magisterium has the role of being able to authentically interpret this.
Novus Ordo critics of Traditional Catholicism have pounced upon the rhetoric of "Magisterium vs. Tradition" to make an analogy with the Protestants. So the language must be completely avoided.
Yes, I give my internal assent to the Magisterium. Pope Piux IX and Pope Gregory XVI condemned Religious Liberty. I give my assent to that Magisterium and reject Religious Liberty. Now Vatican II comes along and says the opposite. Do I now accept Religious Liberty? Do I both accept it and reject it at the same time? That's intellectually impossible. So do I now give my assent to a proposition and also to its opposite at the same time? At that point the discussion centers around the hermeneutic to be applied and around how the two can be convincingly reconciled. Now we are no longer setting ourselves up as private judges of Tradition over and against the Magisterium but as struggling with a legitimate crisis of conscience regarding assent. Yes, we must give internal assent to the Magisterium. But to WHICH Magisterium?
Drew, you've simply restated the entire false R&R theological narrative.
Theologians have ALWAYS made the distinction between the infallible Magisterium and the non-infallible (aka merely authentic) Magisterium. There's nothing "equivocal" about this. Catholic theologians clearly distinguish between the two ... as did I in my post. So I honestly have no earthly idea what you're talking about.
To the former is due the assent of divine faith; teachings of the infallible Magisterium are believed with the certainty of faith.
To the latter is due the RELIGIOUS SUBMISSION. Religious submission involves the "mind and will" ... which is simply a way of stating that it must be an INTERNAL submission and not merely and outward "shutting up". It is not an absolute unconditional assent of divine faith or with the certainty of faith, but it is nevertheless and act of intellect and will (not merely of the body -- controlling the lips). Yes, as Father Fenton stated, it is theoretically POSSIBLE (however unlikely) that this Magisterium COULD CONTAIN ERROR. In that case, given due and proportionate reason, a respectful disagreement may be had ... while in full submisssion to the Magisterium per se.
There is consequently ABSOLUTELY NO REASON that any Catholic can reject that statement that we MUST give religious submission of the intellect and will to the merely authentic Magisterium. This was held universally by all Catholic theologians before Vatican II. This does not preclude legitimate respectful disagreement for grave reasons. Grave reason here = an APPARENT word-for-word contradiction of previous Magisterium to which we ALSO OWE THE SAME submission.
So how do we know that Pius IX and Gregory XVI weren't in fact WRONG in their condemnation of religious liberty while Vatican II was right? Ah, you say, it's because Pius IX and Gregory XVI followed Tradition while Vatican II did not. Says who, Drew? Your private judgment?
You're basically claiming that the 1989 formula required the absolute assent of divine faith to the merely-authentic non-infallible Magisterium in its mention of "intellect and will". That is completely false.
Ironically, it is the Sedevacantists who make this EXACT SAME MISTAKE, essentially imputing infallibility and absolute certainty to the teachings of the non-infallible merely-authentic Magisterium ... based on this very same language used in the pre-Vatican II theologians, that religious submission involves the internal assent of intellect and will.
In November 2013 Bishop de Gallareta told some of us in India that the SSPX would never sign a deal with the Conciliar Church as long as Vatican II was in place. I believe that he said something quite similar in Britain recently. Would he say such had he not been told this by Bp Fellay himself? Maybe Bishop de Mallerais has also been given a similar assurance.
But the writing on the wall for some years now is that Bp Fellay and his team want a deal. And it seems that such is not far away.
How can Bps dG and dM stay with the Society after this?
+Fellay has been dishonest even with the religious orders (Dominicans of Avrille, Braz. Benedictines and the German Carmelites. He was caught on many lies). So, he has totally discredited himself. I think +de Galarreta would have to go with +Fellay to Rome because he is the one that handled the talks with the Romans. My assumption is that if the two assistants are eager to go to Rome, so is +dG. If he has objections to it, he should have spoken after Fr. Pfluger made it clear the train to Rome is leaving. As far as +TM, my impression is that they are not leveling with him but is clear from his last talk that he is not going to Rome. He calls those who advise going to Rome "bad friends" and warns about them.
+TM may be the reason why the SSPX is coming to Rome through the back door (Argentina), as someone who has something to hide but from his last interview, he has gone the whole hog. I was delighted to hear Fr. Cyprian's June sermon. After listening to it, it is clear to me that he will not go to Rome. His speaking so emphatically at this time when +Fellay is showing his reform of the reform colors is no coincidence and very encouraging. MO.
For some readers, it might be time to re-read the letter of "the three" to +Fellay early in 2012. And be aware that letter was delivered while +F was putting the final touches on his AFD ("Doctrinal Preamble") or April Fifteenth Declaration.
In that letter, it seems clear that +W, +dG and +dM were of the same mind, but subsequently +F must have threatened the latter two forcing them into submission to his nefarious tactics.
But in time, the truth will come out, and if the latter two bishops are going to be true to their calling and their duty to God, they will not follow +F through the "back door" to Rome.
Fr. Joseph Fenton attributes the term "authentic (or authorized) magisterium"
N.B.: Fr. Fenton considered Fr. Salaverri and Louis Cardinal Billot, S. J. the foremost theologians of their time.
Other theologians before Vatican II were in agreement with Fr. Fenton.
Ah, MariaA ! These theologians are saying EXACTLY what I have been in my posts.
What you need to demonstrate is that the statement in the Professio is stating something different.
Msgr. Fenton used the term internal "mental" (aka "of the mind") assent for religious submission (in your citation above). Fr. Jung used the expression "inner" (aka of the mind and will, the interior faculties of man). This is to distinguish mere external lip service.
So when the Preamble uses the term religious submission of the mind and will, it's saying NOTHING OTHER THAN what these same theologians are saying. PROVE that the Professio means the absolute and unconditional assent of faith (with the certainty of faith).
You can't, because it does NOTHING OF THE SORT.
And why exactly do you keep bolding "authentic" Magisterium? It's precisely to the MERELY authentic Magisterium that the Profession requires "relgious submisson" (vs. the assent of faith).
In fact, the Vatican authorities have made it quite clear that they would entertain respectful dialogue with regard to the SSPX's concerns/problems/issues with the teachings of Vatican II ... provided that it's done from a standpoint of "religious submission", or "respect" and "deference". Lumen Gentium equates this religious submission to "in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence". This is to be distinguished from the cocky, "Convert, ye heretics, before we'll talk." attitude of the Resistance et al. Since WHEN has it been permitted for Catholics to adopt this defiant (vs. submissive) attitude towards the Vicar of Christ? Answer: NEVER.
Your reply makes a distinction between the uses of the word "magisterium." I agree with that distinction as far as it goes. But that distinction made here was not made in your first post. The teacher in one is God and the teacher in the other is man teaching by his grace of state. The former can neither deceive nor be deceived. The latter can both deceive and be deceived even when corresponding to his grace of state. The distinction is one of kind and not one of degree. Even in your current reply you are using the word at times without making the necessary distinction.
Submission of the mind and will, that is, the soul to God on the authority of God is what divine faith is. It must necessarily be unqualified. Any submission to man, any man whatsoever, speaking ultimately on his own authority, always and everywhere must be necessarily qualified.
Fr. Joseph Fenton in the AER article, The Religious Assent Due to Teaching of Papal Encyclicals, cites several theologians and all admit that religious submission is ALWAYS qualified and is distinct from "divine faith and ecclesiastical faith" (a term Fr. Fenton dates to the 16th century referring to doctrines of Catholic faith that have not been dogmatized). He cites specific examples of problems and says, "In line with these explanations, it is clear that the contradictions of a doctrinal statement contained in a papal encyclical in a non-infallible manner, but asserted authoritatively only in an encyclical is something which could be qualified with at least the censure of error. Obviously this applies to doctrinal statements alone." Whenever "error" is admitted as possible, qualification of assent is necessary. The problem is that you do not see any distinction between what Fr. Fenton describes and what is taught in Lumen Gentium, incorporated in the 1989 Profession of Faith, and made a criminal violation in canon law. I think this is a big mistake.
There is nothing in this explanation that suggests limitations or qualifications. Submission of the intellect and the will, that is, the soul, in an act of faith is necessary because "created reason is completely subject to uncreated truth, we are obliged to yield to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith" (Vatican I). The truths of divine revelation are not self-evident and therefore require submission of the mind and will. The religious submission of the will and intellect is demanded by Cardinal Ratzinger for the same reason because it is "under the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith." That is, it is an appeal to authority and not to reason. No qualification of this religious submission if affirmed. They may say that their can "respectful disagreement," but ultimately the questioning is permitted and ends with human authority alone. True "respectful disagreement" is followed by definitive clarification by the Holy Father. That is not case now nor has it been since Vatican II. If you have doubt as to the meaning of the 1989 Profession of Faith then examine how it is applied.
Fr. Waters and the Mission have been accused of "heresy" and "schism" by the local ordinary. The diocesan letter from the judicial vicar at the direction of the bishop specifically cited "descent from the 'authentic magisterium'" for the charge of "heresy." This charge has been appealed to the Holy Father through the CDF as is the right of every Catholic to obtain a clear, authoritative, and definitive declaration from the Holy Father on matters of Faith. This right to appeal to the Holy Father has been twice affirmed, once at the Lyons II and the other at Vatican I Council, it is also codified in canon law. Catholics possess this right and this right imposes a duty of obligation upon the Holy Father.
The 1989 Profession of Faith is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed with two additional dogmatic propositions plus a third non-dogmatic addendum which is the proposition in question. According to the CDF, the "Professio fidei states: 'Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium.'" This is a "Professio fidei" and it is imposed as such.
Fr. Waters and the Mission were accused of "heresy" for denying acts of the "authentic magisterium" that demanded "religious submission of the will and intellect" to the person of the pope by virtue of his grace of state and not to the attribute of infallibility which God has endowed His Church. When the charge of "heresy" for disobedience to the "authentic magisterium" was appealed to the Holy Father through the CDF asking, as a right, a definitive determination of matters concerning the Catholic Faith, the reply given by the CDF was the 1989 Profession of Faith. No answer was made to Fr. Waters' "respectful questioning" that the 1989 Profession of Faith could not be made by any Catholic without specific qualifications, several of which were cited, without breaking the First Commandment. He also added that he is willing to be corrected if the Holy Father will infallibly settle the matter. This failure to answer also explains why it is the only absolutely non-negotiable condition for regularization of the SSPX with Rome. Nothing else is needed.
Everything since and including Vatican II has no greater authority than the authentic ordinary magisterium of the pope and bishops which ultimately is human authority with few exceptions, such as previously cited, when Pope John Paul II used the authentic magisteium to engage the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium on the decree concerning the ordination of women.
In fine, theologians such as Fr. Fenton before Vatican II when speaking of religious submission do not use the phrase "submission of the mind and will" without necessary qualifications and several examples have already been cited. These qualifications are not in the 1989 Profession of Faith or the CDF explanation of the addendum. It is added to a Creedal profession and now treated by the CDF as if it were a dogma, for only denial of a dogma can be formally charged with heresy. Any criticism of Vatican II and the concilarist direction is only permitted until serious questions are asked and then the reply is the 1989 Profession of Faith – that is, the reply is 'shut-up.' The reason Bishop Fellay has not been told to 'shut-up' is because he has asked no serious questions.
No Catholic can accept a demand of UNQUALIFIED submission of the mind and will to any man as man and that is what the authentic ordinary magisterium is. Theologians before Vatican II recognized necessary qualifications. The current understanding and application of the teaching does not.
We know they are wrong because their teaching is in accord with the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium. Of course any judgment anyone makes on anything can rightfully be called "private judgment." Even making a profession of Catholic faith by the submission of mind and will to the revelation of God is a "private judgment." Vatican I's article on the faith says that, "the assent of faith is by no means a blind movement of the mind." That is, it requires a "private judgment" regarding the motives of credibility. What I said before concerning conscience applies here. Every Catholic must do his best before any act or judgment to insure a conscience that is both true and certain. He is then required to follow that conscience even if it is shown subsequently to be erroneous. We have made, what you call a "private judgment" on the Catholic Faith and we have submitted this "private judgment" to the supreme magisterium of the Church. We have done all that is morally required in the objective order to obtain a definitive judgment by virtue of the infallible Magisterium of the Church.
I am not making this claim. I am claiming that Rome is treating it that way. That is established by what the CDF has done with Fr. Waters and the Mission. It could not be called a "heresy" if it were not treated as an article of "divine faith." That is a fact by definition and constitutes prima facie evidence in support of this argument.
It is true that the Sedevacantists make this mistake but I am not. I am not "imputing infallibility and absolute certainty to teaching of the non-infallible." Quite the opposite. I think that what is being done in the 1989 Profession of Faith is evidence against Sedevacantism because it is an effort by Modernists to impose the conciliarists teachings with the appearance of infallible truth without its substance. If the concilarist popes were not true popes then there would be nothing prohibiting them from dogmatizing error. In spite of having all the power and authority, they have not done this.
The Sedevacantists also treat the pope, in his person, as the 'rule of faith.' He is not. The 'never failing faith' given by Jesus to St. Peter was according to a Lapide, a personal gift for him alone. And this is confirmed by Vatican I in its definition of papal infallibility because it cites this scripture passage as the authority for the dogma yet the dogma itself defines infallibility in a very narrow sense as an attribute of the Church that the pope under specific conditions can employ.
We know they [Pius IX and Gregory XVI] are not wrong because their teaching is in accord with the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium. Of course any judgment anyone makes on anything can rightfully be called "private judgment." Even making a profession of Catholic faith by the submission of mind and will to the revelation of God is a "private judgment." Vatican I's article on the faith says that, "the assent of faith is by no means a blind movement of the mind." That is, it requires a "private judgment" regarding the motives of credibility. What I said before concerning conscience applies here. Every Catholic must do his best before any act or judgment to insure a conscience that is both true and certain. He is then required to follow that conscience even if it is shown subsequently to be erroneous. We have made, what you call a "private judgment" on the Catholic Faith and we have submitted this "private judgment" to the supreme magisterium of the Church. We have done all that is morally required in the objective order to obtain a definitive judgment by virtue of the infallible Magisterium of the Church.
MA, I agree with what you say about Bp Fellay. But take a look at this extract from the editorial of the just departed SSPX-UK Superior in that District's July-August Bulletin.
combat for, and to propagate, the Faith, the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Catholic Church... This mission is more urgent than ever given that the situation in the Church is getting worse from day to day.
revolution, and how this touches on all the aspects of the life of the Church. Having over-turned Catholic teaching, the Faith, Catholic doctrine, the liturgy, the sacraments, the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the government of the Church, the nature of the Church her-self, with a new bible, new a new catechism, a new code of Canon Law, a new notion of holiness (which is unrecognisable to Tradition), there are now moves to overturn Catholic morality, the last defence, the last bastion left in the official Church. It is an attack on the moral order, both natural and supernatural.You know that the Church authorities want to allow Holy Communion for divorced "re married" couples, as well as recognising sinful partnerships, cohabitation, and even unnatural unions. This affects Catholic teaching and goes against the sanctity of the Church herself, against the sanctity of marriage and against the sanctification of souls.
It also signifies an overturning of all morality because if the realities of good and evil can change then virtue and sin become relative. It changes the precepts given by Our Blessed Lord in the moral law, both natural and supernatural.
innovations, whether they be prelates or institutions, such as the Franciscans of the Immaculate.
post -conciliar reforms, making these a condition of any agreement. We see how those in authority act towards us with disloyalty and cunning.
Your reply makes a distinction between the uses of the word "magisterium." I agree with that distinction as far as it goes. But that distinction made here was not made in your first post.
Drew, I've been pushing this distinction for years here on CI, largely in addressing the sedevacantists, many of whom similarly confuse "internal religious submission of the mind and will" with infallibility. So if it was not clearly-enough articulated in my first post, that's because I was assuming the distinction in my mind. In fact, the distinction is evident already in the passage from the Professio wherein it's talking about the Magisterium where it falls short of making a "definitive act". So that was my starting point.


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An Animated History Of The Minimum Wage
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22 raises, by 12 presidents, but how much in your pocket?
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… if the figures are reliable, that is
Economy Growing at Fastest Pace in 2 Years
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The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the government estimated Thursday.
Why Today's Miserable Job Numbers Are Probably Wrong
A revision is likely coming
What Recovery? The Average Family Is Still Poorer Than it Was Seven Year Ago
By Christopher Matthews Dec. 20, 2013
Here's a statistic that illustrates just how bad the recession was: Despite U.S. households gaining $21 trillion in household wealth since 2009, the average family is still poorer than it was in 2007. That's right, according to …
The Global Economy Is About to Pop!
Unless economists are wrong—which, it turns out, they often are
When Taking On More Debt Is a (Very) Good Thing
The 2008 financial crisis had many causes, but the underlying theme of the meltdown was that businesses and individuals took on too much debt. Since the bubble burst, the country has been dealing with the problem of casting off …
Jobless Rate Falls To 7%, A 5-Year Low
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Best since 2008
GDP Growth Soars to 3.6% in Third Quarter: Will it Last?
Always remember to read the fine print, especially when it comes to government statistics.
Though the Commerce Department announced Thursday that estimates for third-quarter GDP growth had been revised up to an eye-popping …
New Data Hint At Accelerating Economic Recovery
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The Institute for …
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Foroohar: Housing Will Not Save the Economy
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When it comes to the U.S. economic recovery, the conventional wisdom is that it's all about housing. That's where the majority of Americans keep the majority of their wealth. It's 15% of the economy and has been driving …

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


UU A Way Of Life: Is God smiling on you?
My fears make me jealous and paranoid.
My insecurities make me hypervigilant and I think I see things that aren't there.
Hell has come into my own head and heart, and I spread my personal hell into my relationships with others.
I blame them for things they didn't do. I falsely accuse them of things which makes them angry and drives them away. I insist that they are doing things to me which they deny and that only makes me more jealous and paranoid and them angry and rejecting.
Where do these fears come from that fuel the jealousy and paranoia?
Yes, I have been hurt in the past. Yes, I have been wounded. Yes, I don't want to be hurt again. Yes, I live my life on high alert, seeing things that aren't there just to protect myself.
I know what is happening to me. I am becoming aware of the patterns. I realize increasingly what that thing is that always happens to me. There was a time when my fears were appropriate. My fears wanted me to be safe and no longer attacked and harmed. My fears back then were a friend trying to help me. Now, fears have taken over my life and instead of helping me and protecting me, they are destroying my relationships and making my life a living hell.
I have come to realize that my fears are no longer my friend. They have done their job and its time for them to move along. I have learned that deep down I am loved by a Divine energy that is beyond any human understanding. It is in this Divine energy that I will put my trust and accept that no matter what happens I am loved and will be okay.
This connection with the Divine energy within protects me and with this new found source of security, I find myself engaging with the world in an open hearted rather then a close hearted way.
I realize that while others have hurt me, God has smiled on me.


When America's biggest football championship came to New York City, Pepsi wanted to give local fans the party they deserved. From the moment attendees approached MetLife Stadium, Pepsi's presence was both powerful and palpable. Pepsi's dazzling entry gate engaged fans with a refreshing take on the football experience and on the Pepsi brand.
Tostitos party zone is an interactive installation that lets fans gather and hone their football skills in a life-sized football video game that responds in real time to coordinated movements. This innovative gaming experience made clever use of proprietary technology from 3M GTG by integrating crowd recognition technology with large LED screens.
To boost pre-game excitement, PepsiCo popped up in Bryant Park with a three-day extravaganza of elevated experiences including: food, culture, art and sports.
Capitalizing on its success in New York, PepsiCo created luxurious, branded hospitality experiences. Premium event lounges and suites provided "the best seat in the house" for football fun in Arizona.


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Horror Mystery Science Fiction Historical Romance time travel
By James Van Pelt
Jun 14, 2019 · 5,760 words · 21 minutes
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Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel via Unsplash.
From the author: Everyone knows about time travel paradoxes and how they make travel into history impossible, but there are ways around the problems, and if you could go back in time, to your best and worst days, what would you discover? Could you answer your deepest mysteries?
"Some things happen that you have to figure out how to live with. If you don't, they will kill you," said Pierce.
"You can't keep taking equipment without getting into trouble," said Linda, from her work station. She looked concerned and grandmotherly. "It's not ethical. There are laws."
Pierce glanced up from the briefcase full of electronics. His face dragged against the bones--full of exhaustion and whatever had taken the place of grief--and his brain moved too slowly to lie. It had been weeks since he'd slept more than an hour or two in a row. "You don't always think about consequences. Go ahead and report me," he said, snapping the lid shut. "Besides, her voice is everywhere," he whispered.
He coughed twice. Spring and summer allergies had settled into his lungs and turned into a dry, whistling hack he hadn't been able to shake.
In the hallway outside of the lab, he heard Linda say to his back, "Nothing you find out will make it any better."
She's probably right, he thought as he drove to Denver's City Park. Even with the Aural History Institute's capability of going back in time to record sound, history was still a mystery. Sound records only provided more questions: why did people do anything? Why did they behave the way they did? Why did events turn out one way and not another? Human actions weren't always the result of cause and effect, and motivations were still only guessed at. Sometimes people just acted out. History was a joke.
He shook his head. Surely there must be answers, he thought. We only have to keep searching. History is about making sense of the chaos.
Yesterday's recording of two days at the Chocolate Liqueur's manager's office a week and a half before Sarah's death, had been a wash. Fourteen phone calls, all business related: a long bull session with one of the waitresses about house hunting and tropical fish and several short talks with restaurant employees over hours or what needed to be done for the day. Evidently, Sarah hadn't spent much time in her office.
No mention of his name in two days, though. Nothing about her upcoming wedding.
He turned automatically. Today's recording wouldn't require subterfuge like yesterday's, where he had to sit in the new manager's office, pretending to fill out a job application while the sensitive instruments in the briefcase below him searched for the time he had preset, recording all the sounds that had taken place in the room then. The mechanism whirred slightly, and he had kept shuffling his feet to cover the sound. Annoyed, the manager took his application wordlessly and waved him away from her desk.
As good as the computer's search engine was, picking Sarah's voice from the hours of silence or other conversations, listening to everything she said had still taken several hours. He'd played back parts, adjusting the mix, enhancing sound quality, identifying who she was speaking to. A printout tucked into the back of the notebook listed one hundred and three voices from the hundreds of days of recordings he'd made, but only twenty-seven had names beside them. The rest were unknown.
And in all those hours of voices, of Sarah talking, he hadn't heard her once say why she changed her mind.
If I can reconstruct the past maybe I can understand it, he thought. Maybe I can understand my part in it.
That morning, as the sun washed coldly through the lab's window, Pierce had found himself listening over and over to the same irrelevant sentence: Sarah asking someone in her crystalline clear voice, "Are any of the avocados soft at all?"
He fell asleep on a couch beside the Aural History file cabinets, and Linda found him there when she opened the lab.
City Park slid by on his left, and he almost missed the parking lot. He set the dates before he got out of the car: February 17 and April 28, the day they were engaged, and the day she broke the engagement. The best of times and the worst of times, he thought.
Pierce squeezed the handle of the briefcase as he walked toward the park bench where both events had occurred. Mid-morning on a weekday in August, the park was mostly empty. A handful of toddlers with a single supervisor ran around the marble dolphin sculpture on the street side of the park. On the other side, a row of high rises bordered the bike path and neatly trimmed grass. A scattering of solid wooden benches stretched from Broadway at the east end of the park to Lincoln at the other.
He sat heavily on "their" bench. Dark green paint absorbed the sun's heat, and its warmth baked the backs of his legs. His fingers rested lightly on the briefcase while he sat motionless for a long time.
Somewhere in time it's February, he thought; she's still sitting on this bench. She's wearing the yellow ski parka I bought her for Christmas, has her hands underneath her because we'd cleared the wet snow to give her a place to sit. Two kids play on the bike path, except it's snow covered too, and they're having troubles with their sled. Its runners keep digging in instead of riding on the top.
Tiny heat waves danced off the bike path's asphalt now, but he could see the snow there too; the kids laughed, tugging at their sled, and beside him Sarah's breath came out in little fogs that danced around her face.
Through the smell of summer grass and cars on the street, he could also feel the sharp bite of winter air in his nose. He took another deep breath, then coughed loudly, a pair of seal barks that trailed into whistles.
What did she say, though? he thought. What were we talking about before I asked her? What did her voice sound like before she knew I wanted to marry her? What, exactly, did it sound like when she said yes? Can I hear in her yes a hint of the confusion that would come in two months?
He opened the case and pressed the record button. He imagined a tiny microphone hurtling back to rest at this same spot six months earlier, recording everything that was said then. Nothing physical really traveled, though. The device reached back into the continuum to record what had happened in the past. It didn't go there itself.
The readouts confirmed the device was functioning correctly. A short distance presented no problems in chronological drift, not like his current project at the Aural History Institute, which was finding early Denver political speeches. Going back a hundred years meant he could miss by as much as a day.
His problems were tiny compared to the work some groups were doing, like the one trying for George Washington's inaugural, or the ridiculously ambitious group in Israel who hoped to capture the Sermon on the Mount. Not only were they dealing with incredible chronological slop, but no one was sure when or where the sermon occurred, if it did at all.
Still, a six-month jump presented no challenge. He wouldn't miss by more than a few minutes, and the device could hold two-days' worth of sound.
Pierce shut his eyes. He almost felt Sarah beside him, her cheeks flushed in the cold air, her wide smile lighting the rest of her face. She had rested her hand on his wrist. He remembered how warm it felt. "Yes," she had said. "Yes, I'll marry you." She put her head on his shoulder.
On the same bench, though--on the same bench two months later at the end of April she'd cried, holding her head in her hands, refusing to look at him. Crusts of old snow, blackened with city soot surrounded the bench. On Broadway, the cars splashed grimly through dirty water, and the clouds scudded across the sky like tattered ghosts.
Time held them both.
On July 2 she married Baylor, head of the Aural History Institute, and on July 7, while Baylor was in Dallas working on the Kennedy project, her Victorian house with its crummy wiring she'd planned on replacing in the fall burned down with her in it. Baylor flew back on the red-eye when he heard the news. Now, in August, Pierce was sitting on the same bench, gathering the echoes of her voice solidly anchored in time. Why did it all happen? he thought. Where's the sense in it?
It all existed at once. The bench beneath him now was warm, but once it was wet, and another time it was cold. Sarah held his wrist and leaned against him, breathing winter in and out in fog and whiteness, and she also shook in tears, her face buried in her hands. Everything, all of it, tumbled around and around. But time wasn't like memory. It didn't fade and mix. It didn't change with perception or become disordered. Sounds in time's continuum, at least, were measurable and retrievable. In five years they might be able to capture visuals too, but presently they were limited to sound. Sound would have to be enough, he thought. In sound he would find the reason for the emptiness now.
The mechanism chirped softly, and he knew that it had finished with the February recording, capturing four hours in a few minutes. The recorder moved on to April.
That afternoon, Pierce plowed through several hours of spidery sounding recordings of state senate from the previous century. The new recordings of Sarah at City Park waited on his desk, but he couldn't work on it until after hours.
Baylor's office stood open, revealing a corner of his desk and a droopy fern in a pot on the floor.
Through Pierce's headphones, Henry Teller, one of Colorado's Republican senator's boomed out a speech he gave several times in 1893. "We are neither cast down nor dejected, but this is mindless destruction," he said repeatedly, as a lead in to each point attacking the repeal of the Sherman Silver act, which would close hundreds of mines and put much of the mining industry into bankruptcy. "We do not disguise the fact that we are to go through the valley of the shadow of death," he said with his particular hyperbole.
Baylor stepped into the doorway. His grey suit seemed more businesslike than academic, and the athleticism of his build and stance only accented his nearly white hair and silver-rimmed glasses. He scanned the room, nodding when he caught Pierce's eye, then said something to Linda that Pierce didn't catch through the headphones. They laughed, and through the thundering conclusion of Teller's speech, Pierce watched his boss and Linda chat amiably.
Baylor didn't look like a man whose wife of one week had died in a fire a month ago. He was relaxed and tanned. He seemed well rested, at ease, and, as always, oozing with a breezy confidence that calmed potential clients, nervous about the thousands of dollars a thorough aural search cost.
He'd come to work the day after, Pierce had heard, while Pierce himself spent the day in the waiting room at Denver General, consoling Sarah's parents and being consoled himself.
Pierce categorized the speech, stored it and moved on to the next step. The computer displayed a circular grid with sound sources highlighted. Teller's voice was loudest and brightest on the screen. The other spots were coded and some tentatively identified. Pierce ran the speech back, this time isolating on the weaker sounds. One was a fan, he decided; another was a conversation between what was probably a pair of state dignitaries. He entered his observations mechanically into the computer. Maybe some grad student doing a paper on politics in the west would be interested later.
A third sound puzzled him. It rumbled for a few seconds, then paused, over and over. Pierce tapped a pencil against the monitor, switching from one sound filtering routine to the next. The display next to the circular grid showed the pattern of sound waves in the familiar pattern of jagged lines. Finally he decided it was a man snoring.
Baylor flicked off his office light, and with a start, Pierce realized how late it was. Linda waved as she left, and a moment later Baylor closed his door, strode across the room and sat on the corner of Pierce's desk.
"You don't look good, Pierce. Are you O.K.?" Baylor's voice was soft, which made it harder to find and record in time.
Every day since Sarah's death, Baylor had made an effort to make small talk with Pierce. Pierce couldn't remember him being nearly as friendly before.
"Fine, yes," said Pierce. A long pause stretched between them. "Thank you," he added finally.
Baylor shifted on the desk, bumping his knee against Pierce. "I know how difficult this has been on you. Get through the Teller speeches and take a week off."
Pierce forced himself to smile. "I appreciate the concern, but really, I'm all right."
"Maybe the weekend will help." Baylor stood, then leaning over Pierce's shoulder, glanced at the computer display. He pointed to the sound source Pierce had just been studying for the last half hour. "Looks like a guy snoring."
After he left, Pierce loaded in the first recording, the proposal.
"Hey, buddy," she'd said. They were her first words.
"God, it's cold." Pierce didn't sound nervous to himself, but listening with his eyes closed, headphones clamped solidly, he remembered now how tense he'd been. Every word was just delaying the question he wanted to ask. He remembered thinking that at any moment she would want to know what was the matter, but she didn't say a thing. She laughed instead.
"Here, sit on your hands like I am. It's warmer, and you won't get your pants wet," she said.
He'd already forgotten how optimistic she had been. Never, it's cold, but here's a way to stay warm.
"Of course, when you're older, like me, you'll know these things," she had continued.
He laughed, and it sounded easy. "By a week!"
When he finally got to the proposal, it was just as he remembered. He listened to her acceptance a dozen times. It was always the same: totally sure, totally in love. What happened in the next month? How could she go from loving him to leaving him? How could she possibly have married Baylor?
He let the recording run on, and she said something he didn't remember. After she'd said, "Yes, yes I'll marry you," there was no conversation for a few minutes. He remembered holding her; his throat tightened thinking about it, listening to the silence of their embrace. Then she said, "You could go back in time and record us, couldn't you?"
"I suppose," he'd said lazily.
"That's nice to know--that it's always there."
"Like a contract," he said with a laugh.
"Would you ever do that?" She sounded lazy too. Her voice carried no edge. Pierce remembered her forehead against his cheek.
Pierce joked, "That would be breaking the law."
"Yeah, but would you?"
"It's possible" A tumble of snow fell from a nearby tree, thumping solidly to the ground. "I might, for you."
He ran the whole conversation through again, this time with a different filtering equation, trying to get the essence of her voice, the pure stuff. The truth. Were the seeds of her decision to leave him present even then?
They'd left the park holding hands inside his coat pocket, and instead of going back to work, had gone to her house and made love. It was only the second time they'd been together, and they were nervous. He'd gotten into her bed first, and when she came out of the bathroom, she had a bath towel wrapped around her. She'd let the towel slip a little and said shyly, "How do you like this?"
The afternoon had passed in languorous glory in her old house. He drowned joyfully in bedsheets and warm breath and moist pleasures.
Pierce shook himself and pulled the headphones down around his neck. His ears ached from pressing the phones so tightly to the sides of his head.
He popped the recording out of the player and turned it over in his hand. The other conversation would be there too. The beginning and end of their love. Bookends, so to speak, of sound.
Fluorescent lights buzzed softly in the deserted office. It was long past midnight; he'd lost hours playing back the old conversation, listening for any clue to put some sense to the last few weeks. But it hadn't helped. Her words rang in his ears, "Yes. Yes, I'll marry you."
Her twenty-fifth birthday would have been next month. They'd celebrated Baylor's fiftieth at the end of January. Thoughtful, Pierce opened the recorder, set new coordinates, then checked the office one more time to be sure he was alone. Feeling paranoid, he moved softly across the room to Baylor's door, opened it, then slipped through the darkness to his desk. The whir of the device sounded monstrously loud in the quiet room, and Pierce jumped at the click of the air-conditioning when it kicked on.
Pierce listened to the new recording. The morning of Sarah's death, Baylor received Linda's condolences politely, refusing her suggestion that he should go home. After Linda left the office, Baylor made quiet sounds as he worked at his desk. Drawers opened and closed. A pen scratched on paper. He took some calls and made some others. If Pierce hadn't known, he wouldn't have been able to distinguish this day from other days.
Mid-afternoon, on the day after Sarah died, Baylor made a call to his insurance agent. Pierce listened intently.
"I'd like to report a claim," Baylor said, his voice matter of fact and calm.
"Right, My wife died in a fire yesterday." Baylor paused. "No. No, I'd rather do it now. It's better than thinking about it." He answered all the questions, then hung up.
"Linda," Baylor called. Pierce winced at the high volume. "I think I will go home early today."
Linda's voice, very faintly replied, "Oh, I think that's best, dear. You should get away for awhile."
Dawn broke gradually, and the sun was well up before Pierce listened to the April recording. She'd started crying after Pierce had said, "I can't wait for the spring melt."
"What's wrong?" he said. Cars mumbled in the background. The bench creaked. She'd continued sobbing. He coughed in the recording. The allergies were bothering him even then, each cough sliding into the airy whistle that just tickled his throat and provoked the next one.
Pierce opened his eyes; scratches marred the desk's surface. The computer display showed the orientation of the sound sources. Lines jumped, and she said, "I'm not happy, Pierce. I've got to call it off."
He hadn't answered. Hands clamped against the earphones, he couldn't even hear his breathing anymore, just the hitches in Sarah's throat as she cried. He held his breath now; it was like being there, her sounds were so clear. A hot iron fist bunched in his chest, and he shut his eyes again. Then she said, "It's not you. It's me. I'm not ready."
"Why?" Pierce said to the emptiness of the office. He coughed and his lungs hurt. Everywhere he'd recorded in the past weeks, he'd searched for that answer, and he hadn't found it yet. She hadn't told anyone why, after six weeks, she decided she didn't love him. She hadn't told anyone why she married Baylor.
Pierce took a recorder and went home. He fell asleep without undressing, and when the phone woke him, it was already dark outside.
It took a few seconds for him to recognize Linda.
"One of the machines is missing," she said.
"I've got it." He rubbed at his eyes. Nothing in his brain functioned right yet, and he was afraid he sounded incoherent.
"Someone at the restaurant recognized you. They called the police, and the police called Baylor. I think they were just checking up on the complaint, but if they find out you took unauthorized recordings, you could be arrested. You could get our license revoked."
Pierce blinked hard and shook his head before he answered.
"I was asleep. Sorry. Why'd they call Baylor?"
"People are afraid of aural historians. It might seem like harmless work to you, but they're worried that everything they've said in the past could come back to haunt them. Haven't you noticed how much harder it is to get the permits? You know how many states have passed laws forbidding sound sampling less than fifty years old? You can't walk into a place that knows what kind of work you do without them worrying that you're going to record them too. A waitress recognized you. She didn't know your name, but she remembered where you worked. They figured you weren't actually trying to get a job, so they contacted the police."
Pierce took a deep breath. "Did you know Baylor called his insurance claim on Sarah the day after she died?"
Silence hissed for a long time on the line. Finally Linda said, "Well, he's a cold fish."
"I don't think he loved her. What kind of guy would be out of town without his wife a week after the wedding?"
"Pierce. There's nothing you can find that will change what happened. It doesn't matter."
He said, "I know, Linda. Listen, I've got to get some more sleep. I haven't been myself lately."
"Good. That sounds like the best plan. Monday we can straighten the restaurant thing out with Baylor, and we can get this behind us." She sounded relieved.
When he hung up, Pierce rechecked the charge on the batteries in the recorder, then headed for his car.
At Sarah's house, yellow, plastic ribbon still surrounded the burned remnants. In the streetlight's garish illumination, the broken timbers stuck up like a pocket lunar landscape. He ducked under the ribbon, then carefully picked his way through the rubble. His feet stirred ash and the smell of burnt wood. A menthol cough drop coated the back of his throat. The neighborhood was too close together. If he were heard, someone would call the cops.
Her house had been a perfect reflection of her. She'd hung art prints on the wall, mostly impressionists, and black and white photographs she'd taken herself of falling down barns and old country fences. Standing in the remains of the house, Pierce tried to orient himself to what he remembered. The burnt patch of land seemed much smaller than the original house. He figured, approximately, that he now stood where the living room used to be. She'd had a phone on a delicate cherrywood end table. He placed the recorder about where it might have been and activated it.
A car turned the corner onto her street, and Pierce ducked low. Charred wood flaked beneath his fingers as long shadows swept past him. He stayed down until the tail lights vanished.
A chirp from the briefcase told him that the first recording was done. Using a penlight, he reset the instrument and started it again. He didn't bother standing up. Cars came along often enough that he figured it wasn't worth the effort to get out of the ash, and he didn't feel he had the energy to do it anyway.
Finally, lying back, he stared at the stars. The device hummed quietly beside him. Complicated electronics were right now holding a position in time, recording everything that they could. They were there, where Sarah still lived and breathed.
Pierce remembered once when he was a student, he'd been taking an exam that he wasn't well prepared for, and as he struggled with the little he knew about the subject, the professor had walked by his desk. The answers are all right there, so close I can almost reach out and touch them, Pierce had thought. But the professor had walked on, and Pierce knew nothing more than he had before. He could feel Sarah's presence like that. She had walked through this burnt out space a thousand times. She was all around him, in time, but he couldn't touch her. The best he could do was send the recorder back and let it do its job.
Moving the briefcase into where the bedroom used to be, he recorded a few hours of the past. Twice a police car drove by, sweeping the ruins with a searchlight, while Pierce hid himself behind a low remnant of wall.
Pierce let the computer kick out dead air time. Then an index of sounds scrolled onto the screen, labeling when each section was recorded, how long it was, and, where possible, what it was. Many of the segments were Sarah's voice alone. Some were Sarah and Baylor. A handful were not voices: refrigerator, air conditioner, telephone ringing, etc. And some were labeled "anomalous"--the computer didn't recognize the sound.
Hand trembling and a little sick, Pierce picked July 2, the day Sarah married Baylor. Linda was right, thought Pierce. People should be afraid of the aural technology. It is, essentially, limitless eavesdropping. What person could stay sane knowing that anything he or she said could be retrieved later? How could any moment remain intimate if a microphone out of time could drop into your room, into your life, for someone else's consumption? He thought, what right do I have to listen to Sarah's final days?
For that matter, what if the technological advances delivered on their promise, and in five or ten years visual records of past events could be made? What if the current prejudice against the admissibility of pre-present retrieval of criminal information changed? For all he knew, his actions right now were being recorded for a trial in the future. As soon as he played back the recording, he was committing an illegal act, albeit at this point a minor one.
He pushed playback anyway.
In the recording, a door opened. Sarah's voice. It was 4:30 on July 2, an hour and a half after the wedding. She was too far away from the pick up, maybe standing outside the door, but clearly she wasn't happy. The tone sounded upset. She was arguing with someone, Baylor.
"It's our honeymoon night," Pierce heard her say clearly. The reply was incomprehensible.
After more words, the door shut. Her dress swished loudly as she passed the recording point. Drawers slammed open. A lot of clatter. Then the shower turned on. As far as Pierce could tell, she was alone. Baylor hadn't come in. Pierce knew he left for Dallas the next morning. Until her parents called him on the night of the fire, he had assumed that Sarah was with him.
Later, she picked up the phone and punched in a number. Then she hung it up immediately. She did that twice more.
By 10:15, she was in bed. Nothing on the disk after that except household creaks and groans. It was an old house, after all, and as the night cooled it shrank against itself with plenty of protest.
The 3rd and 4th were a repetition of the first night without the argument at the door. She took a phone call on the 4th; it sounded like it was from Baylor.
"I'm doing fine," she said, her tone cool and reserved. "And you?"
"That's good . . . How's the project going? . . . That's interesting . . . Uh huh . . . Uh huh . . . Yes . . . I'll expect to hear from you." She hung up. She didn't move from the couch; the recording point was only a foot or two from her. Pierce heard her suck air between her teeth. Then, distinctly, she said, "The shit."
Pierce drew back a bit and played it again. Sarah never swore. Never. And it embarrassed him to have heard it from her. Or worse, it embarrassed him that he'd intruded into her privacy to hear this. Still, a little part of him exulted. What if she were unapproachably happy in the marriage? How would he feel about that?
On top of the embarrassment, he felt horrifying sadness. He could taste it in his mouth and feel it in his face. Her final days were not good. She married, and her husband left town for a week. Would he have wished that on her?
Why didn't she call him? Everything would have been different if she had only called him.
Pierce listened to her side of four more phone calls in the last days, each one more bitter than the last. Sarah sounded baffled and frustrated. Pierce couldn't hear Baylor's end of the conversations, but he could imagine his calm voice, reassuring her, calming her, refusing to argue.
"I'm not being a little girl!" she yelled once. "This isn't what we talked about before."
They argued about money. He wanted her to sign papers at the bank on the house and car. She had stock.
"Maybe when you grew up, men behaved this way," she said. "It's different now. How about you sign over your mutual fund to me instead?" That ended one of the conversations.
Pierce had lain awake the week after the wedding in agony. It made his cough worse, and he hacked so hard that he thought he would throw up. He didn't know she was still in town. Every time he closed his eyes he could see them together. He couldn't wipe it out. Partly it made him desperate, although there was nothing he could do. But most of all it maddened him. Pointless, hopeless, boiling anger that made him want to punch holes in walls, to tear things down.
He went to work instead, and imagined them in Dallas. Pierce pictured her sitting on the park bench in the yellow jacket. He pictured her in bed, and he could feel her hands on his shoulders, but they weren't his shoulders, and it wasn't him. It was Baylor.
He had to sleep with the lights on.
Pierce looked around the office. The late afternoon sun cast a butter yellow on the walls and equipment. In the cabinets were thousands of files of sound samples, every one marked and sorted. All of history waiting to be observed in its honesty. No interpretation. No prejudices of memory and subjectivity. The actual sounds. The real thing. Unavoidable. Undeniable. Never to fade away.
Like the sounds of Sarah on July 7, her last day, crying on her couch.
She'd placed two calls to Dallas, and left a message both times. "This is Sarah. Please phone."
Pierce's eyes were shut. He cried too. She picked up her phone again, punched in a number, then hung up. Was it his number? He couldn't tell. He tried punching his number on the phone to see if the tones matched, but they all sounded the same to him. The recording didn't give enough tonal difference to be sure.
She cried on the couch for almost an hour, never moving. Pierce didn't fast forward through the section. He laid his head on the scratched surface of the desk, and listened to the rise and fall of her despair. She'd always been so happy that it hurt to hear this coming from her.
Finally, she stopped. The computer showed that a section of her voice was coming, but it didn't show any other sounds. No telephone ringing or knock at the door, just her speaking.
Her breathing was soft and even. Then she sighed. "Pierce," she said. Pierce jerked his head off the desk. "Pierce, if you ever come and listen to this, I want you to know I was wrong about us. I was wrong."
Pierce held the earphones to his head in disbelief. He fumbled at the keyboard and played it back. He clutched double handfuls of his shirt as she said it again.
He whispered into the empty office, "Oh, god, I'm so sorry." It didn't matter why she changed her mind anymore. At the end, she still loved him.
The file played on. She stood from the couch, her clothes swishing, and she walked into the kitchen. Pots clattered. Water ran. Pierce listened to the clink of silverware against a plate.
Outside, the sun set. Pierce listened in real-time. No fast forward. Time crept in the recording at the same pace it occurred. He heard her last hours.
She walked from room to room. Light switches clicked on or off. The shower ran. Then, silence. The computer showed that it was 10:30 in her world. She was sleeping.
Hand shaking, full of dread and resignation, Pierce skipped to just before a sound at 12:15 the computer labeled "anomalous."
Through the headphones, the house was quiet. Not even the creaks that were a part of the early evening. No wind blew. Then, a scratch. The computer barely registered it as a jump in the sound levels. Another sound: the tumblers on her front door turning. A squeak of hinges. A stealthy step.
Pierce sat straight up, eyes closed, seeing the blackness that was the interior of the house in his memory. Another tiny click, a flashlight going on. He could see it in his mind's eye, a handkerchief blocking most of the light.
More whispery hisses like cloth on cloth. A metallic clink. Then, a crackling buzz: the kind of sound a shorted wire would make in an old house where the wiring was ninety years' old and the wood as dry as abandoned dreams.
Then, a cough. A dry, awful cough that ended on a tiny whistle. His cough.
Totally numb, Pierce listened to his own footsteps retreating across the living room--to the subtle rustle, like rainfall on cement, of fire building in the wall.
Still gripping his shirt, he heard the ravenous sound in a few minutes build into a roar. Suddenly she began screaming. It went on and on.
Sarah wasn't supposed to be home. She was supposed to be in Dallas. And why did he go to her house? What did he hope to accomplish? He didn't know. It was just anger and acting out. Even now, having just heard it all, he could barely remember who he was that night.
The last thing she had said was, "I want you to know I was wrong about us."
It was there, always, without explanation, in time.
This story originally appeared in Altair (an Australian SF/F/H magazine).
James Van Pelt
An interviewer asked the author if he wanted to be the next Stephen King: he said, "No, I want to be the first James Van Pelt."


According to the calander summer is over. Mornings and nights are longer, there's more time for stitching. Finally time to put the gardens to sleep and spend more time with our needle and thread.
September is full of events.
First off This weekend is our Fall Stitch in. If you have been thinking a couple days of stitching with freinds old and new sound like some fun for you, you are right. We have just a couple spots left so dont delay. Call right away. What is our stitchin? You get two full days of stitching, Friday lunch and dinner, snacks, laughter, inspiration and your own table for your project. There will be ironing stations and a cutting area available. All for just $50. We hold this at the Roann Community Building. There are no overnight accommodations with this event.
Next week Sept 19 - 23 We will be participating in the Northeast Fall Shop Hop, Goodie bags, projects and prizes will be awarded to everyone in attendance. Only four shops Carolines Cottage Cottons Rome City, Edwards Sewing Center in Fort Wayne, Quilts N' Gifts Bluffton and Me Heaven on Earth, Grab your friends Come on out and get your sewsperation on.
Sept 30 I will be vending at the Common Threads Quilt show in LaFayette In. This is my first time there and have been told their quilt displays are just awesome. Looking forward to this event. Held at the Faith East Community Center from 9 - 4 Flyers are available at the shop if you would like more information.
Lastly our new BOM Tokens of Thyme starts in Oct. This one will be fun. It is all wool, has a framed option, you can make this in several different ways. We are starting this in October doing the November block. That way you can display the first block for Thanksgiving. If you love wool or would like to try your hand at it this is your BOM Limited kits on this one dont delay.


In Vermont we call soft serve ice cream creemees and it's generally only available in the summer. This happens. Sometimes it happens in life too. Here you are, going along being sugary and awesome, and then - bam! You're headed down instead of up. You are, however, still flying. In reverse.
Originally painted for the Weirdo show at the SPACE Gallery in Vermont, summer 2017, in red, white and grey. This summer, I realized it needed color badly so this is the newest and best version of it.
Original painting = acrylic paint on board.


text:
Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels among the Youth of the Middle East
Read by Jason Collins
Jared Cohen Blackstone Publishing
Defying foreign government orders and interviewing terrorists face-to-face, a young American tours hostile lands to learn about Middle Eastern youth—and uncovers a subculture that defies every stereotype. Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand. While studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he took a crash course in Arabic, read voraciously on the history and culture of the Middle East, and in 2004 he embarked on the first of a series of incredible journeys to the Middle East. In an effort to try to understand the spread of radical Islamist violence, he focused his research on Muslim youth. The result is Children of Jihad, a portrait of paradox that probes much deeper than any journalist or pundit ever could. Written with candor and featuring dozens of eye-opening anecdotes, Cohen's account begins in Lebanon, where he interviews Hezbollah members at, of all places, a McDonald's. In Iran, he defies government threats and sneaks into underground parties, where bootleg liquor, Western music, and the Internet are all easy to access. His risky itinerary also takes him to a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, borderlands in Syria, the insurgency hotbed of Mosul, and other frontline locales. At each turn, he observes a culture at an uncanny crossroads: Bedouin shepherds with satellite dishes to provide Western TV shows, young women wearing garish makeup despite religious mandates, teenagers sending secret text messages and arranging illicit trysts. Gripping and daring, Children of Jihad shows us the future through the eyes of those who are shaping it.
Defying foreign government orders and interviewing terrorists face-to-face, a young American tours hostile lands to learn about Middle Eastern youth—and uncovers a subculture that defies every stereotype.
Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand. While studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he took a crash course in Arabic, read voraciously on the history and culture of the Middle East, and in 2004 he embarked on the first of a series of incredible journeys to the Middle East. In an effort to try to understand the spread of radical Islamist violence, he focused his research on Muslim youth. The result is Children of Jihad, a portrait of paradox that probes much deeper than any journalist or pundit ever could.
Written with candor and featuring dozens of eye-opening anecdotes, Cohen's account begins in Lebanon, where he interviews Hezbollah members at, of all places, a McDonald's. In Iran, he defies government threats and sneaks into underground parties, where bootleg liquor, Western music, and the Internet are all easy to access. His risky itinerary also takes him to a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, borderlands in Syria, the insurgency hotbed of Mosul, and other frontline locales. At each turn, he observes a culture at an uncanny crossroads: Bedouin shepherds with satellite dishes to provide Western TV shows, young women wearing garish makeup despite religious mandates, teenagers sending secret text messages and arranging illicit trysts. Gripping and daring, Children of Jihad shows us the future through the eyes of those who are shaping it.
"This young gutsy writer knows that the East-West struggle is being fought over the café tables of the Near and Middle East. Do the youth of the Islamic world dream of an engineering degree from Michigan State or a martyr's death? This young American has had the moxie to sit and listen for hours at those tables. In the words of the poet, Jared Cohen has taken the road 'less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.'" —Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show.
"Cohen's chronicle is fine fieldwork for students of the Middle East." —Booklist
Author Bio: Jared Cohen
Jared Cohen joined the US Department of State after completing Children of Jihad. A Stanford graduate (2004), Oxford graduate (2006), and Rhodes scholar, he has conducted extensive research in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. He has also traveled to Afghanistan, as well as 21 African countries. He has worked in the public and private sectors and appeared in the media, including ABC Radio and the Discovery Channel. He lives in Washington, DC.
Category: Nonfiction
CDs: 8 CDs: 1


55 foreground recordings and 22 background recordings of Amazilia beryllina . Total recording duration 28:14.
Calling from a perch about 2 meters off the ground.
Clipped from Blue Mockingbird recording XC292307. Amplification, low and high pass filters used in Audacity.


Looking for a business partner to help you accomplish your records & information management goals? Choose a vendor that sponsors the Puget Sound Chapter of ARMA!
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Sponsors may also be added to the Vendor Directory. Sponsorship opportunities are available throughout the year. For more information please contact the Chapter.


text:
Q: Convert YAML file to PHP File I have a bunch of Yaml configuration files that I want to convert to straight PHP files so that the application does not have to process the Yaml files every time.
I know that there are a lot of libraries out there that will let you convert Yaml to a php array, but are there any libraries that will let you convert a yaml file to a php file?
The thing that makes this tricky is that converting a yaml file to php will usually produce a multidimensional array.
Thanks.
UPDATE:
I just realized that the following code does what I think i need. Notice the second paramter in the print_r. Pretty cool...
$test = print_r($yaml, true);
file_put_contents('test.php', $test);

A: There is a simple builtin to export a PHP variable/array, which allows you to write a small script for that task:
$array = yaml_import(...);

$array = var_export($array, 1);
file_put_contens($fn, "<?php \$array = $array; ?>");

A: Just Try Using the Symfony YAML Component
The Symfony2 Yaml component is very simple and consists of two main classes: one parses YAML strings (Parser), and the other dumps a PHP array to a YAML string (Dumper).
On top of these two classes, the Yaml class acts as a thin wrapper that simplifies common uses.
Reading YAML Files
The parse() method parses a YAML string and converts it to a PHP array:

use Symfony\Component\Yaml\Parser;

$yaml = new Parser();

$value = $yaml->parse(file_get_contents('/path/to/file.yml'));

A: file_put_contents('file.php', '<?php ' . var_export(your_yaml_parser_function_which_returns_php_array('file.yaml'), true));

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Vectra Corporation is a specialist cyber security company providing cyber security consulting services, managed security services and security solutions throughout Asia-Pacific since 2001.
Vectra Corporation Chief Security Officer Kelvin HeathSpecialist cyber security company Vectra Corporation has made IBM's industry-leading QRadar Security Intelligence system affordable for small to medium enterprises by delivering it as a managed service.
IBM QRadar is a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system that provides intelligent insights which enable security teams to detect threats accurately across the enterprise and respond quickly to reduce the impact of incidents.
Vectra, which has provided cyber security consulting services, managed security services and security solutions throughout Asia Pacific since 2001, has worked closely with IBM this year to make QRadar accessible to companies and organisations lacking the internal resources to deploy and manage it.
Vectra's Active Defence delivers IBM QRadar as a managed service to solve the dual problem of the high cost of implementing an enterprise system and the scarcity and expense of security experts. Active Defence replaces the upfront capital cost and complexity of configuring and managing IBM QRadar by offering it as a service for a monthly fee that delivers the benefits without the overheads.
Vectra provides Active Defence to numerous organisations throughout Australia, ranging from financial sector organisations to charities.
Vectra Corporation Chief Security Officer Kelvin Heath said Vectra's Active Defence service put IBM QRadar within the reach of most organisations. "IBM QRadar is the worldwide-leading SIEM solution that monitors critical security activities across all environments regardless of their location, whether it be cloud, hosted or on premise," he said.
Vectra Corporation has successfully certified that its operations comply with three global standards for environmental sustainability, quality management and Occupational Health & Safety.
Vectra picked up its green tick in October last year when SAI Global certified its operations to environmental standard AS/ISO 14001, the globally relevant standard for organisations that are committed to operating in an environmentally sustainable manner.
SAI Global went on to certify Vectra's quality systems against the AS/ISO 9001 quality standard in December last year and against the AS/ISO 18001 standard for OH&S in January this year.
The eight-month certification process has formalised many procedures that were already standard at Vectra to ensure that events are recorded and measured and required actions are taken. These procedures include recycling all computers rather than sending them to landfill and reducing waste generation by recycling all paper, cardboard and boxes.
Vectra's certification achievements were major milestones in its establishment of a Quality Management System that covers its environmental impact, quality controls and OH&S processes.
Vectra Corporation Accounts Officer, William Smerdon, who is closely involved with running the company's Quality Management System, said the key to the system's success was Vectra's staff. "The people who work here are the driving forces as they are the ones that help build the system through their input," he said.
Vectra Corporation has provided vital technology skills and services for Mitsubishi Motors Australia Ltd (MMAL) during five years of rapid change for the company.
Following a switch to a solely importing model in 2008, Mitsubishi sells and services more than 60,000 new cars a year in Australia, employing about 230 people nationally.
The Adelaide-based company also supports about 215 licensed Mitsubishi dealers throughout the country, maintaining its role as an important part of the Australian automotive landscape.
In 2004, Mitsubishi outsourced its mainframe and midrange computer operation and maintenance to Vectra Corporation in order to gain cost-effective access to a wider range of specialist skills.
Mitsubishi's Head of Information Services Alan Gilbie said Vectra had worked successfully for the company on a service-based support contract. "This relationship has worked really well for us," he said.


Have your car running as smoothly as possible to ensure you and your family get from A to B safely.
Thanks to the team at Mag and Turbo Tyre and Service you'll be able to utilise maximum steering and braking potential after a wheel alignment and rotation.
Using a computerised alignment machine, your wheels will be adjusted to within manufacturer's specifications.
Talk to the expert team who will try fit you in at a time that best works with your busy schedule.
Grab a wheel alignment and rotation for $45 from Mag and Turbo Tyre and Service Centre Whangarei.
Make sure you don't get held back with car issues on your next road trip, or even during the daily commute. Mag and Turbo Tyre and Service Centre Whangarei will ensure that your car is road safe before you hit the road. To ensure you get maximum steering, braking potential and life out of your tyres, a regular alignment check is recommended.
A number of factors (including hitting potholes) can affect your alignment. A bad alignment causes uneven tread wear and can lessen the life of your tyres considerably. Your vehicle's alignment will be measured using a computerised alignment machine and the settings will be adjusted to within manufacturers specifications. HINT – If your steering wheel isn't straight or your car pulls to one side when driving, your alignment may need adjusting.
Bookings essential. Subject to availability. Not valid on public or statutory holidays. 24-hour cancellation policy applies or coupon is void. To be used in one visit, on one vehicle. Valid for cars, 4WDS and utes. Excludes HT, campervans, buses or commercial vehicles. Any additional work to your vehicle will be quoted, and the merchant will seek authorisation before being carried out. No refunds unless required by law, no cashback, not to be used with any other offers.


Since his appointment as head chef at Renvyle House Hotel, Tim O'Sullivan has been in his own quiet way a driving force in Ireland's food revolution. Over his years atRenvyle, Tim has been a participant in the New Irish Cuisine movement, a stalwart supporter of local produce, and a trainer and mentor to young chefs, including Conrad Gallagher, who worked at Renvyle for eighteen months.
Heat a pan and add oil, shallots, and garlic; cook for 2–3 minutes.
Add spinach, tomato, butter, and lemon juice; simmer for 2 minutes.
Melt the butter in a pot; add herbs and onion.
Add black pudding and bread crumbs; cook for 2–3 minutes.
Heat the pan, add red wine and lamb stock, and reduce by a third.
Add redcurrant jelly and chopped rosemary.


Paradigm shift: technology, feedback, discussion, & additional novel tweaks to experiments are productive tools only if used at appropriate times.
Collaboration through technology should be enlightening your research – not a burden.
Digital sharing tools, emails, & ubiquitous online access to info are all super things. Working as team is also great. Engaging with supervisor/student/collaborators via digital means also great. However, I have come to realize that it is easy to evolve collaborators into unproductive cycles. No need for the background, but checking emails, constant brainstorming and feedback, and touching bases with team can impede actual research activities – particularly when the research is in the field often in remote spots (i.e. when you get online you have infinite pool of emails waiting about the research you are actively doing). The analogy I have been considering is from product development wherein creativity is critical, planning critical, but at some point you stop and let the product (i.e. the field research) go and be free to succeed or fail.
1. PLANNING PHASES. We meet at appropriate times that we clearly book in advance in the lab, and then, we end the infinite planning/feedback loop. Closure to planning and design stages so that you can move on. This has the advantage of providing the students/field researchers with the space to actually do the work and succeed, fail, and adapt to it. Development and feedback from supervisor occurs only during the appropriate, planned phases. I love infinite new ideas, tweaks, experiments, and discussion but too much becomes distracting. It is better to give space and allow people to be in the moment.
2. EMAIL, CORRESPONDENCE, & FEEDBACK. Reduce email traffic by posting updates to blog (use as lab notebook and update tool for team), the google calendar for hard and soft deadlines, and the drive for all files others need.
requests, introduce unnecessary expectations and apply indirect pressure. Respect personal space. Research is still a job.
4. FIELD EXPEDITIONS. Plan the times when supervisor and students collaborate in field and stick to them. My PhD supervisor came only at the end of every season for five days directly to my field site. He met me where I worked. We toured around, I showed him what I did, and he never criticized. He only made suggestions for the next season for the new experiments.
5. SAFETY. Use the Gen SPOT messenger to relay messages to the team re: safety and location. Replying to emails, texts, etc. as appropriate only as decided by field researcher.
6. PLAN FIELDSEASON FEEDBACK LOOPS. At the completion of each field expedition, plan the feedback meetings and updates with team and supervisor. Do them all at once after all materials are up on drive and safely archived. Team (& supervisor) waits till that point in time to increase efficiency, reporting progress, and collectively respects that new window for feedback & discussion before proceeding to next expedition.
7. INITIATION/TERMINATION OF EXPEDITIONS. No need for check in/check out for expeditions. Get to sites, crank, and fully commit to process. Use GPS safety device of course and use your team as needed, but you are in charge of process.


Ear cropping, like tail docking and dew claw removal, began centuries ago as a preventive measure. In those times, there were no antibiotics for infections or anesthesias, and no veterinary surgeons to repair cuts, wounds and infections. Owners learned as a practical matter to remove in the first days of life those portions of a puppy's anatomy that were prone to tearing.
Hunting dogs, which wag their tails vigorously when on scent, had their tails shortened. Dew claws, which can snag and tear in heavy brush, were removed. Ears were an easy target in fights, and most of the fighting dogs had their ears cropped. Thus, breeds like American Staffordshire Terriers and Bull Terriers were cropped. (Bull Terrier breeders, however, stopped cropping almost a century ago and learned to select dogs for breeding with a small, erect ear.) Some hunting and guarding breeds, including the Great Dane (at that time a boarhound) and the Boxer, were cropped to prevent injury. Many flockguarding breeds (such as the Caucasian Owtcharka of Russia and the Akbash Dog of Turkey) had their ears nearly amputated (across, almost flush with the head) since they lived most of their lives out with the flocks and had to face wolves and bears. Even the Saluki had its ears removed in its native Arabia, probably due to the rapid appearance of flies and maggots in any wound. Many early Saluki imports from the desert could not be shown in the United States due to their cropped ears.
Almost all early ear crops were short and crude. As advances in husbandry and medicine eliminated the need for short ears, cropping became more fashion than protective medicine. Surgeries were done under anesthesia, and the cuts tended to lengthen and become more graceful and aesthetic in shape. Miniaturized breeds, such as the Miniature Pinscher and the Miniature Schnauzer, usually followed their larger cousins in fashion. Toy Manchester Terrier breeders, however, resisted and do not allow cropping, although it is permitted for the Standard Manchester Terrier.
There are no longer any scientifically proven reasons to crop ears. Some say that it prevents ear infections, but veterinarians see plenty of erect-eared dogs (both natural and cropped) with these infections. Besides, if that were true, the practice of cropping Cockers and other spaniels as well as Poodles, Beardies and Mastiffs would have gained wide acceptance.
Today, ear cropping is a cosmetic surgery, pure and simple. If you like the look of the cropped ear, you may choose to crop, but it is a choice. The procedure should be done as early as possible: 6 weeks of age in the larger breeds and not past 9 weeks in the smaller ones. In a dog older than 16 weeks there is not only more pain but also more pain memory. Ear cartilage is for the most part set permanently by 4 months of age, so there is little latitude for bracing and training the cut ear to stand after surgery. Ear cropping is a choice each owner must make, and it should be an informed choice.
Copyright ©2001 Animal Network, a division of Fancy Publications Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
Home Politics & Laws
Việt Nam-Laos enhance drug prevention and control cooperation
Việt Nam was committed to supporting Laos in the fight against drugs, said deputy Minister of Public Security Nguyễn Duy Ngọc
Vietnamese deputy Minister of Public Security Nguyễn Duy Ngọc and his Lao counterpart Lieutenant General Khamking Phuilamanyvong chair the bilateral ministerial meeting reviewing an MoU on drug prevention and control co-operation between Việt Nam and Laos. VNA/VNS Photo Phạm Kiên
HÀ NỘI – Việt Nam was committed to supporting Laos in the fight against drugs, said deputy Minister of Public Security Nguyễn Duy Ngọc.
On the basis of the traditional and special friendship between the governments of Việt Nam and Laos, Việt Nam hopes bilateral co-operation between the two ministries of Public Security would be promoted in an effective way, Ngọc said on Wednesday in a meeting with Lao deputy Minister of Public Security, Lieutenant General Khamking Phuilamanyvong.
The bilateral ministerial meeting was a venue for the two sides to review and re-evaluate the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in drug prevention and control.
Việt Nam and Laos are neighbouring countries facing great pressure of drug trafficking from the "Golden Triangle" area, which is considered one of the major drug production and trading centres in the world, said Ngọc.
The task of promoting international co-operation in drug prevention and control in general, especially co-operation between neighbouring countries, is crucial.
Last year, the two ministries signed a Memorandum of Understanding on drug prevention and control in order to deal with crime, especially those involving drugs, especially on the Việt Nam-Laos border.
These are concrete and important steps to promote drug prevention and combat towards a new, more practical and effective level.
After a year of implementing the MoU, the two police forces have actively developed plans, drastically carried out the assigned tasks and achieved very important initial results.
During the fight against drug crime, the Vietnamese police discovered and handled 5,338 cases, arrested 7,397 offenders, seizing 292kg of heroin, 2.7kg of opium and 1.62 million synthetic drug tablets and other related evidence.
The Drug Crime Investigation Police Department and the local police co-ordinated with the units in Laos to establish joint projects, successfully arresting 16 wanted drug suspects hiding in Laos.
"Việt Nam highly appreciated the close coordination and active and effective support of the Lao authorities and functional forces in drug combat.
"This bilateral ministerial-level conference was also an opportunity for the ministries of Public Security to review and re-evaluate the situation and results of implementing the information dissemination and suppression of drug crimes between the two ministries, as well as clearly identify existing difficulties," said the Vietnamese deputy minister.
"The two sides also discussed and proposed directions to make the co-operation more practical and effective," he said.
After the meeting, drug prevention and combat co-operation between the two countries would be raised, contributing to controlling and eventually repelling drugs in each country and the region, he said.
Speaking at the meeting, Lao's deputy minister, Lieutenant General Khamking Phuilamanyvong, stressed that the Lao Ministry of Public Security applied the national programme on solving the drug problem to coordinate with the Vietnamese police.
The ministry has strengthened information dissemination and education for border officers, soldiers and people to have a sense of respect for the laws and customs of each country, and to implement the treaty on border management to protect security and safety in border areas, the Lieutenant General said.
The two ministries have coordinated and created favourable conditions for each other in arresting criminals who fled to the other country.
In addition, both police forces have also monitored the drug transport route from the "Golden Triangle" through the northern provinces, he said.
The Lao deputy minister highly appreciated the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security in assisting in the construction of police headquarters in bordering villages, which was invaluable and meaningful help, contributing to preventing and combatting cross-border crime between Laos and Việt Nam.
Laos ministry thanked the Vietnamese ministry for providing 1,000 sets of detox pills, four sets of drug assessment machines, 30 boxes of urine test kits and some other equipment.
It is forecast that drug crimes on the Việt Nam-Laos border will worsen, requiring effective measures to tackle suspects and gangs.
The two ministries will further exchange information through hotlines, cross-border liason offices (BLOs) and enhance patrols.
The two sides will further coordinate in the collection of documents, information exchange to establish a joint special project.
Dissemination activities on drug prevention and control for people in border areas will be organised with an aim to build drug-free villages, communities and schools as well as proactively prevent, detect and thoroughly handle acts related to the cultivation of drug-containing plants and illegal production of drugs, especially synthetic drugs.
During the meeting, the two deputy ministers presented Certificates of Merit to 20 collectives and 60 individuals of the two ministries for their outstanding achievements in implementing the MoU. VNS
Việt Nam supports expansion of UN Security Council
Hoàng Sa exhibition centre affirms national sovereignty
Foreign minister details six priorities of diplomatic sector in 2023
Vietnam News Agency re-elected to OANA Executive Board for 2022 - 2025
The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) has been re-elected to the Executive Board of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) for 2022 - 2025 on the last working day of the 18th OANA General Assembly in Tehran of Iran on October 25.
More regulations needed to ensure consumers' rights in non-conventional business models
Some provisions in the draft law on Protection of Consumer Rights (revised) are just suitable to conventional businesses and transactions.
PM receives Lao Deputy PM and Minister of Public Security
Party leader stresses importance of Việt Nam-Cambodia relations
Party leader Trọng spoke highly of the visit by the Cambodian President of Senate, which he said would contribute to deepening the bilateral relations.
President hails development of VN-Cambodia relations
President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc stressed that the relations between Việt Nam and Cambodia has continued to developing positively while receiving President of the Cambodian Senate Samdech Say Chhum in Hà Nội on Tuesday.
Official: Hà Nội treasures Cambodia's invaluable support
Hà Nội always pays attention to stepping up cooperation with Phnom Penh for the development of the two capital cities and nations
PM hopes Cambodia will support people of Vietnamese origin, scammed workers
Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính held talks with President of the Cambodian Senate Samdech Say Chhum, who is on a three-day visit to Việt Nam.
Ambassador presents credentials to Timor Leste's President
Vietnamese Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor Leste Tạ Văn Thông presented his credentials to José Ramos Horta, President of Timor Leste, in the capital city of Dili on October 24.
Minister presents draft amended Law on Electronic Transactions
The draft, comprised of eight chapters and 58 articles, has been drawn up in line with the nine policies specified in the governmental Resolution 152.


text:
package me.devsaki.hentoid.notification.delete;

import android.app.NotificationChannel;
import android.app.NotificationManager;
import android.content.Context;
import android.os.Build;

import androidx.annotation.NonNull;

import java.util.Objects;

public class DeleteNotificationChannel {

    private DeleteNotificationChannel() {
        throw new IllegalStateException("Utility class");
    }

    static final String ID = "delete";

    // IMPORTANT : ALWAYS INIT THE CHANNEL BEFORE FIRING NOTIFICATIONS !
    public static void init(@NonNull final Context context) {
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.O) {
            String name = "Content deletion";
            int importance = NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT;
            NotificationChannel channel = new NotificationChannel(ID, name, importance);
            channel.setSound(null, null);
            channel.setVibrationPattern(null);

            NotificationManager notificationManager = context.getSystemService(NotificationManager.class);
            Objects.requireNonNull(notificationManager, "notificationManager must not be null");
            notificationManager.createNotificationChannel(channel);
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub