From the day they left Ebou Dar, traveling with Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders was every bit as bad as Mat’s darkest thoughts had made it. For one thing, it rained almost every day for a few hours and once for three days running, cold winter rain in downpours little short of snow and icy drizzles that slowly soaked a coat through and left you shivering before you knew it. Water ran off the hard-packed road as if it had been paved in stone, leaving at worst a thin slick of mud, but that long train of wagons and horses and people covered little enough ground when the sun shone. In the beginning, the showfolk had been all eagerness to leave the city where lightning sank ships in the night and strange murders had everyone looking over their shoulders, to be away from a jealous Seanchan nobleman who would be hunting his wife furiously and might take out his anger on anyone associated with spiriting her out her of his clutches. In the beginning, they pressed ahead as fast as the horses could pull the wagons, urging the animals for a quicker step, another mile. But every mile seemed to make them feel that much farther from danger, that much safer, and by the first afternoon . . .
“Have to take care of the horses,” Luca explained, watching the team unhitched from his ridiculously painted wagon and led away to the horselines through a light drizzle. The sun still sat little more than halfway down to the horizon, but already gray tendrils were rising from the smoke holes of tents and the metal chimneys of the box-like living wagons. “Nobody’s chasing us, and it’s a long way to Lugard. Good horses are hard to come by, and expensive.” Luca gave a sour frown and shook his head. Mention of expense always soured him. He was tight with a penny, except where his wife was concerned. “Not many places between here and there worth stopping more than a day. Most villages won’t provide a full crowd even if the whole population turns out, and you can never tell how a town will be until you set up. You’re not paying me enough to give up what I can earn, though.” Hitching his embroidered crimson cloak closer against the damp, he glanced over his shoulder toward his wagon. The smell of something bitter drifted through the light rain. Mat was not sure he would want to eat anything Luca’s wife cooked. “You’re certain nobody is chasing us, right, Cauthon?”
Irritably tugging his woolen cap lower, Mat stalked away through the brightly colored sprawl of tents and wagons grinding his teeth. Not paying enough? For what he had offered, Luca should have been willing to run his animals all the way to Lugard. Well, not exactly run—he did not want to kill horses, after all—but that puffed-up popinjay should have been willing to bloody push hard.
Not far from Luca’s wagon, Chel Vanin was seated on a three-legged stool that he overlapped, stirring some sort of dark stew in a small kettle that hung over a small fire. Rain dripped into the kettle from the drooping brim of his hat, but the fat man did not seem to notice, or care. Gorderan and Fergin, two of the Redarms, grumbled curses as they drove pegs into the muddy ground for the guy ropes of the dirty-brown canvas tent they shared with Harnan and Metwyn. And with Vanin, too, but Vanin possessed skills that he considered put him above raising tents, and the Redarms agreed with only a little reluctance. Vanin was an experienced farrier, but more importantly, he was the best tracker and the best horsethief in the country, unlikely as that seemed to look at him, and you could name the country you chose.
Fergin caught sight of Mat, and bit off an oath as his hammer missed the tent peg and hit his thumb.  “We’re going to be out in this all night guarding those women, my Lord. Can’t you hire some of those horse handlers to do this so we can at least stay dry till we have to get wet?”
Gorderan poked Fergin’s shoulder with a thick finger. He was as wide as Fergin was skinny, and a Tairen despite his gray eyes. “Horse handlers’ll put up the tent and steal everything in it that’s loose, Fergin.” Another poke.  That’s a good saddle.” A third poke nearly pushed Fergin over sideways. “We don’t get this tent up, and Harnan’ll have us standing guard all night.”
Fergin glowered and grumbled, but he picked up his hammer, wiping the mud off on his coat. He was a good enough soldier, but not very bright.
Vanin spat through the gap in his teeth, just missing the kettle. The stew smelled wonderful after whatever Latelle was making, but Mat decided he was not going to eat here, either. Tapping his wooden spoon on the rim of the kettle to clean it, the fat man looked up at Mat through heavy-lidded eyes. His round face often looked half-asleep, but only a fool believed it. “At this rate, we’ll reach Lugard about the end of summer. If we ever do.”
“We will, Vanin,” Mat said, more confidently than he felt at the moment. The rough woolen coat he had donned dry a few hours ago only shed rain in spots, and water was trickling down his back. It was hard to feel confident with icy rain sliding down your backbone. “Winter’s almost done. We’ll move faster once spring comes. You’ll see. Come the middle of spring, and we’ll be in Lugard.”
He was not so sure of that, either. They covered no more than two leagues that first day, and after that, two and a half made a good day. Not many places could be called towns along the Great North Road, a name that began to change very quickly as the show crept north. People called it “the Ebou Dar Road,” or “the Ferry Road,” or sometimes just “the road,” as if there were only one. But Luca stopped at every last town, real or so-called, walled or jumped-up village with six streets and a rough-paved excuse for a town square. Near half a day went into just getting the show set up and the canvas wall erected around it with that huge red-lettered blue banner hung across the entrance. Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show. It was just not in Luca to pass up the chance of a crowd. Or the coins in their purses. Or the chance to flourish one of his bright red cloaks and bask in their adulation. Luca liked that almost as much as the coin. Almost.
The strangeness of the performers and the caged animals from far-off lands were sufficient to pull people. The animals from not so far were enough, for that matter; few had been far enough into the countryside to see a bear much less a lion. Only heavy rain lessened the crowd, and when the rain was too stiff, the jugglers and acrobats refused to perform anyway without some sort of covering overhead. Which made Luca stalk about in a sullen snit and talk wildly of finding enough canvas tarps to shelter every act, or having a tent made large enough to hold the entire show. One tent! The man was nothing if not grandiose in his ambitions. Why not a palace on wheels while he was about it?
If Luca and the slow way the show moved had been all Mat had to worry about, though, he would have been a happy man. Sometimes, two or three slow-moving trains of Seanchan settlers who had gotten an early start passed with their strangely shaped, peaked wagons and odd-looking cattle or sheep or goats before the first wagon from the show began to move. Sometimes columns of Seanchan soldiers overtook them as they ambled along at a slow walk, ranks of men wearing helmets like huge insects’ heads, stepping out smartly, and columns of horsemen with their armor of overlapping plates painted in stripes. Once, the riders were on torm, bronze-scaled creatures like horse-sized cats. Except for having three eyes, anyway. Twenty or so of them snaking along in a sinuous lope faster than a horse could trot. Neither the riders nor their mounts gave the show a second glance, but the show’s horses went wild as the torm passed, screaming and rearing in the traces. The lions and leopards and bears roared in their cages, and the peculiar deer flung themselves against the bars trying to flee. It took hours to quiet everything down enough for the wagons to move again, and Luca insisted on having the caged animals’ scrapes seen to first. His animals were a large investment. Twice, officers in thin-plumed helmets decided to check the warrant for Lucas horses, and Mat oozed cold sweat the size of grapes until they moved on again, satisfied. As the show crept north, the numbers of Seanchan on the road dwindled, yet he still sweated when he saw another party, soldiers or settlers either one. Maybe Suroth really was keeping Tuon’s disappearance a secret, but the Seanchan would be searching for her. All it would take was one meddlesome officer who actually compared the numbers on the warrant with the number of horses. He would search the wagons with a fine-tooth comb after that, for certain. Just one officious sul’dam who thought there might be a woman who could channel among the jugglers and tumblers and contortionists. He sweated plums! Unfortunately, not everyone had a proper regard for their own skins.
Outside a flyspeck village called Weesin, a thatch-roofed little cluster of houses where not even Luca thought two coppers could be shaken loose, Mat stood with a heavy woolen cloak pulled around him in a driving rain and watched the three Aes Sedai steal back into the show as the sun set. Thunder boomed in the distance. They were swathed in dark cloaks with the hoods well up, yet he had no doubts who they were. In the downpour, they passed within ten feet without seeing him, but the silver medallion hanging beneath his shirt went cold against his chest. At least one of them was channeling, or holding the Power, anyway. Burn him, they were all three mad as loons.
No sooner did the Aes Sedai vanish among the wagons and tents than three more cloaked shapes appeared, hurrying after them. One of these women had a sharper eye, raising a hand to point at him, but the others only paused, and then they scurried after the Aes Sedai together. He started to curse, then left it unuttered. He was beyond that. If he named the people he wanted wandering around where a Seanchan patrol might see them, the Aes Sedai and the sul’dam would come about even with Tuon and Selucia.
“I wonder what they want?” Noal said behind him, and Mat gave a jump that let a torrent of rain into his cowl and down his neck. He wished the knobbly old man would quit sneaking up on him.
“I intend to find out,” he muttered, jerking his cloak straight. He hardly knew why he bothered. His coat was only a little damp, but his linen shirt was already soaked.
Oddly enough, Noal was no longer with him when he reached the gray-streaked wagon with its fading whitewash where the Aes Sedai and sul’dam slept. The man liked sticking his nose in everywhere. Maybe he had decided he was wet enough. Blaeric and Fen were already wrapped in their blankets beneath the wagon, apparently oblivious to rain or mud, but he would not have wagered on either being asleep. Indeed, one sat up as he squelched up to the wagon. Whichever it was, he said nothing, yet Mat could feel the man’s eyes. He did not hesitate, though, and he did not bother with knocking.
 Two lamps mounted in gimbals on the walls gave a good light, better than he could have wished for, in a way. Six faces swiveled toward him with those frozen looks women gave a man when he put a foot where they did not want it. The air in the wagon smelled of damp wool and felt as if lightning had just struck, or might at any moment. Rain drummed on the roof, and thunder rolled, but the foxhead medallion felt no cooler than any other piece of silver.  Maybe they just wanted to stay out of this themselves.  Not Mat Cauthon.  It hardly gave him a twinge anymore. Seldom, anyway.
When he challenged them, Edesina fiercely, shaking out the black hair that spilled down her back. “I am grateful to you for rescuing me from the Seanchan, Master Cauthon, and I will show my gratitude, but there are limits. I am not your servant to be ordered about. There were no Seanchan in the village, and we kept our faces hidden.  The look she shot at the three Seanchan women could have fried eggs. Edesina was over being nervous about anyone with a Seanchan accent. She wanted some of her own back, and the sul’dam were close to hand. Mat was counting on that fabled Aes Sedai self-control to keep matters short of violence. He hoped it was not already stretched too far to hold. Those old memories recalled Aes Sedai going up like an Illuminator’s wares.
Bethamin’s dark face showed no sign of alarm. She had finished shaking out her cloak and hanging it on a peg while Edesina was speaking, then smoothed her dress over her hips. Tonight, she wore faded green petticoats. She complained that the Ebou Dari garment was indecent, and he supposed that he would have to find her something else now they were away from the coast, but she did fill out that very low narrow neckline nicely. She sounded too much like a mother for his taste, though. “They did keep their faces hidden, my Lord,” she drawled, “and they stayed together. No one tried to sneak off. Very well behaved, all in all.”  Or maybe a dog trainer praising the dogs. Yellow-haired Seta nodded approvingly. Definitely a dog trainer.
“If my Lord wishes to keep them confined,” Renna said ful-somely, “we can always use the a’dam. They really shouldn’t be trusted loose.” She even offered him a bow, in the Seanchan way, bending herself at a sharp right angle. Her big brown eyes looked hopeful. Teslyn gasped and clutched her wet cloak to her bosom. She certainly was not over her fear of the sul’dam, for all she looked as though she could eat nails. Joline, haughty as ever, drew herself up, eyes flashing. Aes Sedai serenity or no, lightning might as well strike when Joline’s eyes started flashing. It was often so with pretty women.
“No,” Mat said hastily. “There’s no need for that. You give those things to me, and I’ll get rid of them.” Light, why had he ever saddled himself with these women?  “All of you just have to be careful. We’re not thirty miles from Ebou Dar yet.  He gave an apologetic look to the three Seanchan women. They were on his side, after all. In a manner of speaking. They had nowhere else to go except Egeanin, and they had realized who had the money. Bethamin’s eyebrows twitched upward in surprise. Seanchan nobles did not apologize, even with a glance.
“Seanchan soldiers did pass through the village yesterday,” Teslyn said, her Illianer accent particularly strong. Joline’s flashing eyes shifted to her, but she took no notice beyond turning away to hang up her own cloak. “They did ask questions about strangers on the road. And some did complain about being sent north.” Teslyn glanced over her shoulder at the sul’dam, then jerked her eyes away and took a deep breath. “It does seem the Return be aimed east. The soldiers did believe the Ever Victorious Army will present Illian to their empress before the end of spring. The City itself, and all the rest.” Supposedly Aes Sedai gave up the lands of their birth when they went to the White Tower, but to any Illianer, the city of Illian was ‘the City,’ and you could hear the capital.
“That’s good,” Mat said half to himself, thinking. Soldiers talked out of turn all the time; that was one reason you did not tell your plans to every trooper until the last minute. Teslyn’s thin eyebrows rose, and he added, “It means the road to Lugard will be clear most of the way.” Teslyn’s nod was curt and not very pleased. What Aes Sedai were supposed to do and what they did were often widely different.
“We didn’t speak to anyone, my Lord, only watched the girls,” Bethamin said, even more slowly than usual, and Seanchan usually talked like honey pouring in a snowstorm. She was clearly in charge among the three sul’dam, but she looked at each of the others before going on. “In Ebou Dar, all the talk in the sul’dam quarters was of Illian.  And wealth.” She tossed that in as if wealth hardly counted alongside a new name. “We should have realized you’d want to know about such things.” Another deep breath almost popped her out of that dress. “If you have any questions, my Lord, we’ll tell you what we know.”
Renna made him another bow, her face eager, and Seta piped up with, “We could listen in the towns and villages where we stop, too, my Lord. The girls can be shifty, but you can trust us.”
Why, when a woman offered to help you, did she always start by sticking you in a pot of hot water and stoking up the fire? Joline’s face became a disdainful mask of ice. The Seanchan women were beneath her notice; she made that clear with a glance.  Edesina’s mouth thinned, and she tried to stare holes in him and the sul’dam both. Even Teslyn managed indignation. She was grateful for rescue, too, but she was Aes Sedai. And she directed her frown at him. He suspected she would jump like a startled frog if one of the sul’dam clapped her hands.
“What I want,” he explained patiently, “is for all of you to stay with the wagons.” You had to be patient with women, including Aes Sedai. He was bloody well learning that by heart. “One whisper there’s an Aes Sedai with this show, and we’ll be hip-deep in Seanchan hunting for her. Rumors of Seanchan with the show won’t serve us any better. Either way, somebody will come to find out what’s behind it sooner or later, and we’ll all be in the pickling kettle. Don’t flaunt yourselves. You need to stay low till we get closer to Lugard. That isn’t so much to ask, now is it?” Lightning lit up the wagon’s windows with a blue flash, and thunder crashed overhead, so close it rattled the wagon.
It was too much to ask, apparently, as the days wore on. Oh, the Aes Sedai kept their hoods well up when they went outside—the rain gave enough excuse for that; the rain and the cold—but one or another rode on the wagon seat as often as not, and they made no real effort to pass as servants around the showfolk. Not that they admitted who they were, of course, or ordered anyone about or even spoke to anyone much besides each other, but what servant clearly expected people to move out of her way? They went into the villages, too, and sometimes the towns, if they were sure there were no Seanchan there. When an Aes Sedai was sure of something, it had to be true. Twice they came scurrying back when they found a town half-full of settlers on their way north. They told him what they learned on their visits. He thought they did. Teslyn did seem grateful, after an Aes Sedai fashion. And Edesina. After a fashion.
Despite their differences, Joline, Teslyn and Edesina stuck together like herded geese. If you saw one, you saw all three. Likely that was because when you saw them taking a stroll, all neatly cloaked and hidden as they were, a minute later Bethamin and Renna and Seta appeared trailing after them. Oh so casually, but never letting ‘the girls’ out of sight. The goose-herds. A blind man could see there was tension between the two groups of women. A blind man could see none of them were servants. The sul’dam had held respected positions, positions of authority, and they moved almost as arrogantly as the Aes Sedai. He was stuck with the story, though.
Bethamin and the other two were as leery of other Seanchan as the Aes Sedai were, yet they also followed the Aes Sedai when they went into a village or town, and Bethamin always reported the tidbits they had picked up by eavesdropping, with Renna wearing an ingratiating smile and Seta chirping in that ‘the girls’ had missed this or that, or claimed not to have heard; you could never be sure with someone who had the audacity to call herself Aes Sedai; maybe he should reconsider having them leashed, just till everything was safe.
Their tales really were not that different from what the sisters told him. Townsfolk’s talk of what they had overheard from Seanchan passing through. Many of the settlers were nervous, their heads full of tales about savage Aiel ravaging through Altara, though the local people all said that was up north somewhere. It seemed someone higher might be thinking the same, though, because many settlers had been diverted east, toward Illian. An alliance had been concluded with someone powerful who was expected to give the High Lady Suroth access to many lands. The women refused to be convinced that they need not listen for rumors. They never quite got around to handing over the a’dam, either. In truth, those silvery leashes and the three sul’dam were the only real lever he had with the Aes Sedai. Gratitude. From an Aes Sedai! Ha! Not that he really thought about putting those collars on the sisters again. Not often, anyway. He was well and truly stuck.
He truly did have no need of what the sul’dam and Aes Sedai learned. He had better sources, people he trusted. Well, he trusted Thom, when the white-haired gleeman could be routed out from playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver or mooning over a much-creased letter he carried tucked in the breast of his coat. Thom could walk into a common room, tell a story, maybe juggle a bit, and walk out knowing what was in the head of every man there. Mat trusted Juilin, too—he did almost as well as Thom, without juggling or storytelling—but Juilin always insisted on taking Thera with him, demurely clutching his arm as they strolled into a town. To get her used to freedom again, the man said.  Maybe she had been Panarch of Tarabon, the way Juilin and Thom claimed, but Mat was beginning to doubt it. He had heard some of the contortionists joking about how the Taraboner serving girl was wearing the Tairen thief-catcher out till he could barely walk. Panarch or serving girl, though, Thera still started to kneel any time she heard a drawling accent. Mat figured that any Seanchan who asked her a question would get everything she knew, beginning with Juilin Sandar and ending with which wagon the Aes Sedai were in, all answers delivered from her knees. Thera was a bigger danger than Aes Sedai and sul’dam put together, in his book. Juilin bridled at the slightest suggestion his woman might be unreliable, though, and spun his bamboo staff as if he was considering cracking Mat’s head for him. There was no solution, but Mat found a stopgap, a way to get a little warning if the worst occurred.
“Of course I can follow them,” Noal said, with a gap-toothed grin that said it would be child’s play. Laying a gnarled finger alongside his bent nose, he slipped the other knobbly hand beneath his coat, where he kept his knives. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better just to make sure she can’t talk to anyone? Just a suggestion, lad. If you say not, then not.” Mat most emphatically said not.  He was not going to add a third to his soul.
“It seems Suroth might have made an alliance with some king,” Juilin reported with a smile over a cup of mulled wine. At least Thera seemed to be making him smile more.  “At least, there’s considerable talk of some powerful new ally. And those settlers are all frightened out of their wits by Aiel.”
“Most of the settlers seem to be have been sent east,” Thom said, peering sadly into his cup. As Juilin grew happier day by day, he seemed to grow sadder. Noal was out shadowing Juilin and Thera, and Lopin and Nerim were sitting cross-legged at the back of the tent, but the two Cairhienin serving men had their mending baskets out and were examining Mat’s good coats from Ebou Dar for any repairs they thought necessary, so the small tent still seemed crowded. “And a great many soldiers, too,” Thom went on. “Everything says they’re going to fall on Illian like a hammer.”
Well, at least he knew he was hearing the unvarnished truth when he heard it from them. No Aes Sedai spinning words on their heads or sul’dam trying to smarm their way into his good graces. Bethamin and Seta had even learned to curtsy. Somehow, he felt more comfortable with Renna bending herself double. It seemed honest. Strange, but honest.
For himself, town or village, Mat took no more than a quick look around, with his collar turned up and his cap pulled down, before heading back to the show. He seldom wore a cloak. A cloak could make it difficult to use the knives he carried tucked about his person. Not that he expected to need them. It was just a prudent precaution. There was no drinking, no dancing, and no gambling. Especially no gambling. The sound of dice rattling on a table in an inn’s common room pulled at him, but his sort of luck with dice was bound to be remarked, even if it did not lead to somebody pulling a knife, and in this part of Altara both men and women carried knives tucked behind their belts and were ready to use them. He wanted to pass through unnoticed, so he walked by the dice games, nodded coolly to the tavern maids who smiled at him, and never drank more than a cup of wine and usually not that. After all, he had work to do back at the show. Work of a sort. He had begun it the very first night after leaving Ebou Dar, and a rough job it was.
“I need you to go with me,” he had said then, pulling open the cupboard built into the side of the wagon beneath his bed. He kept his chest of gold in there, all honestly come by through gambling. As honestly as he could, anyway. The greater part came from one horse race, and his luck was no better than any other man’s with horses. For the rest . . . If a man wanted to toss dice or play at cards or pitch coins, he had to be ready to lose. Domon, seated on the other bed rubbing a hand over the bristle on his shaved scalp, had learned that lesson. The fellow should have been willing to sleep on the floor like a good so’jhin, but in the beginning he had insisted on flipping a coin with Mat each night for the second bed. Egeanin got the first, of course. Tossing coins was as easy as dice.
As long as the coin did not land on edge, the way it sometimes did for him. But Domon had made the offer, not him. Until Mat had won four times straight, and then the fifth night the coin did land on edge, three times in a row. They took turn and turn about, now. But it was still Domon’s turn for the floor, tonight.
Finding the smallish washleather bag he was after, he stuffed it into his coat pocket and straightened, pushing the cupboard shut with his foot. “You have to face her sometime,” he said. “And I need you to smooth things over.” He needed someone to attract Tuon’s ire, someone to make him seem acceptable by comparison, but he could not say that, could he? “You’re a Seanchan noble, and you can keep me from putting my boot in my mouth.”
“Why do you need to smooth things over?” Egeanin’s drawl was hard as a saw. She stood against the wagon’s door with her fists on her hips, blue eyes augering out from beneath her long black wig. “Why do you need to see her? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her,” Mat scoffed, dodging the question. What answer could he give that did not sound insane? “You could tuck her under your arm almost as easily as I could.  “If she does no want to go, then you trot off to court the girl by yourself. Stay the night, if you choose.”
Egeanin continued to glare at Mat. Or through him. Then she glanced at Domon, her shoulders slumped a little, and she snatched her cloak from its peg on the wall. “Get a move on, Cauthon,” she growled. “If it has to be done, best it’s done and over with.” She was out of the wagon in a flash, and Mat had to hurry to catch her up. You could almost think she did not want to be alone with Domon, as little sense as that made.
Outside the windowless purple wagon, black in the night, a shadow shifted in the deeper shadows. The sickle moon came out from behind the clouds long enough for Mat to recognize Harnan’s lantern jaw.
“All quiet, my Lord,” the file-leader said.
Mat nodded and took a deep breath, feeling for the washleather bag in his pocket. The air was clean, washed by the rain and away from the horselines. Tuon must be relieved to be away from the dung smell, and the rank odor of the animal cages. The performers’ wagons to his left were as dark as the canvas-topped storage wagons to his right. No use waiting any longer. He pushed Egeanin up the purple wagon’s steps ahead of him.
There were more people inside than he expected. Setalle was seated on one of the beds, working her embroidery hoop again, and Selucia stood at the far end scowling beneath her head scarf, but Noal was sitting on the other bed, apparently lost in thought, and Tuon sat cross-legged on the floor playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver.
The boy twisted around with a wide-mouthed grin that almost split his face when Mat came in. “Noal has been telling us about Co’dansin, Mat,” he exclaimed. “That’s another name for Shara. Did you know the Ayyad tattoo their faces?  It was bad enough that Vanin and the Redarms were teaching the boy bad habits, not to mention what he was picking up from Juilin and Thom, without Noal filling his head with made-up nonsense.
Suddenly Noal slapped his thigh and sat up straight. “I remember now,” he said, and then the fool began to recite.
“Fortune rides like the sun on high
with the fox that makes the ravens fly.
Luck his soul, the lightning his eye,
He snatches the moons from out of the sky.”
The broken-nosed old man looked around as if just realizing anyone else was there. “I’ve been trying to remember that. It’s from the Prophecies of the Dragon.”
“Very interesting, Noal,” Mat muttered. Those colors whirled in his head just the way they had that morning, when the Aes Sedai were panicking. They flashed away without making a picture this time, but he felt as cold as if he had spent a night sleeping under a bush in his skin. The last thing on earth he needed was anybody else linking him to the Prophecies. “Maybe some time you can recite the whole thing for us. But not tonight, eh?”
Tuon looked up at him through her eyelashes, a black porcelain doll in a dress that was too big for her. Light, but she had long lashes. She ignored Egeanin as if the other woman did not exist, and in truth, Egeanin was doing her best to appear part of a cabinet built into the wall. So much for hoping for a diversion.
“Toy doesn’t mean to be rude,” Tuon murmured in that slow honey drawl. “He just has never been trained in manners. But it is late, Master Charin; time for Olver to be in bed. Perhaps you will escort him to his tent? We’ll play again another time, Olver. Would you like me to teach you to play stones?”
Olver most emphatically would. He almost wriggled, saying so. The boy liked anything that gave him a chance to smile at a woman, not to mention a chance to say things that should have gotten him slapped till his ears swelled up bigger than they already were. If Mat ever found out which of his ‘uncles’ was teaching him that . . . But the lad gathered the pieces of his game and carefully rolled up the line-marked cloth without a second urging. He even made a very good leg, thanking the High Lady, before letting Noal lead him from the wagon. Mat nodded approvingly. He had taught the boy how to make a leg, but the boy usually added a leer for a pretty woman. If he ever found out who . . .
“You have a reason for interrupting me, Toy?” Tuon said in cool tones. “It is late, and I was thinking of going to sleep.”
He made a leg and gave her his best smile. He could be polite even if she was not. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. These wagons are uncomfortable, on the road. And I know you aren’t happy with the clothes I could find you. I thought this might make you feel a little better.” Fishing the leather bag from his pocket, he presented it with a flourish. Women always liked that little extra flourish.
Selucia tensed, blue eyes sharpening, but Tuon waggled her slim fingers and the bosomy maid subsided. A little. Mat liked feisty women, by and large, but if she ruined this, he was going to paddle her bottom. He hung on to his smile with an effort, and even managed to ratchet it up a notch.
Tuon turned the bag over her hands several times before untying the drawstrings and spilling what it contained into her lap, a heavy necklace of gold and carved amber. An expensive piece, and Seanchan work to boot. He was proud of finding the thing. It had been the property of an acrobat, who had it from a Seanchan officer whose fancy she caught, but she had been willing to sell now that her officer was left behind. It did not suit her skin, whatever that meant. He smiled and waited. Jewels always softened a woman’s heart.
No one’s reaction was quite what he expected, though. Tuon lifted the necklace in front of her face with both hands, studying it as if she had never seen such a thing before. Selucia’s lip curled in a sneer. Setalle set her embroidery down on her knees and looked at him, the large golden hoops in her ears swaying as she shook her head.
Abruptly, Tuon thrust the necklace back over her shoulder toward Selucia. “It does not suit me,” she said. “Would you like it, Selucia?” Mat’s smile slipped a little.
The cream-skinned woman took the necklace between thumb and forefinger, as if holding a dead rat by the tail. “A piece for a shea dancer to wear with her veil,” she said wryly. With a twist of her wrist, she hurled the necklace at Egeanin, snapping, “Put it on!” Egeanin caught the thing just before it hit her face. Mat’s smile slid the rest of the way off his.
He expected an explosion, but Egeanin immediately fumbled open the clasp and pushed her heavy wig back to fasten it behind her neck. Her face might have been molded from snow for all the expression on it.
“Turn,” Selucia commanded, and it was a command, without any doubt. “Let me see.”
Egeanin turned. Stiff as a fence post, but she turned.
Setalle looked at her intently, with a puzzled shake of her head, then gave Mat a different head shake before returning to her embroidery. Women had as many ways of shaking their heads as they had looks. This one said he was a fool, and if he did not catch the finer nuances, he was just as glad. He did not think he would have liked them. Burn him, he bought a necklace for Tuon, who gave it to Selucia right in front of him, and now it was Egeanin’s?
“She came for a new name,” Tuon said musingly. “What does she call herself?”
“Leilwin,” Selucia replied. “A fitting name for a shea dancer. Leilwin Shipless, perhaps?”
Tuon nodded. “Leilwin Shipless.”
Egeanin jerked as though every word was a slap. “May I withdraw?” she asked stiffly, bending in sharp bow.
“If you want to go, then go,” Mat growled. Bringing her in the first place had not been the best notion he ever had, but maybe he could recover a little without her.
Eyes locked on the floorboards, Egeanin sank to her knees. “Please, may I withdraw?”
Tuon sat there straight-backed on the floor staring through the taller woman, clearly not seeing her at all. Selucia eyed Egeanin up and down, pursing her lips. Setalle pushed her needle through the cloth stretched on her hoop. No one so much as glanced at Mat.
Egeanin dropped to her face, and Mat bit back a startled oath when she kissed the floor.
Egeanin scrambled backward on hands and knees and all but tumbled out the door, so fast that Mat was left gaping.
With an effort, he managed to regain his smile. There seemed little point in staying, but a man could make a graceful exit. “Well, I suppose—”
Tuon wriggled her fingers again, still not looking at him, and Selucia cut him short. “The High Lady is weary, Toy. You have her permission to go.”
“Look, my name is Mat,” he said. “An easy name. A simple name. Mat.” Tuon might as well have been a porcelain doll in truth for all the response she made.
Setalle set down her embroidery, though, and rose with one hand resting lightly on the hilt of the curved dagger stuck behind her belt. “Young man, if you think you’re going to lounge about till you get to see us readying for bed, you’re sadly mistaken.” She smiled saying it, but she did have her hand on her knife, and she was Ebou Dari enough to stick a man on a whim. Tuon remained an unmoving doll, a queen on her throne somehow mistakenly dressed in ill-fitting clothes. Mat left.
Egeanin was leaning on one hand against the side of the wagon, her head hanging. Her other hand was gripping the necklace around her throat. Harnan moved, a little way off in the darkness, just to show he was still there. A wise man, to keep clear of Egeanin just then. Mat was too irritated for wisdom.
“What was that about?” he demanded.  And Selucia?  I don’t know anybody who’d jump for his queen the way you jumped for her.”
Egeanin’s hard face was shadowed, but her voice was haggard. “The High Lady is . . . who she is. Selucia is her so’jhin. No one of the low Blood would dare meet her so’jhin’s eyes, and maybe not the High Blood, either.” The clasp broke with a metallic snap as she jerked the necklace free. “But then, I’m not of any Blood, now.” Rearing back, she put her whole body into throwing the necklace as far into the night as she could.
Mat opened his mouth. He could have bought a dozen prime horses with what he paid for that thing and had coin left. He closed it again without saying a word. He might not always be wise, but he was wise enough to know when a woman really might try to stick a knife in him. He knew another thing, as well. If Egeanin behaved this way around Tuon and Selucia, then he had better make sure the sul’dam were kept clear. The Light only knew what they would do if Tuon started wiggling her fingers.
That left him with a job of work to do.  He hated battle, too—a man could get killed dead!—but it was better than work. Strategy and tactics. Learn the ground, learn your enemy, and if you could not win one way, you found another.
The next night he returned to the purple wagon, alone, and once Olver had finished his lesson in stones from Tuon, Mat inveigled his way into a game. At first, sitting on the floor across the board from the dark little woman, he was not sure whether to win or lose. Some women liked to win every time, but the man had to make her work for it. Some liked the man to win, or at least more often than he lost. Neither made any sense to him—he liked to win, and the easier, the better—but that was how it was. While he was dithering, Tuon took matters out of his hands. Halfway through the game, he realized she had him in a trap he could not get out of.  It was a clean and resounding win for her.
“You don’t play very well, Toy,” she said mockingly. Despite the tone, her big, liquid eyes considered him coolly, weighing and measuring. A man could drown in eyes like that.
He smiled and made his goodbyes before there could be any thought of kicking him out. Strategy. Think to the future. Do the unexpected. The next night, he brought a small red paper flower made by one of the show’s seamstresses. And presented it to a startled Selucia. Setalle’s eyebrows rose, and even Tuon seemed taken aback. Tactics. Put your opponent off balance. Come to think, women and battles were not that different. Both wrapped a man in fog and could him kill him without trying. If he was careless.
Every night he visited the purple wagon for a game of stones under Setalle and Selucia’s watchful eyes, and he concentrated on the crosshatched board. Tuon was very good, and it was all too easy to find himself watching the way she placed her stones, with her fingers bent back in a curiously graceful way. She was used to having fingernails an inch long and taking care not to break them. Her eyes were a danger, too. You needed a clear head in stones or battle, and her gaze seemed to reach inside his skull. He buckled down to the game, though, and managed to win four of the next seven, with one draw. Tuon was satisfied when she won and determined when she lost, with none of the temper tantrums he had feared, no scathing comments aside from insisting on calling him Toy, not very much of that icy regal hauteur, as long as they were playing anyway. She purely enjoyed the game, laughing exultantly when she pulled him into a trap, laughing in delight when he managed a clever placement to escape. She seemed a different woman once she lost herself in the stones board.
A flower sewn from blue linen followed the paper blossom, and two days later, a pink silk bloom that spread out as wide as a woman’s palm. Both handed to Selucia. Her blue eyes increasingly set in a suspicious frown when they rested on him, but Tuon told her she could keep the flowers, and she stored them away carefully, folded in a linen cloth. He let three days pass without a present, then brought a little cluster of red silk rosebuds, complete with short stems and glistening leaves that looked as real as nature, only more perfect. He had asked the seamstress to make it on the day he bought that first paper flower.
Selucia took a step, reaching to accept the rosebuds with a curl to her lip, but he sat down and put the flowers beside the board, a little toward Tuon. He said nothing, just left it lying there. She never so much as glanced at it. Dipping into the small leather bags that held the stones, he plucked one from each and shuffled them between his hands till even he was unsure which was where, then offered his closed fists. Tuon hesitated a moment, studying his face with no expression, then tapped his left hand. He opened it to display the glistening white stone.
“I’ve changed my mind, Toy,” she murmured, placing the white stone carefully on the intersection of two lines near the center of the board. “You play very well.”
Mat blinked. Could she know what he was up to? Selucia was standing at Tuon’s back, seemingly absorbed in the almost empty board. Setaile turned a page in her book and shifted a little to get a better light. Of course not. She was talking about stones. If she even suspected his real game, she would toss him out on his ear. Any woman would. It had to be the stones.
That was the night they played to a draw, with each of them controlling half the board in irregular pools and patches. In truth, she won a victory.
“I have kept my word, Toy,” she drawled as he was replacing the stones in the bags. “No attempts to escape, no attempts at betrayal. This is confining.” She gestured around at the interior of the wagon. “I wish to take walks. After dark will do. You may accompany me.” Her eyes touched the cluster of rosebuds, then rose to his face. “To make sure I don’t run away.”
Setaile marked her place with a slim finger and looked at him. Selucia stood behind Tuon and looked at him. The woman had kept her word, mad as that seemed. Walks after dark, with most of the showfolk already in their beds, would do no harm, not with him there to make sure. So why did he feel that he was losing control of the situation?
Tuon agreed to go cloaked and hooded, which was something of a relief.  A child-sized woman with hair shorter than any man not going bald would have been remarked even in the night. Setalle and Selucia always followed at a little distance in the darkness, the lady’s maid to keep a protective eye on her mistress and Setalle to keep an eye on the maid. At least, he thought that was how it was. Sometimes it seemed they were both watching him. The two of them were awfully friendly for guard and prisoner. He had overheard Setalle cautioning Selucia that he was a rogue with women, a fine thing for her to be saying! And Selucia had calmly replied that her lady would break his arms if he showed any disrespect, just as if they were not prisoners at all.
He thought to use these walks to learn a little more about Tuon—she did not talk much over a stones board—but she had a way of ignoring what he asked or deflecting the subject, usually to him.
“The Two Rivers is all forests and farms,” he said as they strolled along the main street of the show. Clouds hid the moon, and the colorful wagons were indistinguishable dark shapes, the performers’ platforms lining the street merely shadows. “Everybody grows tabac and raises sheep. My father breeds cows, too, and trades horses, but mostly, it’s tabac and sheep from one end to the other.”
“Your father trades horses,” Tuon murmured. “And what do you do, Toy?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the two women ghosting along ten paces back. Setalle might not be close enough to hear, if he kept his voice down, but he decided to be honest. Besides, the show was dead quiet in the darkness. She might hear, and she knew what he had been doing in Ebou Dar. “I’m a gambler,” he said.
“My father called himself a gambler,” Tuon said softly. “He died of a bad wager.”
And how were you supposed to find out what that meant?
Another night, walking along a row of animal cages, each one built to fill an entire wagon, he said, “What do you do for fun, Tuon? Just because you enjoy it. Aside from playing stones.” He could almost feel Selucia bristling at his use of her name from thirty feet away, but Tuon did not seem to mind. He thought she did not.
“I train horses and damane,” she said, peering into a cage that held a sleeping lion.  “Does he really have a black mane? There are no lions with black manes in all of Seanchan.”
She trained damane? For fun? Light! “Horses? What kind of horses?”  For fun.
“Mistress Anan tells me you’re a scoundrel, Toy.” Her voice was cool, not cold. Composed. She turned toward him, face hidden in the shadows of her cowl. “How many women have you kissed?” The lion woke up and coughed, a deep sound guaranteed to raise the hair on anyone’s head. Tuon did not even flinch.
“Looks like rain’s coming again,” he said weakly. “Selucia will have my hide if I get you back soaked.” He heard her laugh softly. What had he said that was funny?
There was a price to pay, of course. Maybe things were going his way and maybe not, but when you thought they were, there was always a price.
“Bunch of chattering magpies,” he complained to Egeanin. The afternoon sat on the horizon, a red-gold ball half hidden by clouds, casting the show in long shadows. There was no rain, for once, and in spite of the cold they were sitting hunched beneath the green wagon they shared, playing stones in plain sight of anyone who walked by. A good many did, men hurrying about some last-minute chore, children snatching the final chance to roll hoops through the mud puddles and toss balls before night fell. Women holding their skirts up glanced at the wagon in passing, and even when they were hooded, Mat knew what their expressions were. Hardly a woman in the show would speak to Mat Cauthon. Irritably, he rattled the black stones he held gathered in his left hand. “They’ll get their gold when we reach Lugard. That’s all they ought to care about. They shouldn’t be poking their noses into my business.”
“You can hardly blame them,” Egeanin drawled, studying the board. “You and I are supposed to be fleeing lovers, but you spend more time with . . . her . . . than with me.” She still had trouble not calling Tuon High Lady. “You behave like a man courting.” She reached to place her stone, then stopped with her hand above the board. “You can’t think she’ll complete the ceremony, can you? You can’t be that big a fool.”
“What ceremony? What are you talking about?”
“You named her your wife three times that night in Ebou Dar,” she said slowly. “You really don’t know? A woman says three times that a man is her husband, and he says three times she’s his wife, and they’re married. There are blessings involved, usually, but it’s saying it in front of witnesses that makes it a marriage. You really didn’t know?”
Mat laughed, and shrugged his shoulders, feeling the knife hanging behind his neck. A good knife gave a man a feeling of comfort. But his laugh was hoarse. “But she didn’t say anything.”  “So whatever I said, it doesn’t mean anything.” But he knew what Egeanin was going to say. Sure as water was wet, he knew. He had been told who he was going to marry.
“With the Blood, it’s a little different. Sometimes a noble from one end of the Empire marries a noble from the other. An arranged marriage. The Imperial family never has any other kind. They may not want to wait until they can be together, so one acknowledges the marriage where she is, and the other where he is. As long as they both speak in front of witnesses, inside a year and a day, the marriage is legal. You truly didn’t know?”
Sure was sure, but the stones still spilled from his hand onto the board, bouncing everywhere.  Maybe she thought this whole thing was an adventure, or a game. Maybe she thought being kidnapped was as much fun as training horses or bloody damane! But he knew he was a trout waiting for her to set the hook.
He stayed away from the purple wagon for two days.  Only, he knew it was just a matter of when she decided to jerk the line tight.
As slowly as the show moved, eventually they reached the ferry across the Eldar, running from Alkindar on the west bank to Coramen on the east, tidy little walled towns of tile-roofed stone buildings with half a dozen stone docks each. The sun was climbing high, hardly a cloud crossed the sky, and those white as new-washed wool. No rain today, maybe. It was an important crossing, with trading ships from upriver tied to some of the docks and big barge-like ferries crawling from one town to the other on long sweeps. The Seanchan apparently thought so, too. They had military camps outside both towns, and from the stone walls beginning to rise around the camps and the stone structures going up inside, they had no intention of leaving soon.
Mat crossed over with the first wagons, riding Pips. The brown gelding looked ordinary enough to an undiscerning eye; it would not seem out of place for him to be ridden by a fellow in a rough woolen coat with a woolen cap pulled down over his ears against the cold. He was not actually considering making a run for the hilly wooded ridge country behind Coramen. Thinking about it, but not really considering. She was going to set the hook whether he ran or not. So he sat Pips at the end of one of the stone ferry landings, watching the show cross over and trundle away through the town. There were Seanchan on the landings, a squad of beefy men in segmented armor painted blue and burnt gold under a lean young officer with one thin blue plume on his odd-looking helmet. They seemed to be there just to keep order, but the officer checked Luca’s horse warrant, and Luca inquired whether the noble lord might know of ground outside the town suitable for his show to perform. Mat could have wept. He could see soldiers wearing striped armor in the street behind him, wandering in and out of shops and taverns. A raken swooped down out of the sky on long, ribbed wings, alighting outside one of the camps across the river. Three or four of the snake-necked creatures were already on the ground. There had to be hundreds of soldiers in those camps. Maybe a thousand. And Luca was going to put on his show.
Then one of the ferries hit the rope-padded bumpers at the end of the landing, and the ramp came down to let the windowless purple wagon rumble off onto the stones. Setalle was driving. Selucia sat on one side of her, peering out from the hood of a faded red cloak. On the other side, swathed in a dark cloak so not an inch of her showed, was Tuon.
 If his heart did not pound its way out of his chest first. The dice had started up in his head, that rattling feel of dice rolling across a table. They were going to come up the Dark One’s eyes, this time; he just knew it.
There was nothing to do except fall in beside the purple wagon, though, riding along as though life were wonderful, riding along the wide main street through criers for shops and hawkers selling things from trays. And Seanchan soldiers. They were not marching in formation now, and they eyed the brightly painted wagons with interest. Riding along and waiting for Tuon to shout. She had given her word, but a prisoner would say anything to get the shackles loosened. All she had to do was raise her voice, and summon a thousand Seanchan soldiers for rescue. The dice bounced and spun in Mat’s head. Riding along, waiting for the Dark One’s eyes.
Tuon never spoke a word.  Never a word until they had passed the gates of Coramen and were rumbling toward the base of the ridge that rose behind the town, where Luca was already gathering the show’s wagons. That was when Mat really knew there was no escape for him. She was going to set the hook all right.
He made sure all the Seanchan stayed in their wagons that night, and the Aes Sedai, too. Nobody had seen any sul’dam or damane that Mat knew, but the Aes Sedai did not argue for once. Tuon did not argue, either. She made a demand that sent Setalle’s eyebrows almost to her hairline. It was phrased as a request, in a way, a reminder of a promise he had made, but he knew a demand when a woman made one. Well, a man had to trust the woman he was going to marry. He told her he had to think on it, just so she would not start imagining she could have anything she wanted out of him. He thought on it all the day that Luca put on his show, thinking and sweating while as many Seanchan as not came to gape at the performers. He thought on it while the wagons wound eastward through the hills, moving slower than ever, but he knew what answer he had to give.
On the third day after leaving the river, they reached the salt town of Jurador, and he told Tuon that he would.  He would always remember that. She smiled, and then the dice stopped. A man could weep!


The Chrome Apps security model disallows
external content in iframes and
the use of inline scripting and eval()
.
You can override these restrictions,
but your external content must be isolated from the app.
Isolated content cannot directly access the app's data or any of the APIs. Use cross-origin XMLHttpRequests and post-messaging to communicate between the event page and sandboxed content and indirectly access the APIs.
API Sample: Want to play with the code? Check out the sandbox sample.
The Content Security Policy used by apps disallows
the use of many kinds of remote URLs, so you can't directly reference external
images, stylesheets, or fonts from an app page. Instead, you can use use
cross-origin XMLHttpRequests to fetch these resources,
and then serve them via blob:
URLs.
To be able to do cross-origin XMLHttpRequests, you'll need to add a permission for the remote URL's host:
"permissions": [ "...", "https://supersweetdomainbutnotcspfriendly.com/" ]
Fetch the remote URL into the app and serve its contents as a blob:
URL:
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.open('GET', 'https://supersweetdomainbutnotcspfriendly.com/image.png', true); xhr.responseType = 'blob'; xhr.onload = function(e) { var img = document.createElement('img'); img.src = window.URL.createObjectURL(this.response); document.body.appendChild(img); }; xhr.send();
You may want to save these resources locally, so that they are available offline.
API Sample: Want to play with the code? Check out the browser sample.
The webview
tag allows you to embed external web content in your
app, for example, a web page. It replaces iframes that point to remote URLs,
which are disabled inside Chrome Apps. Unlike iframes, the
webview
tag runs in a separate process. This means that an exploit
inside of it will still be isolated and won't be able to gain elevated
privileges. Further, since its storage (cookies, etc.) is isolated from the app,
there is no way for the web content to access any of the app's data.
Your webview
element must include the URL to the source content
and specify its dimensions.
<webview src="http://news.google.com/" width="640" height="480"></webview>
To dynamically change the src
, width
and
height
properties of a webview
tag, you can either
set those properties directly on the JavaScript object, or use the
setAttribute
DOM function.
document.querySelector('#mywebview').src = 'http://blog.chromium.org/'; // or document.querySelector('#mywebview').setAttribute( 'src', 'http://blog.chromium.org/');
Sandboxing allows specified pages
to be served in a sandboxed, unique origin.
These pages are then exempt from their Content Security Policy.
Sandboxed pages can use iframes, inline scripting,
and eval()
.
Check out the manifest field description for
sandbox.
It's a trade-off though:
sandboxed pages can't use the chrome.* APIs.
If you need to do things like eval()
,
go this route to be exempt from CSP,
but you won't be able to use the cool new stuff.
Here's a sample sandboxed page which uses an inline script and eval()
:

Woot

You need to include the sandbox
field in the manifest
and list the app pages to be served in a sandbox:
"sandbox": { "pages": ["sandboxed.html"] }
Just like any other app pages, you can create a window that the sandboxed page opens in. Here's a sample that creates two windows, one for the main app window that isn't sandboxed, and one for the sandboxed page:
NOTE: A sandboxed window will not have access to the chrome.app APIs. If a callback is provided to app.window.create it will be run, but will not have the sandboxed window provided to it.
chrome.app.runtime.onLaunched.addListener(function() { chrome.app.window.create('window.html', { 'bounds': { 'width': 400, 'height': 400, 'left': 0, 'top': 0 } }); chrome.app.window.create('sandboxed.html', { 'bounds': { 'width': 400, 'height': 400, 'left': 400, 'top': 0 } }); });
Sandboxed pages can also be embedded within another app page
using an iframe
:
<!DOCTYPE html>
I am normal app window.

There are two parts to sending a message: you need to post a message from the sender page/window, and listen for messages on the receiving page/window.
You can use postMessage
to communicate
between your app and sandboxed content.
Here's a sample background script
that posts a message to the sandboxed page it
opens:
var myWin = null; chrome.app.runtime.onLaunched.addListener(function() { chrome.app.window.create('sandboxed.html', { 'bounds': { 'width': 400, 'height': 400 } }, function(win) { myWin = win; myWin.contentWindow.postMessage('Just wanted to say hey.', '*'); }); });
Generally speaking on the web, you want to specify the exact origin from where the message is sent. Chrome Apps have no access to the unique origin of sandboxed content, so you can only allowlist all origins as acceptable origins ('*'). On the receiving end, you generally want to check the origin; but since Chrome Apps content is contained, it isn't necessary. To find out more, see window.postMessage.
Here's a sample message receiver that gets added to your sandboxed page:
var messageHandler = function(event) { console.log('Background script says hello.', event.data); // Send a reply event.source.postMessage( {'reply': 'Sandbox received: ' + event.data}, event.origin); }; window.addEventListener('message', messageHandler);
For more details, check out the sandbox sample.


Trevor Bedford (@trvrb)
14 Nov 2016
Comp Bio Faculty Seminar
Fred Hutch
with Gytis Dudas, Luiz Carvalho, Marc Suchard, Philippe Lemey, Andrew Rambaut
and many others
with Nick Loman, Oli Pybus, Nuno Faria, Luiz Alcantara, Ester Cerdeira Sabino, Marcio Nunes, Josh Quick, Alli Black, Ingra Morales and many others
with Kristian Andersen, Nathan Grubaugh, Oli Pybus, Pardis Sabeti, Sharon Isern, Jason Ladner, Gytis Dudas, Karthik Gangavarapu and many others
Rethink database of virus and titer data
with Charlton Callender, Sidney Bell, Sarah Murata and Barney Potter
Build scrips to align sequences, build trees and annotate
with Richard Neher, Sarah Murata, Sidney Bell and Barney Potter
React / D3 visualization of resulting trees
with Colin Megill and Richard Neher
Ebola: data producers, Gytis Dudas, Andrew Rambaut, Luiz Carvalho, Philipe Lemey, Marc Suchard, Richard Neher, Nick Loman, Ian Goodfellow, Paul Kellam, Danny Park, Kristian Andersen, Pardis Sabeti
Zika: data producers, Nick Loman, Kristian Andersen, Gytis Dudas, Nuno Faria, Andrew Rambaut, Oliver Pybus, Richard Neher, Charlton Callender, Allison Black, Luiz Alcantara and the rest of the ZiBRA team
Nextstrain: Richard Neher, Colin Megill, Charlton Callender, Sarah Murata, Sidney Bell


Poly-Links.com | Florida Poly Resources tool
This is a 1990's style website used for helpful links in the Florida Polytechnic University community. Learn
why it's better
The page provides access to the Florida Polytechnic Virtual Private Network.
VPN
Linux
Windows
Mac


See: Description
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| AbstractWSPolicyObject |
AbstractWSSecurityObject.
|
| AbstractWSPolicyObjectBuilder<T extends WSPolicyObject> |
AbstactWSPolicyObjectBuilder.
|
| AbstractWSPolicyObjectMarshaller |
An abstract marshaller implementation for XMLObjects from WS-Policy.
|
| AbstractWSPolicyObjectUnmarshaller |
An abstract unmarshaller implementation for XMLObjects from WS-Policy.
|
| AllBuilder |
Builder for the All element.
|
| AllImpl |
AllImpl.
|
| AllMarshaller |
Marshaller for the wsp:All element.
|
| AllUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for the wsp:All element.
|
| AppliesToBuilder |
Builder for the AppliesTo element.
|
| AppliesToImpl |
AppliesToImpl.
|
| AppliesToMarshaller |
Marshaller for the wsp:AppliesTo element.
|
| AppliesToUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for the wsp:AppliesTo element.
|
| ExactlyOneBuilder |
Builder for the ExactlyOne element.
|
| ExactlyOneImpl |
ExactlyOneImpl.
|
| ExactlyOneMarshaller |
Marshaller for the wsp:ExactlyOne element.
|
| ExactlyOneUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for the wsp:ExactlyOne element.
|
| OperatorContentTypeImpl |
OperatorContentTypeImpl.
|
| OperatorContentTypeMarshaller |
Marshaller for the wsp:OperatorContentType element.
|
| OperatorContentTypeUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for the wsp:OperatorContentType element.
|
| PolicyAttachmentBuilder |
Builder for the PolicyAttachment element.
|
| PolicyAttachmentImpl |
PolicyAttachmentImpl.
|
| PolicyAttachmentMarshaller |
Marshaller for PolicyAttachment.
|
| PolicyAttachmentUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for PolicyAttachment.
|
| PolicyBuilder |
Builder for the Policy element.
|
| PolicyImpl |
PolicyImpl.
|
| PolicyMarshaller |
Marshaller for the wsp:Policy element.
|
| PolicyReferenceBuilder |
Builder for the PolicyReference element.
|
| PolicyReferenceImpl |
PolicyReferenceImpl.
|
| PolicyReferenceMarshaller |
Marshaller for the wsp:PolicyReference element.
|
| PolicyReferenceUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for the wsp:PolicyReference element.
|
| PolicyUnmarshaller |
Unmarshaller for the wsp:Policy element.
|
Copyright © 1999–2016 Shibboleth Consortium. All rights reserved.


KnockoutJS Webpack ES6
Add something to the table demo
👤
$
.00
Add reservation
ID
Name
Time
Actions
Remove


- activateKey(Pitch) - Method in class cs3500.music.view.PianoPanel
-
Sets the key representing the given pitch to the active state.
- activateNote(Pitch) - Method in class cs3500.music.view.AudioVisualView
-
- activateNote(Pitch) - Method in class cs3500.music.view.AView
-
- activateNote(Pitch) - Method in class cs3500.music.view.GuiViewFrame
-
- activateNote(Pitch) - Method in interface cs3500.music.view.IView
-
- addAll(PitchSequence, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.model.PitchSequence
-
Adds all
Note
s from the provided
PitchSequence
to this one.
- addingNote - Variable in class cs3500.music.control.SimpleController
-
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int) - Method in interface cs3500.music.control.IController
-
Adds a note to the model.
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int, int, int) - Method in interface cs3500.music.control.IController
-
Adds a note to the model.
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.control.SimpleController
-
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int, int, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.control.SimpleController
-
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int) - Method in interface cs3500.music.model.MusicOperations
-
Adds a note from beats start
to end
at pitch
specified by octave o
and note type nt
.
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int, int, int) - Method in interface cs3500.music.model.MusicOperations
-
Adds a note of from beats start
to end
at pitch
specified by octave o
and note type nt
.
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.model.MusicSheet
-
- addNote(Octave, NoteType, int, int, int, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.model.MusicSheet
-
- addNote(Note) - Method in class cs3500.music.model.PitchSequence
-
Adds the provided note to this PitchSequence
.
- addNote(int, int, int, int, int) - Method in interface cs3500.music.util.CompositionBuilder
-
Adds a new note to the piece.
- addNote(int, int, int, int, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.util.SheetBuilder
-
- addRepeat(RepeatInstr) - Method in interface cs3500.music.control.IController
-
Adds a repeat instruction to the model.
- addRepeat(RepeatInstr) - Method in class cs3500.music.control.SimpleController
-
- addRepeat(RepeatInstr) - Method in interface cs3500.music.model.MusicOperations
-
Addes a repeat instruction to this piece of music.
- addRepeat(RepeatInstr) - Method in class cs3500.music.model.MusicSheet
-
- addRepeat(int, int) - Method in interface cs3500.music.util.CompositionBuilder
-
Add a new repeat instruction to the piece.
- addRepeat(int, int) - Method in class cs3500.music.util.SheetBuilder
-
- addRepeatDoesNotDisrupt() - Method in class cs3500.music.tests.MusicSheetTest
-
- addRepeatOutOfBounds() - Method in class cs3500.music.tests.MusicSheetTest
-
- addTest() - Method in class cs3500.music.tests.ControllerTests
-
- addTestInstrumentLoudness() - Method in class cs3500.music.tests.ControllerTests
-
- advanceReady() - Method in class cs3500.music.view.AudioVisualView
-
- advanceReady() - Method in class cs3500.music.view.AView
-
- advanceReady() - Method in class cs3500.music.view.GuiViewFrame
-
- advanceReady() - Method in interface cs3500.music.view.IView
-
- allOnKeysActivated() - Method in class cs3500.music.view.PianoPanel
-
Determines if all keys are currently on are in the activated state.
- appendSheet(MusicOperations) - Method in interface cs3500.music.model.MusicOperations
-
Appends the sheet of notes represented in m
to the end of this sheet.
- appendSheet(MusicOperations) - Method in class cs3500.music.model.MusicSheet
-
- AudioView - Class in cs3500.music.view
-
An audio view for a piece of music.
- AudioView() - Constructor for class cs3500.music.view.AudioView
-
Default constructor creates an instance of an AudioView using a standard midi synthesizer.
- AudioView(StringBuilder) - Constructor for class cs3500.music.view.AudioView
-
Creates a test version of the AudioView class that uses its midimessages to keep a log of the
sound messages it send to its receiver.
- AudioViewTests - Class in cs3500.music.tests
-
Tests of the AudioView using a mock synthesizer and receiver.
- AudioViewTests() - Constructor for class cs3500.music.tests.AudioViewTests
-
- AudioViewTranscriptTest - Class in cs3500.music.tests
-
Used to create midi transcripts of music files using the mock receiver to collect the
output from the audio view.
- AudioViewTranscriptTest() - Constructor for class cs3500.music.tests.AudioViewTranscriptTest
-
- AudioVisualView - Class in cs3500.music.view
-
An audiovisual view for a piece of music.
- AudioVisualView(IView, IView) - Constructor for class cs3500.music.view.AudioVisualView
-
- AView - Class in cs3500.music.view
-
Abstract class for view implementations that defines shared fields and methods.
- AView() - Constructor for class cs3500.music.view.AView
-


Introduction¶
The use of the Python programming language in computational neuroscience has been growing steadily over the past few years. The maturation of two important open source projects, the scientific libraries NumPy and SciPy, gives access to a large collection of scientific functions which rival in size and speed those from well known commercial alternatives such as Matlab® from The MathWorks™.
Furthermore, the flexible and dynamic nature of Python offers scientific programmers the opportunity to quickly develop efficient and structured software while maximizing prototyping and reusability capabilities.
The Modular toolkit for Data Processing (MDP) package is a library of widely used data processing algorithms, and the possibility to combine them together to form pipelines for building more complex data processing software.
MDP has been designed to be used as-is and as a framework for scientific data processing development.
From the user’s perspective, MDP consists of a collection of units, which process data. For example, these include algorithms for supervised and unsupervised learning, principal and independent components analysis and classification.
These units can be chained into data processing flows, to create pipelines as well as more complex feed-forward network architectures. Given a set of input data, MDP takes care of training and executing all nodes in the network in the correct order and passing intermediate data between the nodes. This allows the user to specify complex algorithms as a series of simpler data processing steps.
The number of available algorithms is steadily increasing and includes signal processing methods (Principal Component Analysis, Independent Component Analysis, Slow Feature Analysis), manifold learning methods ([Hessian] Locally Linear Embedding), several classifiers, probabilistic methods (Factor Analysis, RBM), data pre-processing methods, and many others.
Particular care has been taken to make computations efficient in terms
of speed and memory. To reduce the memory footprint, it is possible to
perform learning using batches of data. For large data-sets, it is
also possible to specify that MDP should use single precision floating
point numbers rather than double precision ones. Finally, calculations
can be parallelised using the parallel
subpackage, which offers a
parallel implementation of the basic nodes and flows.
From the developer’s perspective, MDP is a framework that makes the
implementation of new supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms
easy and straightforward. The basic class, Node
, takes care of tedious
tasks like numerical type and dimensionality checking, leaving the
developer free to concentrate on the implementation of the learning
and execution phases. Because of the common interface, the node then
automatically integrates with the rest of the library and can be used
in a network together with other nodes.
A node can have multiple training phases and even an undetermined number of phases. Multiple training phases mean that the training data is presented multiple times to the same node. This allows the implementation of algorithms that need to collect some statistics on the whole input before proceeding with the actual training, and others that need to iterate over a training phase until a convergence criterion is satisfied. It is possible to train each phase using chunks of input data if the chunks are given as an iterable. Moreover, crash recovery can be optionally enabled, which will save the state of the flow in case of a failure for later inspection.
MDP is distributed under the open source BSD license. It has been written in the context of theoretical research in neuroscience, but it has been designed to be helpful in any context where trainable data processing algorithms are used. Its simplicity on the user’s side, the variety of readily available algorithms, and the reusability of the implemented nodes also make it a useful educational tool.
With over 20,000 downloads since its first public release in 2004, MDP has become a widely used Python scientific software. It has minimal dependencies, requiring only the NumPy numerical extension, is completely platform-independent, and is available in several Linux distribution, and the Python(x,y) scientific Python distribution.
As the number of users and contributors is increasing, MDP appears to be a good candidate for becoming a community-driven common repository of user-supplied, freely available, Python implemented data processing algorithms.


A little bit about me...
I am from a small town in Central Massachusetts. My journey into tech is a bit unorthodox compared to most. I was first exposed to design and tech in high school, but it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I decided it was what I wanted to do for my career. I started taking online courses in order to further develop my skills and learn new ones.
That decision has opened up a whole new world for me and a fresh way for me to express myself and my story. I love the challenge that coding brings to the table. It forces me to think critically, attack problems head on, focus on the details, and forces me to be intentional in all that I do. There is no better feeling than solving a problem in your own code or completing a project, it’s an adrenaline rush I can’t stop chasing.


Sagittarius
Sagittarius : (November 23 – December 21)
The relationships with your parents will improve today and you will get their blessings. You will also take care of their needs and assume full responsibility. You are likely to get a legacy from your parents which is going to be a big amount of money. It will change your fortunes. And you will feel financially more secured.


'Spartan Playground')); ?>
Solve these small tasks to get a basic understanding of Spartan, refer to the docs for help.
Hint: Defined in 61-grid.less
| Max width | |
|---|---|
| Type | |
| Gutter width | |
| Gutter type | |
| Columns |
Basic grid structure is already set up, add classes to the columns so they all take a third of the width.
Set up a grid row with 3 columns which take a quarter of the width, having a a quarter width gap after the 2nd column. (e.g column, column, gap, column)
Set up a grid row with 2 columns which take half the width and swap columns visually without altering the html.
Make a non-responsive layout prototype of the content section from this website using Spartan. (largest viewport, including right sidebar)
Now recreate the main content area (no header/footer) of this website using responsive layouts.
Hint: Define layouts in the file 40-layouts.less
.
Play around with the spartan setup mixins and try to prototype some of the following example sites using only the grid:
Hint: Consult the Spartan examples for some inspiration.


Perfect Tazki:
Tejarka Paagrio!
I've been waiting for you! The Hestui totem spirit has revealed many ancient Orcish secrets to me!
"What have you learned?"


Poland Denmark
by Associated Press1 / 6Denmark's Crown Princess Mary, left, and Crown Prince Frederik, second from left, welcome by Poland's President Andrzej Duda, second from right, and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, right, during the welcoming ceremony at the start of their one-day visit marking 100 years of bilateral relations, in the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, Monday, Nov. 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Danish Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary marked 100 years of Denmark’s diplomatic ties with Poland with a one-day visit to Warsaw Monday that involved meeting Poland’s president and World War II veterans.
Frederik and Mary were greeted with military honors by Polish President Andrzej Duda in front of the Presidential Palace.
Later in the day, they were set to open a conference at Warsaw University on the history of the countries’ ties.
They were also due at the nearby Polish Academy of Sciences to dedicate a memorial plaque to Danish 19th-century sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, who made a popular monument in Warsaw to Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
They were also to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and meet war veterans.
Talks in coal-reliant Poland were to include climate protection and a joint gas pipeline project, Baltic Pipe, to bring Norwegian gas to Denmark and Poland.


Honzi
/
Guides
/
EVE Online
/Charon
Fittings:
ALIGN
CARGO
HULL
WARP
Fittings
Code
Notes
Align
[Charon, CHARON-ALIGN] Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizers Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizers Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizers
Cargo
[Charon, CHARON-CARGO] ORE Expanded Cargohold ORE Expanded Cargohold ORE Expanded Cargohold
Hull
[Charon, CHARON-HULL] Syndicate Reinforced Bulkheads Syndicate Reinforced Bulkheads Syndicate Reinforced Bulkheads
Warp
[Charon, CHARON-WARP] Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator


I have amended the code in src/ddscf/movecs_pr_anal.F so that a more complete wavefunction is printed in the log file. I am now printing anything with a coefficient greater than 0.01 (the default value was set as 0.15 with a maximum of 10 basis functions output).
I have noticed that for some vectors summing the square of the basis function coefficients does not sum to 1.0 (or close to 1.0 as I am still ignoring terms below 0.01). In some cases this sum is less than 0.5. Could you please advise whether there may be an issue with the final vectors analysis.
The changes I have made to movecs_pr_anal are shown in the snippets below identified by "jdt42". I don't think my changes have introduced a bug as the top items agree with the output from the default settings. An example output is also pasted in below. I can supply the amended file and output files if required.
Many thanks
Jon
Change 1 to over-ride default threshold .....
110 continue
do i = ilo, ihi
c
call ga_get(g_vecs, 1, nbf, i, i, dbl_mb(k_vecs), 1)
c
c Identify significant coefficients and sort by size
c
n = 0
c cur_thresh = thresh
c jdt42: to override the default threshold of 0.15
cur_thresh = 0.01d0
111 do j = 0, nbf-1
if (abs(dbl_mb(k_vecs+j)).ge.cur_thresh) then
int_mb(k_list + n) = j
n = n + 1
endif
enddo
Change 2 to eliminate the restriction to only 10 basis functions
22 format(1x,2(' Bfn. Coefficient Atom+Function ',5x))
write(LuOut,23)
23 format(1x,2(' ----- ------------ ---------------',5x))
c do klo = 0, min(n-1,9), 2
c jdt42: to eliminate the restiction of only 10 bf output
do klo = 0, min(n-1,(nbf-1)), 2
khi = min(klo+1,n-1)
write(LuOut,2) (
$ int_mb(k_list+k)+1,
$ dbl_mb(k_vecs+int_mb(k_list+k)),
$ (byte_mb(k_tags+int_mb(k_list+k)*16+m),m=0,15),
$ k = klo,khi)
2 format(1x,2(i5,2x,f12.6,2x,16a1,4x))
enddo
An example vector output with all basis function contributions with a coefficient greater than 0.01. The sum of the square of the coefficients is 0.548, the remaining terms below 0.01 do not make up the difference (I have tried lowering the threshold to 0.0001).
Vector 15 Occ=2.000000D+00 E=-1.054512D+00
MO Center= -8.0D-01, 5.1D-01, -4.0D-02, r^2= 1.8D+00
Bfn. Coefficient Atom+Function Bfn. Coefficient Atom+Function
----- ------------ --------------- ----- ------------ ---------------
36 -0.261547 3 N s 17 -0.259538 2 N s
32 -0.252514 3 N s 21 -0.250074 2 N s
77 -0.161915 6 C s 6 -0.145915 1 O s
2 -0.141347 1 O s 16 0.127673 2 N s
31 0.124543 3 N s 47 -0.108267 4 C s
76 0.082512 6 C s 34 -0.076693 3 N py
62 -0.069952 5 C s 48 -0.066961 4 C px
1 0.066766 1 O s 107 -0.064100 8 C s
92 -0.060200 7 C s 4 0.057354 1 O py
96 -0.056720 7 C s 46 0.055405 4 C s
18 0.049977 2 N px 63 0.049236 5 C px
52 0.044419 4 C px 61 0.037371 5 C s
78 -0.037280 6 C px 67 -0.035449 5 C px
109 -0.034766 8 C py 91 0.034132 7 C s
20 -0.033304 2 N pz 106 0.032921 8 C s
93 -0.031074 7 C px 19 0.030821 2 N py
38 -0.030409 3 N py 66 -0.030118 5 C s
110 -0.028708 8 C pz 8 0.027288 1 O py
35 0.026980 3 N pz 97 -0.024668 7 C px
3 0.023663 1 O px 24 -0.022980 2 N pz
94 0.022222 7 C py 39 0.021553 3 N pz
53 0.020166 4 C py 122 -0.017577 9 C s
126 0.017539 9 C s 50 0.017475 4 C pz
152 -0.017242 11 C s 98 0.016903 7 C py
137 -0.016526 10 C s 141 0.015324 10 C s
82 0.014947 6 C px 221 -0.013836 17 H s
30 0.013806 2 N dzz 143 -0.013476 10 C py
216 -0.012655 16 H s 90 0.012262 6 C dzz
119 -0.012147 8 C dyz 226 -0.011741 18 H s
45 0.011158 3 N dzz 88 -0.011135 6 C dyy
79 0.011060 6 C py 33 -0.010922 3 N px
81 -0.010810 6 C s 95 0.010804 7 C pz
113 0.010576 8 C py 123 -0.010347 9 C px
|


protocol
Debugging protocol similar to those found in most Prolog compilers.
Paulo Moura
1.0
2000/7/24
static, context_switching_calls, events
(no dependencies on other files)
Starts tracing all message sending events.
static
trace – one
Stops tracing.
static
notrace – one
Activates spy points and starts debugging.
static
debug – one
Suspends spy points and stops debugging.
static
nodebug – one
True if the debugger is active.
static
debugging – zero_or_one
Initializes debugger, turns debugging off and resets all spy points and streams.
static
init – one
Current debugger input or output streams.
static
stream(Kind,Stream)
stream(?atom,?stream) – zero_or_more
Sets the debugger input or output stream.
static
set_stream(Kind,Stream)
set_stream(+atom,+stream) – one
(none)
(none)


How to Re-Enable SafeSlinger Notification.
This page helps iOS users to re-enable their notification for SafeSlinger.
Step1: Select Settings to configure the notification. |
Step2: Select Notifications. |
Step3: Select SafeSlinger. |
Step4: Enable (Switch On) Badge App Icon, Sounds, and Alert Style (either Banners or Alerts work). |
Questions?


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We have released a new version of Encyclopædia Inflationaris and its associated public code ASPIC. This opiparous edition extends the original paper by 400 pages and features 46 new models of inflation that have been proposed in the last decade. Cosmic Inflation is ready to tackle the data challenges of tomorrow.
The first edition of Encyclopædia Inflationaris was published in Ref. [1] and authored by Jérôme Martin, Christophe and Vincent Vennin. It was built upon the slow-roll models of inflation proposed prior to 2013, the year of the first Planck data release. It contains accurate reheating-consistent slow-roll calculations of the background universe and of the expected scalar and tensor perturbations for all these models. Although it is now often seen as a review, it is a genuine paper as it goes beyond the mere gathering of known results. Indeed, a fair fraction of these models had been studied only under rough approximations, which were not matching the accuracy needed by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data. The ambition of the project was, and still is, to provide an (almost) exact treatment of single-field inflationary models using only the slow-roll approximation while incorporating the kinematic effects of reheating.
All these results are also incorporated in a public runtime library, ASPIC [2], which has been used in a number of subsequent works. For instance, Bayesian model comparison using the Planck CMB data has been presented in Refs. [3] and [4] while the constraints derived on the reheating epoch have been separately presented in Refs. [5] and [6].
Ten years later Cosmic Inflation remains the most favoured scenario of the early universe [7] but several developments have called for the release of a new edition:
-
First, at the theoretical level, new models have been proposed. Some of them boil down to one of the functional forms of the inflationary potentials already encoded in ASPIC, in which case they have been added in the relevant sections1. Some other models give rise to new inflationary potentials, and therefore constitute new sections of Encyclopædia Inflationaris, as well as new entries in the ASPIC library.  The inclusion of these models allows the new edition to provide an up-to-date landscape of all single-field slow-roll inflationary models, bringing the number of models included in the ASPIC library to 118.
-
Second, at the observational level, the first edition compared the predictions of single-field models with the early release of the Planck 2013 data. Since then, additional data has been collected, and the second edition features second-order slow-roll constraints from the full Planck Legacy + Bicep-Keck data combination. The Bayesian evidence of all models has also been re-computed with the new data set, and the results will be presented in a separate publication.
-
Third, as the accuracy of the recent data releases has kept improving, several projects are on their way that should deliver even more accurate cosmological data in the years to come. In particular, let us mention ground-based experiments that are currently operating such as BICEP3 & Keck array and SPT in Antarctica, QUIJOTE in the Canary islands, and CLASS, ACT and Polarbear in the Atacama desert. They have been very recently joined by QUBIC. In space, the Euclid satellite is soon to be launched and will provide unprecedented measurements on the matter power spectrum, down to very small scales. The LiteBIRD satellite is planned to be launched in 2028 and should allow us to further constrain the \(B\)-mode signal in the polarisation of the CMB. These prospects of ever increasing precision confirm the relevance of the original Encyclopædia Inflationaris and ASPIC projects, namely the need for accurate predictions on a model-to-model basis. For this reason, we have continued to pay special attention to solve the inflationary dynamics exactly, without any other approximations than those contained in the slow-roll framework. This one has indeed been shown to be sufficiently accurate for the Planck CMB data [8] and can be extended to arbitrary precision if needed [9]. On the contrary, as discussed in Ref. [10] other commonly-employed approximations are now too imprecise to allow for a fair comparison with the data.
Some of the new models are compatible with the present data, as one could have expected, but this statement is strongly reheating dependent. This can be illustrated by the following figure. It shows their predictions, namely spectral index \(n_\mathrm{S}\) and tensor-to-scalar ratio \(r\) as a function of the reheating energy scale \(E_{\mathrm{reh}}\) (assuming a matter-like reheating for illustration purposes). The contours are the \(68\%\) and \(95\%\) confidence intervals associated with the successive Planck data releases since 2013.
As this figure shows, getting reheating-consistent predictions has never been so crucial. The reheating expansion history determines the part of the inflationary potential being probed by cosmological measurements, it can now substantially affect the preference shown by the data for a given model (in technical terms, the Bayesian evidence). This is one of the reasons why, in the opirarous edition, the Starobinsky model (SI) and Higgs Inflation (HI) are now treated as distinct models, since they come with different reheating histories. Moreover, even though they are often treated as sharing the same potential, this is only correct at leading order in an expansion with respect to the inverse of the non-minimal coupling of the field. Differences arise at next-to-leading order that we now account for in an exact manner.
The previous figure certainly confirms the strategy adopted since the early days of Encyclopædia Inflationaris to derive reheating-consistent predictions. Ignoring it can indeed be catastrophic. As an example, here are the reheating-consistent predictions of one of the new model proposed after the Planck data release. Not including reheating effects would imply selecting random points in this mess…
Let us note that in its new edition, the format of the paper has been purposely kept similar to its original version. In particular, the introduction (section 2) has been essentially left untouched in order to keep track of our original motivations, and of the main considerations that were discussed in the field at that time. We have also not completed section 3 with a list of new analytical results derived in the 46 new potentials, given that we think it has already become clear that Encyclopædia Inflationaris is more than a review indeed. At the time of this post, the opiparous edition is made public only through arXiv:1303.3787v4 with a full open access CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Finally, about the benefit of a second edition, let us quote Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (in a letter to Voltaire, June 23, 1766):
Quant à l’ouvrage, il est maigre, mais il est aisé de lui donner de l’embonpoint dans une seconde édition.
-
These models may nonetheless come with different values for the parameters describing the potential, i.e. different priors in the framework of a Bayesian analysis. ↩


Crafting a Succinct Message
★ Sifting for Gold
★ Staying on Message
A Wealth of Experience in Interviews
★ What Can We Read Between the Lines?
★ Read the Room
★ Let’s Talk About Me
★ Why Those Questions
Balancing Simplicity with Tactics
Communication is both the receipt and transmission of information.
It’s a great example of something that seems difficult to measure and to quantify. Unless you’re familiar with the math that drives companies like Google, then communication is going to seem like a liberal art. But great people learn how to systemize everything. It’s difficult to truly excel at something without systemizing it. And both Google and the truly great excel at both parsing the nuggets of gold from information received, as well as crafting their content to convey the intended message.
Crafting a Succinct Message
Crafting the right message your business, brand or project requires skill and experience. It’s a tough optimization problem. The best take great pains to craft a minimal message. By minimalizing the content, the message and its concepts are pure, simple, easily understood and easily recalled. You can tell just by looking at Apple’s advertisements, their user manuals, their developer documentation, their tech support dialogues – these guys have gone through great pains to craft their message for simplicity and to promote their brand’s identity. I can just tell, that Apple as a company, from the top down, is structured differently, just by observing the uniform style and goals of nearly 100% of their communication.
Sifting for Gold
As the internet dominates information distribution and makes it available to everyone, being privy to information and knowledge is no longer the difficulty. It is sifting through the firehose of data. Now the informational advantage is available to those who can process the data. Whereas acquiring information used to be the barrier to overcome that signified opportunity, now it is the capacity for sifting through the data to find the valuable nuggets. And so, both identifying that valuable data and providing it through a viable gateway for a large market will prove valuable in the social age. Of course, providing paid access to distribute information to a market in a targeted manner is not new. That’s basically advertising in general.
Staying on Message
With Increased Informational Surface Area
The prevalence of social media represents ennumerable opportunities to network with customers, to learn from them, to understand how they think about your products and to observe the kinds of experiences your products create. But social media also presents itself as a huge vulnerability to business strategy. If you’re not watching your message, you could be revealing a lot of information about that business strategy. You could be projecting the wrong message and associations for your brand, confusing your customer’s perception of brand identity or unintentionally diluting your brand’s value. Branding is one of the most crucial aspects to tech products, especially since tech products are informational by nature.
Whereas a can of coke has a characteristic sound when you open it, technology products lack many of the physical phenomena that correspond to the reinforcement of brand. The types of experiences that generate your consumer’s notion of brand identity are harder to singularize: they are more highly varied and differ in more virtualized ways that are difficult to quantify/control.
A Wealth of Experience in Interviews
Moving back towards the facets of great people, I enjoy watching interviews of founders or other great leaders today. I like watching new and unknown founders who might not have as much experience, but I like to do so because I see myself in their shoes. These guys are green. They haven’t had the PR training. What mistakes do they make? What do they consciously and unconsciously focus on presenting to the audience and why? What do they think is important about their product or their message? How do they react to pressure when they’re on stage?
When watching interviews of people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or a ton of other influential people, it’s important to pay attention to more than just the message they want to convey. There’s a sea of information you can glean from these videos. You get to see how they react with people of various stature, including those who might be almost unknown. Even when an audience member asks a dumb question, or a leading question, you can learn how they respond to different situations and a little bit about why.
Ooohhh, yeh, you might want to watch your answer on that one, just sidestep and keep moving.
You’ll notice that these people are smart and quick, yet usually passive, when someone does something like asking a leading question. They usually just don’t attach to it, and I’ll elaborate on that in a later section. Observing how someone responds to problems is vital to measuring their character.
What Can We Read Between the Lines?
If you know about the long term goals and mission of this person’s organization, looking at how they posture themselves and their organization can speak volumes about those goals. How do they say they say? What are their motivations behind the structure of their message? How are current events and market conditions affecting their message today as compared to the past? What are the obvious points they could be making, but haven’t mentioned and why? Do how they stay on message or circle back from a risky area? Does it seem like the interviewer or this person veered off track and why? What was the outcome of seemingly off-the-cuff statements and questions? Good? Bad?
It’s important to note that many, if not most, inferences you make that aren’t grounded in fact might be based in misinterpretation of words & actions. So properly weighting the inferences you draw is key.
Read the Room
And Know Your Audience
There’s so much you can garner from the audience’s reaction. Have you ever thought about how it would be to perform as the rockstar on stage? There’s a ton of information you’re missing, as the audience member. It’s crucial and difficult to understand how audience members are going to perceive your words and actions. This varies from area to area. Politics can be volatile and people will latch onto anything. Business, not so much, but it can be unpredictable. But, it’s definitely worth it to have someone else help you construct your message here and to help you craft together content for a media appearance.
Let’s Talk About Me
Imagine the processes behind an interview or media appearance. How did they identify the questions being asked? What was the process to set up the interview? What’s the message they’re obstensibly trying to convey? Why did they agree to this appearance? What are both parties getting out of it?
Why Those Questions
And Why Those Answers?
If they have someone managing PR, how did they work to posture content for the organization and/or its projects for this interview? What would motivate them to do so? How long ago does it seem like they structured their content and message? Have current events affected their PR posturing in the week(s) leading up to the interview? For politicians running for election, did some article or video clip set the tone? How was their PR and team involved in responding to this? Are they responding to the elephant in the room? Is that typically how they handle situations like that and why?
But, again and perhaps most important, when they veered off track, why did that happen? This might be where you pick up the most information that wasn’t intentionally conveyed.
Balancing Simplicity with Tactics
While it’s critical to convey a simple message, for many organizations, this can render elements of your business strategy more predictable than you’d like. In contrast, your organization needs to keep people guessing. The idea here is at least two-fold. First, people are excited with new information and this keeps your fans and customers focused on you. And secondly, extraneous information makes it much harder for a competitor to completely discern elements of your strategy. So, if you only stick to what seems relevant, then it becomes easier for your opponents to predict your intentions, strategy, opportunities and other facets of your organization’s behavior.
These tactics contrast with the goal of keeping communications simple and minimal. At best, these tactics allow your organization to remain agile and retain surprise. Yet, the wrong idea could backfire, if not properly assessed or executed. Using tactics to avoid predictability requires that you have an intimate understanding of how your message is perceived by various categories of customers and how it could be perceived.
That’s It for Communication
I might write about the facet of communication again soon, but since it overlaps so much with networking and signaling, it’s difficult to identify topics which apply only to communication. I hope to post the content I have on signaling and networking next.


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About
the Gauge Tool:
The Gauge Tool lets you create gauge report snippets to make part of your reports.
Configuration Properties:
There are 7 configuration properties.
Percentage Field - This is the field on your data which contains the percentage to display on the gauge. It should be between 0 and 100. One gauge gets producued for each row of input data.
Width - The width of each gauge report snippet that is produced.
Height - The height of each gauge report snippet that is produced.
Color 1 - This is the color of the section of the dial which corresponds to the percentage data in your selected field.
Color 2 - This is the color of the other section of the dial which is 100 subtract the percentage data in your selected field.
Font Color - The color of the font for the percentage label.
Arrow Color - The color of the gauge's arrow.
All colors must be supplied as RGB hex values (e.g. #ff0000 is red).
Version History:
Version 1.0 - Initial release.
Version 2.0 - Updated to Alteryx 9.0 macro interface. Fixed bug with colors.
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