Yeah, I know it’s satire. I’m an atheist, and I hate stupid, narrow-minded fundies as much as anyone. But honestly, this joke has run its course. People’s lives can actually get ripped apart by Pastafarianism, though I know you don’t really believe it. Not as many as by organized religion, but organized religion can’t really be stopped except by massive revolution, whereas Pastafarianism can be. It was funny for a while, but you don’t seem to realize (actually, some of you probably do) that no one cares anymore, that all the hate mail is faked. Stop laughing at the rest of the world, and realize that you’re not better than the people who post your hatemail; it’s a /joke/. And your religion has lost its humor. So shut up when talking to people you think are stupid. That was the /real /meaning of the “atheists are so arrogant” post. He was pointing out that /you/ were so arrogant in believing that there were really that many stupid people in the world. Some of you, I am now sure, know that all this hatemail is faked. Tell the others, and get everyone to stop acting such a fool.
RAmen,
bbctol
@ bill – You are so right – for most of my life I have let others dictate who/what I should be. About a year and a half ago I took an online class called “the Labyrinth” which was the best thing I ever did for myself. My husband convinced me to take it (at the time I didn’t believe I was worth spending the money on), and during the 5 weeks of the course we spent hours each day discussing what I’d discovered about who I was and what I thought. The Labyrinth is about self-discovery; it’s based on Cognitive Behavior Therapy which I went on to do at home with great results. I am picking it back up this week after finding a bunch more stuff I need to unwind out of my head. I haven’t quit since finishing the Labyrinth, and my life gets better all the time. My husband is not the only support I’ve had – I am lucky to have the group of friends I have who believe in me and see the best of me.
@ Thumpie – Howdy from Rowdy! I missed the whole pursuit of god discussion – much to my detriment.
And now I will sign off for the night…we have an early morning tomorrow. I hope to be able to play again tomorrow night…
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@Rowdy
Hello…sorry to throw my “is God packin’” post in the middle of a deep discussion with Bill…it’s never too late to pursue God and his cronies…join in anytime…
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@Rowdy Wench
I really believe in the cognitive approach, not for people with serious disturbances but for ordinary people trying to make sense of things and their feelings in the world. It’s not for everyone. I asked a friend once, what he thought of a very sad letter. How does it make you feel? I don’t remember the response but it was something like ‘turtle’.
Some people have no access to how they feel and so for those, I don’t see “cognitive’ as the way to go. But emotions are a way of giving us ordinary people feedback on what we experience and a chance to reflect, and any chance to think about things differently is an opportunity to develop.
I babble. But some look at negative emotions as all pain and no benefit. However, I wanted to put in my 2¢ about some of the benefits.
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@ Thumpie – No problem on the “is God packin” post – I thought it was funny!
@ bill – Not much time to write (it’s past time for bed and I was going to be done for the night but wanted to see what you had to say! :) ) It’s a hard thing for me to understand that negative emotions have benefits, because for most of my life that’s all I felt. BUT (!!) as I get more healthy I can see that fear, anger, and guilt (healthy guilt, not the crap that we all know as guilt) among others are not all bad. They can and should be part of a healthy human experience.
Gotta be done for real this time. Taking hubby to a doctor’s appointment in the morning. They are going to give him good drugs and scope his esophagus. Fun times for all…hopefully be back late tomorrow night.
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Is mom3x one of us?
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I’m still deciding whether or not to abuse her.
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@Beastly Rich
I don’t know! I couldn’t decide either… If you go to the new members forum though, you might see a few names that could prove to be of interest… There’s ….. (I’m assuming Hymen for short), and another one I won’t mention because I think she wants to be subtle.
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@St. Jimmy
Come on, “Kansas” isn’t stupid. I live in Kansas and I moved here from Texas, of all places! You may argue the point, but I don’t think I’m stupid either. What’s stupid is people who don’t take action to prevent far right or far left crowds from getting the rest of us into these embarrassing messes in the first place. Until the system gets changed and ordinary citizens are no longer allowed to vote, go register and vote as I did this past election and help finish off Mr. Henderson’s original list of hijacked governmental organizations. Neither religion nor government ever fare well when mixed. OK, go ahead, blast away.
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Since when is Kansas a better place to live than Texas?
Just curious….
RAmen
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@Abathos
I don’t recall your forum name, so if you are indeed new to FSM then welcome.
I disagree with religion not doing well when mixed with government as is the case in the US at the moment. I’ve read figures that with things like the ‘faith based initiative’, religious organisations get over two billion of goverment money a year. Plus they get preferential treatment over other organisations when money is awarded for e. g. work in developing countries. One of the outcries was that churches have managed to take away almost all money from other organisations, partly by branding those others as ‘condom-promotors’ in places where AIDS infection rates are over a quarter of the population. Some say that money spent throught churches etc is less effective as when spent through non-religious organisations. Yet religious organisations are favoured.
So I agree that government is not benefiting (suffering a huge, unnecessary expense in fact), but how is it NOT benefitial to religious organisations to have their teeth stuck deep into government funding?
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I’d like you to consider establishing a “Red Spaghetti”, a humanitarian service whose stated mission would be to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for the human being, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering, without any discrimination based on nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions.
The Red Spagehetti is an natural ‘counter’part to the Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Magen David Adom and the proposed Red Swastika (Buddhist/Hindu). As such, thereby a petition to the International Red Cross and Crescent and Int’l Committee of the Red Cross for full recognition upon the establishment of a bona vide website to collect online donations. Millions of dollars and euros are donated each year to these institutions with the express purpose of collecting millions of dollars and euros, and the potential for helping ourselves is an important aspect of being a human being.
Sincerely
Benjamin
CEO2B, Red Spaghetti
“The power of human being”
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@Benjamin
Shouldn’t it be the “Red Sauce”?
just wondering…
RAmen
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@Thumper Feb 27th, 2007 at 11:20 pm “…you might have to pretend to be 10 years old to avoid getting the boot but this is bound to be fun”
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This might be difficult if they have an age limit: I didn’t check that out while registering. The venganza forum has a 13 year min. age limit, the Pursuit I don’t know, I’ll check. I’ll stick with Juan, unless I don’t see any means to develop something.
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@persuitofgod pirates
If anyone has a minute, could you give me some fodder in the ‘talking to atheists’ thread on that other blog so that I can pounce on it please? I won’t spoil the ‘friendly’ act in my second post yet, I’ll build it up gradually.
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@DPG
I’ll let Juan have a shot, worrying about rising atheism in once Catholic Spain.
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@Rowdy Wench
“It’s a hard thing for me to understand that negative emotions have benefits”
It depends. A little discomfort is a reminder that we might want to change our behavior or attitude or expectations or make a commitment to ourselves. But if we have serious or chronic pain because of an emotion then it may be more disabling and not of the healthy variety. It sounds to me that you had an unhealthy dose of the second. It would be natural to try to avoid even a little bit of that kind of emotion for a long time.
I’m not a fan of guilt. I haven’t had much in a long time and I resist it when people try to put it on me.
But I do believe in shame. I enjoy trying to be a certain kind of person and shame lets me know how I’m doing and how I might have to change.
My favorite negative emotion is ‘wonder’. It’s a little negative, the displeasure of not knowing something profound, but it’s positive in that we may be able to anticipate coming to understand later on. There is another positive aspect to wonder that I haven’t quite put my finger on.
P.S. Can’t seem to post under my own name or email
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@JB
Highly predictable cliche: are you expecting the inquisition?
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hahahahaha!!!!!
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http://www.inthepursuitofgod.com/forum/showthread.php?p=52557#post52557
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I’m just thinking about how to best answer this, perhaps with some sort of link to Matthew 10:35-6 “10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
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@Rowdy Wench
I’m interested in what you mean by healthy guilt. Could you explain?
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I’m having trouble posting under my own name, although it does allow my email addy. If this posts, it’s my reference to my webpage that is causing the non-posting.
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ahh, that must be DPG, friendly hardline atheist.
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@Beastly
Yep. I’ll be very reasonable for a while and then gradually work up the contempt level. See how long they’ll accept it before they kick me out.
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JB has brought up ‘monstruos’. Lovely! Does anyone intend to mention FSM? Would be fun, especially is someone could pose as a ‘real’ Pastafarian! On the other hand, it might bring them here and spoil the game. Alchemist, this bit of fun is your glorious Creation (noodles to you for that!). Would you say the fun is worth the risk?
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I think I might just start them off with normalbobsmith. See how that goes down.
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@DutchPastaGuy Feb 28th, 2007 at 3:34 pm “JB has brought up ‘monstruos’. Lovely!”
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Thank you, the reply has already arrived, take a deep breath!
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How exciting! I wonder if they’ll find us?
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@Beastly Rich Feb 28th, 2007 at 3:00 pm “.
http://www.inthepursuitofgod.com/forum/showthread.php?p=52557#post52557
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Another thread invaded! I keep copying, but to sort it all out afterwards, I’ll need the comments here (for the dates) and the comments of the Disciples!
RAmen!!
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@persuitofgod pirates
Alchemist is not here tonight. What do the others think? Mention the FSM? JB has first mentioned ‘monstruos’ and then followed up with ‘flying monster’ that, according to students, created the universe. Hmmmm… Shall I be the atheist who has heard of it and praise it as a wonderful bit of satire and then give arant against religion in science classes and on te evils of geocentrists. I won’t paste in a url to here yet of course.
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Too risky.
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@DutchPastaGuy Feb 28th, 2007 at 4:33 pm “Alchemist is not here tonight. What do the others think? Mention the FSM? JB has first mentioned ‘monstruos’ and then followed up with ‘flying monster’ that, according to students, created the universe. Hmmmm…”
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I’d rather hoped for a Mills’ reply on the creating thing. Mentioning satire? Satire (and humor in general) doesn’t work with much fundies. Logically, an atheist should condemn the universe creating monster as well!
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@DPG
If I may add my two cents worth…hell…nothing’s ever stopped me before…
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I think that the FSM would want us to introduce him to the Final Harvest…personally I believe that DPG has been “touched” when scheming his scheme…They can only ban who they suspect of complicity…the other pirates may remain hidden like the Greeks of yore at the gates of Troy… ready to pounce upon Millsey and his flock when they least suspect it…just think of the fun and games should some of Milsey faithful come here to preach and chastise us!!!…*wabbit rubs paws together gleefully*…
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@Thumper Feb 28th, 2007 at 5:11 pm “…just think of the fun and games should some of Milsey faithful come here to preach and chastise us!!!…*wabbit rubs paws together gleefully*…”
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I should take my laptop to the classroom then, occasionally doing some teaching, having an eye on this page, one one the Harvest site, another on the Disciples’ messages.
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If ever a Mills’ errand boy coms a-preaching here, he could find out something if he finds this thread, Greeks or not!
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@everyone
I went to that pursuitofgod site and the whole thing kind of creeps me out. I don’t know why. It’s the same weird feeling I get when I walk into a church full of believers. I have no problem walking into tourist type churches in Europe.
I don’t know if I’ll post. I wanted to ask him if when I hear a voice, could it be God? Wanted to see how he deals with the liability issue.
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@all
Ok, I won’t mention FSM yet, see when Alchemist responds. For now just one reasonably civil atheist post back about monster gods in general.
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@Jean Bart
Tsk, tsk, tsk…you credit the common or garden variety fundie with too much grey matter…quick name changes on the fundie site is all…done in advance…and private email discussions to gloat and dance about…surely there’s other sites out there as well in any event should Millsey prove to be a greater adversary than anticipated (yeah right)…just imagine a conversion!!!…fundie to pirate…that would be something…
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Very strange. I could not post as long as my name linked to my website but when I change the name of the website it works O.K.
Do you think the Creator is mad at my website?
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@bill Feb 28th, 2007 at 5:28 pm “Very strange. I could not post as long as my name linked to my website but when I change the name of the website it works O.K.
Do you think the Creator is mad at my website?”
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I couldn’t post today as long as I had a link to our own venganza forum in it, but with a link to the Harvest site it worked! Somewhere a battle between some god and FSM going on?
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@DutchPastaGuy Feb 28th, 2007 at 5:26 pm “Ok, I won’t mention FSM yet, see when Alchemist responds. For now just one reasonably civil atheist post back about monster gods in general.”
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I’ve just read your reply: brilliant! Just naughty enough to start them on a reply, not enough to ban you!
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@All Pirates on Excursion
Signing off, seen some remarkable stuff, check the Home Studio thread for Beckie’s encouragements of JuanB!!
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Well I did it. I guess I’ll see what comes back or if I’m ignored. There are a lot of threads there.
http://www.inthepursuitofgod.com/forum/showthread.php?p=52596
We’ll see.
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@The Pirates on “Assignment”
This is starting to remind me of Fight Club…and the first rule is…”you’re not supposed to talk about the FSM”…and the second rule is…
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@Bill
Welcome to “Project Mayhem”…
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@Thumper
I don’t know Thumper. These people still seem incredibly sad to me and I don’t see a way to make them think.
This ‘Death’ thing has them by the throats, I think. Fear of death is a hard one. Most ‘resolve’ it by a simple belief, ‘denial’. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’ve found a resolution to ‘fear of death’ for myself, but I’ve learned to live with it.
It would be hard to trade my sense of reality for the comfort of death denial. I don’t even think that trade is possible for me, because I would always know down deep that I was trying to believe something totally silly to avoid my fear. How can others do it?
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Momx3 is pretty clearly a troll. She was married eight years ago, then had her three kids, and now she has a thirteen year old daughter?
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@everyone
Here we are trolling for fundies. Supply low.
Someone mentioned on a thread recently about how we know someone is a real fundy who is posting against his noodliness? Is it unreasonable to suspect that maybe every letter or almost every letter is from someone in-house, trying to get the conversation going? I mean I “know” that ‘mike’ is probably real but for the others does this site really challenge them enough for them to post?
Maybe we ought to make our claim explicit.
1) FSM is no sillier than your religion.
2) FSM is silly
Conc: Your religion is silly
3) One should not believe silly things.
Conc2: One should not believe your religion
If you want to restrict it to fundamentalist religions or creationists religions then that might be O.K. too.
By the way: reading “God: the failed hypothesis”. Seems to be written for the likes of me, in argument form. A lot of good info.
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@Bill
The only people who truly fear death are those that believe in a devil…this is not to say that any creature doesn’t fear being killed but death is the great certainty (”On a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” – Fight Club).
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Religion generally fuels more fear than it gives back by way of assurance of an afterlife in some non specific paradise.
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For myself I’m not going to tip toe around the delicate sensitivities of a fundie just because their beliefs are ruining their enjoyment of life…quite the contrary…I’ll tell them what I think…I think that one of the historical problems with religion is that people have not previously subjected them to sufficient scrutiny (largely because through out history religious types would kill you if you scrutinise them).
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@Bill
“Here we are trolling for fundies. Supply low.”
I guess that what most people here want is to debate fundies…something most fundies don’t want to do…if they won’t come to us then going to them is a logical progression.
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@Thumper
I believe I agree with your sensibilities. Except that these people seem so clueless and tortured. I would hate to add to that torture.
But in terms of death, I believe I disagree. I don’t think the idea of hell is haunting me from my childhood (but possible, I suppose). But of the thought of becoming nothing, forever, spooks me out. Like I say, I can live with it, but not with perfect comfort.
But perfect comfort is not an option for some of us.
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Grr, I miss hate-mail. Where are all the fundies and trolls.
The lag on this thread is too big, I’m not gonna post anymore till a new thread pops up, unless I really feel like it.
See you all later!
RAmen
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@Thumper
“going to them is a logical progression”
We could make the site more explicitly radical. If not “in house” then with reference to it from atheist sites. How about if we get major atheist sites to set a link to CoFSM. Or how about we write a letter to Bobby attacking the site for being too gutless in it’s attack on religion and hope he makes a thread?
Would that stimulate or would it just die?
I’m just throwing out some ideas. Maybe it would still just be us trying to get stimulated by some straw men.
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@Bill
I don’t think we need to be “radical”…some of us can if they want…that we be too close to creating a real religion…for me this is recreation for the most part…the magic of this site is it’s freedom…I think Bobby is to be commended on the way the site’s set up…so long as we’re having fun it’s all good…most of the time we get side tracked off the point of hate mail anyway…speaking of side tracked…have you checked out the Vacation sighting thread photo’s???…I think the bearded guy is Bobby…just a guess after reading Lylly’s post…
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Originally Posted by Qualo (that’s me on the pursuitofgod. site)
Hi Everyone,
I’m new here and I found this site by searching for ‘pursuit of god’. I wanted to ask something a little personal. Maybe someone can answer. If I hear a voice that could be God’s voice, how can I know if it’s God? Can I tell by what he says? Or should I just know?
Christa responds (who seems to be a senior member, by the way):
1) it must not contradict biblical/spiritual principles
2) it is accompanied by an inner peace – not necessarily in your soul but in your spirit where you “just know” it is the right thing, even if your nerves tremble at the very thought of it.
3) move it in your heart before God. if the impression and the peace last, it is most likely from Him.
__________________
in spirit and truth
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I couldn’t come back at that. It doesn’t work to say everything contradicts biblical/spiritual principles because they are self-contradictory.
Any way to argue with it makes me look like an ass-hole. Which I don’t mind, it’s just that it doesn’t do anything constructive.
So I said (like a wimp):
“Hi Christa
Thank you for your thoughts. You seem to have given thought before you responded. Thanks again.”
I lost that round.
P.S. She doesn’t even say “It’s from him” she says ‘likely’. Not a totally thoughtless person. I guess you couldn’t be and be a senior member and be an idiot. Senior member: On the payroll?
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@Thumper
I see your point. I guess I’m very torn. On the one hand I see religion as a major obsticle in advancing civilization or at least letting it survive. It needs to be fought hard. On the other hand I see the sad and weak and clueless people trying to figure out life without a way in hell they are going to do it. And then you see people like Christa who is either a thoughtful person or a person paid to give the right response, A sort of Elmer Gantry (old movie).
How can we change things? I guess parody is a good step and I shouldn’t hope for more than that one or two people stumble along the site and say: Hey, this stuff is just as stupid as the stuff I’ve been taught.
Then you have the fundies that are easy to make fun of, because they do all seem to be idiots. It gives us someone to make fun of, but it is a ’straw man’. There was a thread like that, right?
I’ll go check that out.
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