With vivid anecdotes, he showed how one thing led to another, but moved along without a pre-charted course.

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They taught me that punishment would not go away, but would be far less severe if I told the truth about what happened and how or why I veered off the charted course.

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But regulars no longer charted the course of history or forged a national identity between puffs on imported cigarettes.

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We have charted our course.

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We have renewed the push for peace in the Middle East, charted a course to secure vulnerable nuclear materials within four years, and reestablished our leadership in the Pacific Rim, while taking the lead in forging a response at the global level to the economic crisis.

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Concentrating on Arizona and New Mexico, we charted a course that included Flagstaff, through Albuquerque, up to Santa Fe, down past Roswell to Carlsbad in the southeastern corner of New Mexico, over to White Sands National Monument and Las Cruces, and finally into Tucson before our flight out of Phoenix.

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We've charted our own course against all odds with a shared sense of determination and optimism at every pass.

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The first robot capable of lifting a patient from a bed to a wheelchair and back, RIBA charted a new course in the development of care-giving robots, yet functional limitations prevented its direct commercialization.

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My parents charted a similar course.

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The one-time Drexel Burnham Lambert executive has charted an entirely different course ever since and is a well known philanthropist.

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This is the course that Genco management has charted.

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Vienna has a youthful side, too, and is visited yearly by backpackers as much as mainline culture aficionados -- something Richard Linklater celebrated in his 1995 film "Before Sunrise, " which charted two strangers falling in love in the course of one day, with Vienna as the romantic backdrop.

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But, welcome as his alarm is, the course is one Mr. Gates has largely charted himself.

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