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530e8b99753294b458a37cbd111ce223 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Big-12-Conference | Big 12 Conference | Big 12 Conference
Big 12 Conference, originally Big 6 Conference, American collegiate athletic organization, composed of the Universities of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Baylor, Texas Christian, Texas Tech, and West Virginia universities. Kansas, the University of Nebraska, Oklahoma, the University of Missouri, Iowa State, and Kansas State had been members of the Missouri Valley Conference (formed in 1907) but split in 1928 to form the Big 6 Conference. It became the Big 7 when the University of Colorado joined the conference in 1948 and the Big 8 when Oklahoma State was added in 1959. The conference expanded in 1996 when four Texas universities (Texas, Baylor, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M University) left the Southwest Conference and joined the Big 8. As the Big 12, it was split into two six-team divisions, one of which consisted of the two Oklahoma and four Texas schools. The conference’s structure changed again when it was announced in 2010 that Colorado was departing to join the Pacific-12 Conference and that Nebraska was leaving to join the Big Ten Conference. In 2012 Missouri and Texas A&M left the conference to join the Southeastern Conference and were replaced by West Virginia and Texas Christian. Despite the reduction in conference membership to 10 schools, the Big 12 decided to keep its well-known name.
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2339d29108bfa68df4747eb538773c08 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Big-Daddy-fictional-character | Big Daddy | Big Daddy
Big Daddy, in full Big Daddy Pollitt, fictional character, a wealthy plantation owner who confronts some painful truths with his son Brick in the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) by Tennessee Williams. Big Daddy is a willful and domineering patriarch who is unaware that he is dying of cancer. His hatred of mendacity leads him to a confrontation with his son in which Brick is forced to reveal some painful secrets; in retaliation, Brick reveals his father’s illness to him. The best-known portrayal of Big Daddy was that of Burl Ives in the 1958 film adaptation of the play.
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43c9841163984164b21fbce6faa46e6b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Big-Little-Lies | Big Little Lies | Big Little Lies
…executive in the limited series Big Little Lies (2017 and 2019). Dern took the part of Marmee in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019), an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic. It was her portrayal of a divorce attorney in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (2019) that at last brought her…
…he cowrote the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, about the lives of four mothers in Monterey, California; it was adapted from a best-selling novel by Liane Moriarty, and a second season aired in 2019. Kelley also created and cowrote the series Mr. Mercedes (2017– ), which was based on a…
…wife in the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, an adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel, and appeared in the second season of Campion’s TV series Top of the Lake. Her film roles that year included the headmistress of a Southern boarding school in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, which was based…
…cast of the HBO series Big Little Lies for its second season. That same year she starred in The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh’s farce about the Panama Papers scandal, and portrayed Aunt March in Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic. Her films from 2020 included
…mother in the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, adapted from Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel. Later that year Witherspoon appeared in the romantic comedy Home Again. She played the role of Mrs. Whatsit in the 2018 film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s acclaimed 1962 sci-fi novel, A Wrinkle in Time. In 2019…
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43815edff4c87dd385dfd7068d9f6341 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bilder-der-Welt-und-Inschrift-des-Krieges | Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges | Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges
For his critically acclaimed Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (1988; Images of the World and the Inscription of War), he showed blurry aerial images of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp that had been taken in 1944 by the Allies. The film then reveals that the photographs…
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0bb921ba978ac31adad07317b4b5d77b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/billiards | Billiards | Billiards
Billiards, any of various games played on a rectangular table with a designated number of small balls and a long stick called a cue. The table and the cushioned rail bordering the table are topped with a feltlike tight-fitting cloth. Carom, or French, billiards is played with three balls on a table that has no pockets. The other principal games are played on tables that have six pockets, one at each corner and one in each of the long sides; these games include English billiards, played with three balls; snooker, played with 21 balls and a cue ball; and pocket billiards, or pool, played with 15 balls and a cue ball. There are numerous varieties of each game—particularly of carom and pocket billiards.
Many countries—among them France, England, China, Italy, and Spain—have been credited with the invention of the game, but, in fact, nothing is really known about the origin of billiards. It may be inferred that it developed from a variety of games in which propelling a ball was a main feature. The earliest references to the game in Europe occur in the 15th century.
All billiards games require the basic equipment of a table, cue sticks, and balls. The traditional mahogany billiards table is still in use, but tables are now generally made of other woods and synthetic materials. The large rectangular table typically is twice as long as it is wide. It has a bed usually of polished slate covered by a woven woolen cloth, sometimes referred to as felt. Angled rails of hardened rubber or synthetic rubber, known as cushions, rim the inner edge of the table. The cue is a tapered rod of polished wood or synthetic material, ranging in length from about 40 to 60 inches (100 to 150 cm). The small end of the cue, with which the ball is struck, is fitted with a plastic, fibre, or ivory reinforcement to which is cemented a leather cue tip. Chalk in small cubes is applied uniformly to the cue tip permitting the players to strike the cue ball off centre on purpose in order to impart a spinning motion, called “side” in Great Britain and “English” in the United States. The billiard balls, formerly made of ivory or Belgian clay, are now usually plastic; they each measure from about 21/4 to 23/8 inches (5.7 to 6 cm) in diameter, the larger balls being used in carom billiards.
Different forms of the game tend to be played in certain groups of countries or areas of the world, though many of the games cross many national boundaries. The game of carom billiards is still played primarily in France and other European countries and to a lesser degree in the United States and has many players in Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and South Korea and in Central America, South America, Africa, and the Middle East. The game of English billiards is most popular in Britain and the former empire countries. The game of pocket billiards, or pool, which uses six large pocket openings, is primarily the game played on the American continents and, in recent years, has been played in Japan. The game of snooker is primarily British and is played to a small degree in the Americas.
Carom billiards is played on a table usually 5 by 10 feet (1.5 by 3 m) or 4.5 by 9 feet (1.4 by 2.7 m). It has no pockets. The game is played with three balls, two white and one red, with one of the white balls having a small red dot, or spot, to distinguish it. One of the white balls (plain or spot) serves as the cue ball for each player, the red ball and other white ball serving as his object balls. In play, the object is to stroke the cue ball so that it hits the two object balls in succession, scoring a carom, or billiard, which counts one point. In a variety of the game called three-cushion billiards, the cue ball must also touch a cushion or cushions three or more times to complete a carom. Scoring a carom also entitles the player to another shot, and his turn, or inning, continues until he misses, when it becomes his opponent’s turn.
The game of English billiards is played on a relatively large table, usually 6 feet 1.5 inches by 12 feet (1.9 by 3.7 m); it is played with three balls as in carom—a plain white, a white with a spot, and a red. There are three ways of scoring: (1) the losing hazard, or loser, is a stroke in which the striker’s cue ball is pocketed after contact with another ball; (2) the winning hazard, or pot, is a stroke in which a ball other than the striker’s cue ball is pocketed after contact with another ball; (3) the cannon, or carom, is a scoring sequence in which the striker’s cue ball contacts the two other balls successively or simultaneously. The skill involved consists of developing one scoring stroke after another. A player continues at the table for as long as he succeeds in scoring.
Snooker is played on the same table and with the same size balls used for English billiards. The game is played with 22 balls, made up of one white ball (the cue ball), 15 red balls, and six numbered coloured balls including one yellow 2, one green 3, one brown 4, one blue 5, one pink 6, and one black (valued at 7 points). The player must first pocket a red ball and then try to pocket any colour he may choose, scoring the value of the ball that he has pocketed. He then alternately pockets red and coloured balls. Each red ball when pocketed remains in the pocket, while the colours when pocketed, as long as any reds remain on the table, are placed on their respective spots. Play continues until only the six colours remain on the table. Finally, the six coloured balls must be pocketed in the order of their values. When the last ball is pocketed, the game is ended. During play, when a player cannot hit the ball that the rules require him to hit (because of obstruction by another ball or balls), he is said to be snookered and loses his turn; this situation gives the game its name.
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680127fab01793b0d02b4656091b67ef | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Billy-Budd | Billy Budd | Billy Budd
Billy Budd, British adventure film, released in 1962, that was an adaptation of a play based on Herman Melville’s unfinished novel Billy Budd, Foretopman.
Billy Budd (played by Terence Stamp) is a young seaman impressed into service on the HMS Avenger of the British navy in 1797 during the war between England and France. The captain of the Avenger, Edward Vere (Peter Ustinov), relies on his cruel and sadistic master-at-arms, John Claggart (Robert Ryan). Budd is a naive, harmless soul whose eternal optimism remains steadfast in the face of the hardened, cynical crew. His happy-go-lucky demeanor endears him to his shipmates and officers alike—everyone except Claggart, who despises Budd’s humility and innate goodness. When Claggart learns of a conspiracy by the crew to kill him, he implicates Budd as the leader of the mutiny. Budd is confronted with the charges and, shocked, finds himself unable to speak in his own defense. He strikes Claggart instead, killing him. The punishment for attacking an officer is death, and though the other officers vote to acquit Budd, Vere pushes for the punishment to be upheld out of obligation to navy law. Budd is sentence to be hanged. At the hanging Budd publicly forgives the captain, shouting as his final words, “God bless Captain Vere!” The crew is moved to the verge of mutiny when a French ship attacks the Avenger. The crew man their stations, and, during the battle that ensues, part of the ship’s rigging falls and kills Captain Vere.
Ustinov directed, produced, and starred in the film and also cowrote the gripping screenplay. Stamp, a big-screen newcomer in 1962, garnered an Academy Award nomination (for best supporting actor) for his role as Budd. Fine performances were also rendered by Melvyn Douglas, as an old salt who befriends Budd, and by David McCallum, as an officer racked by conscience versus duty.
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adfcfaa4744d0c13eb871b906da2c31f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Billy-Ward-and-the-Dominoes | Billy Ward and his Dominoes | Billy Ward and his Dominoes
With McPhatter singing lead, Billy Ward and the Dominoes became one of the era’s preeminent vocal groups, but the martinetish Ward fired McPhatter in 1953 (replacing him with Jackie Wilson). Shortly thereafter, Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun sought to establish a new group around McPhatter, eventually recruiting former members of…
Black vocal groups such as the Dominoes and the Spaniels began combining gospel-style harmonies and call-and-response singing with earthy subject matter and more aggressive rhythm-and-blues rhythms. Heralding this new sound were disc jockeys such as Alan Freed of Cleveland, Ohio, Dewey Phillips of Memphis, Tennessee, and William (“Hoss”) Allen of…
…of the vocal group the Dominoes, led by Billy Ward, with whom he sang until he became a solo performer in 1957. Wilson had to deal with the routine forms of racial segregation that made it difficult for African-American male artists to secure mainstream success. The commercial and stylistic barriers…
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27a507d103ff599cdab720730ccd8af1 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/bimah | Bimah | Bimah
Bimah, also spelled Bima, also called Almemar, orAlmemor, (from Arabic al-minbar, “platform”), in Jewish synagogues, a raised platform with a reading desk from which, in the Ashkenazi (German) ritual, the Torah and Hafṭarah (a reading from the prophets) are read on the Sabbath and festivals. In the Sephardic (Spanish) rite, the entire service is conducted from a platform called a teba (“box”). At an earlier date, when the bimah was positioned in the centre of the synagogue (as it still is in Sephardic and many Orthodox Ashkenazi synagogues), the attention of the congregation was divided between it and the Ark of the Law. Although Maimonides and others insisted on this location in the Middle Ages, many modern synagogues now place the bimah in front of the Ark. This arrangement conserves space, facilitates listening, and is, some feel, architecturally more pleasing.
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7549c38475ffb98848ffe46fb81058f7 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bimbos-Initiation | Bimbo’s Initiation | Bimbo’s Initiation
The short Bimbo’s Initiation (1931) is a prime example of the Fleischers’ quirky perverseness. In it, Betty Boop’s dog, Bimbo, is trapped in an underground labyrinth by a character who looks suspiciously like a demonic Mickey Mouse (evil Mickeys were common in early Fleischer cartoons). While there,…
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a0d0f343c7d870aa4e3e76cab452a086 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/bird-watching | Bird-watching | Bird-watching
Bird-watching, the observation of live birds in their natural habitat, a popular pastime and scientific sport that developed almost entirely in the 20th century. In the 19th century almost all students of birds used guns and could identify an unfamiliar species only when its corpse was in their hands. Modern bird-watching was made possible largely by the development of optical aids, particularly binoculars, which enabled people to see and study wild birds, without harming them, better than ever before.
A great surge of interest in wild birds occurred from about the 1880s onward. Bird-watching first became popular in Great Britain, with the United States not far behind. Eventually, it became almost equally popular in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the older countries of the British Commonwealth.
Interest in bird-watching has been stimulated by bird books, stretching as far back as Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne (1788) and John James Audubon’s illustrated Birds of America (1827–38) and culminating in such essential aids in the field as H.F. Witherby’s five-volume Handbook of British Birds (1938–41) and Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds (1947), which gives the field marks of all North American birds found east of the Rocky Mountains. Similar works are available for many other regions.
Journals and magazines, such as the Audubon Magazine (United States), British Birds (England), and La Terre et la vie (France), have also contributed to the growth of interest, as have the broadcasting media.
One of the great appeals of bird-watching is that it is a relatively inexpensive activity. Basic equipment includes binoculars, a field book to aid identification, and a notebook for recording time and place of sightings; it is not necessary to travel. Many bird-watchers set up feeding stations to attract birds. The lists of bird observations compiled by members of local bird-watching societies are very useful to scientists in determining dispersal, habitat, and migration patterns of the various species.
From about 1930 there was a great increase in fieldwork, including photography, by amateur bird-watchers. The British Trust for Ornithology organizes cooperative inquiries, such as sample censuses of herons and great crested grebes and surveys of winter roosts of gulls, in which large numbers of amateurs take part. The wildfowl counts of the International Wildfowl Research Bureau are run as a coordinated international effort throughout western Europe.
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efa7491695ea4b352c0ef5958fa40875 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Birdman-of-Alcatraz | Birdman of Alcatraz | Birdman of Alcatraz
Birdman of Alcatraz, American dramatic film, released in 1962, that made a household name of convicted murderer Robert Stroud, the so-called “Birdman of Alcatraz.”
The film is a sentimentalized look at Stroud (played by Burt Lancaster), who became a self-taught ornithologist during his 54 years in prison. In addition to his work with birds, the film also focused on Stroud’s relationship with a short-sighted warden (Karl Malden) and with his doting mother (Thelma Ritter).
Although based on the biography by Thomas E. Gaddis, Birdman of Alcatraz took liberties with the facts. In reality, Stroud was an unrepentant killer who used the media to cast himself as a heroic figure. In addition, much of Stroud’s work was actually done in Leavenworth Prison, Kansas, not Alcatraz. Despite such inaccuracies, the film is one of the most engrossing prison dramas ever made, largely because of Lancaster’s Academy Award-nominated performance as Stroud. Ritter and Telly Savalas, who portrayed a hard-bitten fellow convict, also earned Oscar nominations.
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c20e38e15464c85de71a92c003bcd602 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/bishop-chess | Bishop | Bishop
…was a depreciation of the bishop: The Hypermoderns had attacked Tarrasch’s high opinion of an unobstructed bishop and said a bishop could profitably be traded for a knight. The post-Soviet players often traded bishop for knight for minimal compensation. They also often exchanged their good bishop, the one less encumbered…
Each player has two bishops, and they begin the game at c1 and f1 for White, c8 and f8 for Black. A bishop can move to any unobstructed square on the diagonal on which it is placed. Therefore, each player has one bishop that…
…jump in shatranj, became the bishop, more than doubling its range.
The bishop was known by different names—“fool” in French and “elephant” in Russian, for example—and was not universally recognized by a distinctive mitre until the 19th century. Depiction of the rook also varied considerably. In Russia it was usually represented as a sailing ship until the…
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d2a90c4af35b09ce610eb14f41fe3c7a | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bishop-v-Wood | Bishop v. Wood | Bishop v. Wood
Bishop v. Wood, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held (5–4) on June 10, 1976, that a municipal employee who was dismissed from his position without a formal hearing and for false causes was not thereby deprived of property or liberty in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”).
Bishop v. Wood arose in 1972 when Carl Bishop was dismissed from his job as a police officer in Marion, North Carolina, by the city manager at the recommendation of W.H. Wood, the city’s chief of police. Bishop was not granted a hearing at which he might have challenged the grounds for his dismissal. Instead, the city manager orally informed him in private that he was to be fired for allegedly violating departmental rules and regulations and failing to regularly attend training classes, among other reasons. Bishop then filed suit in U.S. district court, naming the chief of police and others as defendants. Bishop contended that his dismissal had deprived him of his property interest in his continued employment. He also claimed that the charges against him were false and defamatory and had damaged his reputation, thereby depriving him of his freedom (liberty) to seek other employment opportunities. Because no hearing had taken place, he argued, his dismissal constituted a violation of his due process rights to property and liberty under both the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendment.
The district court’s summary judgment (without trial) in favour of the defendants (1973) was affirmed by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and later by the entire appeals court (1974). Bishop then appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on March 1, 1976.
In an opinion for a 5–4 majority written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court rejected Bishop’s argument that his status as a permanent (non-probationary) employee and the ordinance governing his employment (the Personnel Ordinance, which applied to all city employees) had established an expectation of continued employment sufficient to constitute a protected property interest. According to Bishop, by specifying certain causes for which a permanent city employee could be discharged, the Personnel Ordinance implicitly protected permanent employees against dismissal for any other reason, which amounted to a grant of tenure. The court found that, although the ordinance could be interpreted as implicitly granting tenure, it “may also be construed as granting no right to continued employment, but merely conditioning an employee’s removal on compliance with certain specified procedures.” In either case, however, “the sufficiency of the claim of entitlement must be decided by reference to state law,” as the Supreme Court had held in Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth (1972). Accordingly, the court looked for an authoritative interpretation of the ordinance by a North Carolina state court. Finding none, it deferred to the interpretation of the district court judge, “who, of course, sits in North Carolina and practiced law there for many years.” The judge had declared in his opinion that, under the ordinance, “the dismissal of an employee does not require a notice or a hearing” and that “the plaintiff held his position at the will and pleasure of the city.” “Under that view of the law,” the Supreme Court concluded, “petitioner’s discharge did not deprive him of a property interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The court also rejected Bishop’s claim that he had without due process been deprived of his liberty to seek other employment. Because the district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, it “was required to resolve all genuine disputes as to material facts in favor of [the] petitioner,” the Supreme Court noted. Thus, “we must therefore assume that his discharge was a mistake and based on incorrect information.” Nevertheless, the charges could not have harmed Bishop’s reputation in the manner he alleged, because they had been communicated to him only in private. And although the charges were later disclosed in discovery proceedings before the district court, those proceedings clearly “did not commence until after petitioner had [allegedly] suffered the injury for which he seeks redress,” and they “cannot provide retroactive support for his claim.” Nor could Bishop claim that the mere loss of his job had harmed his reputation to the extent of depriving him of his liberty. “In Board of Regents v. Roth,” the court recalled,
The court accordingly affirmed the Fourth Circuit’s ruling. Steven’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and by Justices Potter Stewart, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William Rehnquist.
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221891832273c2d6e7c66fcacb82b48c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/blacherniotissa | Blacherniotissa | Blacherniotissa
…her left arm; and the blacherniotissa (from the Church of the Blachernes, which contains the icon that is its prototype), which emphasizes her role as intercessor, showing her alone in an orant, or prayer posture, with the Child pictured in a medallion on her breast. The Virgin also figured prominently…
… Empire, the Madonna orant, or blacherniotissa, was one of the major types of depictions of the Virgin. Used to decorate the main apse of a number of churches, the Madonna orant stood symbolically as an intercession with Christ on behalf of the congregation.
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59425923225bcbdaec635664d7839328 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Alliance-for-Educational-Options | Black Alliance for Educational Options | Black Alliance for Educational Options
Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), organization launched in 2000 to advocate for initiatives including private school vouchers, charter schools, tuition tax credits, and public school choice and to build support for those initiatives among African Americans.
The groundwork for the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) was laid at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1999 during a symposium convened by Howard Fuller, a former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent. An organizational meeting to set up the BAEO was held in Washington, D.C., at the end of 1999 and was followed by a second meeting during which participants elected Fuller the first chairman of the board. Kaleem Caire became the BAEO’s first president when it officially launched in 2000.
In 2002 the BAEO received an initial grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop Project Clarion, a public information campaign to inform parents of their available options under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001; another federal grant followed in 2004. The BAEO also received a $4 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to oversee the opening of small project-based high schools in low-income urban African American communities. The BAEO has been criticized by organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Alliance of Black School Educators, which argue that the BAEO has disguised efforts to privatize the public school system as advocacy for African American students.
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1c393cd0ab6809a2c6948ae708460611 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Economic-Empowerment | Black Economic Empowerment | Black Economic Empowerment
…to benefit from the country’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) laws, which required companies to have a minimum 26 percent black ownership before a mining license would be granted. In 1994 Motsepe founded a mine services company, Future Mining, and applied all of his life experience—knowledge of the mining trade and…
…in compliance with South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) mining charter. In 2007 De Beers began operations in Canada at Snap Lake Mine in the Northwest Territories—the company’s first mine outside Africa. The company opened the Victor Mine in Ontario, Can., in 2008.
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8c291b5e854f264dc90ece968c987d10 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Hebrew-Israelites | Black Hebrew Israelites | Black Hebrew Israelites
Black Hebrew Israelites, byname of the Original African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem, African American religious community in Israel, the members of which consider themselves to be the descendents of a lost tribe of Israel. Black Hebrew Israelites hold religious beliefs that differ from those of modern Jewish communities in Israel. Black Hebrew Israelites permit polygamy and forbid birth control. Leaders decide who will marry and whether marriage annulments will be permitted, and they perform wedding ceremonies. Black Hebrew Israelites are vegans, avoiding the consumption of meat, dairy, eggs, and sugar. Members adopt Hebrew names to replace names they believe could be derived from slavery.
Most Black Hebrew Israelites live in Dimona, Israel, with the first ones arriving in that country in 1969. The group began in Chicago in 1967 under the leadership of Ben Ammi Ben Israel, an African American whose birth name was Ben Carter. Ben Israel appointed 30 disciples and in 1967 moved the group to Liberia before embarking for their final destination in Israel.
The Black Hebrew Israelites’s claims of Jewish heritage provoked substantial debate in Israel. Israeli law offers citizenship for all Jews throughout the world, but the Black Hebrew Israelites could produce no evidence to substantiate their Jewish heritage. After much investigation, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel thus decided that the Black Hebrew Israelites were not really Jewish and were not entitled to citizenship.
The Black Hebrew Israelites entered Israel with temporary visas, which were periodically renewed while the government considered their claims to citizenship. They were allowed to live, work, and receive health care in Israel and were given loans so they could meet their basic needs. However, their non-citizen status did not provide the free education for their children, tax exemptions, and loans for permanent settlement that were available to Jewish immigrants.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Israeli government did not take steps to deport the Black Hebrew Israelites, but neither did it offer them citizenship, which led to heated discussions in the country. The Black Hebrew Israelites could obtain full citizenship by formally converting to Judaism, but they refused. Meanwhile, the Black Hebrew Israelites population of Dimona grew, aided by high birthrates among the group and by additional members entering Israel. Some Black Hebrew Israelites, frustrated by their lack of citizenship, denounced Israel and adopted anti-Semitic rhetoric, arguing that white Jews were frauds and that Black Hebrew Israelites were the only true Jewish descendents.
Critics in Israel labeled the Black Hebrew Israelites a cult, a charge the group adamantly denied, and argued for their expulsion. However, proposals for their deportation met with hunger strikes in Dimona and objections from supporters in the United States. The U.S. Congress and African American leaders in the United States argued in favour of the Black Hebrew Israelites’ continued residence in Israel and sent funds, including subsidies provided by Congress, to establish a school for the Black Hebrew Israelites’ children.
In 1990 the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Israeli Ministry of the Interior reached an agreement. The Black Hebrew Israelites would be granted tourist status for one year, until they were accorded temporary residency status. Temporary residency status would be reviewed in five years, in 1995, and reviewed periodically thereafter. Status as temporary residents made the Black Hebrew Israelites eligible for financial support from the Israeli government. The Israeli government later also agreed to build a permanent organic farming village for the group in the Negev region of Israel. The Black Hebrew Israelites continued to live and work in Israel, earning money through farming, their well-known choir, sewing, and a vegan food factory and restaurants.
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4157bffcc5471d4e114ee7dcab61486c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Indian-motion-picture | Black | Black
…a major box-office success; and Black (2005), which was inspired by Helen Keller’s life story. For the latter film Bachchan won another National Film Award, and he also received that honour for his performance in the drama Paa (2009), playing a boy who suffers from an aging disease similar to…
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b6c1f8f4e9af75ea95c07f37b8743701 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Mans-Burden | Black Man’s Burden | Black Man’s Burden
…his 1965 collection of essays Black Man’s Burden, which addressed the African American experience in the United States and denounced the nonviolent approach to facing oppression.
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6d93d6850ee55df902b92fd98fc48bb4 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Mischief | Black Mischief | Black Mischief
Black Mischief, satiric novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1932. The book skewers attempts to impose European customs and beliefs upon so-called primitive peoples.
The story is set in the fictional empire of Azania, an island off the coast of Africa. Upon the death of the emperor of Azania, rule is assumed by his grandson Seth, a recent graduate of Oxford who is eager to modernize his country. Seth’s ideas are a muddle of fashionable notions and philosophies, and each of his new programs fails. Ultimately the country relapses into barbarism and cannibalism.
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96fba0f51342e1ac3d0397f7905f746f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther | Black Panther | Black Panther
Director Ryan Coogler helmed Black Panther (2018), a dazzling spectacle that saw Boseman return to the screen in the role of T’Challa. Perhaps the MCU’s best-reviewed film to date, Black Panther examined race, gender, and power issues through an Afrofuturist lens and featured an ensemble cast that included Michael…
…the soundtrack for the film Black Panther was released. Lamar produced and curated the album, a collection of songs “from and inspired by” the movie, and he performed on every track. The single “King’s Dead,” which also featured Jay Rock, Future, and James Blake, won a Grammy for best rap…
In addition, Black Panther made news as the first big-budget movie with an almost all-Black cast, and T’Challa became a highly celebrated icon. Boseman played the character again in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019) before starring in the police thriller 21 Bridges (2019). In…
…as villain Erik Killmonger in Black Panther (2018), which starred Chadwick Boseman and was directed by Coogler. Also in 2018 he played Guy Montag in a remake of Fahrenheit 451, based on the Ray Bradbury novel, and reprised his role as Creed in Creed II. Jordan next portrayed activist lawyer…
…Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster superhero movie Black Panther. He then gave a moving performance as one of the title characters in the acclaimed fugitive story Queen & Slim (2019). For his riveting portrayal of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), Kaluuya won both an…
… in the acclaimed superhero movie Black Panther (2018). Her movies from 2019 included Jordan Peele’s horror film Us, in which she starred as the mother of a family whose home is invaded by violent doppelgängers, and the zombie comedy Little Monsters. Also that year she reprised her role as Maz…
…he appeared in the movies Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, and Burden. He then took a starring role in the TV series Godfather of Harlem (2019– ), portraying 1960s crime boss Bumpy Johnson.
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93dbfa27dfd3ac7c17dbe378c1cbe172 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party | Black Panther Party | Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party, original name Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, African American revolutionary party, founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighbourhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. The Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all African Americans, the exemption of African Americans from the draft and from all sanctions of so-called white America, the release of all African Americans from jail, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. At its peak in the late 1960s, Panther membership exceeded 2,000, and the organization operated chapters in several major American cities.
The Black Panther Party was an African American revolutionary organization that was formed in 1966 and reached its heyday a few years later. Its initial purpose was to patrol Black neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality. It later evolved into a Marxist group that called for, among other things, the arming of all African Americans, the release of all Black prisoners, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation. It was also notable for its various social programs, such as free breakfasts for children, and medical clinics.
Students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California, in 1966; the group later shortened its name to the Black Panther Party. The two men adopted Malcolm X’s slogan “Freedom by any means necessary.” The Black Panthers also drew inspiration from Stokely Carmichael, a Black nationalist leader. He coined the phrase “Black Power,” which became the group’s rallying cry, and in 1965 he founded a political party that had a black panther as its emblem. The Black Panthers later adopted that image.
The Black Panthers’ campaign for African American equality had a lasting impact on Black empowerment, and its influence continues to be felt in such current social movements as Black Lives Matter. In addition, the group inspired other minority groups worldwide to pursue their own causes.
In addition to the founders, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, notable Black Panthers included Eldridge Cleaver, who favored a more militant approach, and Elaine Brown, the party’s first and only female chairman. Angela Davis, a philosophy lecturer, was closely associated with the group, and she became a cause célèbre for the radical left after being accused of abetting a failed prisoner escape. Also notable was Fred Hampton, whose death during a police raid brought increased scrutiny to the FBI’s efforts to end the party. Learn more.
The FBI viewed the Black Panther Party as an enemy of the U.S. government and sought to dismantle the party. To this end, its counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) used agent provocateurs, sabotage, misinformation, and lethal force. The FBI’s escalating campaign against the Black Panthers culminated in December 1969. That month a police raid in Chicago resulted in the deaths of local Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and a fellow Panther, Mark Clark. Several days later there was a five-hour police shoot-out at the party’s Southern California headquarters. The measures employed by the FBI were so extreme that the director of the agency later publicly apologized for “wrongful uses of power.”
Despite passage of the 1960s civil rights legislation that followed the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), African Americans living in cities throughout North America continued to suffer economic and social inequality. Poverty and reduced public services characterized these urban centres, where residents were subject to poor living conditions, joblessness, chronic health problems, violence, and limited means to change their circumstances. Such conditions contributed to urban uprisings in the 1960s (such as those in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965, among others) and to the increased use of police violence as a measure to impose order on cities throughout North America.
It was in this context, and in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, that Merritt Junior College students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense on October 15, 1966, in West Oakland (officially “Western Oakland,” a district of the city of Oakland), California. Shortening its name to the Black Panther Party, the organization immediately sought to set itself apart from African American cultural nationalist organizations, such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam, to which it was commonly compared. Although the groups shared certain philosophical positions and tactical features, the Black Panther Party and cultural nationalists differed on a number of basic points. For instance, whereas African American cultural nationalists generally regarded all white people as oppressors, the Black Panther Party distinguished between racist and nonracist whites and allied themselves with progressive members of the latter group. Also, whereas cultural nationalists generally viewed all African Americans as oppressed, the Black Panther Party believed that African American capitalists and elites could and typically did exploit and oppress others, particularly the African American working class. Perhaps most importantly, whereas cultural nationalists placed considerable emphasis on symbolic systems, such as language and imagery, as the means to liberate African Americans, the Black Panther Party believed that such systems, though important, are ineffective in bringing about liberation. It considered symbols as woefully inadequate to ameliorate the unjust material conditions, such as joblessness, created by capitalism.
From the outset, the Black Panther Party outlined a Ten Point Program, not unlike those of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Nation of Islam, to initiate national African American community survival projects and to forge alliances with progressive white radicals and other organizations of people of colour. A number of positions outlined in the Ten Point Program address a principle stance of the Black Panther Party: economic exploitation is at the root of all oppression in the United States and abroad, and the abolition of capitalism is a precondition of social justice. In the 1960s this socialist economic outlook, informed by a Marxist political philosophy, resonated with other social movements in the United States and in other parts of the world. Therefore, even as the Black Panther Party found allies both within and beyond the borders of North America, the organization also found itself squarely in the crosshairs of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO. In fact, in 1969 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered the Black Panther Party the greatest threat to national security.
The Black Panther Party came into the national spotlight in May 1967 when a small group of its members, led by its chair, Seale, marched fully armed into the California state legislature in Sacramento. Emboldened by the view that African Americans had a constitutional right to bear arms (based on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution), the Black Panther Party marched on the body as a protest against the pending Mulford Act. The Black Panther Party viewed the legislation, a gun control bill, as a political maneuver to thwart the organization’s effort to combat police brutality in the Oakland community. The images of gun-toting Black Panthers entering the Capitol were supplemented, later that year, with news of Newton’s arrest after a shoot-out with police in which an officer was killed. With this newfound publicity, the Black Panther Party grew from an Oakland-based organization into an international one with chapters in 48 states in North America and support groups in Japan, China, France, England, Germany, Sweden, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uruguay, and elsewhere.
In addition to challenging police brutality, the Black Panther Party launched more than 35 Survival Programs and provided community help, such as education, tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, ambulance service, and the manufacture and distribution of free shoes to poor people. Of particular note was the Free Breakfast for Children Program (begun in January 1969) that spread to every major American city with a Black Panther Party chapter. The federal government had introduced a similar pilot program in 1966 but, arguably in response to the Panthers’ initiative, extended the program and then made it permanent in 1975—undoubtedly to the chagrin of Hoover.
Notwithstanding the social services the Black Panther Party provided, the FBI declared the group a communist organization and an enemy of the U.S. government. Hoover had pledged that 1969 would be the last year of the Black Panther Party and devoted the resources of the FBI, through COINTELPRO, toward that end. In a protracted program against the Black Panther Party, COINTELPRO used agent provocateurs, sabotage, misinformation, and lethal force to eviscerate the national organization. The FBI’s campaign culminated in December 1969 with a five-hour police shoot-out at the Southern California headquarters of the Black Panther Party and an Illinois state police raid in which Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed. The measures employed by the FBI were so extreme that, years later when they were revealed, the director of the agency publicly apologized for “wrongful uses of power.”
In the early 1970s radical scholar and activist Angela Davis became widely associated with the Black Panthers, though it seems likely that she never actually became a standing member of the party. Davis did, however, have strong connections with the party and taught political education classes for it. She initially gained notoriety in 1970 when then governor of California Ronald Reagan led the Board of Regents in refusing to renew Davis’s appointment as lecturer in philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, because of her politics and her association with communists. At about the same time, Davis became involved in the case of three African American inmates at Soledad Prison who had been accused of murdering a guard. She became deeply involved with one of the inmates, George Jackson, whose younger brother’s attempt on August 7, 1970, to win Jackson’s release by taking hostages in the Marin county courthouse went violently awry. Four deaths resulted, and when at least one of the guns proved to be registered to Davis, she fled charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder, going underground and entering the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list before being captured some eight weeks later after becoming a cause célèbre for the radical Left. Ultimately she was acquitted of all the charges against her by an all-white jury.
From the mid-1970s through the ’80s, the activities of the Black Panther Party all but ceased. Although COINTELPRO contributed to its demise, the dissolution of the party’s leadership also contributed to the downfall of the organization. Kathleen Cleaver earned a law degree and took an appointment as a professor. After returning from exile in Cuba, Newton was killed in a drug dispute in August 1989, perishing in an alley in West Oakland, not far from where he and Seale had founded the first Black Panther Party chapter. Eldridge Cleaver designed clothes in the 1970s and ’80s before joining the anticommunist Unification Church en route to becoming a born-again Christian and a registered member of the Republican Party.
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be83a3e6be4385638ee48b0ea16b225c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Power | Black Power | Black Power
“Black Power” became popular in the late 1960s. The slogan was first used by Carmichael in June 1966 during a civil rights march in Mississippi. However, the concept of Black power predated the slogan. Essentially, it refers to all the attempts by African Americans to…
…and the espousal of “Black Power” by previously integrationist civil rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) helped to galvanize a generation of young Black writers into rethinking the purpose of African American art. Rejecting any notion of the…
Carmichael’s use of the “Black power” slogan encapsulated the emerging notion of a freedom struggle seeking political, economic, and cultural objectives beyond narrowly defined civil rights reforms. By the late 1960s not only the NAACP and SCLC but even SNCC and CORE faced challenges from new militant organizations, such…
With such slogans as “black power” and “black is beautiful,” they also sought to inculcate a sense of pride among blacks.
…the intellectual foundations for the Black Power and Black consciousness movements in the United States in the late 1960s and ’70s (see Black nationalism). Through the influence of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X helped to change the terms used to refer to African Americans from “Negro” and “coloured” to…
Thus, a “Black Power” movement arose, hitting into Johnson’s popularity even among African Americans. A general crime increase and sporadic violence in the cities raised apprehension in white communities. A call for “law and order” was the response, and it became not only an issue but, many…
…advocate of the burgeoning “Black power” movement, a facet of late 20th-century Black nationalism. The shift was personified by Stokely Carmichael, who replaced John Lewis as SNCC chairman in 1966–67. While many early SNCC members were white, the newfound emphasis on African American identity led to greater racial separatism,…
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b614e9e5decb30821da646dc3ed1ed0c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Rod | Black Rod | Black Rod
Black Rod, in full Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod or Lady Usher of the Black Rod, an office of the British House of Lords (the upper house in Parliament), instituted in 1350. Its holder is appointed by royal letters patent, and the title is derived from the staff of office, an ebony stick surmounted with a gold lion.
Black Rod is a personal attendant of the sovereign in the upper house and there functions as a sergeant at arms. The most prominent duty of the office is the summoning of the members of the House of Commons (the lower house) to the upper house to hear a speech from the throne or the royal assent given to bills. On such occasions the House of Commons closes its doors at Black Rod’s approach, whereupon he or she must knock three times before being admitted. The origin of this curious ceremony dates from the indignation of the lower house at the famous attempt of Charles I to arrest John Hampden, John Pym, and three other members of the House of Commons in 1642. Black Rod is ex officio an officer of the Order of the Garter. In 2017 Sarah Clarke was named Lady Usher of the Black Rod; she was the first woman to be appointed to the office in its more than 650-year history.
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e2418c71d062df96580ae776bbccdde6 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Square-by-Malevich | Black Square | Black Square
…his first Suprematist work (Black Square, 1915), he identified the black square with feeling and the white background with expressing “the void beyond this feeling.”
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70bebb4d64dac6ae5287e066fd604a5c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Swan-American-company | Black Swan | Black Swan
…companies, among which the short-lived Black Swan label of Harry Pace is recognized as the first. Pace’s motto was “The only genuine colored record. Others are only passing for colored.” African American artists who recorded for Black Swan included Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters, and pianist and bandleader Fletcher Henderson. When…
…position as musical factotum for Black Swan records, the first Black-owned recording company, for which he organized small bands to provide backing for such singers as Ethel Waters. He played piano for leading Black singers on more than 150 records between 1921 and 1923 and then began a full-time career…
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e0e829c352cf50be8a10ddd57bc8c181 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blackadder | Blackadder | Blackadder
…1983 the first installment of Blackadder, written by Atkinson and Curtis, slithered onto British TV screens. The show featured the twisted relationship between four incarnations of the groveling, spineless Lord Blackadder and his foully fleshed retainer, Baldrick, as they cajoled their way through history from the Crusades to the end…
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2c81519bef73415c5225d57ed9492877 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blade-II | Blade II | Blade II
…and led to the sequels Blade II (2002) and Blade: Trinity (2004). Snipes later appeared in several straight-to-video features, including 7 Seconds (2005) and The Contractor (2007). He played a drug dealer in the crime thriller Brooklyn’s Finest (2009) and Doctor Death, an assassin in the action thriller The Expendables…
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6b5cea4eab0bdbf9b2cc43c57b00a3c5 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blade-Trinity | Blade: Trinity | Blade: Trinity
…Snipes in the action movie Blade: Trinity (2004), for which he trained for three months and gained 25 pounds.
…sequels Blade II (2002) and Blade: Trinity (2004). Snipes later appeared in several straight-to-video features, including 7 Seconds (2005) and The Contractor (2007). He played a drug dealer in the crime thriller Brooklyn’s Finest (2009) and Doctor Death, an assassin in the action thriller The Expendables 3 (2014). In 2015…
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a7082bb5e63bbed31ba4d54bb6cf8f88 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/blanqueamiento | Blanqueamiento | Blanqueamiento
…hasten this supposed process of blanqueamiento (“whitening”). The beliefs and practices of elites in countries with large indigenous populations (e.g., Mexico) became quite contradictory: they tended to glorify the indigenous past in ideologies of indigenismo while still envisaging a future of integration and mixedness, all the while discriminating against extant…
…moving away from ideas of blanqueamiento and toward an official recognition and celebration of cultural and ethnic plurality. This was partly in response to indigenous and, to a lesser extent, Black political activism that, building on long-standing traditions of resistance, flowered from the 1960s. The term race rarely occurs in…
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cf0fbee0ed1a8b8ce0954126da52ed6b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blind-Date-film | Blind Date | Blind Date
…Kim Basinger in the farce Blind Date (1987) and as the cowboy actor Tom Mix investigating a murder in 1920s Hollywood in Sunset (1988). With Skin Deep (1989), Edwards returned to the world of the sexual farce, this time with John Ritter playing the role of a novelist with writer’s…
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ecf704d331626d03e9c6aae8d25c400c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/blitzkrieg | Blitzkrieg | Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg, (German: “lightning war”) military tactic calculated to create psychological shock and resultant disorganization in enemy forces through the employment of surprise, speed, and superiority in matériel or firepower. Blitzkrieg is most commonly associated with Nazi Germany during World War II even though numerous combatants used its techniques in that war. Its origins, however, can be traced to the 19th century, and elements of blitzkrieg have been used in present-day conflicts.
The concept of blitzkrieg was formed by Prussian military tactics of the early 19th century, which recognized that victory could come only through forceful and swift action because of Prussia’s relatively limited economic resources. It had its origins with the Schwerpunktprinzip (“concentration principle”) proposed by Carl von Clausewitz in his seminal work On War (1832). Having studied generals who predated Napoleon, Clausewitz found that commanders of various armies had dispersed their forces without focused reasoning, which resulted in those forces’ being used inefficiently. So as to eliminate that wasteful use of manpower, he advocated for a concentration of force against an enemy. All employment of force should have an effective concentration in a single moment, with a single action, Clausewitz argued. Clausewitz called that concentration the Schwerpunkt (“centre of gravity”) where it was most dense, identifying it as the effective target for attack.
For historical generals, from Alexander the Great of ancient Macedonia to Frederick II of 18th-century Prussia, their armies functioned as the centre of gravity. If the army was destroyed, the commander would be considered a failure. In smaller countries or countries engaged in internal strife, according to Clausewitz’s reasoning, the capital becomes the centre of gravity and should be identified as the Schwerpunkt. Beginning in the 20th century, technological advances such as radio, aircraft, and motorized vehicles allowed a commander to concentrate force at the Schwerpunkt so as to annihilate the opposition and achieve victory. During World War II each blitzkrieg campaign contained a Schwerpunkt that gave it meaning and substance, with doctrines of mobile warfare expounded by British military theorists J.F.C. Fuller and Sir Basil Liddell Hart providing the tactics necessary to translate the theory into action.
Once the strategic Schwerpunkt had been identified, the attack could commence, using the concept of Kesselschlacht (“cauldron battle”). A frontal attack would immobilize the enemy while forces on the flanks would execute a double envelopment, forming a pocket called a Kessel (“cauldron”) around the enemy. Once surrounded, the opposing army, demoralized and with no chance of escape, would face the choice of annihilation or surrender.
Tested by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War in 1938 and against Poland in 1939, the blitzkrieg proved to be a formidable combination of land and air action. Germany’s success with the tactic at the beginning of World War II hinged largely on the fact that it was the only country that had effectively linked its combined forces with radio communications. The use of mobility, shock, and locally concentrated firepower in a skillfully coordinated attack paralyzed an adversary’s capacity to organize defenses, rather than attempting to physically overcome them, and then exploited that paralysis by penetrating to the adversary’s rear areas and disrupting its whole system of communications and administration. The tactics, as employed by the Germans, consisted of a splitting thrust on a narrow front by combat groups using tanks, dive bombers, and motorized artillery to disrupt the main enemy battle position at the Schwerpunkt. Wide sweeps by armoured vehicles followed, establishing the Kessel that trapped and immobilized enemy forces. Those tactics were remarkably economical of both lives and matériel, primarily for the attackers but also, because of the speed and short duration of the campaign, among the victims.
Blitzkrieg tactics were used in the successful German invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France in 1940, which saw audacious applications of air power and airborne infantry to overcome fixed fortifications that were believed by the defenders to be impregnable. The Kesselschlacht campaigns on the Eastern Front were staggering in scale, with Kessels that covered vast swathes of territory, enveloping hundreds of thousands of troops. Blitzkrieg tactics were also used by the German commander Erwin Rommel during the desert campaigns in North Africa.
After those initial German successes, the Allies adopted this form of warfare with great success, beginning with Stalingrad and subsequently used by commanders such as U.S. Gen. George Patton in the European operations of 1944. The Germans’ last successful Kessel campaign was against the British paratroops at Arnhem, Netherlands, an encirclement that came to be known as the Hexenkessel (“witches’ cauldron”). By the end of the war, Germany found itself defeated by the strategic (Schwerpunkt) and tactical (Kesselschlacht) concepts that had initially brought it such success. German armies were destroyed at Falaise in France, the Scheldt in the Netherlands, and the Bulge in Belgium and on the Eastern Front at Cherkasy (in modern Ukraine), Memel (now Klaipėda, Lithuania), and Halbe, Germany. The last great battle of World War II fought using blitzkrieg tactics was the Battle of Berlin (April 1945).
Later manifestations of blitzkrieg tactics were the combined air and ground attacks by Israeli forces on Syria and Egypt during the Six-Day War (June 1967) and the Israeli counterattacks and final counteroffensive of the Yom Kippur War (October 1973). The “left hook” flanking maneuver executed by U.S. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Persian Gulf War also utilized elements of blitzkrieg tactics, with a combined arms offensive that destroyed the Iraqi army in Kuwait in a period of just three days.
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429e6a45b4ad0cd13cfb4e088088ec8b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blodeuedd | Blodeuedd | Blodeuedd
Blodeuedd, (Welsh: “Flower-Form”) , also called Blodeuwedd, in the Welsh collection of stories called the Mabinogion, a beautiful girl fashioned from flowers as a wife for Lleu Llaw Gyffes (see Lugus). Lleu’s mother had put a curse on him that he would have no wife, and Blodeuedd was created to subvert the curse; she was unfaithful, however, and conspired with a lover to kill Lleu. The attempt failed and she was changed into an owl as a punishment.
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6cd9e77908b61aac41bfa9b15d32b1ab | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blondel-by-Rice-and-Oliver | Blondel | Blondel
…Oliver on the stage production Blondel (1983) and with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, both veterans of the pop group ABBA, on the musical Chess (1984, first staged in 1986). The latter show yielded the pop hits “I Know Him So Well” and “One Night in Bangkok.” In the 1990s…
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ca3fa2b25b7df0cbdb7a7cd30e9f9e20 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blondie-American-rock-group | Blondie | Blondie
Blondie, American rock group known for incorporating varied influences, including avant-garde, reggae, and hip-hop, into the new wave sound of the 1970s and ’80s. Blondie was formed in 1974 by vocalist Debbie Harry (b. July 1, 1945, Miami, Florida, U.S.) and guitarist Chris Stein (b. January 5, 1950, Brooklyn, New York). The pair—also longtime romantic partners—recruited drummer Clem Burke (byname of Clement Bozewski; b. November 24, 1955, Bayonne, New Jersey), bassist Gary Valentine (byname of Gary Lachman; b. December 24, 1955), and keyboardist Jimmy Destri (byname of James Destri; b. April 13, 1954, Brooklyn). Later members included bassist Nigel Harrison (b. April 24, 1951, Stockport, England) and guitarist Frank Infante (b. November 15, 1951).
The band played New York punk clubs such as CBGB alongside contemporaries such as Talking Heads, Television, and Patti Smith, and released its self-titled debut album on Private Stock Records in 1976. Major label Chrysalis Records released Plastic Letters the following year, earning the group a following in the United Kingdom. Parallel Lines (1978) broke the band into the rock mainstream thanks to hits such as “Picture This,” “One Way or Another,” and the disco-influenced “Heart of Glass.” Eat to the Beat (1979) was similarly successful.
The group’s image was always defined by bleach blonde Harry’s sly streetwise vocal delivery and sexually charged public persona. A collaboration with Europop producer Giorgio Moroder led to the single “Call Me,” which topped the charts in 1980 and served as the theme for the film American Gigolo. By the time of Autoamerican (1980), the other members’ creative contributions had waned, even as the group’s style grew more adventurous, encompassing the reggae hit “The Tide Is High” and introducing the nascent genre of hip-hop to rock audiences with the single “Rapture.” The Hunter (1982) represented a downturn in record sales. After Stein became seriously ill that year, Blondie disbanded.
In 1998 original members Harry, Stein, Burke, and Destri reunited for a European concert tour, and they released a new album, No Exit, the following year. Blondie continued to tour sporadically, and the band’s later albums included The Curse of Blondie (2004), Panic of Girls (2011), and Pollinator (2017). In 2006 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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f0364c5aa12f93fa5c9feb25645e8323 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blondie-and-Dagwood | Blondie and Dagwood | Blondie and Dagwood
Blondie and Dagwood, wife and husband who appeared in Blondie, an American newspaper comic strip created by Chic Young in 1930. Originally, Blondie Boopadoop was a flighty flapper and Dagwood Bumstead was the bumbling playboy son of a millionaire industrialist. The two were married, and Dagwood was promptly disinherited from the family fortune. Blondie and Dagwood had a son in 1934 (Baby Dumpling, later called Alexander) and a daughter in 1941. Hundreds of thousands of readers participated in a mail-in contest to name the Bumstead baby, and she was eventually dubbed Cookie.
The Blondie strip chronicled the everyday life of the Bumstead family, Dagwood’s comical misadventures with his irascible employer Mr. Dithers, and Blondie’s levelheaded, often zany, handling of life’s minor and major crises. A stay-at-home wife and mother for the first 60 years of the strip’s existence, Blondie opened a successful catering business in the early 1990s. Dagwood, a lovable bungler whose well-meaning but usually inept behaviour reinforced the stereotype of the bumbling husband, lent his name to the Dagwood sandwich, a staple on restaurant menus across North America. In the strip it is a gravity-defying architectural wonder containing meats, cheeses, vegetables, and some visual surprises.
In more than 20 films (1938–50) Blondie was played by Penny Singleton and Dagwood by Arthur Lake. Two television series were made (1957 and 1968), and an animated TV movie appeared in 1987. At the height of its popularity, the syndicated comic strip was translated into 35 languages and appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers worldwide.
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0e4cba6e4d3f0b75f233c9d74b44a5d2 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/blood-brotherhood | Blood brotherhood | Blood brotherhood
Blood brotherhood, one of several kinds of alliances or ties that bind persons together in a fashion analogous to, but distinct from, kinship ties. Other forms of fictive kinship include adoption and godparenthood.
Blood brotherhood derives its name from the ritual commingling of the blood of the participants. The nature of the alliance thus formed typically enjoins the members to mutual support, loyalty, or affection. When practiced between groups, blood brotherhood most frequently serves to bind together potentially hostile sets of individuals, to form an alliance in war, or to conclude a peace. References to blood brotherhood occur in the works of many classical writers, beginning with Herodotus (5th century bc). Other accounts of blood brotherhood occur in myths and sagas from central Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia. The custom has also been documented in Africa and, rarely, among North American Indians.
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5e16eee430ef85163584cb72ef4a0154 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/blood-libel | Blood libel | Blood libel
Blood libel, also called blood accusation, the superstitious accusation that Jews ritually sacrifice Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened bread. It first emerged in medieval Europe in the 12th century and was revived sporadically in eastern and central Europe throughout the medieval and modern periods, often leading to the persecution of Jews.
Christian attitudes toward Jews during the Middle Ages were reflected in the economic, social, and political life of medieval societies. Until about the 11th century, manifestations of anti-Semitism were relatively infrequent. In fact, in the early medieval period there were frequent contacts between Christians and Jews, who intermarried and shared language and culture.
The situation became complicated after about the year 1000, as Christian society began a process of reorganization that contributed to the marginalization of Jews as well as of other groups. In 1096 knights of the First Crusade unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France and the Holy Roman Empire, including massacres in Worms, Trier (both now in Germany), and Metz (now in France). Unfounded accusations against Jews of such gruesome actions as ritual murder and host desecration began to spread. In 1144 an English boy, William of Norwich, was found brutally murdered with strange wounds to his head, arms, and torso. His uncle, a priest, blamed local Jews, and a rumour spread that Jews crucified a Christian child every year at Passover. A century later an investigation into the death of another boy, Hugh of Lincoln (died 1255), sparked anti-Jewish fervour that resulted in the execution of 19 English Jews. The story of “Little Saint Hugh” soon became part of popular literature and song, and he was widely venerated as a martyr.
The blood libel reemerged in Damascus in 1840 and in Tiszaeszlár, Hung., in 1882. In both cases, torture was used to obtain false confessions, though the accused were ultimately cleared. The most infamous occurrence of the blood libel in modern times was the case of Mendel Beilis, a Jewish factory manager in Kiev (now in Ukraine), who was accused of ritual murder by the tsarist government in 1911. Imprisoned for more than two years, he was eventually acquitted by an all-Christian jury. In the 1930s the blood libel became part of Nazi propaganda. It was subsequently a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda in parts of Europe and the Arab world.
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663f6367972ded6f8c8636061d382493 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/blood-money-sociology | Blood money | Blood money
Blood money, compensation paid by an offender (usually a murderer) or his kin group to the kin group of the victim. In many societies blood money functions to prevent the continuation of hostilities in the form of a feud (q.v.). Some customs allow the injured party the choice of punishing the murder by blood vengeance or by blood money.
Among the Anglo-Saxon tribes, members of the killer’s kin group contributed to pay wergild, or blood money, to the kin of the victim. Kinsmen contributed according to the distance of the relationship to the murderer; the sum was divided among the victim’s kin on the same basis. Among many Indians of the northern Pacific coast of North America, blood payment was mandatory after killings in order to make peace possible, even when actual blood vengeance was also required. In most places there was no fixed standard, each group demanding as large an amount as possible. If agreement was not reached, feud might result.
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3ffcdaf7ffe81b31db05ec92df019063 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blood-on-the-Sun | Blood on the Sun | Blood on the Sun
Blood on the Sun (1945) received a more receptive response; it was arguably Lloyd’s best movie in almost a decade. The tale centred on Japan’s plan to control the world, and it starred James Cagney and Sylvia Sidney. Lloyd subsequently retired to his ranch, but…
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914530bb2dee50b711c0c15fa95cd11e | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blood-Wedding | Blood Wedding | Blood Wedding
Blood Wedding, folk tragedy in three acts by Federico García Lorca, published and produced in 1933 as Bodas de sangre. Blood Wedding is the first play in Lorca’s dramatic trilogy; the other two plays are Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba. The protagonists of Blood Wedding are ordinary women confronting their own passionate natures and rebelling against the constraints of Spanish society. The unnamed bride in Blood Wedding runs away from her wedding reception with her former suitor, Leonardo, who is married. Death, in the person of a beggar, leads the frustrated bridegroom to the guilty couple. The men kill each other, leaving the bereaved women—Leonardo’s wife, the bridegroom’s mother, and the bride—to bewail their losses.
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c56ae42611053477d97829cd12c81eb8 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blood-Work | Blood Work | Blood Work
Blood Work (2002) was a serviceable thriller about a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) profiler who is convinced that only he can locate a murderer.
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67f27343b4ce396d2c7b00b984233635 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bloodlines-Odyssey-of-a-Native-Daughter | Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter | Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter
Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter (1993) is a collection of autobiographical essays that reflect on her past and her heritage, with accounts of her paternal grandmother, who was a follower of the Nez Percé leader known as Chief Joseph.
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5648b00d0d9a0ff6dbc78d7dee9edf5b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/bloody-mary-cocktail | Bloody Mary | Bloody Mary
…made with orange juice; the Bloody Mary, with tomato juice; vodka and tonic, a tall drink; and the vodka martini, with vodka substituted for gin.
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9fccc0e8eab47d298289f7e4e58e8aea | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blooms-taxonomy | Bloom's taxonomy | Bloom's taxonomy
Bloom’s taxonomy, taxonomy of educational objectives, developed in the 1950s by the American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom, which fostered a common vocabulary for thinking about learning goals. Bloom’s taxonomy engendered a way to align educational goals, curricula, and assessments that are used in schools, and it structured the breadth and depth of the instructional activities and curriculum that teachers provide for students. Few educational theorists or researchers have had as profound an impact on American educational practice as Bloom.
Throughout the 20th century, educators explored a variety of different ways to make both explicit and implicit the educational objectives taught by teachers, particularly in early education. In the early 20th century, objectives were referred to as aims or purposes, and in the early 21st century, they evolved into standards. During much of the 20th century, educational reformers who wanted to more clearly describe what teachers should teach began to use the word objectives, which referred to the type of student learning outcomes to be evidenced in classrooms. Bloom’s taxonomy was one of the most significant representations of those learning outcomes.
Bloom’s work was not only in a cognitive taxonomy but also constituted a reform in how teachers thought about the questioning process within the classroom. Indeed, the taxonomy was originally structured as a way of helping faculty members think about the different types of test items that could be used to measure student academic growth. Bloom and a group of assessment experts he assembled began their work in 1949 and completed their efforts in 1956 when they published Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain.
Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy originally was represented by six different domain levels: (1) knowledge, (2) comprehension, (3) application, (4) analysis, (5) synthesis, and (6) evaluation. All of the Bloom domains focused on the knowledge and cognitive processes. The American educational psychologist David Krathwohl and some of his associates subsequently focused on the affective domain, which is concerned with student interests, attitudes, and feelings. Another American educational psychologist, Anita Harrow, developed the psychomotor domains, which deal with a wide variety of motor skills. Bloom’s work was most noted for its focus on the cognitive. Bloom became closely associated with the cognitive dimension even though, in subsequent work, he often examined the wide variety of “entry” characteristics (cognitive and affective) that students evidenced when they began their schooling.
Each of Bloom’s cognitive domains enabled educators to begin differentiating the type of content being taught as well as the complexity of the content. The domains are particularly useful for educators who are thinking about the questioning process within the classroom, with questions ranging in complexity from lower-order types of knowledge to higher-order questions that would require more complex and comprehensive thought. Bloom’s taxonomy enabled teachers to think in a structured way about how they question students and deliver content. The taxonomy, in both its original and revised versions, helped teachers understand how to enhance and improve instructional delivery by aligning learning objectives with student assessments and by enhancing the learning goals for students in terms of cognitive complexity.
The following list presents the structure of the original framework, with examples of questions at each of the six domain levels:
Bloom focuses primarily on the cognitive dimension; most teachers rely heavily on the six levels of the cognitive domain to shape the way in which they deliver content in the classroom. Originally Bloom thought about the characteristics that students possess when they enter school, and he divided those characteristics into the affective and the cognitive. From Bloom’s perspective the learning outcomes are a result of the type of learning environment a student is experiencing and the quality of the instruction the teacher is providing. The affective elements included the students’ readiness and motivation to learn; the cognitive characteristics included the prior understandings the students possessed before they entered the classroom. In essence, a student who had an extensive personal vocabulary and came from a reading-rich home environment would be more ready to learn than the student who had been deprived of such opportunities during his preschool years. In the early 21st century, some reformers described this as the “knowledge gap” and specifically highlighted the fact that students from low socioeconomic settings have less access to books and a lower exposure to a rich home vocabulary. In essence, some of Bloom’s original ideas continued to be reinforced in the educational research literature.
Many researchers had begun to rethink the way in which educational objectives were presented by teachers, and they developed a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy in 2001. The revised taxonomy was developed by using many of the same processes and approaches that Bloom had used a half century earlier. In the new taxonomy, two dimensions are presented: the knowledge dimension and the cognitive dimension. There are four levels on the knowledge dimension: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. There are six levels on the cognitive process dimension: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The new taxonomy enabled teachers to think more in depth about the content that they are teaching and the objectives they are focusing on within the classroom. It allowed teachers to categorize objectives in a more-multidimensional way and to do so in a manner that allows them to see the complex relationships between knowledge and cognitive processes.
The original Bloom’s taxonomy allowed teachers to categorize content and questions at different levels. The new two-dimensional model enabled teachers to see the relationship between and among the objectives for the content being taught and to also examine how that material should be taught and how it might be assessed. By examining both the knowledge level and the cognitive processes, teachers were better equipped to consider the complex nature of the learning process and also better equipped to assess what the students learn.
The new taxonomy did not easily spread among practitioners, in part because most classroom teachers remained unfamiliar with the new taxonomic approach and because many professional development experts (including those in teacher-education institutions) continued to rely on the original taxonomy. The new model was in many ways just as significant as the original taxonomy. The original approach provided a structure for how people thought about facts, concepts, and generalizations and offered a common language for thinking about and communicating educational objectives. In essence, it helped teachers think more clearly about the structure and nature of knowledge. The new taxonomy helped teachers see how complex knowledge really is.
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9e8433b5f05e1b964a4a78e4aa031629 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Jasmine | Blue Jasmine | Blue Jasmine
…locale for Allen’s next film, Blue Jasmine (2013), which starred Cate Blanchett as the wife of an unscrupulous investment banker (Baldwin). After her wealth disappears, she moves in with her blue-collar sister. Reminiscent of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Blue Jasmine took Allen’s work in a new direction as…
…Rome with Love (2012) and Blue Jasmine (2013). In Still Alice (2014) he portrayed the husband of a woman (Julianne Moore) who is succumbing to early-onset Alzheimer disease.
…of Lying (2009), Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013), and David O. Russell’s American Hustle (2013). C.K. provided the voice of a terrier in the computer-animated children’s comedy The Secret Life of Pets (2016). He had a recurring role on the sitcom Parks and Recreation. C.K. also cocreated and wrote the…
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8bc66b9cc46c786131a61908cf94def0 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Lard | Blue Lard | Blue Lard
…words, with Goluboe salo (1999; Blue Lard). The book became widely known for its graphic sexual scenes between clones of former Soviet leaders Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin (portrayed as homosexual lovers), which, though whimsical and absurd, resulted in Sorokin’s prosecution by the Russian government for the dissemination of…
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884c6ca1c83ed43dced525f0048964d4 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Peter | Blue Peter | Blue Peter
Blue Peter, (foaled 1936), English racehorse (Thoroughbred), unbeaten during the 1939 racing season when he won two of the events comprising the British Triple Crown: the Two Thousand Guineas at Newmarket and the Derby at Epsom Downs. The beginning of World War II deprived him of the chance to race in the Saint Leger, the last of the Triple Crown events, at Doncaster. Foaled by Fancy Free and sired by Fairway, Blue Peter was bred and owned by Lord Rosebery and trained by Jack Jarvis. He raced only twice in 1938, but in 1939 he was unbeaten in four races. Blue Peter sired Ocean Swell, the 1944 Derby winner.
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672b64c0cf925ff9034326abe15b4831 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Rose | Blue Rose | Blue Rose
…Strayhorn, she recorded the album Blue Rose; though not a popular success when it was released, it was later deemed a jazz classic.
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65ffb75b5d3eb2a3c88a5ef9837d42ed | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Sky | Blue Sky | Blue Sky
Richardson’s final film, the drama Blue Sky (1994), for which Jessica Lange earned an Oscar, was released three years after his death from complications of AIDS.
…Award for best actress for Blue Sky (1994). Later notable films included Cousin Bette (1998), based on the Honoré de Balzac novel; Titus (1999), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus; and the fantasy drama Big Fish (2003). In 2003 she appeared as the wife of a man who decides to…
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d2a1d2d924cedc3702fd466bf57305f6 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blue-Valentine | Blue Valentine | Blue Valentine
…her emotionally raw performance in Blue Valentine (2010), which sketched the story of a crumbling marriage, Williams captured an Oscar nomination for best actress.
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252e233e3d1ee46afdd5468a9b92eeda | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bluebeard-literary-character | Bluebeard | Bluebeard
Bluebeard, murderous husband in the story “La Barbe bleue,” in Charles Perrault’s collection of fairy tales, Contes de ma mère l’oye (1697; Tales of Mother Goose). In the tale, Bluebeard is a wealthy man of rank who, soon after his marriage, goes away, leaving his wife the keys to all the doors in his castle but forbidding her to open one of them. She disobeys and finds in the locked room the bodies of his former wives. On his return, Bluebeard discovers on one of the keys a telltale spot of blood and threatens to cut off her head as a punishment for disobedience. The wife is saved by her brothers just as Bluebeard is about to strike the final blow.
Similar stories exist in European, African, and Eastern folklore; the essentials are the locked and forbidden room, the wife’s curiosity, and her 11th-hour rescue. Perrault’s version probably derived from Brittany and may have been based on the career of the 15th-century marshal of France Gilles de Rais and that of Comorre the Cursed, a 6th-century Breton chief, each of whom committed crimes similar to those in the Bluebeard stories. In an Estonian version, the wife is rescued by a gooseherd (or a page), a childhood friend who slays her husband and marries her. In the story “Fitcher’s Bird” in Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812–15), three sisters are the intended victims. The identification in some stories of Bluebeard with the Devil and of the locked door as the gate of hell are probably later additions. Andrew Lang’s translation (1888) of Perrault’s Contes includes a close comparison with other folktales and details of the careers of Gilles de Rais and Comorre.
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49c071fc65e90fae05d280ac7d871b22 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blues-All-Around-Me | Blues All Around Me | Blues All Around Me
King’s autobiography, Blues All Around Me, written with David Ritz, was published in 1996. King was the recipient of numerous awards and honours. He was a member of the inaugural class of inductees to the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980. In 1987 he earned a Grammy…
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80b2f77d27ad4558b2cefb4e692ff7b8 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bluestocking-British-literary-society | Bluestocking | Bluestocking
Bluestocking, any of a group of ladies who in mid-18th-century England held “conversations” to which they invited men of letters and members of the aristocracy with literary interests. The word has come to be applied derisively to a woman who affects literary or learned interests. The Bluestockings attempted to replace social evenings spent playing cards with something more intellectual. The term probably originated when one of the ladies, Mrs. Vesey, invited the learned Benjamin Stillingfleet to one of her parties; he declined because he lacked appropriate dress, whereupon she told him to come “in his blue stockings”—the ordinary worsted stockings he was wearing at the time. He did so, and Bluestocking (or Bas Bleu) society became a nickname for the group. This anecdote was later recounted by Madame d’Arblay (the diarist and novelist better known as Fanny Burney), who was closely associated with (but also satirized) the Bluestockings.
The group was never a society in any formal sense. Mrs. Vesey seems to have given the first party, in Bath. After she moved to London, a rivalry developed with Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, who became the leader of the literary ladies. Others included Mrs. Hester Chapone, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Miss Mary Monckton, and Miss Hannah More, whose poem “The Bas Bleu, or Conversation,” supplies valuable inside information about them. Guests included Dr. Johnson, David Garrick, the Earl of Bath, Lord Lyttleton, and Horace Walpole (who called them “petticoteries”).
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ed2dff38d47996b16b98ba1d2c329b42 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Blunderbuss-by-White | Blunderbuss | Blunderbuss
…released his first solo album, Blunderbuss (2012), which extended his stylistic reach and deepened his songwriting craft. The follow-up, Lazaretto (2014), garnered mostly glowing reviews. His devotion to vinyl recordings was especially evident on the latter album—an ambitious mix of familiar and unexpected musical approaches—which incorporated a raft of technical…
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8ca1fbad6b3caa7ef21c028978ee0975 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Board-of-Public-Papers | Board of Public Papers | Board of Public Papers
The official business of the Mandokoro was to control the finances of the bakufu; and later the Ise family, who were hereditary retainers of the Ashikaga, came to inherit this office. The Samurai-dokoro, besides handling legal judgments, was entrusted with the control of the capital. Leading officials called shoshi who…
Yoritomo now established the Kumonjo (“Board of Public Papers”) and Monchūjo (“Board of Questioning”), setting up not only a military but also an independent political government in the east, yet one that was recognized by the central imperial court in Kyōto. In 1184 Yoritomo’s considerable armies, commanded by his…
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299bc87752f87d5ba103debfa56f2101 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Board-of-Regents-v-Roth | Board of Regents v. Roth | Board of Regents v. Roth
Board of Regents v. Roth, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 1972, ruled (5–3) that nontenured educators whose contracts are not renewed have no right to procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment unless they can prove they have liberty or property interests at stake.
The case centred on David Roth, a nontenured assistant professor at Wisconsin State University, Oshkosh. When his one-year fixed-term contract expired in 1969, school officials opted not to renew it. When they notified Roth of their decision, the officials provided no reasons for dismissing him, nor did they grant him a hearing to challenge their actions. Roth subsequently filed suit, alleging a violation of his right to procedural due process of law, which requires that individuals be given notice and opportunities to be heard before being deprived of liberty or property. In addition, Roth claimed that he had been fired as a result of critical comments he had made about the administration, and he thus asserted that his First Amendment freedom of speech rights had also been violated. A federal district court entered a judgment in favour of Roth, ordering that he be provided reasons for his dismissal and a hearing. However, the court stayed the proceedings concerning the freedom of speech allegations. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
On January 18, 1972, the case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. It noted that persons are entitled to procedural due process rights only if their liberty or property is deprived by government action. The court observed that liberty interests are wide ranging and include the right of persons to enter into contracts, to marry, to raise children, and to enjoy privileges recognized as vital to the pursuit of happiness and to good name or integrity. Insofar as the decision not to renew Roth’s contract was not based on charges that could have damaged his reputation or ability to procure future employment, the court found that his liberty interests were not at stake.
The Supreme Court next addressed property interests. It noted that such interests are created not by the Constitution but rather by contracts, statutes, rules, and regulations. The court noted that Roth’s contract “made no provision for renewal.” In addition, the court observed that there were no state laws or university policies “that secured his interest in re-employment or that created a legitimate claim to it.” On the basis of those findings, the court held that Roth had no property or liberty interests that required school officials to grant a hearing. Thus, the university had not violated his procedural due process rights. (Given that the district court had not ruled on the alleged violation of his freedom of speech rights, the Supreme Court did not address it.) The decision of the Seventh Circuit was overturned. (Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., was not involved in deciding the case.)
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e2b4ba57e64c56e72de021d4d230a1dc | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bob-and-Carol-and-Ted-and-Alice | Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice | Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, American comedy film, released in 1969, that lampooned the trendy aspect of the decade’s sexual liberation.
Natalie Wood and Robert Culp played Carol and Bob, a pretentious wealthy and bored couple in southern California. After attending an enlightened New Age-type retreat, they decide to indulge in the sexual experimentation of the free-love era—in particular, swinging and wife swapping. Carol and Bob share their new philosophy with their more inhibited best friends and potential swap mates, Ted and Alice (played by Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon). The aggressive openness of Bob and Carol in regard to their extramarital affairs leads Ted to admit to an affair of his own. Incensed, Alice finally suggests what everyone has been thinking: that the two couples join each other in bed.
Though deemed quaint by contemporary standards, the film was considered racy in its day, and it serves as a time capsule of sexual mores in the late 1960s. It was highly successful and inspired a string of other films dealing with similar topics, as well as a short-lived television series. Gould and Cannon catapulted to stardom as a result of the film and earned Academy Award nominations for their performances.
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fc34e5ae32b4760cc6b61bf3f14b5581 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Boca-Juniors | Boca Juniors | Boca Juniors
Boca Juniors, in full Club Atlético Boca Juniors, Argentine professional football (soccer) club based in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Boca. Boca Juniors has proved to be one of Argentina’s most successful teams, especially in international club competitions.
The club was founded in 1905 by a group of Italian immigrants in Argentina. It joined the Argentine Football Association League in 1913. Boca went through several jersey styles before settling on its distinctive blue shirt with a single yellow band across the chest in 1913. The club won the national amateur league championship six times before joining Argentina’s newly formed national professional league. In 1931 Boca was the first league champion in the professional era, and the team has since won the league title 25 additional times.
Since 1940 Boca has played in Camilo Cichero Stadium, which was renamed Alberto J. Armando Stadium in 2000 in honour of a former club president. Fans know it as La Bombonera (“the Chocolate Box”) because of its unusual structure, with curving, steeply banked stands on three sides and one underdeveloped stand on the final side. The ground has a capacity of 49,000 spectators and is a noisy, intimidating venue when full. This is especially the case when it is visited by River Plate, Boca’s fiercest rival and the most successful club in Argentina. Matches between the two teams are known as the “Superclásico” and are usually sellouts that attract nationwide interest.
Boca is a six-time winner of the Copa Libertadores, the top international competition between leading clubs from all over all South America, which began in 1960. Indeed, Boca is the last team to have won the Copa Libertadores without losing a single game, which it accomplished in 1978. In 2003 Boca beat Brazil’s Santos 2–0 and 3–1 in the home and away matches, respectively, to record the largest ever margin of victory (in terms of aggregate goal total) in a Copa Libertadores final. In addition, Boca has won the Intercontinental Cup (between the Copa Libertadores and European Cup/Champions League champions) three times, including noteworthy triumphs over Real Madrid in 2000 and AC Milan in 2003; the other victory came in 1977.
Many world-famous players began their careers with Boca, including former Argentine captain Antonio Rattin and strikers Gabriel Batistuta, Claudio Caniggia, and Carlos Tevez. Diego Maradona had two spells at the club, at the start and end of his career, and this pattern has been followed by other players, including Juan Román Riquelme and Martín Palermo (who is the club’s all-time leading goal scorer).
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40777f80389b12fd6822e952e9de5a91 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/bodhi-Buddhism | Bodhi | Bodhi
Bodhi, (Sanskrit and Pāli: “awakening,” “enlightenment”), in Buddhism, the final Enlightenment, which puts an end to the cycle of transmigration and leads to Nirvāṇa, or spiritual release; the experience is comparable to the Satori of Zen Buddhism in Japan. The accomplishment of this “awakening” transformed Siddhārtha Gautama into a Buddha (an Awakened One).
The final Enlightenment remains the ultimate ideal of all Buddhists, to be attained by ridding oneself of false beliefs and the hindrance of passions. This is achieved by following the course of spiritual discipline known as the Eightfold Path. Mahāyāna Buddhism, while embracing this ideal, places a high valuation on the compassion of the bodhisattva (one whose essence is bodhi), who postpones his own entrance into Nirvāṇa in order to work for the salvation of all sentient beings. See also Eightfold Path.
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f8b3f281af7d72bc5350adf9839cc388 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/body-politic | Body politic | Body politic
Body politic, in Western political thought, an ancient metaphor by which a state, society, or church and its institutions are conceived of as a biological (usually human) body. As it is usually applied, the metaphor implies hierarchical leadership and a division of labour, and it carries a strong autocratic or monarchial connotation.
The first recorded instance of the body politic metaphor appears in the Rigveda (c. 1500 bce), the oldest of the sacred books of Hinduism. There the South Asian caste system is explained by comparing the priesthood to the mouth, soldiers to the arms, shepherds to the thighs, and peasants to the feet of humankind.
A well-known ancient example of a bodily metaphor appears in “The Belly and the Members,” a fable attributed to the legendary Greek fabulist Aesop. In the fable, the other members of the body revolt against the belly, which they think is doing none of the work while getting all of the food. The hands, mouth, teeth, and legs initiate a strike, but after a few days they realize that they are weak and ailing. They thus learn that cooperation between all members of the body, including the invisible belly, is vital for the body’s health. The story’s not-so-subtle moral is that society, like a body, functions better when all do their assigned tasks and work together. The social metaphor translated easily into the political world.
In the 4th century bce, Plato articulated and refined the political usage of the metaphor in his Republic and Laws. His metaphoric conception of the state emphasized fitness and well-being over illness, the latter condition occurring when the different parts of the state fail to perform the functions proper to them.
The Greeks’ fondness for the organic welfare of their state continued in the voice of their poets. Aristophanes, especially in Wasps (422 bce), claimed that poets needed to cure the diseases of the state. Shortly after, Demosthenes’ orations encouraging the Athenians to fight against Philip of Macedon—particularly, his “Third Philippic”—compared Philip to the attack of a fever or an illness.
The Greeks influenced Rome, and in the 1st century bce Livy was as familiar with the analogy as was his predecessor Cicero. Livy’s History of Rome cited Aesop’s fable of the other body parts revolting against the belly in his recounting of the secession of the plebeians (commoners). During the early Roman Republic, according to Livy, the plebeians seceded from the city of Rome, isolating themselves on the Sacred Mount or the Aventine. Menenius Agrippa was sent to end the crisis, and he used his version of the fable to convince the plebeians to return to the state. In Livy’s words, the Roman Senate (the belly) agreed that it received food from the plebeians (the body), but it did not go to waste. The Senate digested it and sent it back through the blood and veins of the republic. Hence, cooperation between all gave vitality to the republican body. The fable lived on in Plutarch, in the poetry of Marie de France, and in William Shakespeare’s Coriolianus.
With the Christianization of the Roman Empire from the early 4th century ce, the metaphor of the body politic was transformed, though its meaning changed little and continued to imply subordination. In the 1st century ce St. Paul used the metaphor amply, molding Christ and the church into a single body and further depicting the church as the bride of Christ in I Corinthians 12:12–27, which clearly demonstrates the influence of ancient authors:
Colossians 1:18 adds that Christ “is the head of the body, the church.” And Ephesians 5:23–30 continues the metaphor:
Early theologians continued the use of bodily metaphors. Their notion of the body politic was a mystical Christian body united in the sharing of Christ, the Eucharist or transubstantiation (the substantial change of the bread and the wine of the mass into the body and blood of Christ). The metaphor took on a theocratic connotation, implying divine leadership. For example, Chapter 12 of Book IV of St. Augustine’s City of God is titled, “Concerning the Opinion of Those Who Have Thought That God is the Soul of the World, and the World is the Body of God.”
In the Middle Ages the model used in the clerical world spread to secular politics. At first the church presented itself as a mystical body politic whose original head was the pope; kings and princes were its members. But eventually lay authorities vied for leadership, and theorists argued for a divinely inspired monarchy (head) until, to a large extent, the 18th-century revolutions dismembered the medieval Christian body.
The church was first conceptualized as a body, often that of a bride, and Christ was either the body’s head or the bride’s groom. Later, kings and popes associated themselves with the Christian body, integrating its ambivalent dual nature. Like Christ, kings and popes lived and died, but the institutions of monarchy and papacy continued. The German medieval historian Ernst Kantorowicz was the first to highlight the double nature of the monarchy in The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (1957). He suggested a dual construction consisting of the king’s body, which dies because of its physical or biological nature, and the monarchial institution, which endures and indeed is everlasting. The construction was expressed in the traditional rallying cry that followed the death of a king: “The king is dead, long live the king!”
Reflecting on Kantorowicz’s analysis, the Italian historian Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, in The Pope’s Body (2000), considered how the church formulated its own institutional continuity based again on the bodily metaphor. The pope died a human death, but the ecclesiastical institution, like Christ, continued. For Paravicini Bagliani, the ecclesiastical rituals that surrounded the death of a pope cemented the inherent internal contradiction between the pope’s physical transience and the church’s institutional continuity and survival.
Perhaps the most-sweeping medieval elaboration of the concept was left to John of Salisbury and his Policraticus, an essential work of medieval political theory. Like his ancient Greek model, John’s political society mirrored a healthy human body. It discussed the body of a republic (a complete anachronism in the 12th century) that was ultimately dominated by its Christian soul, symbolized in the spiritual leadership of the priesthood. For John, the head of the republic was a leader who was subject to the rule of God, as, in a body, the head is subjected to the rule of its soul. He then proceeded down the physical body, attributing the heart to the Senate; the ears, eyes, and mouth to judges and provincial governors; the hands to officials and soldiers; the stomach and intestines to treasurers and record keepers; and the feet to the peasantry.
In the 13th century the Florentine scholar Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou tresor (1262–66; Book of Treasure) continued the political usage of the metaphor, as did the theological writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Influenced by Policraticus, Aquinas discussed the necessity of deference to the leadership of a king, arguing that such a form of governance was as natural as the existence of a soul in a body. Similarly, John of Paris’s De potestate regia et papali (c. 1302; “On Royal and Papal Powers”), defending the subordination of the pope to a king, used the metaphor to argue for the commonsensical leadership of a single common force. The argument of single leadership is repeated in Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis (1324; “Defender of the Peace”).
The medieval tendency to fuse church and state was bound to create the need to identify a unitary leadership, a requirement that was accommodated in the bodily metaphor. In his On the Duty of the King, the Christian reformer John Wycliffe continued the defense of a divinely inspired kingship, arguing from the bodily metaphor. In his case, leadership moved organically. The king was the kingdom’s head or heart. The medieval apogee of the metaphor was attained in Livre du corps de policie (c. 1407; The Book of the Body Politic), by the French poet and author Christine de Pisan, the first female professional writer of France. She analyzed the state into three parts (ruler, nobles, and commoners) that cooperated, like a well-functioning body, for the benefit of the whole.
In the 16th century, King Henry VIII of England initiated the dismemberment of the body politic metaphor by putting himself in the role of head of the church. Slightly before that time, Sir John Fortescue’s De laudibus legum Angliae (c. 1470; “In Praise of the Laws of England”) had argued that nerves (laws) bound the British body politic, advocating a limited monarchy and parliamentary rule. In 1606 Barnabe Barnes’s Foure Bookes of Offices granted the head to the king and, this time, the lungs to the laws. The Reformation dismantled the metaphor even further, challenging most often those associated with the head—the king or the pope. The partition of Christianity allowed rulers to refer to the old metaphor to assert control over a population that could disavow the leader’s choice of allegiance (Catholicism or Protestantism). The usage of the metaphor advertised unity as Christianity splintered, and the long association between religion and politics decayed.
John Milton’s Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (1641) refashioned “The Belly and the Members” fable into “The Fable of the Wen and the Members.” The wen (or boil)—a metaphor for a Catholic bishop—having grown close in size to a head argued for his prime position over the rest of the members of the body. A philosopher, brought to a meeting of the members, exposes him for what he is—a foul excrescence.
Shakespeare also instilled doubt in the metaphor’s validity, questioning in Coriolanus the organic cooperation between members of the body and comparing plebeians to the monstrous Hydra of Greek mythology and to diseases like the measles or scabs. Pushing the usage of the metaphor to its extreme, Milton and Shakespeare pointed to the truism that a body, like society, does not always function well.
In the mid-17th century, Thomas Hobbes effectively killed the body politic metaphor by insisting on the artificiality of the state. In Leviathan (1651) he discussed the natural selfishness of humankind and the consequent need to impose upon individuals an external authority to prevent perpetual violence. Created to preserve peace, the Leviathan (the state) was an artifical social institution, not a biological or natural one.
After the 17th century the usage of the body politic metaphor declined even further. After the Industrial Revolution, when issues of social contract gained prominence, social institutions were conceived of as machines rather than as natural organisms.
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3c8cff37783a2e33849161216e5c9a5c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bodyguards-and-Assassins | Bodyguards and Assassins | Bodyguards and Assassins
…the 2009 Hong Kong-produced film Bodyguards and Assassins (Shiyueh weicheng). In it she plays a young kung fu expert who, in 1906, helps protect revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen from would-be assassins sent by the Chinese imperial government. Li’s performance earned her two nominations (for best supporting actress and best new…
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9259d1b4f1470bfb30683e6677f73f90 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bogomils | Bogomil | Bogomil
Bogomil, member of a dualist religious sect that flourished in the Balkans between the 10th and 15th centuries. It arose in Bulgaria toward the middle of the 10th century from a fusion of dualistic, neo-Manichaean doctrines imported especially from the Paulicians, a sect of Armenia and Asia Minor, and a local Slavonic movement aimed at reforming, in the name of an evangelical Christianity, the recently established Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The Bogomils were so called after their founder, the priest Bogomil.
The Bogomils’ central teaching, based on a dualistic cosmology, was that the visible, material world was created by the devil. Thus, they denied the doctrine of the incarnation and rejected the Christian conception of matter as a vehicle of grace. They rejected Baptism, the Eucharist, and the whole organization of the Orthodox Church. The moral teaching of the Bogomils was as consistently dualistic. They condemned those functions of man that bring him into close contact with matter, especially marriage, the eating of meat, and the drinking of wine. In fact, the moral austerity of the Bogomils invariably was acknowledged by their fiercest opponents.
During the 11th and 12th centuries Bogomilism spread over many European and Asian provinces of the Byzantine Empire. Its growth in Constantinople resulted, about 1100, in the trial and imprisonment of prominent Bogomils in the city and in the public burning of their leader, Basil. In the second half of the 12th century, it spread westward. The Serbian ruler Stefan Nemanja was obliged to summon a general assembly of his land to check it. Roman Catholic authorities were greatly disturbed by reports of heresy in Dalmatia and Bosnia (though modern scholarship casts doubt on the theory that the Bosnian church ever adopted the dualist theology of the Bogomils). By the early 13th century the dualistic communities of southern Europe—comprising the Paulicians and Bogomils in the east and the Cathari in the west—formed a network stretching from the Black Sea to the Atlantic.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, Rome dispatched several legations and Franciscan missionaries to convert or expel Bosnian heretics, among whom there may have been some Bogomils. In the country of its birth Bogomilism remained a powerful force until the late 14th century. The Bulgarian authorities convened several church councils to condemn its teachings. With the Ottoman conquest of southeastern Europe in the 15th century, obscurity descended upon the sect. Traces of a dualistic tradition in the folklore of the South Slavs are all that remain today of the most powerful sectarian movement in the history of the Balkans.
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d74302cb56d945ff249b560ae65fe33b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bogus | Bogus | Bogus
…a third Oscar nod, and Bogus (1996), a film about a boy and his imaginary friend, played by Gérard Depardieu. The Hurricane (1999) featured Denzel Washington as Rubin (“Hurricane”) Carter, a boxer wrongly accused of murder. In 2003 Jewison directed The Statement (2003), chronicling the real-life efforts of vigilantes and…
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be31ce100308ea308ca719dcd8098d7c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bohemian-Lights | Bohemian Lights | Bohemian Lights
Luces de Bohemia (1920; Bohemian Lights) illustrates his theory and practice of esperpento, an aesthetic formula he also used in his fiction to depict reality through a deliberately exaggerated mimesis of its grotesqueness. His work sometimes recalls that of Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, or Picasso. Jacinto Grau, another would-be…
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19e0fb03fd831a9debad7b1072094424 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bold-Venture | Bold Venture | Bold Venture
His sire was Bold Venture, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 1936, and his great-grandam was a full sister of Man o’ War. It is remarkable that Assault was ever born. His dam, as a foal on the ranch, was so sickly and unpromising that…
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7bfa28ebfa9f8c77c088b996c79f328c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/bolivar-fuerte | Bolívar fuerte | Bolívar fuerte
Bolívar fuerte, (Spanish: ‘‘strong’’ bolívar) formerly bolívar and bolivar, monetary unit of Venezuela. Each bolívar fuerte is divided into 100 céntimos (cents). The bolívar fuerte (the equivalent of 1,000 bolivares) was introduced in 2008 in an attempt to curb high inflation and simplify financial transactions. It replaced the bolívar, which had been adopted as Venezuela’s monetary unit in 1879. Prior to 1879, independent Venezuela used three separate currencies: the escudo, the peso, and the venezolano.
The Central Bank of Venezuela has the exclusive authority to issue currency, though private banks could issue currency prior to the 1940s. Coins are issued in denominations ranging from 1 céntimo to 1 bolívar fuerte. Banknotes range in amounts from 2 to 100 bolívares fuertes. The bolívar fuerte banknotes feature images of leading figures in Venezuelan history, including individuals of indigenous and African descent and, for the first time in the history of Venezuelan currency, a woman: Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi, who appears on the 20-bolívar fuerte note. Her support for her husband, military leader Juan Bautista Arismendi, during Venezuela’s war for independence made her a national hero. The 10-bolívar fuerte note depicts Guaicaipuro, an Indian chief who resisted European occupation in the mid-16th century. Simón Bolívar, a 19th-century soldier who led revolutions against Spanish rule in South America and from whom the currency’s name is derived, appears on the 100-bolívar fuerte note. The reverse side of the banknotes is adorned with an image of an endangered animal that is immersed in one of the country’s varied natural landscapes. The 1-bolívar fuerte coin contains an image of Bolívar on the obverse and the national coat of arms on the reverse; other coins bear a design approved by the board of directors of the Central Bank of Venezuela.
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b8fc5f2493ca2881b9724fbc89713a6b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bolkonsky-family | Bolkonsky family | Bolkonsky family
Bolkonsky family, principal characters of the novel War and Peace (1865–69) by Leo Tolstoy. The elderly dictatorial Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky is the father of Prince Andrey and Princess Marya.
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1b8a7c90770eaa1ea3985c619ab18497 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bolshevik | Bolshevik | Bolshevik
Bolshevik, (Russian: “One of the Majority”) , plural Bolsheviks, or Bolsheviki, member of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, which, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized control of the government in Russia (October 1917) and became the dominant political power. The group originated at the party’s second congress (1903) when Lenin’s followers, insisting that party membership be restricted to professional revolutionaries, won a temporary majority on the party’s central committee and on the editorial board of its newspaper Iskra. They assumed the name Bolsheviks and dubbed their opponents the Mensheviks (“Those of the Minority”).
Although both factions participated together in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and went through periods of apparent reconciliation (about 1906 and 1910), their differences increased. The Bolsheviks continued to insist upon a highly centralized, disciplined, professional party. They boycotted the elections to the First State Duma (Russian parliament) in 1906 and refused to cooperate with the government and other political parties in subsequent Dumas. Furthermore, their methods of obtaining revenue (including robbery) were disapproved of by the Mensheviks and non-Russian Social Democrats.
In 1912 Lenin, leading a very small minority, formed a distinct Bolshevik organization, decisively (although not formally) splitting the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. His determination to keep his own faction strictly organized, however, had also alienated many of his Bolshevik colleagues, who had wished to undertake nonrevolutionary activities or who had disagreed with Lenin on political tactics and on the infallibility of orthodox Marxism. No outstanding Russian Social Democrats joined Lenin in 1912.
Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks became increasingly popular among urban workers and soldiers in Russia after the February Revolution (1917), particularly after April, when Lenin returned to the country, demanding immediate peace and that the workers’ councils, or Soviets, assume power. By October the Bolsheviks had majorities in the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and Moscow Soviets; and when they overthrew the Provisional Government, the second Congress of Soviets (devoid of peasant deputies) approved the action and formally took control of the government.
Immediately after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks refused to share power with other revolutionary groups, with the exception of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries; eventually they suppressed all rival political organizations. They changed their name to Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) in March 1918; to All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) in December 1925; and to Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October 1952.
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96b5feeaff3992d823ce1a02af69ceb7 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bombe | Bombe | Bombe
In March 1940, Turing’s first Bombe, a code-breaking machine, was installed at Bletchley Park; improvements suggested by British mathematician Gordon Welchman were incorporated by August. This complex machine consisted of approximately 100 rotating drums, 10 miles of wire, and about 1 million soldered connections. The Bombe searched through different possible…
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a8d2adf3164e890ba86dee65d13c5b16 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bonanza | Bonanza | Bonanza
Bonanza, American television series that ran on NBC from 1959 to 1973. Bonanza’s 14 seasons and 440 episodes made it the second-longest-running western in broadcast history, after Gunsmoke.
Bonanza, the first western broadcast in colour, recounted the story of the Cartwrights, a fictional family of ranchers living in the mid-1800s, near Virginia City, Nevada, an actual mining boomtown. The Cartwrights were an all-male family headed by Ben (played by Lorne Greene), thrice a widower with a son from each marriage: Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker), and Little Joe (Michael Landon). Adam, the eldest, was serious and responsible, while Hoss was gregarious and oafish, and Little Joe was rashly romantic. The plot in the early seasons often stemmed from personality conflicts between the brothers, but the show’s drama eventually turned toward issues pertaining to mining and managing the Cartwright ranch, the Ponderosa. Often, the Cartwrights were called on to deal with threatening outsiders and to restore peace.
Roberts left Bonanza in 1965, but the popularity of the show, now with only two sons, remained undiminished. However, the unexpected death of Blocker in 1972 left a bigger hole, and Bonanza ended one season later.
Although Bonanza adhered to many genre conventions, it appealed to general audiences by also avoiding some of those conventions. Whereas westerns often featured gunslingers roaming the prairie, the Cartwrights were landowners, tethered to the Ponderosa, and fixtures of the community. Rather than settle disputes solely through shoot-outs and show downs, the Cartwrights also employed diplomacy and dialogue.
Three later TV movies (Bonanza: The Next Generation [1988], Bonanza: The Return [1993], and Bonanza: Under Attack [1995]) featured children of the original cast. A prequel series, Ponderosa (2001–02), chronicled the founding of the Ponderosa ranch.
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2a35b01cfbdcd82a6b140dfec40d6035 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Boneland | Boneland | Boneland
…final installment of the trilogy, Boneland, which details the adult Colin’s quest to find his sister. The books draw on such mythological motifs as the “sleeping king,” a legendary hero waiting to be awakened in a time of crisis, and the “wild hunt,” a group of ghastly riders condemned to…
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775a22b7a1b3c804d83f9629598540db | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bonifacius-or-Essays-to-Do-Good | Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good | Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good
His book, Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good (1710), instructs others in humanitarian acts, some ideas being far ahead of his time: the schoolmaster to reward instead of punish his students, the physician to study the state of mind of his patient as a probable cause of…
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52809140d3445aa9cffc35c667dec3d9 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2020/07/14/check-out-these-amazing-images-of-comet-neowise-taken-from-around-the-world/ | Check Out These Amazing Images Of Comet Neowise Taken From Around The World | Check Out These Amazing Images Of Comet Neowise Taken From Around The World
Comet Neowise seen behind an Orthodox church over the Turets, Belarus on Tuesday, July 14, 2020 ... [+] (photo by Sergei Grits). ASSOCIATED PRESS
Every once in a while we are treated to a fantastic occurrence on Earth, when a comet springs into view in our night sky. And right now, there’s a particularly awesome comet putting on a show – Comet Neowise.
Since early July the comet has been visible in the northern hemisphere about an hour after sunset and before sunrise. While best views of the comet are seen through binoculars or a telescope, it is now bright enough to be seen with the naked eye too.
As a result we’ve been seeing plenty of fascinating photos of the comet from around the world, with its bright head (or nucleus) and tail of dust and gas clearly visible streaming behind it. Many are calling this one of the greatest comets of the 21st Century, and it’s not done yet.
Comet shining above Gran Sasso d'Italia pick (Corno Grande), in L'Aquila, Italy, on July 7, 2020. ... [+] (Photo by Lorenzo Di Cola) NurPhoto via Getty Images
HARBIN, CHINA - JULY 9, 2020 - Comet neowise (C / 2020 F3) was observed. Harbin City, Heilongjiang ... [+] Province, China, July 9, 2020. Barcroft Media via Getty Images
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In this image released by NASA, Comet Neowise, left, is seen in the eastern horizon above Earth in ... [+] this image taken from the International Space Station on Sunday, July 5, 2020. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Comet Neowise seen before sunrise behind the castle Neuschwanstein on July 14 2020 in Bavaria, ... [+] Schwangau (photoby Karl-Josef Hildenbrand). dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Comets become visible when they approach our Sun on their long orbits. As they get closer they are heated up, releasing some of their trapped ices and material into space, and forming long tails that can extend for millions of even billions of kilometers.
Comet Neowise, discovered in March 2020, takes several thousand years to orbit the Sun. It was discovered as it was making its way into the Solar System, making its closest approach to the Sun on July 3.
It is now on its way out, and will make its closest approach to Earth on July 23 at a distance of 104 million kilometers – not returning for about 6,800 years.
Comet Neowise seen above Salgotarjan, Hungary, early Friday, July 10, 2020 (photo byPeter Komka). ASSOCIATED PRESS
Comet Neowise or C/2020 F3 is seen before sunrise over Balatonmariafurdo, Hungary, Tuesday, July 14, ... [+] 2020 (photo by Gyorgy Varga). ASSOCIATED PRESS
C/2020 F3 (Neowise) comet shining above Santa Maria della Pietà Church in Rocca Calascio, L'Aquila, ... [+] Italy, on July 11, 2020 (photo by Lorenzo Di Cola). NurPhoto via Getty Images
Comet Neowise seen above the mountain of Montserrat, near Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, on July 9, ... [+] 2020 (photo by Albert Llop). NurPhoto via Getty Images
As a result, the comet is likely to get brighter in our skies and more visible over the next few days. While it is now too low on the horizon to see in the morning for most, by July 19 it will be up to 20 degrees above the northwest Horizon about 80 minutes after sunset, prime time for viewing.
People often refer to extremely bright comets as “comets of the century”. The last one to be unequivocally classed as such was Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, one of the brightest comets seen in our skies for decades.
Comet Neowise passes St Mary's Lighthouse in Whitley Bay in the early hours of Tuesday morning ... [+] (photo by Owen Humphreys). PA Images via Getty Images
Comet NEOWISE seen in the night sky over Ryazan in Russia. Alexander Ryumin/TASS
Comet Neowise is visible in the night sky above Saltburn pier on July 13, 2020 in Saltburn By The ... [+] Sea, England (photo by Ian Forsyth). Getty Images
Comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) shining at sunset above the Port of Molfetta in Molfetta on July 11, 2020 ... [+] (photo by Davide Pischettola). NurPhoto via Getty Images
Since then we’ve had a number of false dawns, as comets approached the Sun and looked like they might be quite bright before breaking apart. We have had a few bright visitors though, such as Comet McNaught in 2007.
While Comet Neowise probably isn’t bright enough to declare it a “Great Comet” just yet, it is still a sight to behold in the sky. So if you get a chance these next few days, make sure you head outside and see if you can grab a glimpse of our cosmic visitor.
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1c68e27ee6528145755183d3bab2b9c0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2020/07/31/amazon-is-going-to-add-3000-more-satellites-into-earths-orbit--and-people-are-not-happy/?sh=2b71e797628d | Amazon Is Going To Add 3,000 More Satellites Into Earth’s Orbit – And People Are Not Happy | Amazon Is Going To Add 3,000 More Satellites Into Earth’s Orbit – And People Are Not Happy
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will go head-to-head with SpaceX's Elon Musk in the space internet battle. AFP via Getty Images
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved an application by Seattle-based Amazon to launch more than 3,000 satellites into orbit, despite ongoing concerns about launching so-called mega constellations.
Yesterday, Thursday, July 30, five FCC commissioners voted unaminaously to approve Amazon’s Project Kuiper – a mega constellation of 3,236 satellites that will orbit Earth, designed to beam internet to the ground.
Amazon – owned by U.S. entrepreneur Jeff Bezos – will be required to launch half their satellites by 2026, and the rest by 2029, as per the FCC’s authorization.
“We conclude that grant of Kuiper’s application would advance the public interest by authorizing a system designed to increase the availability of high-speed broadband service to consumers, government, and businesses,” the FCC wrote in its authorization for the satellites.
The company hopes to provide internet access around the world via its satellites. Getty Images
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Project Kuiper is Amazon’s entrant into the race for space internet, competing with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, the recently revived U.K.-based OneWeb, and several other players. Amazon asked the FCC for permission to launch its satellites back in July 2019.
The goal is to blanket Earth in satellites in low orbits, which will them beam the internet to ground stations that people can connect to, including from remote locations that might not otherwise have internet access. Amazon’s satellites will orbit between 590 and 630 kilometers, as per the FCC authorization.
In a statement, Amazon said it intended to invest “more than $10 billion” in Project Kuiper. “There are still too many places where broadband access is unreliable or where it doesn’t exist at all,” Dave Limp, Senior Vice President at Amazon, said in the statement. “Kuiper will change that.”
However, there are significant concerns about launching such large numbers of satellites into orbit, such as the risk of collisions between satellites, which could be disastrous.
Currently only about 2,000 active satellites orbit Earth, but SpaceX alone plans to increase this by up to 42,000 with its Starlink constellation, coupled with thousands more from Amazon, OneWeb, and others.
When satellites get too close to each other, they must move out of the way to avoid a potential collision. Currently these maneuvers, known as a collision avoidance maneuver, are performed three times a day. Estimates suggest this will increase to eight an hour if all planned mega constellations are launched.
If two satellites collide, they can produce thousands of pieces of debris that can potentially hit other satellites. In 2009, for example, an active U.S. satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite, creating a large cloud of dangerous debris.
In a worst case scenario, one collision could start a chain reaction of collisions, leading to cascades of space junk as more and more satellites collide. Known as the Kessler syndrome, this would potentially leave parts of Earth orbit unusuable.
In its FCC authorization, Amazon noted it would attempt to deorbit satellites within 355 days of the end of their mission, “a shorter time frame than the 25-year standard established by NASA,” to tackle the issue of space debirs.
However, there was no mention of how the satellites will be deorbited in the event of failure. And satellites are prone to failure, remaining in orbit for tens of even hundreds of years until they are pulled back into the atmosphere.
Equally concerning is the impact these satellites can have on the night sky. Already SpaceX has had a large amount of backlash for the brightness of its Starlink satellites, which have impacted the night sky for astronomers and the general public alike. The company has belatedly tried to address these concerns.
Amazon has not revealed how bright its satellites might be, nor what sort of impact they might have on the sky. The FCC did, however, ask Amazon to consider the impact of its satellites on radio astronomy.
Nonetheless, there will be concerns about yet another constellation of satellites that astronomers will have to contend with in their efforts to study the universe, potentially forever altering the aesthetic of the night sky for many.
Project Kuiper is not the only mega constellation in development. Indeed, SpaceX has already launched hundreds of Starlink satellites, and OneWeb has launched dozens of its own.
But the emergence of another mega constellation, when issues regarding space debris and astronomy are yet to be resolved, will be worrisome to many. In the pursuit of slightly faster rural internet from space, there remain serious and legitimate concerns that could have impacts for generations.
Amazon did not respond to a request to comment for this article.
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949bd66c28eb0dd96922b69d4baf48e3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/02/02/spacex-launches-starship-on-its-latest-test-flight-but-doesnt-quite-stick-the-landing-again-despite-violating-faa-rules/ | SpaceX Launches Its Starship SN9 Prototype On Latest Test Flight, Despite Violating FAA Rules | SpaceX Launches Its Starship SN9 Prototype On Latest Test Flight, Despite Violating FAA Rules
SN9 lifted off with its successor, SN10, sitting alongside. SpaceX
Elon Musk's company SpaceX has launched its latest Mars prototype rocket, Starship, on a second high-altitude test – after it emerged they had launched a previous prototype without approval last year.
Today, Tuesday, February 2, at 3.25 P.M. Eastern Time, the company's “SN9” – or Serial Number 9 – prototype lifted off from a test site in Boca Chica, Texas.
The vehicle, shaped like a rocket plucked out of science fiction, rose into the sky with the help of its three methane-fueled Raptor engines.
It took several minutes for it to reach its maximum altutide, expected to be about 10 kilometers, where it then performed a brief "hover".
Then it fell back to Earth as planned, performing a “belly flop” maneuver to simulate a return through Earth’s atmosphere on future missions to space.
However, while intended to then flip back vertical and reignite its engines to land back on the ground, it wasn't able to slow its descent fast enough.
Instead, it came in for a crash landing about six minutes and 26 seconds after launching, exploding as it hit the ground.
Starship SN9 wasn't quite able to land, instead exploding as it hit the ground. SpaceX
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The flight mimicked that of its predecessor, SN8, which conducted the first high-altitude Starship test flight in December 2020.
SpaceX has been building progressively advanced iterations of Starship, which is ultimately designed to take humans to Mars.
The 50-meter-tall steel vehicle will launch on top of a large booster rocket, called Super Heavy, for these missions.
Both are reusable and designed to land back on the ground following each flight.
Musk has been quick to point out that these are very much test flights at the moment, and failures (including explosive crash landings) are expected.
While flights for now are uncrewed, SpaceX hopes to start launching humans later this decade, up to 100 per vehicle, possibly including missions to the Moon.
Musk's ultimate goal, though, is to use the vehicle – which has the same pressurized volume as the International Space Station (ISS) – to settle humans on Mars.
The vehicle descended with a "belly flop" to simulate a return from space. SpaceX
Today's launch had been delayed from last week, however, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had opened an investigation into SpaceX following its previous SN8 flight.
Musk was not happy with the delay, accusing the FAA's licensing process for space launches as being "fundamentally broken".
Yet today it emerged that SpaceX had launched SN8 without authorization, after the FAA had raised safety concerns.
"Prior to the Starship SN8 test launch in December 2020, SpaceX sought a waiver to exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal safety regulations," an FAA spokesperson said in a statement.
"After the FAA denied the request, SpaceX proceeded with the flight.
"As a result of this non-compliance, the FAA required SpaceX to conduct an investigation of the incident."
Musk accused the FAA's licensing process of being "fundamentally broken" last week. Getty Images
Responding to the statement, several experts noted that SpaceX had set a dangerous precedent by launching without a license – and expressed concern they had not been penalized.
"I am just in complete shock that a licensee has violated a launch license and there seems to be no repercussions," Jared Zambrano-Stout, the former Chief of Staff for the National Space Council, said on Twitter.
"If the FAA does not enforce their launch licenses, it will damage the long-term viability of the launch industry."
And Brian Weeden, a space policy analyst from the Secure World Foundation, noted it was "not what I would call responsible behavior".
SN9's predecessor, SN8, was launched on December 9, 2020. SpaceX
It's unclear what the fallout from the SN8 incident will be, if anything.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment on its violation of its FAA launch license. The FAA did not clarify why they had not penalized SpaceX.
But for the time being, SpaceX is pressing ahead, with the FAA now seemingly satisfied with its immediate plans for Starship.
Whether the crash landing of SN9 today will have any impact remains to be seen, but SpaceX will be keen to move onto its next prototype, SN10, as soon as possible.
And, while many are hoping the company succeeds in its lofty goals, there will also be a hope that they play by the rules, with SN8 being an exception instead of the norm.
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7b230004c6faf402a7a55df4c2f33a6d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/02/25/check-out-this-amazing-hd-panorama-of-mars-from-nasas-perseverance-rover/?via=indexdotco | Check Out This Amazing HD Panorama Of Mars From NASA’s Perseverance Rover | Check Out This Amazing HD Panorama Of Mars From NASA’s Perseverance Rover
The panorama is made up of 142 individual images. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
The verdict is in – and NASA’s Perseverance rover is a hit.
Having touched down on Mars in the Jezero Crater last week on Thursday, February 18, this plucky robotic explorer has captured the hearts and minds of the world.
Following its dramatic descent to the surface, complete with stunning first-of-its-kind footage, we also learned about a mysterious message in its parachute.
Now that the rover is on the surface, however, it is already busy getting to work, using its camera to take images of its surroundings.
And yesterday, Wednesday, February 24, NASA released the first 360-degree panorama from the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, situated at the top of the rover’s neck, called its mast.
You can view the image right here.
The level of detail in the panorama is pretty astounding. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
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It was made using 142 images from the camera, revealed details on the crater rim and the nearby ancient river delta that Perseverance will study for signs of past life on Mars.
The image is zoomable, allowing you to take a detailed look at Perseverance’s immediate location on Mars, where it will spend another week or so.
The camera is able to see objects as small as 0.1 to 0.2 inches (3 to 5 millimeters) near the rover, and 6.5 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) in the distance.
The rim of Jezero Crater seen in the distance. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU
This was the rover’s second panorama, after a previous one captured by its Navigation Cameras – or Navcams, also located on the Mast, said NASA.
But it was the first high-definition panorama from the rover, with Mastcam-Z having a higher resolution than the Navcams.
This allowed the rover to spot some intriguing features, such as a “wind-carved rock” located nearby that looked particularly interesting.
“We’re nestled right in a sweet spot, where you can see different features similar in many ways to features found by Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity at their landing sites,” Jim Bell from Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, the lead on the Mastcam-Z instrument, said in a statement.
The rover spotted an odd rock nearby, carved by Martian wind. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU
The rover will continue running through some checks in the forthcoming days, perhaps taking its first drive relatively soon.
Then, in March, it will drive to a nearby location to deploy a helicopter on the surface, called Ingenuity, to perform the first attempt at flight on another world.
After that, the main science mission can begin, with the rover beginning its studies of the surface to look for evidence of fossilised Martian microbial life.
It’s a two-Earth-year mission that will also see the rover monitor the Martian weather, attempt to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, and look for water-ice under the surface.
So, for the time being, you can maybe forgive it for taking a moment to relax at its landing site and bask in its Martian surroundings.
Thankfully, we get to do the same thanks to its cameras. If you want to pore through more images from the rover, you can do so right here.
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08a40219003e62e0de04bb7acb51e6db | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/03/01/rocket-lab-to-build-neutron-mega-constellation-rocket--that-can-also-launch-humans/ | Rocket Lab To Build Neutron ‘Mega Constellation Rocket’ – That Can Also Launch Humans | Rocket Lab To Build Neutron ‘Mega Constellation Rocket’ – That Can Also Launch Humans
Beck, with a scale model of the Neutron rocket's nosecone. Rocket Lab
The New Zealand-based firm Rocket Lab says it is developing a rocket designed to launch satellites into so-called mega constellations, beginning in 2024 – with human launches also planned at a later date.
Today, Monday, 1 March, the company revealed its “Neutron” rocket, a medium-class launch vehicle that can lift up to 8,000 kilograms (eight tonnes) into orbit, comparable to Russia’s Soyuz rocket.
The two-stage vehicle will be 40 meters (131 feet) tall, more than double the company’s existing Electron rocket, which measures 18 meters (60 feet) tall and has so far flown 97 satellites across 18 launches.
Peter Beck, the company’s CEO, says this will make the rocket particularly suited to launch multiple satellites into constellations, expected to dominate the launch market in the coming years.
“It’s blatantly obvious that an alternative is needed to launch all the mega constellations that are planned in the next decade,” says Beck.
“So there’s a real gap in the market for a vehicle that is purpose-built and the right size for just delivering these.”
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The rocket will have a 4.5-meter (14.7 feet) diameter fairing (or nosecone) to carry stacks of satellites on single launches.
Mega constellations are large groups of satellites designed for a number of purposes in orbit, such as space internet.
The most notable is SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, a planned group of up to 42,000 satellites designed to beam the internet to Earth from space.
However, while SpaceX launches its satellites on its own Falcon 9 rocket in batches of 60, other companies also have plans for their own constellations.
“Take the Telesat constellation, it’s 700 kilograms per satellite, 20 orbital planes, and 11 satellites per plane,” says Beck. “It’s eight tonnes per plane, basically.”
Neutron will be more than twice the height of Electron. Rocket Lab
Yet these constellations are controversial, both vastly increasing the amount of satellites and debris in orbit, and also causing problems for astronomy by altering the natural beauty of the night sky.
A rocket purpose-built for such constellations might therefore be cause for concern for some people, and Beck says they would encourage sustainable use of Earth orbit as much as possible.
“We are very strong supporters of global regulation and global discussion on what we need to do here,” he says.
With its Electron and Neutron vehicles, Rocket Lab says it will be able to launch 98 percent of all types of satellites set to launch by 2029, barring only the largest satellites.
Neutron will use the same fuel as Electron, a mix of liquid oxygen and kerosene, but will use an as-yet unnamed successor to Electron’s Rutherford engines.
The first stage of the two-stage rocket will be reusable. Rocket Lab
What’s more, however, while Electron is designed only for satellite launches, Beck says Neutron will be designed with a much more precious cargo ultimately in mind – humans.
“When you develop a vehicle of this class, it would be remiss not to have that in your plate,” says Beck.
“Making it human certifiable from day one is the prudent thing to do.”
The company has not yet started working on the spacecraft that might sit on top of the rocket, nor has it said how many people could launch per mission.
But possible destinations might include the International Space Station (ISS), or perhaps private space stations placed in orbit.
“We don’t know how the industry’s going to play out,” says Beck. “There’s great potential and huge opportunities.”
A target date for the company’s first planned human spaceflight launch has not yet been announced.
Rocket Lab has launched 18 Electron rockets to date. Rocket Lab/Trevor Mahlmann
Rocket Lab, which also announced it would be merging with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), also revealed plans to make Neutron reusable.
The rocket will be designed to land on an ocean platform, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets.
The company has begun to make its Electron rockets reusable, but uses a parachute to return them, with a helicopter then intended to grab them mid-air.
Neutron, instead, will use its own engines to come back in for a landing.
“It will be a propulsive landing,” says Beck, but notes some people “might be pleasantly surprised by our unique approach,” without going into further detail.
The company recovered one of its Electron rockets for the first time in November 2020. Rocket Lab
The company has yet to announce a cost for a launch of Neutron (Electron launches are priced at $7 million).
But the aim is to offer an attractive alternative to larger rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
Rocket Lab initially plans to launch Neutron in 2024 from a launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, rather than its New Zealand-based launch site where all Electron launches so far have taken place from.
Future launches could take place from other launch sites outside Virginia though, says Beck.
Aside from mega constellation satellites and human launches, the company says Neutron could be used for a lot of other purposes too, including perhaps interplanetary missions to the Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Neutron has a lifting capacity of 2,000 kilograms to the Moon and 1,500 kilograms to Mars and Venus.
The company's own small spacecraft, Photon, is designed to reach other worlds. Rocket Lab
“We’ve got a mission to the Moon for NASA launching later this year on Electron, we have missions to Mars, and of course our own private mission to Venus,” says Beck.
“Interplanetary science is an area we feel very strongly about.”
And Beck isn’t ruling out the possibilities of perhaps an even larger vehicle in future beyond Neutron – having agreed to eat a hat on camera after once saying Rocket Lab would never build a vehicle larger than Electron.
“I’m never going to say we’re not going to build a bigger rocket again,” Beck says, noting the hat tasted “bloody terrible.”
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ca355350da883f15e5e5838bcb50be5e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/03/03/third-times-the-charm--spacex-launches-and-lands-starship-mars-prototype-in-major-first-before-it-explodes-again/ | ‘Third Time’s The Charm!’ – SpaceX Launches And Lands Starship Mars Prototype In Major First, Before Dramatic Explosion | ‘Third Time’s The Charm!’ – SpaceX Launches And Lands Starship Mars Prototype In Major First, Before Dramatic Explosion
This was the first time a Starship vehicle had landed from high altitude. SpaceX
In a major milestone, Elon Musk's company SpaceX has successfully landed its Starship vehicle from high-altitude for the first time, as it continues its efforts to launch humans to Mars.
But it experienced a dramatic explosion shortly after landing.
Today, Wednesday, March 3 at 6.14 P.M. Eastern Time, the company’s latest Starship prototype lifted off from the company’s test site in Boca Chica, Texas.
The methane-powered rocket, designed to one day carry humans but uncrewed on this launch, then used its three Raptor engines to climb to a height of around 10 kilometers.
After a brief hover the vehicle then began its descent back to Earth, flipping to perform a horizontal “belly flop” and simulate a future return from space.
The vehicle lifted off as planned once again. SpaceX
As it approached the ground, it flipped back to a vertical position and reignited its engines to attempt a landing.
In the past few months, the company has tried and failed to launch and land Starship on two high-altitude tests, with those previous SN8 and SN9 prototypes crash-landing on both occasions.
This time, however, everything went relatively smoothly. Slightly more than six minutes after launching, the vehicle was back safely on Earth – heralding a crucial step in a new era of human spaceflight.
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“Third time’s the charm!” SpaceX engineer John Insprucker commentated in the company’s live stream of the flight.
You can rewatch the action unfold below.
However, about 10 minutes after landing, when SpaceX’s live stream had ended, the vehicle was caught on camera by other observers suddenly exploding.
The cause of this subsequent explosion is not yet clear.
It did appear that the vehicle did not properly deploy its landing legs for the touchdown, while a small fire also broke out at its base after the landing.
And so, while the test itself will be deemed a success, there are clearly a few issues that still need to be ironed out with the vehicle.
Starship is SpaceX’s 50-meter tall reusable experimental vehicle designed to one day take humans to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System.
It will launch on top of a large reusable booster called Super Heavy, the two of them stacking up to 120 meters high, for launches to space from Earth.
Together they would be the largest rocket ever flown in history.
SN10 touched down, although its landing legs didn't appear to deploy properly. SpaceX
In order to reach that goal, SpaceX has been building Starship prototypes in increasing complexity, with today’s flight being “serial number 10” – or SN10.
Their last launch, SN9, saw the vehicle launch and climb to about 12 kilometers before falling back to Earth, ultimately exploding on the ground in a failed landing attempt.
But Musk has been very vocal about how these prototypes are designed to potentially fail, as the company focuses more on rapid iterations than perfecting each one.
SN10, however, seemed to go almost entirely as planned.
About 10 minutes after landing, the vehicle suddenly exploded. SpaceX
“The key point of today’s test flight was to gather data on controlling the vehicle while re-entering, and we were successful in doing so,” said Insprucker.
“We had a nominal ascent, we had a maneuver to place Starship horizontal, and during the subsonic entry it appears we had good control on re-entry using the front and aft flaps.
“As we approached the landing pad, we successfully lit the three Raptor engines to perform that flip maneuver, and then we shut down two of them and landed on a single engine as planned.
“A beautiful soft landing of Starship on the landing pad of Boca Chica.”
Few, despite the subsequent explosion, could argue with that.
Now, SpaceX will continue with its testing phase, as it moves towards launching Starship to space for the first time later this year.
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9cb0a5662393ac638193cdbd6a886521 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2021/03/30/a-full-moon-helped-to-free-the-stuck-boat-from-the-suez-canal/?sh=1d6aa90961a7 | A Full Moon Helped To Finally Free The Stuck Boat ‘Ever Given’ From The Suez Canal | A Full Moon Helped To Finally Free The Stuck Boat ‘Ever Given’ From The Suez Canal
The boat had been stuck for a week, blocking all trade along the canal. DigitalGlobe/Getty Images
Rising tides from a full Moon provided the Ever Given the breathing room it needed to escape from its stuck position in the Suez Canal, according to reports.
Since Tuesday, March 23, the boat – owned by the Taiwanese company Evergreen Marine – had been wedged into the side of the Suez Canal, possibly due to high winds, blocking crucial maritime traffic between Asia and Europe.
It is estimated that $9.6 billion of trade per day was being held up as a result.
Yet thankfully, traffic resumed yesterday, Monday, March 29 when the 1,300-foot-long ship was finally freed by hard-working salvage crews. But there was another important player to thank, too:
The Moon.
While a fleet of tugboats had been crucial in pulling the boat to safety, a particularly strong tide – resulting from the gravitational effect of our giant natural satellite – was also vital.
The high tide rising at noon helped to push the back of the vessel, while boats pulled from the front, with the ship’s bow eventually breaking free of the river bank.
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“We were helped enormously by the strong falling tide we had this afternoon,” said Peter Berdowski, CEO of the firm Boskalis that assisted in the salvage efforts, told Dutch radio station NPO 1.
“In effect, you have the forces of nature pushing hard with you and they pushed harder than the two sea tugs could pull.”
It wasn’t just any Moon that played a part, however, but a “supermoon” – when a full Moon occurs at its closest point to Earth, coupled with a full Moon, where the alignment of the Sun also leads to more extreme tides.
Tides are caused by the Moon’s gravity pulling Earth towards it; as Earth rotates, it “bulges” towards the Moon, causing the seas to rise and fall.
But the Moon’s orbit around Earth is not perfectly circular, fluctuating between about 360,000 and 410,000 kilometers.
While negligible, at its closest point the Moon exerts a slightly stronger gravitational pull on Earth – known as a supermoon – and also appears marginally brighter in the sky.
And it was this event, the first supermoon of 2021, that ultimately helped free the Ever Given. The Moon was full on Sunday, March 28, reaching its closest point (perigee) to Earth on Tuesday, March 30.
Bless you, oh great floating space rock. AFP via Getty Images
“The salvage team pinned their hopes on this week’s full moon, when, beginning Sunday, water levels were set to rise a foot-and-a-half higher than normal high tides,” reported The Wall Street Journal.
The effect lasted just a few days, but it was enough to free the boat and reopen the Suez Canal after it had remained blocked for a week.
As of Monday evening, traffic was flowing once again along the canal. And while there are countless humans to thank, a hunk of rock likely formed billions of years ago from our very planet itself may have had a pretty major part to play, too.
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81fbc619244de9c803626c6d77db02e6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2018/01/31/ebay-hitting-all-time-highs-in-after-hours-trading-on-q4-results-and-stubhub-gains/ | eBay Sidelines PayPal By Penning Deal With New Payment Processor | eBay Sidelines PayPal By Penning Deal With New Payment Processor
San Jose-based eBay reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2017 on Wednesday, Jan. 31.
After posting a strong fourth-quarter performance, eBay led its Wednesday afternoon earnings call by announcing that it's penned a deal to add Netherlands-based Adyen as the primary payment processor for its online marketplace — a move that sidelines the Silicon Valley giant's longtime payment partner and former subsidiary, PayPal.
Wenig: We have made the decision to intermediate payments on $eBay. We have already begun building this capability, and will move as quickly as we can under the terms of our operating agreement with PayPal. pic.twitter.com/qDp3mDmBVx — eBay Newsroom (@eBayNewsroom) January 31, 2018
In the call, eBay said its operating agreement with PayPal remains in place until mid-2020, and that the two firms have discussed terms for a new deal, which will keep PayPal as a form of payment on eBay's marketplace through July 2023. eBay said its decision to intermediate payments will lower sellers' costs and broaden their reach by giving consumers more options at checkout.
Ahead of the announcement, eBay reported fourth-quarter net income after the closing bell of $618 million, or 59 cents per share — falling in line with Wall Street estimates and up about 3% from a year ago. The figure doesn't include a $3.1 billion tax charge, attributed to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that translated to a $2.6 billion GAAP loss from continuing operations.
The firm’s revenue also met analyst expectations, climbing 8.8% from last year to hit $2.61 billion in the quarter.
PayPal stock plunged on the news, at one point shedding more than 11% within the hour. eBay stock, on the other hand, was rising as much as 7% in after-hours trading following the announcement. Shares closed Wednesday at $40.58, up about 27% from a year ago.
PayPal, which split from its eBay parent in 2015, also reported fourth-quarter financials on Wednesday. The San Jose payments firm beat out Wall Street's top- and bottom-line estimates and saw revenue spike to $3.7 billion, translating to growth of 24% last quarter. Its market capitalization currently stands at $102.6 billion, compared to an eBay market cap of $42.4 billion.
On eBay Earnings & StubHub Gains:
“Q4 was a record quarter for eBay, representing the fifth quarter in a row of volume acceleration in our US Marketplace,” said Devin Wenig, eBay's president and CEO, in a statement released alongside earnings. “We have made great progress transforming eBay while delivering meaningful growth and we expect further acceleration in 2018 as we continue to execute our strategy.”
Meanwhile, the Marketplace segment, which consistently drives the majority of eBay's top line, saw its transaction revenue hit $1.7 billion in the quarter, rising 8% and matching growth from last quarter. Transaction revenue from StubHub jumped 12% to $306 million after two quarters of light growth for the ticket marketplace.
Wenig said at a Nasdaq conference last month that the firm was eyeing opportunity for StubHub growth abroad, as well as domestically in hyperlocal markets focusing on community events. The eBay subsidiary and longtime secondary ticket market could also see a bigger push as a primary marketplace. “StubHub is a secondary market, but the fact is, the distinction for fans between primary and secondary isn't all that meaningful... Increasingly we are seeing the blurring of those lines, and I do think that the market is right for disruption," Wenig added, pointing to a recently landed partnership with the Philadelphia 76ers.
At the conference, Wenig also discussed how to assess an e-commerce firm's performance in the changing retail landscape of today, saying: “The one formula in e-commerce that matters more than any is whether your cost of customer acquisition is higher or lower than your lifetime value with that customer."
On that front, eBay reported 170 million active buyers in the quarter, up 5% from last year. The firm saw its GMV, or gross merchandise volume, for both StubHub and Marketplace jump 10% to $24.4 billion, led by a 16% jump in StubHub transaction volume. Last quarter, the firm posted GMV, which is the total volume of merchandise sales on a platform, of $21.7 billion. Those revenue and user gains coincided with modest cost increases. The firm recorded a near-12% jump in total operating expenses of $1.4 billion that included $689 million in sales and marketing, up 13% from last year.
The average of available analyst estimates pin the price of eBay shares just above their Wednesday close at $41.13. Analysts are slightly positive on the stock, with Credit Suisse maintaining its outperform rating for eBay shares on Jan. 24 and SunTrust upgrading the stock to buy earlier this month.
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8ed50b7d6c6f9830ca86cf4c98e96e6f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/10/19/netflix-earnings-5-numbers-growth-continues-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/?sh=652ed816225e | 5 Big Numbers That Show Netflix's Massive Growth Continues During The Coronavirus Pandemic | 5 Big Numbers That Show Netflix's Massive Growth Continues During The Coronavirus Pandemic
Photo Illustration by Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto via Getty Images NurPhoto via Getty Images
A controversial movie release and weaker-than-anticipated growth projections for the third quarter have barely stunted Netflix's NFLX surge this year. Though they took a small hit amid the broader market's September correction–after an all-time Netflix high in late August–shares of the Los Gatos, California-based firm are once again nearing peak levels. With the firm set to report earnings Tuesday after the market close, here are five numbers that show just how much the firm has dominated entertainment in the pandemic age.
$235 Billion
That's Netflix's market capitalization the day before it's set to release third-quarter earnings. It's up nearly $100 billion in 2020 alone, making the 23-year-old streaming giant one of the 20 largest companies on the S&P 500 by market cap–ahead of even media mainstays like Walt Disney DIS , Comcast CMCSA and AT&T.
60%
Netflix shares have soared more than 60% since the beginning of the year. To compare, the S&P 500 is up just 6.5% in 2020. The firm's billionaire cofounder and CEO, Reed Hastings, has gotten nearly $2 billion during the pandemic. The 60-year-old, who launched Netflix as a DVD subscription service in 1997 and owns roughly 1% of its shares, is now worth about $5.4 billion.
195 Million
That's the number of paid subscribers analysts expect Netflix will report on Tuesday, up 2.5 million quarter to quarter and in line with the firm's latest guidance. Netflix said in July that it added 26 million subscribers during the first half of the year (10 million in the first quarter and nearly 16 million in the second) as homebound consumers facing government-mandated quarantine orders turned to the streaming giant–and away from movie theaters and live shows–for entertainment. That increase could even prove conservative, noted investment research firm CFRA on Monday, reiterating its buy rating on Netflix shares and adding that the firm could be bolstered by an increase in subscribers from international markets.
$6.4 Billion
Analysts are expecting Netflix will pull nearly $6.4 billion in third-quarter revenues, up more than 20% from the same period last year. The company's also expected to report earnings of about $2.13 per share, down from $1.47 per share last year on heightened costs amid the pandemic.
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$670
That's the price target Bank of America BAC issued on Friday for Netflix, up nearly 17% from a prior target of $575 and representing the highest Netflix price target on Wall Street. Despite near-term uncertainties around second-half subscriber growth–and a highly criticized movie release, Bank of America said it continues to see the acceleration in Netflix subscriber growth during the first half of the year as a "permanent benefit." Netflix's average price target from 39 analysts covering its stock is about $527–within 1% of current prices.
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5b501a2882adbbff6aff2790b6299f7f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanrefoy/2014/09/25/delivering-responsible-capitalism-the-growth-of-employee-ownership/ | Delivering Responsible Capitalism - The Growth Of Employee Ownership | Delivering Responsible Capitalism - The Growth Of Employee Ownership
The financial crisis of 2008 and the post Lehman Brothers abyss led to many calls from politicians and commentators in the media for new forms of capitalism and a move to responsible capitalism, and a rebalancing of economies. As part of this debate, greater diversity in companies and especially boardrooms, a move towards social enterprise and social value, as well as alternative business models such as mutuals and employee ownership, have increasingly attracted attention.
The profile of employee owned businesses has increased greatly in recent years, not only in the UK, but also in the US and Europe. The fact the number of employee owned businesses are rising at an annual rate of nearly ten per cent in the UK and over six per cent in the US highlights how this business model is moving from being on the periphery of the corporate world to a viable choice for company ownership which many firms are considering. In the UK, the employee owned sector contributed over £30bn to the UK economy annually, around 4 per cent of GDP (EOA 2012) with sales revenue of the top 50 UK employee owned companies increasing by 4.6 per cent year on year.
With figures like these the business community is starting to pay more attention, but the employee ownership model has also increased its focus and support from governments, particularly in the UK. Following the publication of the Nuttall Review in July 2012 which highlighted that giving employees a stake in the business they work for can help companies to be more successful, the UK Government announced a raft of measures to incentivise the adoption of employee ownership as a business model.
As of 1 October 2014, the UK will see new tax incentives come into force as part of the Government’s Finance Bill seeking to help boost the number of employee owned businesses in the country. The new legislation will introduce a relief from Capital Gains Tax for employee owned firms, and exempt employees’ bonuses from income tax up to a cap of £3,600 per year. The reason for this, the Deputy Prime Minister Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP says, is clear: “staff who have a stake are more motivated and are rewarded for thinking in the long-term [which is] good for business and good for families, as it means lower absenteeism and lower levels of staff turnover.”
A good example of an established UK employee owned company is the retailer John Lewis – the UK's third largest private company. Although one of Britain's largest firms, employing over 90,000 people, it is held up as one of the country's most sustainable and ethical.
Nick Clegg called on more businesses to adopt a "John Lewis-style economy" in order to create a dynamic workforce with higher morale by giving employees a share and a direct input into the company they work for. The likes of John Lewis represent a side of "responsible capitalism" in which companies are not controlled by a small minority of executives; instead ownership and decisions are in the hands of the many – all its employees.
Citing liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, who hoped that employee owned firms could end what he called the "standing feud between capital and labour" Nick Clegg outlined how the UK needs more individuals to have a real stake in their firms in order to further responsible capitalism.
This principle is also echoed in the US, where employee ownership provides workers with a stake in their company and a possible solution to the issue of wage stagnation. In the book, The Citizen’s Share, published last year, authors Joseph Blasi, Douglas L. Kruse, and Richard B. Freeman look into the way owners of businesses in the US are reaping the rewards of economic growth and explore how increasing the number of employees who own a piece of their firm could have a positive impact on the prosperity of the average American worker.
Firms such as the Florida-based grocer Publix, the seventh largest private company in America, and Idaho-based supermarket WinCo are examples of large organisations that operate a form of employee ownership which allows its workers a controlling stake in the business. This not only provides a significant economic boost to its employees when the firm performs well, but also improves employee engagement. Although the US economy is improving, the median wage has not increased for some years. Blasi, Kruse and Freeman suggest a similar approach to that of the UK Government is taking; to introduce tax incentives and the relaxation of state-based restrictions to allow more firms to transfer to an employee ownership model which will help tackle America’s wage stagnation and more importantly allow an increasing number of workers to be lifted out of the residual effects of a recession.
How employee owned businesses are affected during periods of economic recession compared with other business models was reviewed in a report published by the UK Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Cass Business School in 2012.
The report highlighted that performance was much better in employee owned businesses during economic downturns, with employment increasing more than 12.9 per cent in employee owned businesses between 2008 and 2009 compared to only 2.7 per cent for other business models in this period. Many believe this resilience during a financial crisis is down to the long-termism that runs through employee owned companies. Unlike businesses which are traded on the stock market and often focus on short-term growth to boost their investors’ share prices, employee owned businesses allow for a slower, more measured approach which underpins sustainable and stronger growth.
Iain Hasdell, Chief Executive of the Employee Ownership Association (EOA) in the UK, supports this position, stating: "Employee owned businesses think and act for the long-term. As a consequence they achieve higher productivity, profitability and greater levels of innovation than externally owned businesses and are more resilient to economic turbulence. They also have more fulfilled and less stressed workforces.”
The issue of employee fulfilment is an area which can often be overlooked by big corporates who may not see the relevance of this to their bottom line, however the majority of employees who own a stake in their company often cite job satisfaction as one of the reasons for remaining with their organisation. This can be seen in the staff retention rates at employee owned companies which are significantly higher than other business models; for example John Lewis’ annual staff turnover in recent years has been approximately 21 per cent, less than half that of their competitors who experienced turnover between 38 and 43 per cent. This retention of staff not only benefits the company by retaining talent which can prove invaluable when executing longer-term growth plans, it also leads to significant advantages in business performance. According to the joint BIS and Cass Business School report productivity in employee owned firms can be between nine and 19 per cent higher than in businesses with other models of operating. This is helped in part by the sense of teamwork that many workers at employee owned firms believe develops as a consequence of knowing that there is a shared responsibility for business success.
Clearly the wider social value of employee ownership plays a significant role in the long-established or newly converted employee owned firms both in the UK and US, however we will not see companies transitioning to employee ownership in their droves without the necessary financial benefits and incentives it can bring.
Although we are seeing strong, consistent annual growth in the number of companies moving towards employee ownership, figures from the EOA highlight that only four per cent of the UK’s GDP comes from firms which workers own a stake in – a positive news story to highlight the growth of this business model but relatively little in the broader context of the UK economy. For a real difference to be felt by the economies of the UK and US, we need the base of employee owned companies to be expanded considerably to really start tackling the problems of stagnating wages and rising income inequality in the US and to create a more resilient economy in the UK.
With the introduction of new tax incentives in the UK from next month, it is hoped this will act as a catalyst for employee ownership and provide the incentive for many companies on the cusp of transition to this business model. With the number of employee owned businesses growing at an annual rate of just under ten per cent, added to the raft of new government incentives soon to come into force, Iain Hasdell is quietly confident that the EOA target of ten percent of UK GDP being delivered by employee owned businesses by 2020 will be achieved.
If this is the case, we may soon be seeing US companies looking towards to the UK for inspiration and the employee ownership model leading the move to responsible capitalism as well as being recognised as an essential part of a vibrant and balanced economy.
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501b298692049b3419f9c0792211072b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanrupprecht/2018/10/31/ubers-drone-delivery-dreams-face-harsh-legal-and-economic-realities/?fbclid=IwAR26MVBkvKZcrl64lUhxr-mQBoQWVBOU0L-zLbwcZhlq9ocm-nVkFde_ulI | Uber's Drone Delivery Dreams Face Harsh Legal And Economic Realities | Uber's Drone Delivery Dreams Face Harsh Legal And Economic Realities
A man's hand extended toward a drone in Singapore. Photo by Getty Images.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Uber put up a job posting for an executive position at UberExpress, the drone delivery operation within its UberEats food delivery unit, to help get the drones up and running sometime in 2019, with commercial drone delivery of food planned in multiple locations by 2021.
The need for an executive makes sense since Uber is currently a partner with the City of San Diego, which is one of 10 localities that are participating in a federal pilot program to integrate drones into local airspace. Furthermore, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 told the FAA to update the existing regulations, originally designed for manned aircraft, to address under 55-pound drone delivery. Regardless of these two beneficial events, there are at least two major hurdles that UberExpress will face to establish a commercial food drone delivery business: the law and the economics.
The Law: Uber is going to face issues with the federal government as well as the states that the commercial drone delivery services will be offered in. On top of that, some counties, cities, and towns have created laws that could affect the operations as well. For one given flight, you could have federal, state, county, and city laws applying to the flight, some which could even be contradicting each other!
From a federal government standpoint, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is going to be the biggest problem. (Other federal agencies will affect operations, such as Department of Transportation, Federal Communications Commission, etc.) The FAA has two ways of currently allowing companies to get airborne legally: (1) Part 107 and (2) through the rest of the Federal Aviation Regulations while getting special regulatory approvals to operate under alternative restrictions. Yes, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 is trying to make things easier, but the rulemaking process takes time (around 2.5 years from notice of proposed rulemaking to final rule taking effect).
Both of these methods have problems. Part 107 limits the aircraft to the visual line of sight of the pilot flying the drone and prohibits flying over people without a waiver to do so. "Over people" waiver approvals have around a 99% rejection rate from the FAA. Yikes. On top of that, it is regulatory prohibited to obtain a Part 107 waiver to fly beyond line of sight to make a delivery of other people's property!
The other method of operating is under all of the rest of the Federal Aviation Regulations that were originally designed for manned aviation, which is problematic because you have to go through and identify all the problem regulations you cannot easily comply with and then ask for an exemption from the FAA to fly under alternative restrictions. This will be extremely time-consuming and legal-intensive. This method at least offers the ability to fly beyond the line of sight of the pilot, which allows one delivery drone to cover a greater area than Part 107. The exemption method will still have issues with flying over people, avoiding other aircraft, etc., which will all have to be addressed during the exemption process.
From a state and local legal standpoint, UberExpress will take the path of least resistance—but they have to find it first. A good amount of effort will go into just identifying which geographical locations would have the least amount of legal headaches and/or if there is a need to change the law via lobbying or through a lawsuit. Regarding lawsuits, while the law is very clear that aviation is regulated only by the federal government, it can be time-consuming and costly to try and get a court ruling in your favor. But why fight it out with lobbying and lawsuits when some states have wisely created laws that prevent local governments from creating any drone laws. Florida has a drone law that prevents local governments from creating laws "relating to the design, manufacture, testing, maintenance, licensing, registration, certification, or operation of an unmanned aircraft system."
The Economics: There are two important caveats about using drones for delivery: 1) law and safety drive the economics of the aviation industry and 2) operational possibility does not equal operational profitability.
The singular focus of the FAA is on safety. I remember being on the phone one time with an FAA employee in D.C. who emphatically told me, “The FAA is not interested in your business. We only care about safety.” Businesses will do a balancing test to see if the additional levels of safety are really worth the extra costs for the safety increase while the FAA is mostly just doing a safety analysis. A recent National Academies of Science report stated that "operation of UAS has many advantages and may improve the quality of life for people around the world. Avoiding risk entirely by setting the safety target too high creates imbalanced risk decisions and can degrade overall safety and quality of life."
Setting aside the FAA's heavy focus on safety, the regulations limit your operational capability, which means potentially higher infrastructure/operational costs. Part 107 can only allow flights to be flown within line of sight. Even assuming you tried to initially get something going under Part 107, the line-of-sight issue (let's just say you can see the aircraft 1 mile out) will limit the amount of surface area you can cover so you'll need more aircraft...and pilots...and maintenance which means more overhead costs. Obtaining an exemption to fly beyond line-of-sight package delivery is the best option but will be time-consuming and legal-intensive initially, which means those operations will not be happening anytime soon.
On top of regulations limiting operations, they also increase your cost of operations. You have to have certified pilots, aircraft, maintenance schedules, etc. that need to be operated according to aviation standards or some sort of "flavor" of those standards.
While there are many examples on the news showing the possibility of drone delivery, I think the early adopters who succeed at profitable delivery will be in situations where there is delivery of items that are of a low payload weight and the cost of an alternative delivery method is unavailable or costly. A hamburger with fries will be a low payload weight, but is the extra cost of drone delivery worth it to you when the next best alternative is UberEats or some other food delivery service? If cost is not a factor and availability is what you desire (little time to wait or you are in a hard to get to area), then this could be useful.
But why stop with food? UberExpress has the opportunity to expand and provide fast delivery of other low-weight items where availability is an issue, such as medicines or blood to patients with time-sensitive problems.
As Uber navigates the constantly evolving "drone law," they will need to build out operations to benefit from large economies of scale to drive down the operational costs to where the cost of service will be comparable to other alternative methods of delivery already available that have been made efficient through years of experience.
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bfed7016b62fab7ce8c1993ab76d2e77 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanrupprecht/2019/05/15/drone-sabotage-on-saudi-pipeline-facility-raises-concerns/ | Drone Sabotage on Saudi Pipeline Facility Raises Concerns | Drone Sabotage on Saudi Pipeline Facility Raises Concerns
Oil refinery pipeline facilities, closeup of photo Getty
Two pump stations on Saudi Arabia's key East-West pipeline were attacked by armed drones early Tuesday, causing a fire and minor damage. The Saudi Press Agency declared it an "act of terrorism and sabotage," and Houthi militias in Yemen that are backed by Iran claimed responsibility for the attack.
Incidents are mounting of drones produced for civilian use being adapted for violent ends.
One that caught wide attention was an attack on President Maduro of Venezuela where at least one of the drones was caught on camera when it exploded. ISIS has also used drones by dropping a bomb on a Syrian ammo dump and filmed the entire firework show.
Drones have also been used in an attack-method manner to actually prevent harm and destruction by countering in the air incendiary kites and balloons which Palestinians have flown towards Israeli areas to start fires. The Israelis use small first-person-view (FPV) racer drones to kamikaze into the fire kites. Here is footage of the Israeli drones ramming into the Palestinian fire kites.
With the growing use of unmanned aircraft as low cost solutions for sabotage and terrorism, the foremost questions are: (1) How are we going to stay safe and protect ourselves and our infrastructure from those with harmful intents using drones? (2) What can airports or critical infrastructure do if they have a problematic drone or drones flying around?
Ever since we witnessed the Gatwick airport incident where drone sightings lead to repeated closures of the airport, causing massive problems and now with this pumping station incident, many are looking into counter-drone technology.
Providentially, last week the Federal Aviation Administration thought it would be wise to provide additional information to airports in evaluating, demonstrating, or installing UAS detection systems at airports which includes a frequently asked questions document.
The FAA announced the FAA does not support the use of counter-drone systems "by any entities other than the federal departments with explicit statutory authority to use this technology." The reason for this is many counter-drone systems will violate federal law, and only a handful of federal agencies have approval to exercise some counter-drone equipment.
Setting that aside, the frequently asked questions document raised two practical issues with a counter-drone response: the credibility of the sighting, and the criteria deserving a response.
How do you figure out the credibility of the drone sighting? Was the initial detection verified by visual identification? How do you know if this drone is illegal or flying legally under an FAA-given approval for a client? It can be very difficult to distinguish between a legal flight and a malicious flight just by spotting a drone flying in the sky.
So let's say you detect there is a drone flying. What is the criteria for determining if an incident is worthy of receiving a counter-drone response? Is there a line drawn in the sand somewhere which will evoke an immediate response?
Any response has to be interwoven into the already well-established, understood, and practiced response plans without introducing some undesirable safety and efficiency impacts. This has to be communicated and coordinated among the many stakeholders. This has NOT been accomplished but the FAA is currently working on it with other federal agencies. Thankfully, the FAA is compiling a checklist of planning factors to help airports, and in the meantime has released a document on the technical considerations for unmanned aircraft detection that airports and critical infrastructure entities would do well to understand. If you dive into the technical considerations document, you'll notice that each type of counter-drone technology has its own unique problems and benefits.
In conclusion, many great benefits have been actualized with drones which far outweigh the destructive uses we are witnessing. As we see the emergence of this new threat, we should remind ourselves that the use of new technology for harm is not a new concept and should not evoke a knee-jerk response towards the technology itself, but towards the bad wielding it. A custom-tailored solution to each location, entity, and counter-drone technology will be required, so we can all enjoy the many benefits of drones while still being protected.
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bdb5fa77b1a223f3ed997bb9a981520c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/01/12/three-ways-microsoft-could-change-the-world-with-windows-8/ | Microsoft Could Change The World With Windows 8 | Microsoft Could Change The World With Windows 8
Microsoft reported earlier this week that it had sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses since its newest operating system went on sale on October 26 last year. That’s a boatload of units, though it roughly kept pace with number of PCs shipped during the fourth quarter (just under 90 million). So the idea that its sales kinda fell off the back of a truck isn’t that far off. Industry analysts weren’t overjoyed with holiday sales, with IDC suggesting Microsoft heavily advertised the touch capabilities of its OS while the machines on store shelves didn’t always offer it.
Really? Consumers turned out in droves for that cool new Windows touch functionality?
I predicted that nobody would care about Microsoft’s new OS products because the company would produce brilliantly generic marketing. They’ve lived down to my expectations, doing their best to tell us that Windows 8 devices work like iPads. The TV spots have been endearing little snippets of digital lifestyles that could have been sponsored by any tech brand. Even a budget north of $1 billion hasn’t changed the fact that they have expertly told us nothing compelling about what they’re selling.
I hate the fact that I was mostly right, wishful arguments of “it takes time” and the stark fact of 60 million unit sales aside...because Microsoft deserves so much more. Yup. I said it: not just more, but better.
Windows 8 is a revelation, at least to those of us who haven’t been initiated into the ranks of all-knowing Digerati (i.e. consumers). It is a total rethinking of device interface that seems on par with the way Apple gave us icons and apps instead of a Start Menu...or maybe the very GUI on which all Macs and PCs are based. It changes the way we envision our gizmos, seeing them less as collections in our hands of things that run on our command, and more as live connectors to communities/content around us.
It's a big deal, only you wouldn’t know it from the company’s marketing. So here are three ways Microsoft could change its marketing, and perhaps change the world:
Stress differences, not similarities. The idea behind Windows 8 is that it’s a next generation operating system that gets out of the way between people and what they want to do (or something like that). Talk about it in big, bold terms, focusing on what it does differently and demonstrating how that’s better, not just more fun. It’s a new way of interacting with devices that, once experienced, changes your approach forever after; it’s the design bar for others, including Apple, to strive toward. In other words, talk like an industry leader, not a committee.
I would shelve all the feel-good ads and come out with really blunt, Big Picture spots about the NextGen OS (or the Last OS?). Call it “invisible” or something -- maybe the punchline is that Microsoft has blown up the OS on which it was built -- and give us tangible things it does (and other operating systems don’t). I’d scrap all the pretty imagery on the company’s home page and replace it with a fully-functioning Windows 8 simulator so people could see and play with how their PCs would be different. And touch? Zzzzz. Nice to have, but it’s a cost-of-entry function at this point.
Enable new device engagement. If the tiles interface is as cool as I think it is, Microsoft should offer unique services (or access to them in unique ways) that accentuate the benefits of the interface. Offering just another way to click through to Facebook isn’t such a big deal; what does Windows 8 do differently? Why aren’t there proprietary tiles that aggregate functions and/or create new tools (and if there are, why the hell doesn’t anybody know about them)? Spend marketing dollars on this stuff instead of pretty ads.
Here are a few thought-starters: Instead of giving kids access to the cloud, which is kinda like inviting them to walk the streets of a major city unaccompanied by an adult, create a protected kid cloud for the exclusive use of Windows 8 families. Host a massive developer contest for new tile functions or services. Create online communities and actively manage conversations on really timely stuff, like gun control, and thereby elevate the identity and status of product users to something more than just the non-Apple crowd.
Invent the industry’s next pricing structure. Microsoft’s pricing strategy is cutting-edge circa 1950 or so, and it gets rather Byzantine when it comes to different versions for different users (a matrix has often been invoked, which is a kiss of death for any self-respecting communicator). Scrap the traditional pricing nonsense and figure out how Windows 8 buyers could be subscribers to the OS. This would redefine how they think of it (and the brand), and it would be in keeping with the live, interactive nature of the interface.
Once the company figured out the basic pricing structure, it could come up with a way to incentivize usage and ownership over time...so that when Windows 9 comes around, people will have all but already bought it/into it. This new product should be a chance to lock folks into a lifestyle that they won’t want to leave because it works so wonderfully and is priced so fairly.
There’s so much Microsoft could do to truly change the world, and $1 billion could finance a lot of much. 60 million units sold might be on track with past Windows launches, but the company should be shooting for a far more successful future. Their goal should be to inspire people to flock to stores looking for the OS.
No, it should be to change the world.
UPDATE 01.15.13: News of holiday sales woes for the Surface tablet
UPDATE 01.16.13: Office 2013 will be offered as a subscription, which is a powerful idea, only leave it to Microsoft to make it come across like it's selling imprisonment.
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8066c810de6412325387d557779955ca | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/03/12/rand-pauls-filibuster-was-brilliant-marketing/ | Rand Paul's Filibuster Was Brilliant Marketing | Rand Paul's Filibuster Was Brilliant Marketing
(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Senator Rand Paul filibustered the Senate for 13 hours on March 6th to "sound an alarm from coast to coast" that "no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime (it's how he described his purpose). I'm not interested in debating the substance of his claims but, as a marketer, I can comfortably say his gesture was brilliant. We business types would do well to recognize at least 3 things he got right:
He didn't just talk. Well, yes he did, but it wasn't like he was giving a regular speech, or doing the talking head-thing on cable TV. He pulled off an event which neatly packaged him for distribution across the mediasphere. How many other senators or congresspeople had something to say that day? Probably lots, but his event stole the show. Now, think about how many corporations had something to "say" online recently vs. the brands that did things worthy of being talked about. The old adage that actions speak louder than words is truer today than ever before, especially now that sharing words is free and incessant.
He made the headline simple. Speaking of words, what Sen. Paul actually said was secondary to the symbolism of his gesture. He stood up for his right to stand up, which gave credit to his intentions even if what he said remains mostly unknown. Focusing on asking his question made the headline almost impermeable to any analysis or answer, anyway. I suspect that the majority of people who follow him think he's still engaged in some battle, even if his 13-hour query was addressed by a single-word response of "no" from Attorney General Holder. We corporate types should be so expert at keeping the message under control.
He activated existing content. Brands spend billions every year trying (and often failing) to invent novel associations for their products or services. Sen. Paul simply emulated an existing symbol and meme. Most of us would know nothing about the filibuster had not Jimmy Stewart used it to stand up to corrupt politicians in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, only this time it was a real senator doing the same thing. Further, since his followers already have suspicions of a tyrannical government, it played neatly into a preconfigured context. He didn't break new ground as much as appropriate existing turf, and his economy and efficacy was breathtaking.
It's almost as if Rand Paul is living a storyline that is somehow independent of the narrative being told by the lamestream media. This also should be instructional to brands, which sometimes can be overly occupied with living up to social media theories about radical transparency and the inherent value of conversation. His filibuster fit quite neatly into the context of his career, and it made perfect sense to his supporters (he made no effort to satisfy everyone). Because it was internally consistent, there's no way to deconstruct or challenge it.
Instead, his filibuster owned inherent meaning and, in this sense, the Senator's action was a throwback to an older age when marketers created branding that stood for something. It was what it was, just like he is who he is. Imagine if your latest bit of marketing content rang as perfectly, completely, and consistently true with your customers as Mr. Paul's did with his?
His adversaries could learn something from him, too.
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28f4529df9a0bd79969fc1883cbc0706 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/05/14/social-media-marketing-advice-according-to-doctor-who/ | Social Media Marketing Advice, According To Doctor Who | Social Media Marketing Advice, According To Doctor Who
(Image credit: via @daylife)
Fans who ordered DVDs of this season's BBC series Doctor Who have started receiving them, only there's a catch: The disc contains the season's final episode, which has yet to air on TV! The show's producers have made a big deal about that finale, including promises of plot twists and revelations that will be huge for Whovians. So a premature revelation could not only lessen their enjoyment, but cut into viewership of the final show, which would lessen the appreciation of the program's advertisers.
In a deft jujitsu of marketing brilliance befitting a time lord from the planet Gallifrey, Doctor Who has figured out how to turn a crisis into an opportunity. We of planet Earth should take note.
The producers have reached out via social media to their fans, and asked that they refuse to watch the program if they ordered it, resist sharing its contents if they have, and encourage one another to "keep the secrets safe" by doing the former or latter. In return, they'll get to see a special new clip featuring appearances by a few past Doctors which, if you're a Whovian, is like discovering some missing artifact of crucial historical (or future) value.
The effort will fail, of course. Word will circulate online for anybody interested in finding it, and the producers will release the special video anyway. But that's not the point of the strategy.
It'll heighten engagement among the converted. Those who hold themselves back will be more involved when they view the show. There'll be informal countdowns, maybe even more viewing parties than originally planned. Offending tweets and blog posts will be flagged so believers can avoid them. It'll be a thing.
It will promote the airing to the uninitiated. "What's the big deal about?" viewers will tune in, and a subset of them will become fans. Others will publicly diss the crisis, prompting believers to come to the Doctor's defense. Promising the reward video makes the producers seem like nice people to everyone, fans or not.
Everyone will have something to do. Resisting discovery of the plot twists will be a real-time effort for this fans who choose to fight their base proclivities. Some will debate about disclosure, while others will wonder if the entire shebang is a publicity ploy (humm…).
Imagine if your customers were similarly inspired and engaged. Would they take products off store shelves if you asked them, or leave untouched a tube or bottle of whatever you make until the designated time of its use arrived? It's not inconceivable. The Conventional Wisdom on social media engagement is that it has to be easy, quick, and nothing but entertaining. Doctor Who decided to deliver, and then expect something different, something more.
I think we're going to see more of this transition of customers and fans, from evangelists into activists who do things for brands beyond "liking" them or interacting with marketing content. The opportunities for such involvement on positive themes is probably as powerful as enlisting folks in times of crisis, because it address the mechanism of social media, not just its distributional uses.
My prediction is that Doctor Who will deliver far more engagement and enjoyment through its strategy to address its snafu than it ever would 1) if the squashing plan worked, which it won't, or 2) if the screwup hadn't happened in the first place. Unless, of course, he simply uses the TARDIS to go to a time before the errant DVDs were shipped, and stops the delivery truck which…wait a minute…couldn't he have already done that?
Which means…tune in Saturday...
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3666eef55eb562dd4b5314342e48f3b1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/11/15/tesla-and-twitter-are-in-the-same-business-of-managing-expectations/ | Tesla And Twitter Are In The Same Business Of Managing Expectations | Tesla And Twitter Are In The Same Business Of Managing Expectations
Though making electric cars and running an online service couldn’t be more dissimilar, Tesla and Twitter are in the same business of managing expectations. How they’ve fared in recent media coverage says a lot about what communications approaches work, which don’t, and why.
Both brands have problems. Tesla didn’t make enough money last quarter, and reports of recent accidents appear to question the safety of its cars and factory, so its stock is down. Twitter launched an IPO, yet has no idea how to make money and, though a wash of put warrants in Europe appear to bet on its inability to figure it out anytime soon, expectations are high. In fact, Twitter’s market cap is significantly greater than Tesla’s.
The difference is how the world sees each company, and how the companies respond.
It might seem counterintuitive, but Twitter is the conventional play. The magic of social media is a given these days, as is the belief that monetized is an evolved form of free. Twitter has implicit supporters in its vast user base, and requires nothing from them in exchange for pleasantly expending some of their time and, perhaps thereby, enjoying their tacit approval. The company is judged by metrics invented solely for the purpose of affirming its purpose. Nobody knows what it’ll look like in 2 years, let along 20, but that doesn’t really matter. All it has to do is market itself to the accepted wisdom of today’s zeitgeist, and its backers will collect their zillions soon enough.
Tesla is the game-changer. It faces institutional opposition and generations’ old consumer habits, and the amount of time, expense, and effort required to create a viable network to support its product offering is just shy of overwhelming. It has no natural advocates, since it sells a luxury product to a very selective market. Everyone knows what it will look like in a decade or two; more realistically, it’s obvious what it must create, and then sustain, if it hopes to serve the customers it has already acquired, let alone new ones. Marketing itself against the conventional wisdom has meant literally punching and shoving itself into a cynical marketplace.
So Twitter gets cut a lot of slack, where Tesla doesn’t. It’s almost as if Twitter’s shareholders know it’s simply a spinning carousel of cash from which they need to jump before it stops, whereas the variables in Tesla’s story are complex, which means its ability to meet its profit goals are continually reassessed and revalued. Making things now is a lot harder than selling potential ideas later on. If Tesla doesn’t suffer a reality discount, surely its actions are held up to a different, far more critical standard than those of Twitter.
Each company addresses those expectations differently.
Twitter comes across as generically pleasant, its founders cut from the techie boy-genius mold that central casting provides to most startups these days. There’s no particular voice for the brand, no trail of official comments that is particularly searchable, or worth reading. Tesla’s founder and his company are another matter. Elon Musk is also cut from the same class of innovators, but after spinning off his invention of PayPal, he’s not only trying to reinvent the car industry, but building a fleet of spaceships (SpaceX). When he or his cadre of zealot followers see things in the media they don’t like, they go on the attack, all Lance Armstrong-like. If you’re not with Tesla, you’re against it.
These different approaches accentuate the inherent bias in the media and culture toward the easy-go-lucky, effortless activities of a Twitter, over Tesla's arguably far more real and daring toil. Twitter is happy with everyone, and it buys into the pleasant, consensual hallucination that is social media. Tesla is on a crusade, and that means it’s always at war with someone over something. The expectations for both companies are a result of these differences, in large part.
Another similarity they share, however, is that they both risk playing too perfectly to form.
No brand can truly succeed, or do so to its full potential, unless it finds ways to challenge and reset expectations. Twitter’s promise of a dim but perfect future will star to wear (if it hasn’t already, at least with some critics), and Tesla’s us vs. them mentality will eventually lead folks to question whether it is building a real, sustainable company. Expectations are based on peoples’ belief that their understanding of the past, informed by the reality of what they know today, will be applicable in the future. What worked this time — a happy IPO, or assertions of safety — may not work next time. Expectations for Twitter and Tesla will suffer if they don’t do something different.
I don’t know what those actions should be, but I can imagine a few possibilities. Twitter might come up with a really different approach to making money, something that doesn’t rely on a hundred year-old advertising model. It could start actively challenging its lazy critics, and dare them to think differently and more critically about the brand. Tesla could offer a vehicle designed for rank-and-file car buyers (like a pickup truck it announced yesterday), so as to marshall true populist support for its brand and crusade. It might stop actively challenging people at every turn, and allow them to think more favorably and hopefully about the brand.
In other words, they could borrow a page from each other’s play books.
Ultimately, Twitter might get away with never solving the profit thing, and Tesla could end up being our generation’s Tucker or DeLorean. But if either is going to benefit the largest number of stakeholders, not to mention stick around long enough to change the world in truly meaningful ways, recent events suggest they’ll have to address the challenge they both share:
Tesla doesn’t just build cars, and Twitter doesn’t solely run a social platform. Both brands are in the expectations business.
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933df692aee498bab4f2357e21eaf854 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2014/09/26/you-attended-social-media-week-and-didnt-even-know-it/ | You Attended Social Media Week And Didn't Even Know It | You Attended Social Media Week And Didn't Even Know It
Though you may not have participated in an official event during Social Media Week (which ends today), you attended it…every day, in fact, which is the problem with the gig in particular, and our understanding of social media generally.
First off, it’s one huge, distributed trade show, organized by an events promoter for social media promoters to sell their wares. It’s like real estate agents getting together to talk about selling houses, so it’s populated mostly with the faithful preaching to fellow believers. This avoids the nagging problem the industry faces, which is that for every person who believes social media have some inherent value, there’s another who thinks its marketing utility is little more than snake oil’s efficacy at curing the common cold.
What constitutes great programming for the converted offers little for anyone else, and it accentuates the premise that one has to “get” social media in order to use it (i.e. standard operating rules of finance or physical causality don’t apply). This jibes with the overall approach to the field, insomuch that its supporters work tirelessly to prove their a priori beliefs in its value, thereby violating various premises of the experimental method, like proof comes only from failing to disprove your hypothesis, and things that are true need to be so in a variety of circumstances, not swaddled with caveats that excuse any failure.
Getting taught what works during Social Media Week screams out for the slightest acknowledgment that it might not, or references to the other areas of endeavor it purportedly touches (or that influence it).
Further, it elevates overreach to an art form; the event’s slogan, “Reimagining Human Connectivity,” is kinda like announcing you’re going to reimagine gravity. There’s a ton of underlying science and history about the how, when, and why people engage with one another. Online social tools are a mechanism for enabling it, but certainly don’t change those facts. They reimagine human connectivity about as much as billboards reimagine human consciousness.
It’s too bad, because social media represent an immense opportunity for marketers, but only if they think beyond the narrow confines of the self-identified services that claim to sell it.
All media are social, as are all experiences, just at different speeds, and with different purposes and outcomes. Marketers knew this before the mass media innovations of the 20th century, so much so that the job specialty of marketing didn’t really exist before then; business communications weren’t separated from business conduct, or operational reality, and it was accomplished via any and every behavior. The availability of mass media allowed communicators to become singularly focused (i.e. limited) to communicating via specific channels, like national print and TV, since they offered the only ways to “talk” to distant customers. The rest of what the business did became less important to their efforts.
Even then, though, media and social experience were inseparable. People watched television together, then talked about it. Radio was often a communal experience. Newsprint was sharable.
Fast forward to today: Although those mass media have lost their audiences, the combination of the Internet and mobile devices has reconnected people to the operations of those businesses, as well as with one another. Everything is social again, only now it’s truly two-way, via wireless telephony networks and Internet search, to every live meeting that is immersed or extended beyond its place and time. Everything a company does is social, and nothing it does escapes social scrutiny and judgment. Behaviors online, offline, and anywhere between contribute to our opinions and subsequent purchase decisions.
That’s how you attended a social event today. You used a social medium each time you called someone, shared an idea, or worked on something with someone else. Few of these moments were managed by the services selling their wares at Social Media Week (or perhaps the most important ones weren’t). When we think of it as nothing more than a technology-based marketing channel, social media are a subset of media overall, which are a subset of the mediated experiences that are a subset of experiences generally. They’re a sliver of the bigger picture.
Marketers have a huge opportunity to attack this bigger picture, and use tools to apply design thinking to the experiences of customers, suppliers, employees, and every other community with which companies interact. Sure, a how-to on using LinkedIn or Twitter can be a helpful tactic, but we need strategies for addressing the P2P context of every other experience. There was very little of that content presented this week, the event title notwithstanding.
Which is too bad, since social is real, not just this week, but every week of the year.
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65c883a4644c893e226acae1b0b94181 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2014/10/26/when-bad-customer-service-yields-business-success/ | When Bad Customer Service Yields Business Success | When Bad Customer Service Yields Business Success
Airlines, banks, and cable service providers are delivering record-setting profits this year, even though they regularly rank low on most measures of customer satisfaction. The reasons why illustrate the utility of setting expectations, having a monopoly, and being uniquely expert at something, and the danger of assuming that customer-centricity means making customers "happy."
Airlines
Last week, American Airlines reported record quarterly profits and its first dividend since 1980. Southwest also set a record, and United’s profits were up 51% over a year ago. Delta announced its record quarter a week prior. Customer service seems to have little bearing on these results. Planes are more crowded, and passengers are paying more for tickets and incidental services, like bag check, while fuel costs are down
In fact, airlines rank low in most satisfaction polls — coming in below mortgage lenders in one major survey — and may benefit from consistently lowering traveller expectations, not trying to raise their hopes.
Even though flying is the only reasonable alternative for getting to places beyond a few hours’ drive, the number of things that can make doing so unpleasant is staggering. Perhaps what's working for airline marketers is that flier expectations have kept in line with reality (all of the faux problem-solving on Twitter notwithstanding), as this study by consulting firm McKinsey suggests. Southwest does it brilliantly, by effectively promising to laugh with its passengers about the inanity of it all.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Banks
Bank of America topped the 2014 Customer Service Hall of Shame, yet reported a loss far less than Wall Street expected (due to a large legal charge); otherwise, the industry is at near-record levels for profits, even as its marketers know that customers hate them, according to a CNN story earlier this year. Here’s another ranking in which they do poorly.
So, while the conventional wisdom is that banks must strive to improve those customer perceptions, it begs the question of what problems do those institutions need to fix first and foremost? Banks, like financial markets, enjoy government-granted monopoly control over their business sectors; other than loan sharks and mattresses, people have no alternatives to using them, which means that qualities like “authority” and “reliability” are, arguably, far more important than whether depositors like their banks (as found by this survey).
This suggests a very different approach to satisfying and, thereby, keeping customers, and it may include few of the aspects of affection that factor into models of brand loyalty. Again, most financial services companies are regularly lectured about the necessity of talking more and more often, usually via social media. Perhaps the customer-centric answer simply is to talk better.
Cable
The nation's big cable operators are on their way to delivering 40%+ margins this year, even though disliking them is about as American as apple pie. The industry's poster child on satisfaction is Comcast , which has been voted the worst company in country, according to Consumerist, yet last week it announced healthy increases in revenue, profits and customer acquisition. The company’s CEO was forced to note its bad ratings (embarrassing videos are becoming a popular sub-genre on YouTube) by declaring “customer service should be our best product.”
The data, however, suggest that its best product is connectivity and, in a world in which adopting alternatives for consuming video content are fragmented and can seem somewhat technically complex, such expertise may be the motivating factor for getting and keeping customers. This suggests a significant marketing opportunity for Comcast (and its brethren) to assert its know-how and reliability, and then orient its pricing in ways to literally lock-in subscribers to evermore rich content offerings that require no technical effort on their part.
These facts are even more compelling when you consider the amounts of time and money the ABCs of bad service spend on marketing that tries to change consumer opinions about service. Glossy TV commercials with big seats on vacant airplanes (and WiFi!). Apps for depositing checks. Entertaining spots about enjoying movies on handhelds, or whatever.
It might be more useful for the marketers at these brands to look more closely at what drives use and preference in their industries, and focus resources on strengthening what is obviously already working.
We can all agree that good service is better than bad, but such a blunt measure isn’t the panacea that a very vocal lobby of gurus and consultants would have us believe. There's no apparent casual connection between the multitude of customer service rankings, and any meaningful difference in operational performance.
The ABCs of bad service are doing great business, thank you very much, and every marketer could learn something from understanding how.
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85e2ba046e8fa9ed0a3158c0501596e6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2016/04/18/what-will-self-driving-cars-mean-for-insurance/ | What Will Self-Driving Cars Mean For Insurance? | What Will Self-Driving Cars Mean For Insurance?
“There’s a tech innovation arms race underway to create vehicles that don’t crash,” said Kenny Leitch, Global Telematics Director at RSA. “We intend to be right in the middle of it.”
Considering 93% of accidents involve human error, and 76% of them are caused solely by it, the promise of autonomous vehicles could have as negative an impact on collision underwriting as it delivers even greater benefits to society. Already, accident rates have fallen dramatically, as cars have become smarter, and roads made better. Parking has gotten easier, too.
“Ultimately, the purpose of insurance is to let people go on with their lives, knowing that they’ll get help if something catastrophic happens,” Leitch explained, it’s why RSA is the insurer lead on GATEway, a public/private project launched in late 2014 to research and test automated vehicle technology on U.K. roads.
A GATEway vehicle (Image credit: GATEway)
“The need for insurance doesn’t end with autonomous vehicles, it just changes.”
That need is slowly coming into focus, aided by Google ’s first self-driving car crash in February, and Volvo’s declaration late last year that it will accept all liability when its cars are in autonomous mode.
Gallery: The Future Of Self-Driving Cars 17 images View gallery
Things will get more complex, according to Leitch, even if drivers are taken out of the equation. Liability coverage may follow the Volvo example, as it shifts from personal to product. However, policies will still need to address variables, such as equipment failure, Internet connectivity interruption, or even hacking. The thorniest issues could emerge from vehicles performing according to design, yet resulting in unanticipated side-effects.
“Who is going to write the algorithm of death that enables the onboard computer to choose between saving the life of a driver, or that of a pedestrian in the seconds before impact?” he asked.
The argument for the role of insurance is buttressed by the certainty of injury and death, no matter what technology solution.
“Even if we could reduce the 1,700 annual traffic accident deaths in the U.K. by 90%, that could still leave 20 people dying from, what, system failures?” Leitch said.
Such challenges are a subset of the broader effects of the Internet of Things, as automated intelligence replaces decisions once made by human beings. The questions are endless: If the lives of pet tropical fish rely on a home heating sensor, do they need to be insured? What about the power company providing a constant current to the smart devices in a home?
RSA is experimenting with new product sales, too, according to Steve Jay, who leads the company’s innovation as Head of Product Development & Propositions at More Th>n, a business RSA founded to shake up traditional approaches to insurance.
“We base insurance on our customers’ needs, not products that have remained unchanged for many, many years,” Jay said. “By understanding their needs, we can develop offerings and tech that address their needs in new ways.”
Its current test of a service called Whistle uses pet insurance as a launching pad for a variety of prompts and reports on exercise, diet, and preventative treatments.
“Pet insurance gets more expensive as animals age,” he explained. “If we can help them be healthier by meeting their needs, pets and their owners are happier, and it’s a better business driver.”
“We call our role in meeting these needs ‘underwriting progress,’” Leitch added.
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1455d8ad8f5363e69bb940a6f04f87b6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2016/04/25/carnival-shows-how-to-innovate-at-scale/ | Carnival Shows How To Innovate At Scale | Carnival Shows How To Innovate At Scale
“We were getting hammered,” said Arnold Donald, Carnival Corporation’s CEO, recollecting his first days on the job in mid-2013.
“Fuel prices were going through the roof, the Arab Spring was destabilizing much of the world, and we’d just been through two very public crises with ships belonging to our Costa and Carnival brands.”
Carnival’s latest ship, Holland America Line’s ms Koningsdam (Image credit: Holland America Line)
Founder Ted Arison and son Micky had built Carnival Corporation into the largest leisure travel company in the world through savvy acquisitions and a healthy respect for the independence of its 10 global brands, which include Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line and Princess Cruises. Each brand served a different customer and, according to Donald, since there were only so many ships in service, the mandate was always to create demand and deliver efficiency at each unit. Clearly, it had worked, the recent trials in the media notwithstanding.
So Donald decided to change it.
Gallery: Advice From The Most Innovative Leaders 13 images View gallery
“Ted and Micky had given us an advantage of scale,” Donald said. “I spent the first few months on the job collecting information on what leveraging that scale might look like, from cabin stewards to presidents, and from outside sources. The opportunity became pretty clear to me.”
Donald’s innovation, however, was to expose his team to the same facts, and trust that they would come to a similar conclusion.
He brought the brand presidents together for a retreat in fall 2013 at which he shared the information he’d collected and, with that as context, asked each of them to articulate a vision for personal, brand, and company-wide success. After three days of intense conversation and bonding, it worked, and the leadership team crafted an aspirational vision that they not only shared, but co-owned.
“Facts are hard to ignore,” Donald added.
This started a chain reaction in the company, as the leaders hosted a similar session in January 2014 with broader leadership team, only with the deliverables being evermore specific and actionable goals, with leadership summits now held annually. Donald instituted financial incentives to reward not just innovative ideas that could be applied across the businesses, but skewed a healthy proportion of the rewards unit leaders received to the success of the company overall.
The implications for both the cost and revenue sides of its business were immense.
As one of many examples, teams discovered that the brands were paying seven different prices for arugula, though all using the same vendor. One brand believed its mattresses were the best and they had negotiated the best price possible, so the relevant buyers from across the company got together and, literally, ripped them apart, only to learn that the mattresses from that individual brand were the lowest quality and highest priced in the fleet.
Carnival Corporation, the world’s fifth largest purchaser of airplane tickets, had never negotiated prices from that unified position.
“On the revenue side, the brands don’t compete with one another necessarily, so if somebody knows how to up-sell a beverage, you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t share it,” Donald explained. “Our revenue management opportunities for casinos, communications, on-board retail, and the guest experience overall are only now starting to yield measurable results.”
Though Donald brought in experts, dubbed coaches, to help staff in ticket purchasing and revenue management find opportunities to collaborate, and populated a few senior positions with people from outside the cruise industry, it’s notable that he hasn’t instituted some complex system for coordinating or tracking innovation.
“When people share a vision, they know the right things to do, and they can see the results validated by our performance,” Donald said.
So far, those numbers suggest it’s working. Since the innovation program began, demand and revenue are up, and cost savings will be in the range of $170 million at the end of 2016. EPS is up 65% over the past two years, along with a significant increase in return on invested capital.
Like Donald says, facts are hard to ignore.
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651eb991451af923586cf7141a38ab03 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2016/05/05/cummins-sets-new-innovation-goals/ | Cummins Sets New Innovation Goals | Cummins Sets New Innovation Goals
Cummins' acoustic testing center in Fridley, MN (Image credit: Cummins)
Cummins, which all but singlehandedly brought diesel engines into the 21st century, is innovating how it approaches technology and solutions development, under the tutelage of its new CTO, Jennifer Rumsey.
“Two decades ago, we knew with pretty good clarity the challenges we had to meet,” Rumsey explained. “A regulatory standard for emissions would go into effect by so-and-so date, and if we brought the right technology to market to meet emissions and our customer’s expectations, we could grow our market.”
“Now, we have to solve more complex system-level customer needs, by embracing a more rapid innovation cycle that leverages expertise and collaboration across our business units.”
Rumsey’s predecessor, John Wall, pioneered public-private collaboration with the U.S. government to develop emissions standards in the latter part of the 20th century, which enabled Cummins to grow its diesel engine business to more than $17 billion in 2012, while reducing NOx and particulate emissions by 99%.
It could be argued that the standards provided an innovation challenge on which the company could differentiate itself, but that they’ve since stabilized at near-zero levels in leading emissions markets like the U.S. and Europe, as Rumsey noted, “We continue to reduce the environmental impact of our products globally, and explore alternate energy sources, but it’s no longer about proving technologies exist and can be brought to market that enable diesel engines to meet those standards.”
Now, the development challenge is to layer R&D on top of Cummins’ business units and regions, and thereby exploit its expertise and customer visibility to meet a new generation of customer needs. The approach, which internally is called the right technology matters, has three broad implications for the organization:
First, Rumsey is looking for ways to build on the company’s deep engine systems experience, which make it a credible innovator on topics such as telematics and data analytics, the utility of electrified powertrains, or the opportunities for powertrain controls.
Gallery: Top 10 Innovative Growth Companies 10 images View gallery
Second, she’s considering ways to speed the traditional multi-year development cycles, as evidenced by its introduction of ADEPT — a suite of electronic controls to maximize powertrain fuel efficiency in the vehicle — which was launched in less than half the typical product development cycle time, and has been positioned as a “first generation” offering that will be iterated in market.
Third, the company’s presence in more than 190 countries gives it the opportunity to take innovations (or requirements met) in one market, and apply it to others.
The big transformational idea is that Cummins can elevate from its engine and solutions focus to become an energy supplier (GE is moving in a similar direction with its intention to sell thrust instead of airplane engines alone). Doing so will require it to think and act more collaboratively.
It probably helps that Rumsey began her career at an early-state fuel cell startup in Cambridge, MA, which taught her the necessity of including diverse personalities and areas of expertise in problem-solving, and balancing it with deadlines and the other inconveniences of business reality.
“I really enjoyed it,” she remembered. “But I wanted to not only working on interesting and innovative technologies, but see the impact of what I was doing, and Cummins was already making a difference with its diesel engines when I joined in 2000.”
“We’re building on that leadership.”
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83f7072ffca902cf49959466fbbef824 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2016/07/05/vehicle-electrification-is-much-bigger-than-evs/ | Vehicle Electrification Is Much Bigger Than EVs | Vehicle Electrification Is Much Bigger Than EVs
Engineers on the eBooster team in Kirchheimbolanden, Germany (Image credit: BorgWarner)
While consumers can choose a Tesla, Chevrolet Bolt, or other EV, BorgWarner sees electrification playing a part in every vehicle, and the company’s role that of enabling the technology.
“When we talk about propulsion and vehicle efficiency, it’s not just about a traditional vehicle powertrain,” explained Chris Thomas, BorgWarner’s CTO. “The level of focus is unprecedented. Some manufacturers are down to counting LEDs in tail lights to minimize electrical loads.”
“We try to proceed boldly on tech, especially when customers even hint they’re interested in the benefits of using electrical energy to improve efficiency,” said Brock Fraser, Director of Innovation and New Concepts, BorgWarner Turbo Systems, who leads an advanced engineering team that is all but completely focused on electrification. “Electrically charged air path, electrical recuperation from the exhaust stream, we want to turn those twinkles into serious interest.”
That effort can range from fundamental physics to automated software writing and rapid prototyping, according to Joel Maguire, Technical Fellow for Electrification, BorgWarner Advanced Engineering. Maguire’s role is to evangelize electrification across the company, and he is one of seven “trend champions” helping to facilitate innovative projects.
The company develops technologies with the support of its internal Venture Capital Fund, which helps experimental tech get to market by, as Thomas explained, “taking away the excuses to get funding.”
“Automotive electrical components are expensive, so there’s a hunger for more value-oriented solutions, and the answers aren’t completely obvious,” Maguire said. “One of the areas we’re exploring is lower power/voltage alternatives that might yield 70% of the benefits of electrification, but at only 30% of the cost.”
“Lots of companies can do electric motors,” Thomas added. “There aren’t many that can do the mechanical integration. We’re uniquely able to marry them together as a system.”
For instance, turbochargers help small engines deliver the power of larger engines while using less fuel at light load. The problem is that it takes time for the turbocharger to spool-up, causing a short pause in power known as turbo lag. BorgWarner’s eBooster — an electric motor-driven compressor — delivers boost on demand until the turbocharger takes over. In addition, BorgWarner’s engineers have harnessed the vehicle’s energy as it slows down to generate the electricity needed to run an eBooster charging system.
Fraser added that he’s considering some of the company’s emerging products — such as an electric motor added to a turbo shaft that spins at “insane motor speeds” of up to 200,000 rpm and powered by exhaust gas energy plus a mild-hybrid conversion — on his personal vintage Porsche 911 because he “loves the combination of mad-awakening instant horsepower and silent electric, like Jekyll and Hyde.”
“Innovation is in our culture,” Thomas added. “Our people are inspired.” He explained that the company has partnered with Saïd Business School, Oxford University, to launch courses to teach and encourage its engineers and leaders to be innovative and capture value. The opt-in class is already oversubscribed 2x through 2017.
“We’re in every element of the automotive electrification spectrum,” said Maguire.
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0768e7cc0281d6bd99c0065f2d0c2067 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanshenkman/2020/12/22/retirement-and-investing-lessons-from-my-grandfather/ | Retirement And Investing Lessons From My Grandfather | Retirement And Investing Lessons From My Grandfather
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It is said that the Americans who stormed the beaches of Normandy and saved the world from the ultimate evil are members of the “Greatest Generation.” I believe the name can also apply to the many people who lived through World War II in Europe and moved to the United States to create a new life. Those immigrants typically came with no family, having lost many during the war, minimal understanding of English, and nothing but the clothes on their back.
My grandfather, Sam Blumenfeld, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 98, was part of this latter group. He came to New York City in 1947 after experiencing the atrocities of the Holocaust and seeing many friends and family members murdered at the hands of the Nazis. He didn’t complete his schooling or master any trade since the war interrupted his studies. Yet, in the United States he managed to have a family, start a small business, become an active member of his community, and enjoy a more than 30-year retirement.
He was also my first client when entering the wealth management industry after college. Little did he know that he taught me much more about investing and retirement planning than the training program at a major Wall Street bank early in my career. The money lessons I learned from him were based on nearly a century of experiences. Below are just a few personal finance tips I learned from my grandfather over the course of our professional relationship.
1. Purpose oriented investing: Many folks start investing without clear goals. Sometimes they get into the stock market for a little excitement or because it seems like the responsible thing to do. My grandfather invested with the direct purpose of meeting his cash flow needs and leaving an inheritance for his family. This laser focused approach was helpful in tuning out noise. He never bought in to the latest investment fad and he didn’t trade frequently trying to outpace an arbitrary index or his friends’ alleged performance. He didn’t get caught up on relative performance since his sole benchmark for success was his ability to achieve his own objectives. That is why he was able to retire on a modest sum of money that managed to support his lifestyle for over three decades in retirement.
My grandfather was also clearly ahead of his time, implementing a “values-based approach” to investing before it was popular. He refused to invest in certain European stocks because of his experiences during the war. Proper portfolio diversification is necessary to achieve better risk adjusted returns, but performance became secondary as he would not violate his personal beliefs. The same concept is popular today with the focus on environmental, social, and governance related issues, as well as religious or values-based investing.
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2. Money is a tool, not a scorecard: My grandfather once told me “I’ve been fortunate that I never had to worry about money. If I needed something, I bought it. If I wanted to go on vacation, I went. If family needed money, I was able to give it to them.” Since he was objectively not a rich man, his musing recalled the phrase from Pirkei Avot, a compilation of Jewish ethical teachings, which states “Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot.” In short, he lived within his means and was very satisfied with what he had.
Most of my grandfather’s happiness was derived from being able to spend time with his family. I remember, even as a young boy, my grandparents came to visit every Wednesday after school. They played with me and my brothers, joined us for dinner, and then went home. Later in life, when I began my professional career, I asked him why he would take off from work every Wednesday afternoon to visit. It meant closing his store early and, undoubtedly, cost him revenue. His response was just two words: “Why not?”
For some people, money serves as a scorecard where the more you accumulate, the better off you are. For my grandfather, money allowed him to pay his bills and gave him the flexibility to spend time on the things he enjoyed most. If money isn’t a concern in your life and you can spend your time as you want, that is the ultimate blessing.
3. The power of optimism: The 2008-2009 Great Financial Crisis was one of the best learning experiences of my career. It taught me about risk, reward, human behavior, and the importance of establishing a systematic, rules-based approach to investing. It was during that time that I also learned an incredible lesson from my grandfather. While many people were panicking as they watched their portfolios fall dramatically in value, I distinctly remember how excited my grandfather got at the low prices of some of his favorite blue-chip stocks. During one conversation I remember saying “Zeidy, the market is crashing. Maybe we should keep more cash available in your account.” He said that approach was silly and insisted on buying more stocks because good companies were trading at a fraction of what they were just a few months earlier.
His optimism paid off. The crisis eventually got under control and the market went on to experience one of the longest bull markets in history. Buying the dip was a successful strategy again this year. When it comes to investing, it’s important to be realistic but even more important to be optimistic. As long as you believe in human ingenuity, entrepreneurship, capitalism, and the power of market forces, you can build a meaningful level of wealth in the market over the long run.
4. Proactively downsizing: After my grandfather retired, he and my grandmother sold their house and moved to a smaller house in a nearby community. Many retirees hesitate when it comes to downsizing. They stay in their current home too long, oftentimes resulting in selling their home later under less favorable or more challenging circumstances. Downsizing sooner can help simplify your life by offloading the burden of maintaining a larger home, minimizing expenses, and moving into a residence that is more conducive to aging.
Another important aspect of downsizing is getting rid of your stuff. My grandfather never really accumulated many things, but whatever he did have he tried to give away to family or donate to charity during his lifetime. Giving away your things while you are alive can provide a tremendous sense of fulfillment and will relieve your heirs of the burden of sorting through your stuff upon your death.
5. A fulfilling retirement: My grandfather had a small business selling and installing draperies. He told me that he stopped working when he no longer had the patience to deal with vendors or difficult customers. In truth, he was gearing up for his retirement years in advance. He developed a routine of community involvement, attending lectures, religious study, and visiting family. This daily schedule stayed the same for most of his retirement years.
He also continued to stay curious and well informed, regularly discussing his new stock ideas with me and reading the daily newspaper cover to cover until failing eyesight made him switch to watching cable news at a very high volume. After my grandmother passed away, my grandfather even got a roommate, a graduate student 65 years his junior. During off hours, they had meals and conversations together, which helped him stay “with it” even as an octogenarian and nonagenarian.
I always tell clients that it is essential to retire to something and not from something. The individuals with the most fulfilling retirements maintain a strong social network, a way to stay mentally sharp, and the ability to keep their days structured. My grandfather managed to achieve all three.
6. A framework for giving: Philanthropy is a big focus for some retirees upon reaching a certain age. My grandfather gave throughout his life, always following his personal framework to prioritize his giving. He created a hierarchy of recipients with his first focus on taking care of his family, then his local community, followed by specific causes that he felt passionate about, and lastly any solicitation that came that piqued his interest. While there is no shortage of good causes to support with your hard-earned dollars, it’s imperative to develop a systematic approach to giving away your money so your charity dollars are most impactful and meaningful to you.
7. Learning from mistakes: It’s axiomatic that a sound investing process minimizes one’s mistakes. However, nothing is foolproof. The important thing to remember, when errors are made, is that one can learn as much from their mistakes as their successes. My grandfather definitely didn’t get everything right when it came to his personal finances. Sometimes he chased high yielding stocks or blue-chip companies that were financially struggling. Many of his investing errors took place earlier in his investing career when he could afford to make them. As he got on in years, the lessons that had been learned resulted in fewer missteps.
My grandfather also should have been a bit more explicit on how he wanted certain things handled after his passing. I believe that one of the main reasons he didn’t do enough planning was because of his optimism and faith that things will work out. Things did work out and, as noted above, I extoll the virtue of investing like an optimist. However, when it comes to personal finances, it’s also important to plan like a cynic. This balanced approach helps prepare families for whatever scenario may present.
8. Leaving a legacy: When it comes to leaving a legacy, people often focus on the financial aspects of proper planning. However, I would argue that a legacy is not only about the transmission of wealth, but also about the transmission of values. Certain values are passed to your family by modeling behaviors, the way one leads their everyday life and how they spend their time.
In addition to watching my grandfather prioritize his family, faith, and community, I witnessed his ability to fully live in the moment. He was able to thoroughly enjoy watching his great-grandchildren play in the backyard, chatting with friends at synagogue, or spending a weekend together with his family. His enjoyment and happiness during all these seemingly mundane moments was palpable.
In the age of 24/7 connectivity, it’s easy to lose sight of the here and now. There is always something else that demands your attention. Unfortunately, living for tomorrow causes folks to miss out on some of the best that life has to offer today. When I notice myself reaching for my iPhone, instead of appreciating what is happening around me, I remind myself to live in the moment just like my grandfather would have. This is perhaps my grandfather’s greatest legacy, the one that will allow me to live my life to the fullest.
The underlying theme of the aforementioned lessons is that some of the most important retirement guidance cannot be determined within the confines of a spreadsheet or financial planning software. My grandfather understood this instinctively and imparted that wisdom to me. I continue to share that same timeless advice with my clients today.
Disclaimer: This article authored by Jonathan Shenkman a financial advisor at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. The information set forth herein has been derived from sources believed to be reliable and does not purport to be a complete analysis of market segments discussed. Opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. does not provide legal or tax advice. Opinions expressed are not intended to be a forecast of future events, a guarantee of future results, and investment advice. Adtrax #: 3380718.1
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a8e2cdd1bf0bcb91d23ac30a1a3bdb10 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansherman/2011/02/22/a-looming-uranium-supply-shortage-good-for-cameco/ | A Looming Uranium Supply Shortage Good For Cameco | A Looming Uranium Supply Shortage Good For Cameco
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Cameco(NYSE:CCJ), one of the world’s largest uranium producers, sees opportunity in the 250 million pounds of new uranium production the company believes is required to meet demand over the next 10 years. And there isn’t a lot of competition given the high barriers to entry in the business -- including 10-year lead times to obtain permits and dig new mines. To help meet heightened demand, Cameco plans to grow its production by roughly 10% a year through 2018. They currently supply 16% of global uranium production.
Over one hundred new nuclear reactors are expected to come on line over the next decade worldwide, half of them in China alone, with India and Russia having aggressive build-out plans as well. According to the publication China Daily, the former director of China’s National Energy Administration says that China may expand its 10-year nuclear plant ambitions even more from 80 gigawatts currently planned to 86 gigawatts. The World Nuclear Association says China’s demand for uranium is expected to reach 44 million pounds annually by 2020, but domestic supply will only reach 5 million pounds by that time.
From all this new demand, industry consultants expect the global uranium market to grow from about 190 millions pounds currently to 247 million pounds by 2020. Secondary uranium sources, like governments’ conversion of explosives-grade uranium to electricity-grade uranium, are expected to decline from about 48 million pounds today to 24 million pounds by 2020. In combination, the growing demand with declining secondary sources suggests 5-6%% annual demand growth for uranium from mined sources over the next decade.
It is well known that existing supply from uranium mines cannot meet the anticipated demand; Cameco estimates that 18% of total supply over the next ten years will come from new sources. Afraid of the upcoming supply shortage, China has been aggressively pursuing long-term contracts for uranium. Industry participants believe it is largely China that is responsible for driving spot uranium prices from $40.75 in May 2010 to $72.25 today. Even so, the cost of uranium fuel at today’s prices, which includes the cost of processing it into fuel rods, only represents about 20-25% of the total cost of generating electricity at the more efficient nuclear plants currently planned and under construction, compared to 40-50% for existing plants. Given the efficiency of the new technology, it follows that Chinese planners are likely unfazed by the recent price increases and uranium prices could more than double from current levels before giving the Chinese pause, especially given their history of aggressive behavior in other nation-critical mineral areas like rare earth metals. With their 80 to 86 gigawatts production targets, the Chinese will pull out all stops to lock in their long-term supply of uranium. Inevitably, India and Russia will be forced to enter the bidding war to get their share of supply as well. In 2007, uranium prices spiked to $136 per pound, reportedly helped along by speculators. With the current supply shortage, another price spike over $100 may be in the cards for 2011 and prices may stay elevated for some time.
Cameco (headquartered in Canada) is levered to the spot price of uranium since its mining costs, averaging US$22.5 per pound in 2010, are relatively fixed. Given the China factor, I believe uranium spot prices could average US$100 per pound in 2011 and US$130 in 2012. Should this be the case, existing analyst earnings estimates are too low at $1.56 per share in 2011 and $1.99 in 2012. Building in the higher uranium prices into my earnings model, I calculate Cameco could earn US$2.35 in 2011 and US$4.93 in 2012.
Multiplying my $4.93 2012 earnings estimate by the 18 P/E of the S&P Materials Sector gives Cameco a projected price target of 88, over a double from the 41 level it trades at today. On current consensus earnings estimates, the forward price to earnings for Cameco is 26, so applying an 18 multiple seems relatively conservative. In its latest quarterly report released Friday February 11, Cameco reported earnings of $0.48 per share, $0.20 better than analyst estimates of $0.28. Two analysts rate Cameco as a hold, and one a buy, so there is room for analyst upgrades to help the stock higher.
Cameco management is optimistic about its prospects, recently raising its dividend 43% from 28 cents per share annually to 40 cents. Management’s recent quarterly conference call was up beat.
Looking at the stock chart of Cameco, there is steady accumulation and the stock is in a good uptrend.
I currently own shares of Cameco.
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b420e759b61a40b15b858c8e6e851e8c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathantreiber/2020/09/21/why-retailers-need-to-innovate-and-experiment-now-with-dynamic-discounts-and-pricing-in-spite-of-covid-19/?sh=85431102274e | Why Retailers Need To Innovate And Experiment Now With Dynamic Discounts And Pricing In Spite Of COVID-19 | Why Retailers Need To Innovate And Experiment Now With Dynamic Discounts And Pricing In Spite Of COVID-19
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The retail industry is as diverse as it is lucrative, so it’s somewhat surprising that the impact of COVID-19 has rocked nearly all facets of retail so swiftly and consistently. Brick-and-mortar locations have struggled with the rapid downturn in foot traffic and widespread closures, while ecommerce brands have had to evolve operations rapidly to handle the surge in customer demand. Retail brands will have to future-proof their businesses via new experimentation and personalization to meet the demands of modern customers.
It’s during these times that retailers must ask themselves a fundamental question: what do they have to lose? With the demise of names like Century 21 to Lord & Taylor and J. Crew, retail bankruptcies large and small are only going to continue as the pandemic drags on. As we’ve noted, the tendency in April right on through the recent back-to-school season has been for retailers to resort to excessive discounts across the board to drive demand and sales. But it’s still a short-sighted strategy that will erode margins and dilute personalization innovations that could be the key to pulling retailers from the brink.
From a customer perspective, the “always-on” Black Friday discounts flooding inboxes come across excessive and lazy. Ask yourself: why is a retailer trying hard to get me to their website and show me products they believe I’m inclined to buy the most, all while offering me the same watered down 20 percent discount they give to every customer online or in-person? I’m not inclined to feel special when I know the Pottery Barn, GAP, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, and every other retail email marketing campaign says, “Hello [Insert Name Here],” followed up with the same generic promotional discount.
Retailers have a great two-birds-with-one-stone chance. With a much more targeted discount program, retailers can maximize sales margin while going the extra mile on their personalization road map to customize each consumer touch point.
Perhaps retailers are skittish of targeted discounts because of the backlash potential; what customer wouldn’t like 50 percent off all the time? However, this is a risk worth taking. Perhaps most retailers haven’t made it down the checklist far enough to focus on personalized discounting and pricing.
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Perhaps they’re focusing on what’s easier first because personalized pricing and discounts is a much harder nut to crack. Many retailers claim that personalized discounts are impossible to execute due to lack of systems, data, and expertise. Marketers can put different product images or messages in emails or on the website. However, merchandising systems are separate, archaic, and were built for brick and mortar retail with an eye toward storewide sales or category markdowns. It’s an excuse that rings most true even more now as budgets continue to shrink.
So what can retailers do?
First is implementing personalization technology platforms for ecommerce, mobile and digital marketing. Purpose-built offer management platforms can handle the personalized pricing and discounting use-cases and integrate within larger technologies that handle overall personalization efforts for a retailer. The only requirement is a commitment to research solutions and to invest in test-and-learn technologies that can solve the problem — integrating merchandising and marketing strategies and systems to execute dynamic personalized discounting requires the right combination of technology solutions.
Next in line are the right data inputs to help the technology do its thing, which is to render a different discount or price for each customer, depending on a whole host of factors.
Data like customer demographics are a good start to begin creating customer clusters. Some customers in certain zip codes, for example, are generally willing to pay more than other customers. But demographic data has its limits.
Taking in other more dynamic data signals, such as weather data for example, can help aid dynamic pricing strategies even further. Customers might be willing to pay a higher price for an umbrella when it’s raining or about to rain than when it’s sunny and hot outside. Customers might be willing to pay more for a power generator right after a power outage from a storm. This list goes on.
However, there are limitations at a truly one-to-one customer level. Most data can help inform generalities and averages but doesn’t help determine pricing for a specific customer.
That’s where behavioral data comes into play. While consumers can behave similarly across cohorts, many display unique behaviors when it comes to pricing and discount sensitivity. Some high-income shoppers love chasing a good deal at retail, while others get a psychological rush from paying full-price. Conversely, lower-income shoppers don’t all need a deep discount to make a purchase.
Behavioral data around price and discount sensitivity can unlock insights at a customer-level to help retailers modify pricing and discounts for each customer. When combined with all the other data signals available in the marketplace, retailers have the ingredients to begin heading down the path of dynamic pricing and discounting.
Many retailers have continued segmentation strategies throughout the pandemic, even if they didn’t have time to advance those strategies throughout 2020. But time is ticking, and retailers must look forward and innovate. The one-size-fits-all approach to pricing and discounting will provide suboptimal results for retailers unwilling to take a risk. Worse, it can undermine an otherwise well executed personalization strategy across other customer touchpoints. If customers don’t feel special across the board, especially now, the personalization strategy isn’t good enough.
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dabaf46abd1b587347e871ccf9d15911 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathantreiber/2020/11/30/the-barriers-that-hold-back-personalization-efforts-in-pricing-and-promotion/?sh=205e4f9859c9 | The Barriers That Hold Back Personalization Efforts In Pricing And Promotion | The Barriers That Hold Back Personalization Efforts In Pricing And Promotion
Conversations with industry leaders at Shoptalk uncover obstructions in strategy development
Hand typing discount coupon code on smartphone screen to get the shopping on line sale promotion, on ... [+] line shopping ,digital marketing business and technology, lifestyle concept getty
The past 12 months have been a unique journey for the retail world, full of new strategies, ups and (far too many) downs. And consequently over these months, many retailers and those associated with the industry have had their noses to their individual grindstones, focusing intently on what’s six inches from their faces rather than taking a long view of their efforts and collaborating with others in the industry.
I definitely found myself in that category, which is why the 19 retail experts I was given the privilege of speaking to at Shoptalk—an industry event that connects countless perspectives in retail with a focus on collaboration—offered such an enlightening experience. I had forgotten how important dialogue is to our business.
In the first part of this Shoptalk series, I discussed how the experts I spoke to overwhelmingly agreed that personalization in pricing and promotion is and will be an essential part of the retail space going forward, yet there was a lack of consensus on what “personalization” meant. Each perspective on the subject varied slightly, and different branches of retail had different definitions and applications of it.
Yet if personalized promotion is deemed essential, what are the systemic barriers that block these efforts from coming to fruition? If the end goal for major consumer brands is a more focused targeting of promotion to maximize the value of their strategies, what is stopping them from executing a more dynamic discount strategy? The answers I found were a fascinating mix of technical, strategic, and philosophical barriers, and varied greatly based on industry.
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The main roadblock to offering an individualized discounting and promotion structure appeared to be a resource issue on both the technology and manpower front. For some companies it was the former, for some it was the latter, and for some, even though the drive was there to offer a more personalized promotional structure, institutional support was lacking.
“We do not have enough technical support,” said Juliet Chen, Marketing Director for Tawa Supermarket Inc. “We do not have enough people that are constantly developing and evolving the services; like online services that we’re offering. We’re not a technology company. It makes it kind of hard because whatever we want to do to personalize customization either relies on a third party service provider or we have to basically have our internal developers work on it. But our developers have numerous projects we’re working on,” she said.
These technical barriers weren’t just limited to deployment as well. While some companies may have the manpower to execute such strategies, they may lack the sophistication in targeting necessary to make personalizing promotions effective.
“Part of the challenge is the adaptability that you have to have as an industry in retail means that your technology has to be on pace,” said one Vice President of Merchandising.
Still, if the drive to offer this level of personalized promotion is there, technical barriers shouldn’t be an issue, as some of my subjects intimated. Particularly on the level of medium and larger retailers, the resources allocated to overcoming these technical barriers exist if there’s buy-in on the strategy.
“It’s complicated as far as an executional standpoint, but as far as an organizational standpoint, there wouldn’t be any hurdles as far as somebody saying, ‘We don’t have the technology to do this, so let’s not,’” said one Product Manager to a large-scale clothing retailer. “It would literally just be acknowledging that we don’t and figuring out a way to curate the technology in-house or source it third party.”
And this organizational issue represents the second major barrier to instituting a more personalized discounting and promotion strategy. While overwhelmingly the subjects I spoke to saw the value in this brand of personalization, the reality is a bit more complicated. Discounting strategies, particularly among brick-and-mortar retailers, tend to create a disparity in locations which can create net-negative results across the board. Additionally, coordinating online prices with in-store prices can be a major challenge.
“Promotions serve as a loss leader, not a revenue generator,” said Sandeep Bhanote, Cofounder and CEO at Radius8. “Retailers with multiple stores doing systemwide promotions that enhance poor performing stores at the expense of well-performing ones.”
Further, promotions strategies are now being presented to an increasingly price-savvy public.
“For a very long time, retailers have effectively trained consumers on how and when to buy,” Bhanote said. “So highly promotional retailers like Ann Taylor, it’s a race to the bottom. And that’s a challenge because you’re training your behavior on when to buy, when to look for sales, and that says a fundamental problem. The reason why they did that is they wanted to drive traffic, they wanted to drive excitement, and they wanted to drive sales. Now we live in a little bit different world where the consumer is a little bit more discerning.”
In order to change the tide of this philosophical understanding on the efficacy of personalized promotion, key decision makers need to be sold on its value. Identifying who those decision makers are, however, is another challenge in developing these strategies. Each subject I spoke to had a different answer, but when taken as a whole, it became clear that it would require company-wide strategic alignment across departments to implement this brand of personalized promotion, with specific buy-in from accounting teams, marketing, brand advocates, as well as executive teams.
After 19 illuminating discussions, I walked away from Shoptalk with a much better understanding of where the industry stands on the concept of personalized promotions. While there are certainly barriers to overcome, the excitement at the prospect of individualized offers signals an innovative industry ready to adopt new strategies to meet the needs of an ever-evolving consumer marketplace.
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26b323710ab5cef843a16cb45461bf2a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathantreiber/2021/02/19/the-retail-industry-is-ready-for-a-revolution-in-couponing/?sh=27550b23faae | The Retail Industry Is Ready For A Revolution In Couponing | The Retail Industry Is Ready For A Revolution In Couponing
How The Pandemic Aligned The Stars For A Digital Transformation
With AFP Story by Fabienne Faur: Lifestyle-US-economy-consumer Coupons from the advertising section ... [+] of the Sunday newspaper September 13, 2011 in Washington, DC. The humble coupon -- which is the past gave consumers a few cents off soap or cereal -- has mushroomed into a lifestyle for millions of Americans with its own television programs, websites and trading platforms. A total of 167 billion coupons were distributed to US consumers in the first six months of 2011, according to the research firm NCH Marketing Services, and the value of redeemed coupons rose 5.3 percent to $2 billion. But it's not your grandmother's Sunday newspaper coupon clipping anymore. Websites with names like Southern Savers, livefabuless.com or thekrazycouponlady.com give consumers an edge on how to find the the right discounts in the art of "couponing," which has evolved into a verb. AFP PHOTO / Karen BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images
Since the dawn of the internet, every corner of commerce has been in a constant state of reinvention as new technologies are leveraged to optimize the buying and selling experience. We’ve seen targeting and customer communications efforts streamlined and revolutionized, in-store and e-commerce customer experiences completely overhauled, and breakthroughs in logistics and inventory management that have transformed how products are delivered. Yet for the past 100 years, this digital transformation has mostly missed the couponing arena—until now.
Coupons are sort of a dirty secret in the retail and CPG space, akin to understanding where meat comes from. Those who are aware of the process of clearinghouses, the disconnects between manufacturer and retailer, and all the inefficiencies that exist in between those entities understand how broken this antiquated system is, yet nothing transformative has risen above the fray to disrupt it. We may be entering a revolutionary time for coupons and promotions, however, and COVID-19 may be the engine that drives this tide change.
How COVID is Creating the Conditions for Change
It always feels unsavory to discuss silver linings in a global pandemic, particularly when it comes to commerce and a retail industry that has seen so much decimation over the last year. The changes that the industry has had to undergo as a result of COVID-19, however—namely the push towards contactless payments—has presented an opportunity for evolution that may disrupt a corner of the industry that has needed disruption for decades.
The central question that has plagued retail for as long as I’ve been involved in the industry roughly boils down to: Why can’t I do a coupon on a mobile phone?
It’s a simple question, and a fair one. Why has it taken decades, to little avail, for retailers to deliver customers coupons to their phones that they can scan at a store and receive their discount? The answer to a simple question is often simple itself: there is an investment in hardware required for retailers to be able to scan phones to redeem coupons. The back-end technology is there, but without point-of-sale technology capable of translating the coupon, it’s nearly impossible to reach mass adoption. Some retailers have made the investment, and have been able to institute these next-gen promotions strategies, but the rate of adoption is minimal.
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The pandemic has forced retailers’ hands to invest in new point of sale technology for the purposes of contactless payments. With a greater emphasis on safety, the old way of doing business through cash or card transactions is being phased out. This rise in contactless payments is also seeing a rise in customer reliance on digital wallets and smartphones as the principal source of payment.
We’re at an inflection point of smartphone technology, digital security, and point of sale investment that is creating the conditions for mobile couponing to take the leap into the 21st Century. And the ramifications for this transformation will be monumental for retailers—but not retailers alone.
How This Revolution Can Impact CPG Brands
Consumers have been trying to use manufacturers’ coupons on their mobile phones for years; this has led to the proliferation of consumer services such as a Barter, Checkout 51, Fetch Rewards, and other services that are providing workarounds for both mobile usage and retailer acceptance. Typically these services take the form of a consumer rebate or cashback, not an actual coupon discount deducted at point of sale. Still, consumers are so desperate for mobile incentives that they are willing to scan miles of printed receipts in order to receive a 50 cent or dollar incentive.
Consumers are leading the charge and making demands on CPGs and retailers alike; they want a frictionless experience at check out, coupled with the public health benefits of not having to touch plastic, cash, or paper coupons. Some retailers, like BJ’s, have postponed acceptance of paper coupons for hygiene reasons during the pandemic. Brands have been searching for these solutions for decades, but it took a pandemic to force a shift in thinking among leading retailers. While current capabilities are nascent, there is finally movement towards a true national standard for paperless manufacturer coupons.
With this digital transformation, CPG brands will also be granted the gift of agility. Instead of the required 2-12 weeks to launch a paper-based coupon campaign and then waiting an additional four to six weeks for results, brands will be able to deploy value to consumers’ mobile phones instantly and have near real-time insights into which discounts are being used, where they’re being used, and on what products. It’s a level of information brands have been searching for for years, and we may finally have advanced enough to change the paradigm on digital promotions strategies.
As with any upheaval, the conditions that bring us to certain points may not always be pretty, but the push towards a digital transformation in the couponing space may signal a revolution in a sector of the industry that has demanded disruption for decades.
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