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Kuwaiti oil fires
The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces setting fire to a reported 605 to 732 oil wells along with an unspecified number of oil filled low-lying areas, such as oil lakes and fire trenches, as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 due to the advances of US-led coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War. The fires were started in January and February 1991, and the first well fires were extinguished in early April 1991, with the last well capped on November 6, 1991.
The dispute between Iraq and Kuwait over alleged slant-drilling in the Rumaila oil field was one of the reasons for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
In addition, Kuwait had been producing oil above treaty limits established by OPEC. By the eve of the Iraqi invasion, Kuwait had set production quotas to almost , which coincided with a sharp drop in the price of oil. By the summer of 1990, Kuwaiti overproduction had become a serious point of contention with Iraq.
Some analysts have speculated that one of Saddam Hussein's main motivations in invading Kuwait was to punish the ruling al-Sabah family in Kuwait for not stopping its policy of overproduction, as well as his reasoning behind the destruction of said wells.
It is also hypothesized that Iraq decided to destroy the oil fields to achieve a military advantage, believing the intense smoke plumes serving as smoke screens created by the burning oil wells would inhibit Coalition offensive air strikes, foil allied precision guided weapons and spy satellites, and could screen Iraq’s military movements. Furthermore, it is thought that Iraq’s military leaders may have regarded the heat, smoke, and debris from hundreds of burning oil wells as presenting a formidable area denial obstacle to Coalition forces. The onset of the oil well destruction supports this military dimension to the sabotage of the wells; for example, during the early stage of the Coalition air campaign, the number of oil wells afire was relatively small but the number increased dramatically in late February with the arrival of the ground war.
The Iraqi military combat engineers also released oil into low-lying areas for defensive purposes against infantry and mechanized units along Kuwait’s southern border, by constructing several "fire trenches" roughly 1 kilometer long, 3 meters wide, and 3 meters deep to impede the advance of Coalition ground forces.
The military use of the land based fires should also be seen in context with the coinciding, deliberate, sea based Gulf War oil spill, the apparent strategic goal of which was to foil a potential amphibious landing by U.S. Marines.
As an international coalition under United States command assembled in anticipation of an invasion of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, the Iraqi regime decided to destroy as much of Kuwait's oil reserves and infrastructure as possible before withdrawing from that country. As early as December 1990, Iraqi forces placed explosive charges on Kuwaiti oil wells. The wells were systematically sabotaged beginning on January 16, 1991, when the allies commenced air strikes against Iraqi targets. On February 8, satellite images detected the first smoke from burning oil wells. The number of oil fires peaked between February 22 and 24, when the allied ground offensive began.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's report to Congress, "the retreating Iraqi army set fire to or damaged over 700 oil wells, storage tanks, refineries, and facilities in Kuwait." Estimates placed the number of oil well fires from 605 to 732. A further thirty-four wells had been destroyed by heavy coalition bombing in January. The Kuwait Petroleum Company's estimate as of September 1991 was that there had been 610 fires, out of a total of 749 facilities damaged or on fire along with an unspecified number of oil filled low-lying areas, such as "oil lakes" and "fire trenches". These fires constituted approximately 50% of the total number of oil well fires in the history of the petroleum industry, and temporarily damaged or destroyed approximately 85% of the wells in every major Kuwaiti oil field.
Concerted efforts to bring the fires and other damage under control began in April 1991. During the uncontrolled burning phase from February to April, various sources estimated that the ignited wellheads burnt through between four and six million barrels of crude oil, and between seventy and one hundred million cubic meters of natural gas per day. Seven months later, 441 facilities had been brought under control, while 308 remained uncontrolled. The last well was capped on November 6, 1991. The total amount of oil burned is generally estimated at about one billion barrels of the entire one hundred four billion supply. Almost one in every 100 barrels was destroyed forever. Daily global oil consumption in 2015 is about 91.4 million barrels; the oil lost to combustion would last 11 days at modern usage rates.
On March 21, 1991, a Royal Saudi Air Force C-130H crashed in heavy smoke due to the Kuwaiti oil fires on approach to Ras Mishab Airport, Saudi Arabia. 92 Senegalese soldiers and 6 Saudi crew members were killed, the largest accident among Coalition forces.
The smoke screening was also used by Iraqi anti-armor forces to a successful extent in the Battle of Phase Line Bullet, having aided in achieving the element of surprise against advancing Bradley (IFV)s, along with increasing the general fog of war.
The fires burned out of control because of the dangers of sending in firefighting crews during the war. Land mines had been placed in areas around the oil wells and military demining was necessary before the fires could be put out. Around of oil were lost each day. Eventually, privately contracted crews extinguished the fires, at a total cost of US$1.5 billion to Kuwait. By that time, however, the fires had burned for approximately ten months, causing widespread pollution.
The fires have been linked with what was later deemed Gulf War Syndrome, a chronic disorder afflicting military veterans and civilian workers that include fatigue, muscle pain, and cognitive problems; however, studies have indicated that the firemen who capped the wells did not report any of the symptoms that the soldiers experienced. The causes of Gulf War Syndrome have yet to be determined.
From the perspective of ground forces, apart from the occasional "oil rain" experienced by troops very close to spewing wells, one of the more commonly experienced effects of the oil field fires were the ensuing smoke plumes which rose into the atmosphere and then precipitated or fell out of the air via dry deposition and by rain. The pillar-like plumes frequently broadened and joined up with other smoke plumes at higher altitudes, producing a cloudy grey overcast effect, as only about 10% of all the fires corresponding with those that originated from "oil lakes" produced pure black soot filled plumes, 25% of the fires emitted white to grey plumes, while the remainder emitted plumes with colors between grey and black. For example, one Gulf War veteran stated:
A paper published in 2000 analyzed the degree of exposure by troops to particulate matter, which included soot but the paper focused more-so on silica sand, which can produce silicosis. The paper included troop medical records, and in its conclusion: "A literature review indicated negligible to nonexistent health risk from other inhaled particulate material (other than silica) during the Gulf War".
The burning wells needed to be extinguished as, without active efforts, Kuwait would lose billions of dollars in oil revenues. It was predicted that the fires would burn from two to five years before losing pressure and going out on their own, optimists estimating two years and pessimists estimating five while the majority estimated three years until this occurred.
The companies responsible for extinguishing the fires initially were Bechtel, Red Adair Company (now sold off to Global Industries of Louisiana), Boots and Coots, and Wild Well Control. Safety Boss was the fourth company to arrive but ended up extinguishing and capping the most wells of any other company: 180 of the 600. Other companies including Cudd Well/Pressure Control, Neal Adams Firefighters, and Kuwait Wild Well Killers were also contracted.
According to Larry H. Flak, a petroleum engineer for Boots and Coots International Well Control, 90% of all the 1991 fires in Kuwait were put out with nothing but sea water, sprayed from powerful hoses at the base of the fire. The extinguishing water was supplied to the arid desert region by re-purposing the oil pipelines that prior to the arson attack had pumped oil from the wells to the Persian Gulf. The pipeline had been mildly damaged but, once repaired, its flow was reversed to pump Persian gulf seawater to the burning oil wells. The extinguishing rate was approximately 1 every 7–10 days at the start of efforts but then with experience gained and the removal of the mine fields that surrounded the burning wells, the rate increased to 2 or more per day.
For stubborn oil well fires, the use of a gas turbine to blast a large volume of water at high velocity at the fire proved popular with firefighters in Kuwait and was brought to the region by Hungarians equipped with MiG-21 engines mounted originally on a T-34 (later replaced with T-55) tank, called Big wind. It extinguished 9 fires in 43 days.
In fighting a fire at a directly vertical spewing wellhead, high explosives, such as dynamite were used to create a blast wave that pushes the burning fuel and local atmospheric oxygen away from the well. (This is a similar principle to blowing out a candle.) The flame is removed and the fuel can continue to spill out without igniting. Generally, explosives were placed within 55 gallon drums, the explosives surrounded by fire retardant chemicals, and then the drums are wrapped with insulating material with a horizontal crane being used to bring the drum as close to the burning area as possible.
The firefighting teams titled their occupation as "Operation Desert Hell" after Operation Desert Storm.
The fires were the subject of a 1992 IMAX documentary film, "Fires of Kuwait", which was nominated for an Academy Award. The film includes footage of the Hungarian team using their jet turbine extinguisher.
Lessons of Darkness is a 1992 film by director Werner Herzog that explores of the ravaged oil fields of post-Gulf War Kuwait.
Betchel Corporation produced a short documentary titled "Kuwait: Bringing Back the Sun" that summarizes and focuses upon the fire fighting efforts, which were dubbed the Al-Awda (Arabic for "The Return") project.
Immediately following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, predictions were made of an environmental disaster stemming from Iraqi threats to blow up captured Kuwaiti oil wells. Speculation ranging from a nuclear winter type scenario, to heavy acid rain and even short term immediate global warming were presented at the World Climate Conference in Geneva that November.
On January 10, 1991, a paper appearing in the Journal "Nature", stated Paul Crutzen's calculations that the setting alight of the Kuwait oil wells would produce a "nuclear winter", with a cloud of smoke covering half of the Northern Hemisphere after 100 days had passed and beneath the cloud, temperatures would be reduced by 5-10 Celsius. This was followed by articles printed in the "Wilmington Morning Star" and the "Baltimore Sun" newspapers in mid to late January 1991, with the popular television scientist personality of the time, Carl Sagan, who was also the co-author of the first few nuclear winter papers along with Richard P. Turco, John W. Birks, Alan Robock and Paul Crutzen together collectively stated that they expected catastrophic nuclear winter like effects with continental sized impacts of "sub-freezing" temperatures as a result if the Iraqis went through with their threats of igniting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells and they burned for a few months.
Later when Operation Desert Storm had begun, Dr. S. Fred Singer and Carl Sagan discussed the possible environmental impacts of the Kuwaiti petroleum fires on the ABC News program "Nightline". Sagan again argued that some of the effects of the smoke could be similar to the effects of a nuclear winter, with smoke lofting into the stratosphere, a region of the atmosphere beginning around above sea level at Kuwait, resulting in global effects and that he believed the net effects would be very similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the "Year Without a Summer".
He reported on initial modeling estimates that forecast impacts extending to south Asia, and perhaps to the northern hemisphere as well. Singer, on the other hand, said that calculations showed that the smoke would go to an altitude of about and then be rained out after about three to five days and thus the lifetime of the smoke would be limited. Both height estimates made by Singer and Sagan turned out to be wrong, albeit with Singer's narrative being closer to what transpired, with the comparatively minimal atmospheric effects remaining limited to the Persian Gulf region, with smoke plumes, in general, lofting to about and a few times as high as .
Along with Singer's televised critique, Richard D. Small criticized the initial "Nature" paper in a reply on March 7, 1991 arguing along similar lines as Singer.
Sagan later conceded in his book "The Demon-Haunted World" that his prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it "was" pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared."
At the peak of the fires, the smoke absorbed 75 to 80% of the sun’s radiation. The particles rose to a maximum of , but were scavenged by cloud condensation nuclei from the atmosphere relatively quickly.
Sagan and his colleagues expected that a "self-lofting" of the sooty smoke would occur when it absorbed the sun's heat radiation, with little to no scavenging occurring, whereby the black particles of soot would be heated by the sun and lifted/lofted higher and higher into the air, thereby injecting the soot into the stratosphere where it would take years for the sun blocking effect of this aerosol of soot to fall out of the air, and with that, catastrophic ground level cooling and agricultural impacts in Asia and possibly the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
In retrospect, it is now known that smoke from the Kuwait oil fires only affected the weather pattern throughout the Persian Gulf and surrounding region during the periods that the fires were burning in 1991, with lower atmospheric winds blowing the smoke along the eastern half of the Arabian Peninsula, and cities such as Dhahran and Riyadh, and countries such as Bahrain experienced days with smoke filled skies and carbon soot rainout/fallout.
Thus the immediate consequence of the arson sabotage was a dramatic regional decrease in air quality, causing respiratory problems for many Kuwaitis and those in neighboring countries.
According to the 1992 study from Peter Hobbs and Lawrence Radke, daily emissions of sulfur dioxide (which can generate acid rain) from the Kuwaiti oil fires were 57% of that from electric utilities in the United States, the emissions of carbon dioxide were 2% of global emissions and emissions of soot reached 3400 metric tons per day.
In a paper in the DTIC archive, published in 2000, it states that "Calculations based on smoke from Kuwaiti oil fires in May and June 1991 indicate that combustion efficiency was about 96% in producing carbon dioxide. While, with respect to the incomplete combustion fraction, Smoke particulate matter accounted for 2% of the fuel burned, of which 0.4% was soot."[With the remaining 2%, being oil that did not undergo any initial combustion].
Peter V. Hobbs also narrated a short amateur documentary titled "Kuwait Oil Fires" that followed the University of Washington/UW's "Cloud and Aerosol Research Group" as they flew through, around and above the smoke clouds and took samples, measurements, and video of the smoke clouds in their Convair C-131(N327UW) Aerial laboratory.
Although scenarios that predicted long-lasting environmental impacts on a global atmospheric level due to the burning oil sources did not transpire, long-lasting ground level oil spill impacts were detrimental to the environment regionally.
Forty-six oil wells are estimated to have gushed, and before efforts to cap them began, they were releasing approximately 300,000-400,000 barrels of oil per day, with the last gusher being capped occurring in the latter days of October 1991.
The Kuwaiti Oil Minister estimated between twenty-five and fifty million barrels of unburned oil from damaged facilities pooled to create approximately 300 oil lakes, that contaminated around 40 million tons of sand and earth. The mixture of desert sand, unignited oil spilled and soot generated by the burning oil wells formed layers of hard "tarcrete", which covered nearly five percent of Kuwait's land mass.
Cleaning efforts were led by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and the Arab Oil Co., who tested a number of technologies including the use of petroleum-degrading bacteria on the oil lakes.
Vegetation in most of the contaminated areas adjoining the oil lakes began recovering by 1995, but the dry climate has also partially solidified some of the lakes. Over time the oil has continued to sink into the sand, with potential consequences for Kuwait's small groundwater resources.
The land based Kuwaiti oil spill surpassed the Lakeview Gusher, which spilled nine million pounds in 1910, as the largest oil spill in recorded history.
Six to eight million barrels of oil were directly spilled into the Persian Gulf, which became known as the Gulf War oil spill.
During the second US invasion of Iraq in 2003, approximately 40 oil wells were set on fire in the Persian gulf within Iraqi territory, ostensibly to once again hinder the invasion.
The "Kuwait Wild Well Killers", who successfully extinguished 41 of the Kuwait oil well fires in 1991, used their experience to tackle blazes in the Iraqi Rumaila oilfields in 2003. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17448 |
Kimberly Beck
Kimberly Beck (born January 9, 1956) is a former American actress and model. She is best known for her role as Trish Jarvis in Joseph Zito's "" (1984). Her other film roles include Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" (1964), Luc Besson's "The Big Blue" (1988), George T. Miller's "Frozen Assets" (1992), and Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day" (1996).
Beck was born to the actress Cindy Robbins. She starred in such movies as "Massacre at Central High", "Roller Boogie", and "". Among her notable television credits are " General Hospital", "Capitol" (billed as Kimberly Beck-Hilton), "Fantasy Island", "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" (as one side of a Jekyll-and-Hyde character, whose counterpart was played by Trisha Noble), "Westwind", "The Brady Bunch", "Dynasty", "Lucas Tanner" and "Peyton Place" (as the character Kim Schuster). As a child, she appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" and television commercials for such products as Mattel Toymakers Barbie and Chatty dolls. She had a very brief appearance on "The Munsters" as a transformed Eddie Munster after Eddie drank the rest of Grandpa's Texas Playgirl Potion in season 1, episode 33 entitled "Lily Munster, Girl Model". She starred on the pilot episode of "Eight Is Enough" as Nancy Bradford, the role that, in the series, went to Dianne Kay. She also had the role of Diane Porter in "Rich Man, Poor Man Book II" with Peter Strauss and appeared in a host of other well-received television miniseries productions. In 1968, she and her stepfather Tommy Leonetti, then working in Australia, recorded the single "Let's Take a Walk", released under the name of "Tommy Leonetti and his daughter Kim". It charted at #4 on the Melbourne charts.
In 1988, Beck married producer Jason Clark and they had two sons. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17449 |
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst (; born April 30, 1982) is an American-German actress. Dunst made her film debut in Woody Allen's "New York Stories" (1989), followed by Brian De Palma's "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990). At age twelve, she gained widespread recognition for her performance as Claudia in the 1994 film adaptation of "Interview with the Vampire", which earned her critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Also in 1994, she portrayed the young Amy March in the film adaptation of "Little Women". She subsequently had roles in the youth fantasy films "Jumanji" (1995) and "Small Soldiers" (1998).
In the late 1990s, Dunst transitioned to leading roles in a number of teen films, including the satirical political comedy "Dick", and the Sofia Coppola-directed drama "The Virgin Suicides" (both released in 1999), followed by the comedy "Bring It On" (2000), and the drama "Crazy/Beautiful" (2001). She subsequently portrayed Marion Davies in Peter Bogdanovich's period drama "The Cat's Meow" (2001). Dunst soon gained a resurgence of mainstream attention for her role as Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" (2002), a role which she reprised in the sequels "Spider-Man 2" (2004) and "Spider-Man 3" (2007). She had a minor part in the psychological drama "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), followed by a lead role in Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy "Elizabethtown" (2005), and as the title character in Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" (2006). In 2010, Dunst portrayed Katherine Marks, the missing wife of accused murderer Robert Durst, in the biographical crime film "All Good Things".
In 2011, Dunst starred in Lars von Trier's science-fiction drama "Melancholia" portraying a depressed newlywed, which earned her numerous accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. She then had a supporting role in "On the Road" (2012), an adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel, which garnered mixed reviews. She also appeared in "Upside Down" (2012), and the thriller "The Two Faces of January" (2014). In 2015, Dunst was cast as Peggy Blumquist in the second season of the FX series "Fargo", which was well-received and earned Dunst her second Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Series. This was followed by a leading role in the thriller "Midnight Special" (2016), the historical drama "Hidden Figures" (2016), and she reunited with Coppola for "The Beguiled" (2017). Dunst returned to television in 2019 with a lead role in the black comedy series "On Becoming a God in Central Florida."
Kirsten Caroline Dunst was born on April 30, 1982, at Point Pleasant Hospital in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Dunst's father worked for Siemens as a medical services executive, and her mother worked for Lufthansa as a flight attendant. She was also an artist and one-time gallery owner. Dunst's father is German, originally from Hamburg, and her American mother is of German and Swedish descent. Until the age of eleven, Dunst lived in Brick Township, New Jersey, where she attended Ranney School. Her parents separated in 1993, and she subsequently moved with her mother and brother to Los Angeles, where she attended Laurel Hall School in North Hollywood and Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks. Among her school friends was Rami Malek, who was in the grade above; they were both in a musical theater class. In 1995, her mother filed for divorce.
After graduating from high school in 2000, Dunst continued acting. As a teenager, she found it difficult to deal with her rising fame, and for a period she blamed her mother for pushing her into acting as a child. However, she later said that her mother "always had the best intentions". When asked if she had any regrets about her childhood, Dunst said, "Well, it's not a natural way to grow up, but it's the way I grew up and I wouldn't change it. I have my stuff to work out... I don't think anybody can sit around and say, 'My life is more screwed up than yours.' Everybody has their issues".
Dunst began her career when she was three years old as a child fashion model in television commercials. She was signed with Ford Models and Elite Model Management. At age six, she made her feature film debut with a minor role in Woody Allen's short film "Oedipus Wrecks"; it was released as one-third of the anthology film "New York Stories" (1989). Soon after, Dunst performed in the comedy-drama "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990), based on Tom Wolfe's novel of the same name, in which she played the daughter of Tom Hanks's character. In 1993, Dunst made a guest appearance in an episode of the science fiction drama "".
Her breakthrough role came in 1994, in the horror drama "Interview with the Vampire" opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, based on Anne Rice's novel of the same name. She played Claudia, the child vampire who is a surrogate daughter to Cruise and Pitt's characters. The film received mixed reviews, but many critics praised Dunst's performance. Roger Ebert commented that Dunst's creation of the child vampire Claudia was one of the "creepier" aspects of the film, and mentioned her ability to convey the impression of great age inside apparent youth. Todd McCarthy of "Variety" said that Dunst was "just right" for the family. The film included a scene in which Dunst shared her first on-screen kiss with Pitt, who is almost two decades older. In an interview with "Interview" magazine, she revealed that kissing him had made her feel uncomfortable; "I thought it was gross, that Brad had cooties. I mean, I was 10". Her performance earned her the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance, the Saturn Award for Best Young Actress and her first Golden Globe Award nomination.
Later in 1994, Dunst co-starred in the drama film "Little Women" opposite Winona Ryder and Claire Danes. The film was favorably received. Film critic Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote that the film was the greatest adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel of the same name and remarked on Dunst's performance:
"The perfect contrast to take-charge Jo comes from Kirsten Dunst's scene-stealing Amy, whose vanity and twinkling mischief make so much more sense coming from an 11-year-old vixen than they did from grown-up Joan Bennett in 1933. Ms. Dunst, also scarily effective as the baby bloodsucker of "Interview With the Vampire", is a little vamp with a big future".
In 1995, Dunst starred in the fantasy adventure film "Jumanji", a loose adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's 1981 children's book of the same name. The story is about a supernatural and ominous board game in which animals and other jungle hazards appear with each roll of the dice. She was part of an ensemble cast that included Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt and David Alan Grier. The film was a financial success and grossed $262 million worldwide. That year, and again in 2002, Dunst was named one of "People" magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People.
From 1996 to 1997, Dunst had a recurring role in season three of the NBC medical drama "ER". She played Charlie Chemingo, a child prostitute who was being cared for by the ER pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney). In 1997, she voiced Young Anastasia in the animated musical film "Anastasia". Also in 1997, Dunst appeared in the black comedy film "Wag the Dog", opposite Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. The following year she voiced the title character, Kiki, a thirteen-year-old apprentice witch who leaves her home village to spend a year on her own, in the anime movie "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1998). She also starred in Sarah Kernochan's period comedy "All I Wanna Do" (1998), playing a student at an all girls' boarding school in the 1960s, opposite Gaby Hoffmann, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Lynn Redgrave. Writing for "The New York Times", A. O. Scott opined "the film is surprisingly pleasant, thanks to smart, unstereotyped performances – especially by Hoffmann and Dunst – and the filmmaker's evident respect and affection for her characters".
Dunst turned down the role of Angela in the 1999 drama film "American Beauty", because she did not want to appear in the film's sexual scenes or kiss the main character, played by Kevin Spacey. She later explained: "When I read it, I was 15 and I don't think I was mature enough to understand the script's material". That year, she co-starred in the comedy film "Dick", opposite Michelle Williams. The film is a parody which retells the events of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of former United States president Richard Nixon. Dunst's next film was Sofia Coppola's drama "The Virgin Suicides" (1999), based on Jeffrey Eugenides' novel of the same name. She played Lux Lisbon, one of the troubled teenage daughters of Ronald Lisbon (James Woods). The film was screened as a special presentation at the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival in 2000. According to Metacritic, the film received generally favorable reviews. "San Francisco Chronicle" critic Peter Stack noted in his review that Dunst "beautifully balances innocence and wantonness". Dunst also appeared in Savage Garden's music video "I Knew I Loved You", the first single from their second and final album "Affirmation" (1999).
In 2000, Dunst starred in the comedy "Bring It On" as Torrance Shipman, the captain of a cheerleading squad. The film garnered mostly positive reviews, with many critics reserving praise for her performance. In his review, A. O. Scott called her "a terrific comic actress, largely because of her great expressive range, and the nimbleness with which she can shift from anxiety to aggression to genuine hurt". Charles Taylor of "Salon" noted that "among contemporary teenage actresses, Dunst has become the sunniest imaginable parodist", even though he thought the film had failed to provide her with as good a role as she had in either "Dick" or in "The Virgin Suicides." Jessica Winter from "The Village Voice" complimented Dunst, stating that her performance was "as sprightly and knowingly daft as her turn in "Dick"" and commenting that "[Dunst] provides the only major element of "Bring It On" that plays as tweaking parody rather than slick, strident, body-slam churlishness." Peter Stack of the "San Francisco Chronicle", despite giving the film an unfavorable review, commended Dunst for her willingness "to be as silly and cloyingly agreeable as it takes to get through a slapdash film".
The following year, Dunst starred in the comedy film "Get Over It" (2001). She later explained that she took the role for the opportunity to showcase her singing. Also in 2001, she starred in the historical drama "The Cat's Meow", directed by Peter Bogdanovich, as the American actress Marion Davies. Derek Elley of "Variety" described the film as "playful and sporty", saying that this was Dunst's best performance to date: "Believable as both a spoiled ingenue and a lover to two very different men, Dunst endows a potentially lightweight character with considerable depth and sympathy". For her work, she won the Best Actress Silver Ombú award at the 2002 Mar del Plata International Film Festival.
In 2002, Dunst co-starred in the superhero film "Spider-Man" with Tobey Maguire, the most financially successful film of her career up until this date. She played Mary Jane Watson, the best friend and love interest of Peter Parker (Maguire). The film was directed by Sam Raimi. Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" remarked on Dunst's ability to "lend even the smallest line a tickle of flirtatious music". In the "Los Angeles Times" review, critic Kenneth Turan noted that Dunst and Maguire made a real connection on screen, concluding that their relationship "involved audiences to an extent rarely seen in films". "Spider-Man" was a commercial and critical success. The movie grossed $114 million during its opening weekend in North America and went on to earn $822 million worldwide.
Dunst next co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman and Holly Hunter in the drama "Levity" (2003), a story of a man who is released on parole and returns to his hometown seeking redemption. That same year, she co-starred opposite Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julia Stiles in the drama "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003). The film received mostly negative reviews, with Manohla Dargis of the "Los Angeles Times" describing it as "smug and reductive". Dunst co-starred as Mary Svevo opposite Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet and Tom Wilkinson in Michel Gondry's science fiction romantic comedy-drama "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004). The latter film received very positive reviews, with "Entertainment Weekly" describing Dunst's subplot as "nifty and clever". The film grossed $72 million worldwide.
The success of the first "Spider-Man" film led Dunst to reprise her role as Mary Jane Watson in 2004 in "Spider-Man 2". The film was well received by critics and a financial success, setting a new opening weekend box office record for North America. With box office revenues of $783 million worldwide, it was the second highest-grossing film in 2004. Also in 2004, Dunst co-starred opposite Paul Bettany in the romantic comedy "Wimbledon" in which she portrayed a rising tennis player in the Wimbledon Championships, while Bettany portrayed a fading former tennis star. The film received mixed reviews, but many critics enjoyed Dunst's performance. Claudia Puig of "USA Today" observed that the chemistry between Dunst and Bettany was potent, with Dunst doing a "fine job as a sassy and self-assured player".
In Dunst's sole project of 2005, she co-starred opposite Orlando Bloom in Cameron Crowe's romantic tragicomedy "Elizabethtown" as flight attendant Claire Colburn. The film premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. Dunst revealed that working with Crowe was enjoyable, but more demanding than she had expected. The film garnered mixed reviews, with the "Chicago Tribune" rating it 1 out of 4 stars and describing Dunst's portrayal of a flight attendant as "cloying". It was also a box office disappointment. After "Elizabethtown", Dunst collaborated with Sofia Coppola again and starred as the title character in the historical drama "Marie Antoinette" (2006), based on Antonia Fraser's book "". The film was screened at a special presentation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and was reviewed favorably. The film grossed earned $45 million at the box office from a budget of $60 million.
In 2007, Dunst reprised her role as Mary Jane Watson in "Spider-Man 3". In contrast to the previous two films' positive reviews, "Spider-Man 3" received a mixed reaction from critics. In his review, Ryan Gilbey of the "NewStatesman" was critical of Dunst's character: "the film-makers couldn't come up with much for Mary Jane to do other than scream a lot". Nevertheless, with a worldwide gross of $891 million, it stands as the most commercially successful film in the series and Dunst's highest-grossing film to the end of 2008. Having initially signed on for three "Spider-Man" films, she said that she would consider doing a fourth, but only if Raimi and Maguire also returned. In January 2010, it was announced that the fourth film was cancelled and that the "Spider-Man" film series would be restarted, and therefore dropping the trio from the franchise.
Dunst's next role was in 2008, in which she co-starred opposite Simon Pegg in the comedy "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People", based on former "Vanity Fair" contributing editor Toby Young's memoir of the same name. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 37%, with the film gaining mostly negative reviews. Robert Wilonsky of "The Village Voice" was critical of Dunst's performance, writing she "seems to be speaking in four different accents at once, none of them quite of the English variety". He added that the film "plays like a made-for-CBS redo of "The Devil Wears Prada"""."
Dunst made her screenwriting and directorial debut with the short film "Bastard", which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010 and was later featured at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. She co-starred opposite Ryan Gosling in the mystery drama "All Good Things" (2010), based on a true story of a New York real estate developer Robert Durst, whose wife disappeared in 1982. The film received fair reviews, but was a commercial failure, earning only $640,000 worldwide. Film critic Roger Ebert praised Dunst for her ability to capture "a woman at a loss to understand who her husband really is, and what the true nature of his family involves". Similarly, the "San Francisco Chronicle" complimented her performance as "the only one worth watching", despite the film's "slow crawl" and lack of suspense. Also in 2010, Dunst co-starred with Brian Geraghty in Carlos Cuarón's short film "The Second Bakery Attack", based on Haruki Murakami's short story.
In 2011, Dunst co-starred opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Rampling in Lars von Trier's drama film "Melancholia" as a woman suffering depression as the world ends. The film premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and received positive reviews; in particular for Dunst's performance. Steven Loeb of "Southampton Patch" wrote "This film has brought the best out of von Trier, as well as his star. Dunst is so good in this film, playing a character unlike any other she has ever attempted... Even if the film itself were not the incredible work of art that it is, Dunst's performance alone would be incentive enough to recommend it". Sukhdev Sandhu of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote "Dunst is exceptional, so utterly convincing in the lead role – trouble, serene, a fierce savant – that it feels like a career breakthrough. Dunst won several awards for her performance, including the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Best Actress Award from the U.S. National Society of Film Critics.
Dunst made a cameo appearance in Beastie Boys' 2011 music video "Fight For Your Right Revisited" which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. A year later, she starred in Juan Diego Solanas' science fiction romance "Upside Down" with Jim Sturgess. Described as a "Romeo and Juliet" story, Peter Howell of the "Toronto Star" opined there was no character development and Dunst "brings competence but no passion to her underwritten roles". The critical consensus from Rotten Tomatoes was also negative, with the film receiving only a 28% approval rating. Next, she had a role in Leslye Headland's romantic comedy "Bachelorette" (2012), starring alongside Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson and Lizzy Caplan. The film was produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Dunst plays Regan Crawford, one of three women who reunite for the wedding of a friend who was ridiculed in high school. Upon release, the film garnered mixed reviews. Writing for the "New York Post", Sara Stewart thought Dunst and Caplan gave "standout performances" and praised the writing, despite it being "a little underwhelming when it comes to delivering on laughs".
Her next release was the adventure drama "On the Road" (2012), an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's novel of the same name, in which she plays Camille Moriarty. Dunst was first approached for the role by director Walter Salles several years prior. The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and was released in the United States on December 21, 2012. "On the Road" gained mixed reviews and under-performed at the box office. Writing for "Time" magazine, Richard Corliss compared "On the Road" to "a diorama in a Kerouac museum ... [the film] lacks the novel’s exuberant syncopation", but praises Dunst's "excellent" performance. "Chicago Tribune"'s Michael Phillips was more positive however, giving the film 3 out of 4 stars, praising the cinematic quality and actors for their "kind of fluid motion and freedom that periodically makes "On the Road" make sense and makes it feel alive".2013 saw Dunst make cameo appearances in two films, "The Bling Ring" and "." Hossein Amini's "The Two Faces of January" (2014) was Dunst's next film role, starring alongside Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac. Playing Colette MacFarland, the wife of a con artist, the thriller is based on Patricia Highsmith's 1964 novel of the same name. Garnering mostly favorable reviews, the "Los Angeles Times" complimented the 1960s Greek setting and observed Dunst "brings a potent complexity to Colette; every mood shift registers to the bone". Jake Wilson of "The Sydney Morning Herald" praised the script for "condensing the book's plot while retaining its spirit", although he thought there was some uneven editing. Of Dunst's performance, he called her "typically teasing yet sympathetic". Finally in 2014, Dunst voiced a character in the eighth episode of "", and made a guest appearance in an episode of "Portlandia". Throughout 2015, Dunst focused solely on television work. She was cast as hairdresser Peggy Blumquist in the second season of the critically acclaimed FX crime comedy-drama "Fargo", which earned her a nomination for Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.
In 2016, Dunst co-starred in Jeff Nichols' science fiction drama "Midnight Special" with Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton. The story is about a father and his eight-year-old son who go on the run upon discovering that the boy possesses mysterious powers. The film opened to mostly positive reviews; Tim Grierson of "The New Republic" was impressed by "Midnight Special"'s special effects which imitated a late 20th century retro style. However, he questioned Dunst's character which "simply has nothing to do". Dunst had a supporting role in biographical drama "Hidden Figures" (2016), a loose adaptation of the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, about African-American mathematicians who worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race. Dunst's portrayal of a white supervisor drew praise from "Slant Magazine"'s Elise Nakhnikian, while "The Guardian" thought the film was entertaining and educational despite the underdeveloped supporting cast. The film was a commercial success, grossing $236 million worldwide and was nominated for three Academy Awards. The cast also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In addition to film work, Dunst served as a member of the main competition jury of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. That year, Dunst planned to direct an adaptation of Sylvia Plath's novel "The Bell Jar", starring Dakota Fanning, but left the project before development.
Dunst had two film releases in 2017. She starred with Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Elle Fanning in the drama "The Beguiled", her third collaboration with Sofia Coppola, who wrote and directed the feature. The film is a remake of Don Siegel's 1971 film about a wounded Union soldier who seeks shelter at an all-girls' school in the Confederate States. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 79% approval rating which was "enlivened by strong performances from the cast". London's "Evening Standard" also took note of the "impeccable" cast performances, writing "Dunst lends the ideal measure of coiled physical longing to her prim spinster".
Dunst then starred in the psychological thriller "Woodshock," written and directed by her friends, Kate and Laura Mulleavy"," founders of the Rodarte fashion label. The film is about a woman who falls deeper into paranoia after taking a deadly drug. The Mulleavys' personally approached Dunst for the lead role, which gave Dunst an "emotional safety net" during filming. She prepared for the role over the course of a year, undertaking dream experiments in order to try to inhabit the character's state of mind. Upon release, the film was unpopular with critics. Katie Rife of "The A.V. Club" acknowledged the "sophisticated" cinematography but thought "Character development and motivation are practically nonexistent, and the already-thin plot pushes ambiguity to the point of incoherence". "Variety"'s Guy Lodge shared a similar opinion with the character, writing "Dunst has form in playing irretrievably inverted depression to riveting effect, but the Mulleavys’ script hardly gives her as complex an emotional or intellectual palette to work with".
As of 2019, Dunst stars in the Showtime dark comedy television series "On Becoming a God in Central Florida", which premiered in August that year. For her role, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress and a Critics Choice Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Dunst will next star in "The Power of the Dog" directed by Jane Campion, alongside Jesse Plemons and Benedict Cumberbatch for Netflix.
Dunst made her singing debut in the comedy film "Get Over It", performing two songs written by Marc Shaiman.
She recorded Henry Creamer and Turner Layton's jazz standard "After You've Gone" that was used in the end credits of "The Cat's Meow". In "Spider-Man 3", she sang two songs as Mary Jane Watson, one during a Broadway performance, and one as a singing waitress in a jazz club. Dunst recorded the songs earlier and lip-synced while filming. She appeared in the music videos for Savage Garden's "I Knew I Loved You", Beastie Boys' "Make Some Noise" and R.E.M.'s "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" and she sang two tracks which were "This Old Machine" and "Summer Day" on Jason Schwartzman's 2007 solo album "Nighttiming". In 2007, Dunst said she had no intention to release albums, saying, "It worked when Barbra Streisand was doing it, but now it's a little cheesy, I think. It works better when singers are in movies".
Dunst starred as the magical princess Majokko in the Takashi Murakami and McG directed short "Akihabara Majokko Princess" singing a cover of The Vapors' 1980 song "Turning Japanese". This was shown at the "Pop Life" exhibition in London's Tate Modern museum from October 1, 2009, to January 17, 2010. It shows Dunst dancing around Akihabara, a shopping district in Tokyo, Japan.
Dunst dated actor Jake Gyllenhaal from 2002 to 2004, Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell in 2007, and her "On the Road" co-star Garrett Hedlund from 2012 to 2016. She began dating her "Fargo" co-star Jesse Plemons in 2016 and they became engaged in 2017. Their son, Ennis Howard Plemons, was born on May 3, 2018. In 2001, Dunst bought a home in Toluca Lake, California but eventually sold it in September 2019 for $4.5 million. In 2010, she also sold a property in Nichols Canyon, California for $1.4 million. Dunst owned a Lower Manhattan apartment which she listed for sale in 2017.
In early 2008, Dunst was treated for depression at the Cirque Lodge treatment center in Utah. In late March 2008, she left the treatment center and began filming "All Good Things". Two months later, she went public with this information in order to dispel rumors of drug and alcohol abuse, stating, "Now that I'm feeling stronger, I was prepared to say something. [...] Depression is pretty serious and should not be gossiped about".
Dunst supports the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, for which she helped design and promote a necklace whose sales proceeds went to the Foundation. She worked in support of breast cancer awareness, participating in the Stand Up to Cancer telethon in September 2008 in order to raise funds for cancer research. On December 5, 2009, she participated in the Teletón in Mexico, in order to raise awareness for cancer treatment and children's rehabilitation.
Dunst endorsed John Kerry during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. She supported Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election, and directed and narrated a documentary, "Why Tuesday", about the tradition of voting on Tuesdays and low voter turnout in the United States, to "influence people in a positive way". She endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. In 2011, she gained German citizenship, which enabled her to "film in Europe without a problem". She now has both United States and German citizenship.
Dunst's most acclaimed films according to the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, include "Spider-Man" (2002), "Spider-Man" 2 (2004), "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004), "Melancholia" (2011), "The Two Faces of January" (2014), and "Hidden Figures" (2017). Dunst has been nominated for three Golden Globe awards, and in August 2019, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17450 |
Kevin Warwick
Kevin Warwick FIET, FCGI, (born 9 February 1954) is a British engineer and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done research concerning robotics.
Kevin Warwick was born in 1954 in Keresley, Coventry, in the United Kingdom and attended Lawrence Sheriff School in Rugby, Warwickshire, where he was a contemporary of actor Arthur Bostrom. He left school at the age of 16 to start an apprenticeship with British Telecom. In 1976, he was granted his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD degree and a research job at Imperial College London.
He took up positions at Somerville College in Oxford, Newcastle University, the University of Warwick, and the University of Reading, before relocating to Coventry University in 2014.
Warwick is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) and a Fellow of the City and Guilds of London Institute (FCGI). He is Visiting Professor at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the University of Strathclyde, Bournemouth University, and the University of Reading, and in 2004 he was Senior Beckman Fellow at the University of Illinois in the United States. He is also on the Advisory Boards of the Instinctive Computing Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Centre for Intermedia at the University of Exeter.
By the age of 40, Warwick had been awarded a DSc degree (a higher doctorate) by both Imperial College London and the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, for his research output in two entirely unrelated areas. He has received the IET Achievement Medal, the IET Mountbatten Medal, and in 2011 the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine. In 2000, Warwick presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled "The Rise of Robots".
Warwick performs research in artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering, control systems and robotics. Much of Warwick's early research was in the area of discrete time adaptive control. He introduced the first state space based self-tuning controller and unified discrete time state space representations of ARMA models. He has also contributed to mathematics, power engineering and manufacturing production machinery.
Warwick directed a research project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which investigated the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to suitably stimulate and translate patterns of electrical activity from living cultured neural networks to use the networks for the control of mobile robots. Hence the behaviour process for each robot was effectively provided by a biological brain.
Previously, Warwick helped to develop a genetic algorithm named Gershwyn, which was able to exhibit creativity in producing popular songs, learning what makes a hit record by listening to examples of previous successful songs. Gershwyn appeared on BBC's "Tomorrow's World", having been successfully used to mix music for Manus, a group consisting of the four younger brothers of Elvis Costello.
Another of Warwick's projects involving AI was the robot head, Morgui. The head, which contained five "senses" (vision, sound, infrared, ultrasound and radar), was used to investigate sensor data fusion. It was X-rated by the University of Reading Research and Ethics Committee due to its image storage capabilities—anyone under the age of 18 who wished to interact with the robot had to obtain parental approval.
Warwick has very outspoken opinions about the future, particularly with respect to AI and its effect on the human species. He argues that humanity will need to use technology to enhance itself to avoid being overtaken by machines. He states that many human limitations, such as sensorimotor abilities, can be outperformed by machines, and he has said on record that he wants to gain these abilities: "There is no way I want to stay a mere human."
Warwick directed the University of Reading team in a number of European Community projects such as: FIDIS (Future of Identity in the Information Society), researching the future of identity; and ETHICBOTS and RoboLaw, both of which considered the ethical aspects of robots and cyborgs.
Warwick's topics of interest have many ethical implications, some due to his human enhancement experiments. The ethical dilemmas of his research are used by the Institute of Physics as a case study for schoolchildren and science teachers as a part of their formal Advanced level and GCSE studies. His work has also been discussed by The President's Council on Bioethics and the President's Panel on Forward Engagements. He is a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on "Novel Neurotechnologies".
Along with Tipu Aziz and his team at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and John Stein of the University of Oxford, Warwick is helping to design the next generation of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease. Instead of stimulating the brain all the time, the goal is for the device to predict when stimulation is needed and to apply the signals prior to any tremors occurring to stop them before they even start. Recent results have also shown that it is possible to identify different types of Parkinson's Disease.
Warwick has directed a number of projects intended to interest schoolchildren in the technology with which he is involved. In 2000, he received the EPSRC Millennium Award for his Schools Robot League. In 2007, 16 school teams were involved in a project to design a humanoid robot to dance and then complete an assault course, with the final competition staged at the Science Museum, London. The project, entitled 'Androids Advance' was funded by EPSRC and was presented as a news item by Chinese television.
Warwick contributes significantly to the public understanding of science by giving regular public lectures, participating with radio programmes, and through popular writing. He has appeared in numerous television documentary programmes on AI, robotics and the role of science fiction in science, such as "How William Shatner Changed the World", "Future Fantastic" and "Explorations". He also appeared in the Ray Kurzweil-inspired movie "Transcendent Man" along with William Shatner, Colin Powell, and Stevie Wonder. He has guested on several television talk shows, including "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", "Først & sist", "Sunday Brunch" and "Richard & Judy". He has appeared on the cover of a number of magazines, for example the February 2000 edition of "Wired".
In 2005, Warwick was the subject of an early day motion tabled by members of the UK Parliament, in which he was congratulated for his work in attracting students to science and for teaching "in a way that makes the subject interesting and relevant so that more students will want to develop a career in science."
In 2013, Warwick appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4's "The Museum of Curiosity" with Robert Llewellyn and Cleo Rocos. In 2014, he appeared on BBC Radio 4's "Midweek" with Libby Purves, Roger Bannister and Rachael Stirling.
Warwick's claims that robots can program themselves to avoid each other while operating in a group raise the issue of self-organisation. In particular, the works of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, once purely speculative have now become immediately relevant with respect to synthetic intelligence.
Cyborg-type systems, if they are to survive, need to be not only homeostatic (meaning that they are able to preserve stable internal conditions in various environments) but also adaptive. Testing the claims of Varela and Maturana using synthetic devices is the more serious concern in the discussion about Warwick and those involved in similar research. "Pulling the plug" on independent devices cannot be as simple as it appears, because if the device displays sufficient intelligence, and assumes a diagnostic and prognostic stature, we may ultimately one day be forced to decide between what it could be telling us as counterintuitive (but correct) and our impulse to disconnect because of our limited and "intuitive" perceptions.
Warwick's robots seemed to exhibit behaviour not anticipated by the research, one such robot "committing suicide" because it could not cope with its environment. In a more complex setting, it may be asked whether a "natural selection" might be possible, neural networks being the major operative.
The 1999 edition of the "Guinness Book of Records" recorded that Warwick performed the first robot learning experiment using the Internet. One robot, with an artificial neural network brain at the University of Reading in the UK, learned how to move around without bumping into things. It then taught, via the Internet, another robot at SUNY Buffalo in New York State to behave in the same way. The robot in the US was therefore not taught or programmed by a human, but rather by another robot based on what it had itself learnt.
Hissing Sid was a robot cat that Warwick took on a British Council lecture tour of Russia, where he presented it in lectures at such places as Moscow State University. The robot was put together as a student project; its name came from the noise made by the pneumatic actuators used to drive its legs when walking. Hissing Sid also appeared on BBC TV's "Blue Peter" but became more well known when it was refused a ticket by British Airways on the grounds that they did not allow animals in the cabin.
Warwick was also responsible for a robotic "magic chair" (based on the SCARA-form UMI RTX arm) used on BBC TV's "Jim'll Fix It". The chair provided the show's host Jimmy Savile with tea and stored Jim'll Fix It badges for him to hand out to guests. Warwick appeared on the programme himself for a Fix-it involving robots.
Warwick was also involved in the development of the "Seven Dwarves" robots, a version of which was sold in kit form as "Cybot" on the cover of "Real Robots" magazine in 2001. The magazine series guided its readers through the stages of building and programming Cybot, an artificially intelligent robot capable of making its own decisions and thinking for itself.
Probably the most famous research undertaken by Warwick—and the origin of the nickname "Captain Cyborg" given to him by "The Register"—is the set of experiments known as Project Cyborg, in which an array was implanted into his arm, with the goal of him "becoming a cyborg".
The first stage of Project Cyborg, which began on 24 August 1998, involved a simple RFID transmitter being implanted beneath Warwick's skin, which was used to control doors, lights, heaters, and other computer-controlled devices based on his proximity. He explained that the main purpose of this experiment was to test the limits of what the body would accept, and how easy it would be to receive a meaningful signal from the microprocessor.
The second stage of the research involved a more complex neural interface, designed and built especially for the experiment by Dr. Mark Gasson and his team at the University of Reading. This device consisted of a BrainGate sensor, a silicon square about 3mm wide, connected to an external "gauntlet" that housed supporting electronics. It was implanted under local anaesthetic on 14 March 2002 at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where it was interfaced directly into Warwick's nervous system via the median nerve in his left wrist. The microelectrode array that was inserted contained 100 electrodes, each the width of a human hair, of which 25 could be accessed at any one time, whereas the nerve that was being monitored carries many times that number of signals. The experiment proved successful, and the output signals were detailed enough to enable a robot arm, developed by Warwick's colleague Dr. Peter Kyberd, to mimic the actions of Warwick's own arm.
By means of the implant, Warwick's nervous system was connected to the Internet at Columbia University, New York. From there he was able to control the robot arm at the University of Reading and obtain feedback from sensors in the finger tips. He also successfully connected ultrasonic sensors on a baseball cap and experienced a form of extrasensory input.
In a highly publicised extension to the experiment, a simpler array was implanted into the arm of Warwick's wife, with the ultimate aim of one day creating a form of telepathy or empathy using the Internet to communicate the signal over huge distances. This experiment resulted in the first direct and purely electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans. Finally, the effect of the implant on Warwick's hand function was measured using the University of Southampton's Hand Assessment Procedure (SHAP). There was a fear that directly interfacing with the nervous system might cause some form of damage or interference, but no measurable side effect (nor any sign of rejection) was encountered. In fact, it was observed that nerve tissue grew around the electrode array, enclosing the sensor.
Warwick and his colleagues claim that the Project Cyborg research could result in new medical tools for treating patients with damage to the nervous system, as well as assisting the more ambitious enhancements Warwick advocates. Some transhumanists even speculate that similar technologies could be used for technology-facilitated telepathy.
A controversy began in August 2002, shortly after the Soham murders, when Warwick reportedly offered to implant a tracking device into an 11-year-old girl as an anti-abduction measure. The plan produced a mixed reaction, with endorsement from many worried parents but ethical concerns from children's societies. As a result, the idea did not go ahead.
Anti-theft RFID chips are common in jewellery or clothing in some Latin American countries due to a high abduction rate, and the company VeriChip announced plans in 2001 to expand its line of available medical information implants, to be GPS trackable when combined with a separate GPS device.
Warwick participated as a "Turing Interrogator" on two occasions, judging machines in the 2001 and 2006 Loebner Prize competitions, platforms for an "imitation game" as devised by Alan Turing. The 2001 Prize, held at the London Science Museum, featured Turing's "jury service" or one-to-one Turing tests and was won by A.L.I.C.E. The 2006 contest staged "parallel-paired" Turing tests at University College London and the winner was Rollo Carpenter. Warwick co-organised the 2008 Loebner Prize at the University of Reading, which also featured parallel-paired Turing tests.
In 2012, he co-organised with Huma Shah a series of Turing tests held at Bletchley Park. According to Warwick, the tests strictly adhered to the statements made by Alan Turing in his papers. Warwick himself participated in the tests as a hidden human. Results of the tests were discussed in a number of academic papers. One paper, entitled "Human Misidentification in Turing Tests", became one of the top three most-downloaded papers in the "Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence".
In June 2014, Warwick helped Shah stage a series of Turing tests to mark the 60th anniversary of Alan Turing's death. The event was performed at the Royal Society, London. Warwick regarded the winning chatbot, "Eugene Goostman", as having "passed the Turing test for the first time" by fooling a third of the event's judges into making an incorrect identification, and termed this a "milestone". A paper containing all of the transcripts involving Eugene Goostman entitled "Can Machines Think? A Report on Turing Test Experiments at the Royal Society", has also become one of the top three most-downloaded papers in the "Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence".
Warwick was criticised in association with the 2014 Royal Society event, where he claimed that software program Eugene Goostman had passed the Turing test on the basis of its performance. The software successfully convinced over 30% of the judges who could not identify it as being a machine, on the basis of a five-minute text chat. Critics stated that the software's claim of being a young non-native English speaker weakened the spirit of the test, as any grammatical and semantic inconsistencies could be excused as a consequence of limited proficiency in the English language. Some critics also claimed that the software's performance had been exceeded by other programs in the past. However, the 2014 tests were entirely unrestricted in terms of discussion topics, whereas the previous tests referenced by the critics had been limited to very specific subject areas. Additionally, Warwick was criticised by editor and entrepreneur Mike Masnick for exaggerating the significance of the Eugene Goostman program to the press.
Warwick was a member of the 2001 Higher Education Funding Council for England (unit 29) Research Assessment Exercise panel on Electrical and Electronic Engineering and was Deputy chairman for the same panel (unit 24) in 2008. In March 2009, he was cited as being the inspiration of National Young Scientist of the Year, Peter Hatfield.
Warwick presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in December 2000, entitled "Rise of the Robots". Although the lectures were well received by some, British computer scientist Simon Colton complained about the choice of Warwick prior to his appearance. He claimed that Warwick "is not a spokesman for our subject" (Artificial Intelligence) and "allowing him influence through the Christmas lectures is a danger to the public perception of science". In response to Warwick's claims that computers could be creative, Colton, who is a Professor of Computational Creativity, also said: "the AI community has done real science to reclaim words such as creativity and emotion which they claim computers will never have". Subsequent letters were generally positive; Ralph Rayner wrote: "With my youngest son, I attended all of the lectures and found them balanced and thought-provoking. They were not sensationalist. I applaud Warwick for his lectures".
Warwick was presented with The Future of Health Technology Award and in 2004 received The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Achievement Medal. In 2008, he was awarded the Mountbatten Medal. In 2009 he received the Marcellin Champagnat award from Universidad Marista Guadalajara and the Golden Eurydice Award. In 2011 he received the Ellison-Cliffe Medal from the Royal Society of Medicine. In 2014, he was elected to the membership of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2018 Warwick was inducted into the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences.
He has received Honorary Doctorates from Aston University, Coventry University, Robert Gordon University, Bradford University, University of Bedfordshire, Portsmouth University, Kingston University, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje and Edinburgh Napier University.
Warwick has both his critics and endorsers, some of whom describe him as a "maverick". Others see his work as "not very scientific" and more like "entertainment", whereas some regard him as "an extraordinarily creative experimenter", his presentations as "awesome" and his work as "profound".
Warwick has written several books, articles and papers. A selection of his books:
Lectures (inaugural and keynote lectures):
Warwick is a regular presenter at the annual Careers Scotland Space School, University of Strathclyde.
He appeared at the 2009 World Science Festival with Mary McDonnell, Nick Bostrom, Faith Salie and Hod Lipson. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17453 |
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city had an estimated population of 495,327 in 2019, making it the 38th most-populous city in the United States. It is the most populated municipality and historic core city of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Kansas–Missouri state line and has a combined statistical area (CSA) population of 2,487,053. Most of the city lies within Jackson County, but portions spill into Clay, Cass, and Platte counties. The city borders Kansas City, Kansas (KCK), and the Kansas counties of Johnson County and Wyandotte County. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River coming in from the west. On June 1, 1850, the town of Kansas was incorporated; shortly after came the establishment of the Kansas Territory. Confusion between the two ensued, and the name Kansas City was assigned to distinguish them soon after.
Sitting on Missouri's western boundary with Kansas, with Downtown near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, the city encompasses about , making it the 23rd largest city by total area in the United States. Along with Independence, one of its major suburbs, it serves as one of the two county seats of Jackson County. Other major suburbs include the Missouri cities of Blue Springs and Lee's Summit and the Kansas cities of Overland Park, Olathe, and Kansas City.
The city is composed of several neighborhoods, including the River Market District in the north, the 18th and Vine District in the east, and the Country Club Plaza in the south. Kansas City is known for its long tradition of jazz music and culture, especially theater – the city was the center of the Vaudevillian Orpheum circuit in the 1920s. It is also noted for its cuisine, including its distinctive Kansas City-style barbecue, and its craft breweries.
Kansas City, Missouri, was incorporated as a town on June 1, 1850, and as a city on March 28, 1853. The territory, straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, was considered a good place to build settlements.
The Antioch Christian Church, Dr. James Compton House, and Woodneath are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The first documented European visitor to the eventual site of Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, he had deserted his post as fort commander and was avoiding French authorities. Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about east near Brunswick, Missouri, where he illegally traded furs.
To clear his name, he wrote "Exact Description of Louisiana, of Its Harbors, Lands and Rivers, and Names of the Indian Tribes That Occupy It, and the Commerce and Advantages to Be Derived Therefrom for the Establishment of a Colony" in 1713 followed in 1714 by "The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River". In the documents, he describes the junction of the "Grande Riv[ière] des Cansez" and Missouri River, making him the first to adopt those names. French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the area's first reasonably accurate map.
The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but were not to play a major role other than taxing and licensing Missouri River ship traffic. The French continued their fur trade under Spanish license. The Chouteau family operated under Spanish license at St. Louis, in the lower Missouri Valley as early as 1765 and in 1821 the Chouteaus reached Kansas City, where François Chouteau established Chouteau's Landing.
After the 1804 Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, noting it was a good place to build a fort. In 1831, a group of Mormons from New York settled in what would become the city. They built the first school within Kansas City's current boundaries, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833, and their settlement remained vacant.
In 1833 John McCoy, son of Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy, established West Port along the Santa Fe Trail, away from the river. In 1834 McCoy established Westport Landing on a bend in the Missouri to serve as a landing point for West Port. Soon after, the Kansas Town Company, a group of investors, began to settle the area, taking their name from an English spelling of "Cansez." The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic, which began when a ship carrying an infected person landed at Fort Leavenworth, a short distance to the north, devastated Plains Indian villages along the Missouri River, while white settlements were still sparse.
In 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the Town of Kansas. By that time, the Town of Kansas, Westport, and nearby Independence, had become critical points in the westward expansion of the United States. Three major trails – the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon – all passed through Jackson County.
On February 22, 1853, the City of Kansas was created with a newly elected mayor. It had an area of and a population of 2,500. The boundary lines at that time extended from the middle of the Missouri River south to what is now Ninth Street, and from Bluff Street on the west to a point between Holmes Road and Charlotte Street on the east.
During the Civil War, the city and its immediate surroundings were the focus of intense military activity. Although the First Battle of Independence in August 1862 resulted in a Confederate States Army victory, the Confederates were unable to leverage their win in any significant fashion, as Kansas City was occupied by Union troops and proved too heavily fortified to assault. The Second Battle of Independence, which occurred on October 21–22, 1864, as part of Sterling Price's Missouri expedition of 1864, also resulted in a Confederate triumph. Once again their victory proved hollow, as Price was decisively defeated in the pivotal Battle of Westport the next day, effectively ending Confederate efforts to regain Missouri.
General Thomas Ewing, in response to a successful raid on nearby Lawrence, Kansas, led by William Quantrill, issued General Order No. 11, forcing the eviction of residents in four western Missouri counties – including Jackson – except those living in the city and nearby communities and those whose allegiance to the Union was certified by Ewing.
After the Civil War, Kansas City grew rapidly, largely losing its Southern identity. The selection of the city over Leavenworth, Kansas, for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad bridge over the Missouri River brought about significant growth. The population exploded after 1869, when the Hannibal Bridge, designed by Octave Chanute, opened. The boom prompted a name change to Kansas City in 1889, and the city limits to be extended south and east. Westport became part of Kansas City on December 2, 1897. In 1900, Kansas City was the 22nd largest city in the country, with a population of 163,752 residents.
Kansas City, guided by architect George Kessler, became a forefront example of the City Beautiful movement, offering a network of boulevards and parks.
The relocation of Union Station to its current location in 1914 and the opening of the Liberty Memorial in 1923 provided two of the city's most identifiable landmarks. Robert A. Long, president of the Liberty Memorial Association, was a driving force in the funding for construction. Long was a longtime resident and wealthy businessman. He built the R.A. Long Building for the Long-Bell Lumber Company, his home, Corinthian Hall (now the Kansas City Museum) and Longview Farm.
Further spurring Kansas City's growth was the opening of the innovative Country Club Plaza development by J.C. Nichols in 1925, as part of his Country Club District plan.
The Kansas City streetcar system once had hundreds of miles of streetcars running through the city and was one of the largest systems in the country. In 1903 the 8th Street Tunnel was built as an underground streetcar system through the city. The last run of the streetcar was on June 23, 1957 but the tunnel still exists.
At the start of the 20th century, political machines gained clout in the city, with the one led by Tom Pendergast dominating the city by 1925. Several important buildings and structures were built during this time, including the Kansas City City Hall and the Jackson County Courthouse. The machine fell in 1939 when Pendergast, riddled with health problems, pleaded guilty to tax evasion after long federal investigations. His biographers have summed up Pendergast's uniqueness:
Pendergast may bear comparison to various big-city bosses, but his open alliance with hardened criminals, his cynical subversion of the democratic process, his monarchistic style of living, his increasingly insatiable gambling habit, his grasping for a business empire, and his promotion of Kansas City as a wide-open town with every kind of vice imaginable, combined with his professed compassion for the poor and very real role as city builder, made him bigger than life, difficult to characterize.
Kansas City's suburban development began with a streetcar system in the early decades of the 20th century. The city's first suburbs were in the neighborhoods of Pendleton Heights and Quality Hill. After World War II, many relatively affluent residents left for suburbs in Johnson County, Kansas, and eastern Jackson County, Missouri. Many also went north of the Missouri River, where Kansas City had incorporated areas between the 1940s and 1970s.
Troost Avenue, once the eastern edge of Kansas City, Mo. and a residential corridor nicknamed Millionaire Row, is now widely seen as one of the city's most prominent racial and economic dividing lines due to urban decay, which was caused by white flight. During the civil rights era the city blocked people of color from moving to homes west of Troost Avenue, causing the areas east of Troost to have one of the worst murder rates in the country. This led to the dominating economic success of the neighboring Johnson County.
In 1950, African Americans represented 12.2% of Kansas City's population. The sprawling characteristics of the city and its environs today mainly took shape after 1960s race riots. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., was a catalyst for the 1968 Kansas City riot. At this time, slums were forming in the inner city, and many who could afford to do so left for the suburbs and outer edges of the city. The post-World War II idea of suburbs and the "American Dream" also contributed to the sprawl of the area. The city's population continued to grow, but the inner city declined. The city's most populous ethnic group, non-Hispanic whites, declined from 89.5% in 1930 to 54.9% in 2010.
In 1940, the city had about 400,000 residents; by 2000, it was home to only about 180,000. From 1940 to 1960, the city more than doubled its physical size, while increasing its population by only about 75,000. By 1970, the city covered approximately , more than five times its size in 1940.
The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse was a major disaster that occurred on July 17, 1981, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others during a tea dance in the 45-story Hyatt Regency hotel in Crown Center. It is the deadliest structural collapse in US history other than the September 11 attacks. In 2015 a memorial called the Skywalk Memorial Plaza was built for the families of the victims of the disaster, across the street from the hotel which is now a Sheraton.
In the 21st century, the Kansas City area has undergone extensive redevelopment, with over $6 billion in improvements to the downtown area on the Missouri side. One of the main goals is to attract convention and tourist dollars, office workers, and residents to downtown KCMO. Among the projects include the redevelopment of the Power & Light District, located in the area to the east of the Power & Light Building (the former headquarters of the Kansas City Power & Light Company, which is now based in the district's northern end), into a retail and entertainment district; and the Sprint Center, an 18,500-seat arena that opened in the district in 2007, which was funded by a 2004 ballot initiative involving a tax on car rentals and hotels, and was designed to meet the stadium specifications for a possible future NBA or NHL franchise. Kemper Arena, which was replaced by Sprint Center, fell into disrepair and was sold to private developers. By 2018, the arena was being converted to a sports complex under the name Hy-Vee Arena. The Kauffman Performing Arts Center opened in 2011 providing a new, modern home to the KC Orchestra and Ballet. In 2015, an 800-room Hyatt Convention Center Hotel was announced for a site next to the Performance Arts Center & Bartle Hall. Construction was scheduled to start in early 2018 with Loews as the operator.
From 2007 to 2017, downtown residential population in Kansas City quadrupled and continues to grow. The area has grown from almost 4,000 residents in the early 2000s to nearly 30,000 . Kansas City's downtown ranks as the 6th-fastest-growing downtown in America with the population expected to grow by more than 40% by 2022. Conversions of office buildings such as the Power & Light Building and the Commerce Bank Tower into residential and hotel space has helped to fulfill the demand. New apartment complexes like One, Two, and Three Lights, River Market West, and 503 Main have begun to reshape Kansas City's skyline. Strong demand has led to occupancy rates in the upper 90%.
While the residential population of downtown has boomed, the office population has dropped significantly from the early 2000s to the mid 2010s. AMC and other top employers moved their operations to modern office buildings in the suburbs. High office vacancy plagued downtown, leading to the neglect of many office buildings. By the mid 2010s, many office buildings were converted to residential uses and the Class A vacancy rate plunged to 12% in 2017. Swiss Re, Virgin Mobile, AutoAlert, and others have begun to move operations to downtown Kansas City from the suburbs as well as expensive coastal cities.
The area has seen additional development through various transportation projects, including improvements to the Grandview Triangle, which intersects Interstates 435 and 470, and U.S. Route 71, a thoroughfare long notorious for fatal accidents.
In July 2005, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) launched Kansas City's first bus rapid transit line, the Metro Area Express (MAX), which links the River Market, Downtown, Union Station, Crown Center and the Country Club Plaza. The KCATA continues to expand MAX with additional routes on Prospect Avenue, Troost Avenue, and Independence Avenue.
In 2013, construction began on a two-mile streetcar line in downtown Kansas City (funded by a $102 million ballot initiative that was passed in 2012) that runs between the River Market and Union Station, it began operation in May 2016. In 2017, voters approved the formation of a TDD to expand the streetcar line south 3.5 miles from Union Station to UMKC's Volker Campus. Additionally in 2017, the KC Port Authority began engineering studies for a Port Authority funded streetcar expansion north to Berkley Riverfront Park. Citywide, voter support for rail projects continues to grow with numerous light rail projects in the works.
In 2016, Jackson County, Missouri, acquired unused rail lines as part of a long-term commuter rail plan. For the time being, the line is being converted to a trail while county officials negotiate with railroads for access to tracks in Downtown Kansas City.
On November 7, 2017, Kansas City, Missouri, voters overwhelmingly approved a new single terminal at Kansas City International Airport by a 75% to 25% margin. The new single terminal will replace the three existing "Clover Leafs" at KCI Airport and is expected to open in October 2022.
The city has an area of , of which, is land and is water. Bluffs overlook the rivers and river bottom areas. Kansas City proper is bowl-shaped and is surrounded to the north and south by glacier-carved limestone and bedrock cliffs. Kansas City is at the junction between the Dakota and Minnesota ice lobes during the maximum late Independence glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch. The Kansas and Missouri rivers cut wide valleys into the terrain when the glaciers melted and drained. A partially filled spillway valley crosses the central city. This valley is an eastward continuation of the Turkey Creek Valley. It is the closest major city to the geographic center of the contiguous United States, or "Lower 48".
Kansas City, Missouri, comprises more than 240 neighborhoods, some with histories as independent cities or as the sites of major events.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art opened its Euro-Style Bloch addition in 2007, and the Safdie-designed Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts opened in 2011. The Power and Light Building is influenced by the Art Deco style and sports a glowing sky beacon. The new world headquarters of H&R Block is a 20-story all-glass oval bathed in a soft green light. The four industrial artworks atop the support towers of the Kansas City Convention Center (Bartle Hall) were once the subject of ridicule, but now define the night skyline near the new Sprint Center along with One Kansas City Place (Missouri's tallest office tower), the KCTV-Tower (Missouri's tallest freestanding structure) and the Liberty Memorial, a World War I memorial and museum that flaunts simulated flames and smoke billowing into the night skyline. It was designated as the National World War I Museum and Memorial in 2004 by the United States Congress. Kansas City is home to significant national and international architecture firms including ACI Boland, BNIM, 360 Architecture, HNTB, Populous. Frank Lloyd Wright designed two private residences and Community Christian Church there.
Kansas City hosts more than 200 working fountains, especially on the Country Club Plaza. Designs range from French-inspired traditional to modern. Highlights include the Black Marble H&R Block fountain in front of Union Station, which features synchronized water jets; the Nichols Bronze Horses at the corner of Main and J.C. Nichols Parkway at the entrance to the Plaza Shopping District; and the fountain at Hallmark Cards World Headquarters in Crown Center.
Since its inception in 1857, City Market has been one of the largest and most enduring public farmers' markets in the American Midwest, linking growers and small businesses to the community. More than 30 full-time merchants operate year-round and offer specialty foods, fresh meats and seafood, restaurants and cafes, floral, home accessories and more. The City Market is also home to the Arabia Steamboat Museum, which houses artifacts from a steamboat that sank near Kansas City in 1856.
Downtown Kansas City is an area of bounded by the Missouri River to the north, 31st Street to the south, Troost Avenue to the East, and State Line Road to the west. Areas near Downtown Kansas City include the 39th Street District, which is known as Restaurant Row, and features one of Kansas City's largest selections of independently owned restaurants and boutique shops. It is a center of literary and visual arts, and bohemian culture. Crown Center is the headquarters of Hallmark Cards and a major downtown shopping and entertainment complex. It is connected to Union Station by a series of covered walkways. The Country Club Plaza, or simply "the Plaza", is an upscale, outdoor shopping and entertainment district. It was the first suburban shopping district in the United States, designed to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile, and is surrounded by apartments and condominiums, including a number of high rise buildings. The associated Country Club District to the south includes the Sunset Hill and Brookside neighborhoods, and is traversed by Ward Parkway, a landscaped boulevard known for its statuary, fountains and large, historic homes. Kansas City's Union Station is home to Science City, restaurants, shopping, theaters, and the city's Amtrak facility.After years of neglect and seas of parking lots, Downtown Kansas City is undergoing a period of change with over $6 billion in development since 2000. Many residential properties recently have been or are under redevelopment in three surrounding warehouse loft districts and the Central Business District. The Power & Light District, a new, nine-block entertainment district comprising numerous restaurants, bars, and retail shops, was developed by the Cordish Company of Baltimore, Maryland. Its first tenant opened on November 9, 2007. It is anchored by the Sprint Center, a 19,000-seat sports and entertainment complex.
Kansas City lies in the Midwestern United States, near the geographic center of the country, at the confluence of the Missouri River and Kansas River. The city lies in the northern periphery of the humid subtropical zone, but is interchangeable with the humid continental climate due to roughly 104 air frosts on average per annum. The city is part of USDA plant hardiness zones 5b and 6a. In the center of North America, far removed from a significant body of water, there is significant potential for extreme hot and cold swings throughout the year. The warmest month is July, with a 24-hour average temperature of . The summer months are hot and humid, with moist air riding up from the Gulf of Mexico, and high temperatures surpass on 6 days of the year, and on 47 days. The coldest month of the year is January, with an average temperature of . Winters are cold, with 22 days where the high temperature is at or below and 3 nights with a low at or below . The official record highest temperature is , set on August 14, 1936 at Downtown Airport, while the official record lowest is , set on December 22 and 23, 1989. Normal seasonal snowfall is at Downtown Airport and at Kansas City International Airport. The average window for freezing temperatures is October 31 to April 4, while for measurable () snowfall, it is November 27 to March 16 as measured at Kansas City International Airport. Precipitation, both in frequency and total accumulation, shows a marked uptick in late spring and summer.
Kansas City is located in Tornado Alley, a broad region where cold air from Canada collides with warm air from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the formation of powerful storms, especially during the spring. The Kansas City metropolitan area has experienced several significant outbreaks of tornadoes in the past, including the Ruskin Heights tornado in 1957 and the May 2003 tornado outbreak sequence. The region can also experience ice storms during the winter months, such as the 2002 ice storm during which hundreds of thousands of residents lost power for days and (in some cases) weeks. Kansas City and its outlying areas are also subject to flooding, including the Great Floods of 1951 and 1993.
According to the 2010 census, the racial composition of Kansas City was as follows:
Kansas City has the second largest Sudanese and Somali populations in the United States. The Latino/Hispanic population of Kansas City, which is heavily Mexican and Central American, is spread throughout the metropolitan area, with some concentration in the northeast part of the city and southwest of downtown. The Asian population, mostly Southeast Asian, is partly concentrated within the northeast side to the Columbus Park neighborhood in the Greater Downtown area, a historically Italian American neighborhood, the UMKC area and in River Market, in northern Kansas City.
The Historic Kansas City boundary is roughly and has a population density of about 5,000 people per sq. mi. It runs from the Missouri River to the north, 79th Street to the south, the Blue River to the east, and State Line Road to the west. During the 1960s and 1970s, Kansas City annexed large amounts of land, which are largely undeveloped to this day.
Between the 2000 and 2010 Census counts, the urban core of Kansas City continued to drop significantly in population. The areas of Greater Downtown in the center city, and sections near I-435 and I-470 in the south, and Highway 152 in the north are the only areas of Kansas City, Missouri, to have seen an increase in population, with the Northland seeing the greatest population growth. Even so, the population of Kansas City as a whole from 2000 to 2010 increased by 4.1%.
As of 2016 all employment growth in the area since 2000 has been in Neighboring Kansas, mostly in Johnson County. The federal government is the largest employer in the Kansas City metro area. More than 146 federal agencies maintain a presence there. Kansas City is one of ten regional office cities for the US government. The Internal Revenue Service maintains a large service center in Kansas City that occupies nearly . It is one of only two sites to process paper returns. The IRS has approximately 2,700 full-time employees in Kansas City, growing to 4,000 during tax season. The General Services Administration has more than 800 employees. Most are at the Bannister Federal Complex in South Kansas City. The Bannister Complex was also home to the Kansas City Plant, which is a National Nuclear Security Administration facility operated by Honeywell. The Kansas City Plant has since been moved to a new location on Botts Road. Honeywell employs nearly 2,700 at the Kansas City Plant, which produces and assembles 85% of the non-nuclear components of the United States nuclear bomb arsenal. The Social Security Administration has more than 1,700 employees in the Kansas City area, with more than 1,200 at its downtown Mid-America Program Service Center (MAMPSC). The United States Postal Service operates post offices in Kansas City. The Kansas City Main Post Office is at 300 West Pershing Road.
In 2019, the US Department of Agriculture relocated two federal research labs, ERS and NIFA, to the metro area. This move was consider controversial at the time of announcement, and resulted in multiple people leaving the agencies. The new location for these agencies will be in the downtown area.
Ford Motor Company operates a large manufacturing facility in Claycomo at the Ford Kansas City Assembly Plant, which builds the Ford F-150. The General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant is in adjacent Kansas City, Kansas. Now shuttered Smith Electric Vehicles built electric vehicles in the former TWA/American Airlines overhaul facility at Kansas City International Airport until 2017.
One of the largest US drug manufacturing plants is the Sanofi-Aventis plant in south Kansas City on a campus developed by Ewing Kauffman's Marion Laboratories. Of late, it has been developing academic and economic institutions related to animal health sciences, an effort most recently bolstered by the selection of Manhattan, Kansas, at one end of the Kansas City Animal Health Corridor, as the site for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, which researches animal diseases. Additionally, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research engages in medical basic science research. They offer educational opportunities for both predoctoral and postdoctoral candidates and work with Open University and University of Kansas Medical Center in a joint Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Science (IGPBS).
Numerous agriculture companies operate out of the city. Dairy Farmers of America, the largest dairy co-op in the United States is located in northern Kansas City. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and The National Association of Basketball Coaches are based in Kansas City.
The business community is serviced by two major business magazines, the "Kansas City Business Journal" (published weekly) and "Ingram's Magazine" (published monthly), as well as other publications, including a local society journal, the "Independent" (published weekly).
The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank built a new building that opened in 2008 near Union Station. Missouri is the only state to have two of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank headquarters (the second is in St. Louis). Kansas City's effort to get the bank was helped by former mayor James A. Reed, who as senator, broke a tie to pass the Federal Reserve Act.
The national headquarters for the Veterans of Foreign Wars is headquartered just south of Downtown.
With a Gross Metropolitan Product of $41.68 billion in 2004, Kansas City's (Missouri side only) economy makes up 20.5% of Missouri's gross state product. In 2014, Kansas City was ranked #6 for real estate investment.
Three international law firms, Lathrop & Gage, Stinson Leonard Street, and Shook, Hardy & Bacon are based in the city.
The following companies are headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri:
According to the city's Fiscal Year 2014–15 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top ten principal employers are as follows:
Kansas City, Missouri is abbreviated as KCMO and the metropolitan area as KC. Residents are known as Kansas Citians. Kansas City, Missouri is officially nicknamed the "City of Fountains". The fountains at Kauffman Stadium, commissioned by original Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman, are the largest privately funded fountains in the world. In 2018, UNESCO uniquely named Kansas City as a "City of Music". The city has more boulevards than any other city except Paris and has been called "Paris of the Plains". Soccer's popularity, at both professional and youth levels, as well as Children's Mercy Park's popularity as a home stadium for the U.S. Men's National Team led to the appellation "Soccer Capital of America". The city is called the "Heart of America", as it is near both the population center of the United States and the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states.
There were only two theaters in Kansas City when David Austin Latchaw, originally from rural Pennsylvania, moved to Kansas City in 1886. Latchaw maintained friendly relations with a number of actors such as Otis Skinner, Richard Mansfield, Maude Adams, Margaret Anglin, John Drew, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Julia Marlowe, E. H. Sothern, and Robert Mantell.
Theater troupes in the 1870s toured the state performing in cities or small towns springing up along the railroad lines. Rail transport had made touring easy allowing theater troupes to travel with costumes, props and sets. As theater grew in popularity after the mid-1880s that number increased and by 1912 ten new theaters had been built in Kansas City.
By the 1920s Kansas City was the center of the vaudevillian Orpheum circuit.
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre is the metropolitan area's top professional theatre company. The Starlight Theatre is an 8,105-seat outdoor theatre designed by Edward Delk. The Kansas City Symphony was founded by R. Crosby Kemper Jr. in 1982 to replace the defunct Kansas City Philharmonic, which was founded in 1933. The symphony performs at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Michael Stern is the symphony's music director and lead conductor. Lyric Opera of Kansas City, founded in 1958, performs at the Kauffman Center, offers one American contemporary opera production during its season, consisting of either four or five productions. The Civic Opera Theater of Kansas City performs at the downtown Folly Theater and at the UMKC Performing Arts Center. Every summer from mid-June to early July, The Heart of America Shakespeare Festival performs at Southmoreland Park near the Nelson-Atkins Museum; the festival was founded by Marilyn Strauss in 1993.
The Kansas City Ballet, founded in 1957 by Tatiana Dokoudovska, is a ballet troupe comprising 25 professional dancers and apprentices. Between 1986 and 2000, it combined with Dance St. Louis to form the State Ballet of Missouri, although it remained in Kansas City. From 1980 to 1995, the Ballet was run by dancer and choreographer Todd Bolender. Today, the Ballet offers an annual repertory split into three seasons, performing classical to contemporary ballets. The Ballet also performs at the Kauffman Center. Kansas City is home to The Kansas City Chorale, a professional 24-voice chorus conducted by Charles Bruffy. The chorus performs an annual concert series and a concert in Phoenix each year with their sister choir, the Phoenix Chorale. The Chorale has made nine recordings (three with the Phoenix Chorale).
Kansas City jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. The 1979 documentary "The Last of the Blue Devils" portrays this era in interviews and performances by local jazz notables. In the 1970s, Kansas City attempted to resurrect the glory of the jazz era in a family-friendly atmosphere. In the 1970s, an effort to open jazz clubs in the River Quay area of City Market along the Missouri ended in a gang war. Three of the new clubs were blown up in what ultimately ended Kansas City mob influence in Las Vegas casinos. The annual "Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival" attracts top jazz stars and large out-of-town audiences. It was rated Kansas City's "best festival." by Pitch.com.
Live music venues are found throughout the city, with the highest concentration in the Westport entertainment district centered on Broadway and Westport Road near the Country Club Plaza, as well as the 18th and Vine area's flourish for jazz music. A variety of music genres can be heard or have originated there, including musicians Janelle Monáe, Puddle of Mudd, Isaac James, The Get Up Kids, Shiner, Flee The Seen, The Life and Times, Reggie and the Full Effect, Coalesce, The Casket Lottery, The Gadjits, The Rainmakers, Vedera, The Elders, Blackpool Lights, The Republic Tigers, Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Kutt Calhoun, Skatterman & Snug Brim, Mac Lethal, Ces Cru, and Solè. As of 2003, the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, a big band jazz orchestra, performs in the metropolitan area.
In 2018, UNESCO named Kansas City as a "City of Music", making it the only city in the United States with that distinction. The city's funding of $7 million for improvements to the 18th and Vine Jazz District in 2016, coupled with the city's rich musical heritage, contributed to the designation.
The large community of Irish-Americans numbers over 50,000. The Irish were the first large immigrant group to settle in Kansas City and founded its first newspaper. The Irish community includes bands, dancers, Irish stores, newspapers and the Kansas City Irish Center at Drexel Hall in Midtown. The first book that detailed the history of the Irish in Kansas City was "Missouri Irish: Irish Settlers on the American Frontier", published in 1984. The Kansas City Irish Fest is held over Labor Day weekend every year in Crown Center and Washington Park.
Missouri voters approved riverboat casino gaming on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers by referendum with a 63% majority on November 3, 1992. The first casino facility in the state opened in September 1994 in North Kansas City by Harrah's Entertainment (now Caesar's Entertainment). The combined revenues for four casinos exceeded $153 million per month in May 2008. The metropolitan area is home to six casinos: Ameristar Kansas City, Argosy Kansas City, Harrah's North Kansas City, Isle of Capri Kansas City, the 7th Street Casino (which opened in Kansas City, Kansas, in 2008) and Hollywood Casino (which opened in February 2012 in Kansas City, Kansas).
Kansas City is famous for its steak and Kansas City-style barbecue, along with the typical array of Southern cuisine. During the heyday of the Kansas City Stockyards, the city was known for its Kansas City steaks or Kansas City strip steaks. The most famous of its steakhouses is the Golden Ox in the Kansas City Live Stock Exchange in the West Bottoms stockyards. These stockyards were second only to those of Chicago in size, but they never recovered from the Great Flood of 1951 and eventually closed. Founded in 1938, Jess & Jim's Steakhouse in the Martin City neighborhood was also well known.
The Kansas City Strip cut of steak is similar to the New York Strip cut, and is sometimes referred to just as a strip steak. Along with Texas, Memphis, North, and South Carolina, Kansas City is lauded as a "world capital of barbecue". More than 90 barbecue restaurants operate in the metropolitan area. The American Royal each fall hosts what it claims is the world's biggest barbecue contest.
Classic Kansas City-style barbecue was an inner-city phenomenon that evolved from the pit of Henry Perry, a migrant from Memphis who is generally credited with opening the city's first barbecue stand in 1921, and blossomed in the 18th and Vine neighborhood. Arthur Bryant's took over the Perry restaurant and added sugar to his sauce to sweeten the recipe a bit. In 1946 one of Perry's cooks, George W. Gates, opened Gates Bar-B-Q, later Gates and Sons Bar-B-Q when his son Ollie joined the family business. Bryant's and Gates are the two definitive Kansas City barbecue restaurants; native Kansas Citian and essayist Calvin Trillin famously called Bryant's "the single best restaurant in the world" in an essay he wrote for "Playboy" magazine in the 1960s. Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue is also well regarded. In 1977, Rich Davis, a psychiatrist, test-marketed his own concoction called K.C. Soul Style Barbecue Sauce. He renamed it KC Masterpiece, and in 1986, he sold the recipe to the Kingsford division of Clorox. Davis retained rights to operate restaurants using the name and sauce, whose recipe popularized the use of molasses as a sweetener in Kansas City-style barbecue sauces. In 2009, Kansas City appeared on "Newsmax" magazine's list of the "Top 25 Most Uniquely American Cities and Towns," a piece written by CBS News travel editor Peter Greenberg. In determining his ranking, Greenberg cited the city's barbecue, among other factors.
Kansas City has several James Beard Award-winning/nominated chefs and restaurants. Winning chefs include Michael Smith, Celina Tio, Colby Garrelts, Debbie Gold, Jonathan Justus and Martin Heuser. A majority of the Beard Award-winning restaurants are in the Crossroads district, downtown and in Westport.
The proportion of Kansas City area residents with a known religious affiliation is 50.75%. The most common religious denominations in the area are:
In 1911, Elias Disney moved his family from Marceline to Kansas City. They lived in a new home with a garage built by Elias Disney, which became the location for Walt's very first animation, at 3028 Bellefontaine. In 1919, Walt Disney returned from France where he had served as a Red Cross Ambulance Driver in World War I. Walt started the first animation company Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City. Later, when the company went bankrupt, Walt Disney moved to Hollywood and started The Walt Disney Company on October 16, 1923.
Professional sports teams in Kansas City include the Kansas City Chiefs in the National Football League (NFL), the Kansas City Royals in Major League Baseball (MLB) and Sporting Kansas City in Major League Soccer (MLS).
The following table lists the professional teams in the Kansas City metropolitan area:
The Chiefs, now a member of the NFL's American Football Conference, started play in 1960 as the Dallas Texans of the American Football League before moving to Kansas City in 1963. The Chiefs lost Super Bowl I to the Green Bay Packers by a score of 35–10. They came back in 1969 to become the last ever AFL champion and win Super Bowl IV against the NFL champion Minnesota Vikings by a score of 23–7. In 2020, after 50 years, they won Super Bowl LIV with the score of 31–20 against the San Francisco 49ers.
The Athletics baseball franchise played in the city from 1955, after moving from Philadelphia, to 1967, when the team relocated to Oakland, California. The city's Major League Baseball franchise, the Royals, started play in 1969, and are the only major league sports franchise in Kansas City that has not relocated or changed its name. The Royals were the first American League expansion team to reach the playoffs, in 1976, to reach the World Series in 1980, and to win the World Series in 1985. The Royals returned to the World Series in 2014 and won in 2015. The Kansas City Royals have 1 Kansas City based player in the MLB Baseball Hall Of Fame, George Brett.
The Kansas City T-Bones, playing in the independent Northern League from 2003 until 2010, and currently in the independent American Association since 2011, and unaffiliated minor league team. They play their games in T-Bones Stadium in Kansas City, Kansas.
The Kansas City Wiz became a charter member of Major League Soccer in 1996. It was renamed the Kansas City Wizards in 1997. In 2011, the team was renamed Sporting Kansas City and moved to its new stadium Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas. Sporting's reserve team, Swope Park Rangers, plays at Shawnee Mission District Stadium in Overland Park, Kansas. FC Kansas City began play in 2013 as an expansion team of the National Women's Soccer League; the team's home games are held at Swope Soccer Village.
In college athletics, Kansas City has lately been the home of the Big 12 College Basketball Tournaments. The men's tournament has been played at Sprint Center since March 2008. The women's tournament is played at Municipal Auditorium.
The city has one NCAA Division I program, the Kansas City Roos, representing the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC). The program, historically known as the UMKC Kangaroos, adopted its current branding after the 2018–19 school year.
In addition to serving as the home stadium of the Chiefs, Arrowhead Stadium serves as the venue for various intercollegiate football games. It has hosted the Big 12 Championship Game five times. On the last weekend in October, the MIAA Fall Classic rivalry game between Northwest Missouri State University and Pittsburg State University took place at the stadium.
Kansas City is represented on the rugby pitch by the Kansas City Blues RFC, a former member of the Rugby Super League and a Division 1 club. The team works closely with Sporting Kansas City and splits home-games between Sporting's training pitch and Rockhurst University's stadium.
Kansas City briefly had four short-term major league baseball teams between 1884 and 1915: the Kansas City Unions of the short-lived Union Association in 1884, the Kansas City Cowboys in the National League in 1886, a team of the same name in the then-major league American Association in 1888 and 1889, and the Kansas City Packers in the Federal League in 1914 and 1915. The Kansas City Monarchs of the now-defunct Negro National and Negro American Leagues represented Kansas City from 1920 through 1955. The city also had a number of minor league baseball teams between 1885 and 1955. From 1903 through 1954, the Kansas City Blues played in the high-level American Association minor league. In 1955, Kansas City became a major league city when the Philadelphia Athletics baseball franchise relocated to the city in 1955. Following the 1967 season, the team relocated to Oakland, California.
Kansas City was represented in the National Basketball Association by the Kansas City Kings (called the Kansas City-Omaha Kings from 1972 to 1975), when the former Cincinnati Royals moved to the Midwest. The team left for Sacramento in 1985.
In 1974, the National Hockey League placed an expansion team in Kansas City called the Kansas City Scouts. The team moved to Denver in 1976, then to New Jersey in 1982 where they have remained ever since as the New Jersey Devils.
Kansas City has of boulevards and parkways, 214 urban parks, 49 ornamental fountains, 152 ball diamonds, 10 community centers, 105 tennis courts, 5 golf courses, 5 museums and attractions, 30 pools, and 47 park shelters. These amenities are found across the city. Much of the system, designed by George E. Kessler, was constructed from 1893 to 1915.
Cliff Drive, in Kessler Park on the North Bluffs, is a designated State Scenic Byway. It extends from The Paseo and Independence Avenue through Indian Mound on Gladstone Boulevard at Belmont Boulevard, with many historical points and architectural landmarks.
Ward Parkway, on the west side of the city near State Line Road, is lined by many of the city's largest and most elaborate homes.
The Paseo is a major north–south parkway that runs through the center of the city beginning at Cliff Drive. It was modeled on the "Paseo de la Reforma", a fashionable Mexico City boulevard. It has been recently renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and now the city has voted to change it back to the Paseo.
Swope Park is one of the nation's largest city parks, comprising , more than twice the size of New York City's Central Park. It features a zoo, a woodland nature and wildlife rescue center, 2 golf courses, 2 lakes, an amphitheatre, a day-camp, and numerous picnic grounds. Hodge Park, in the Northland, covers (1.61 sq. mi.). This park includes the Shoal Creek Living History Museum, a village of more than 20 historical buildings dating from 1807 to 1885. Berkely Riverfront Park, on the banks of the Missouri River on the north edge of downtown, holds annual Independence Day celebrations and other festivals.
A program went underway to replace many of the fast-growing sweetgum trees with hardwood varieties.
In 1974, the Kansas City Park and Boulevard System was recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The nomination noted that this park system was among "...the first to integrate the aesthetics of landscape architecture with the practicality of city planning, stimulating other metropolitan areas to undertake similar projects." The park's plan developed by civil engineer George Kessler included some of the "...first specifications for pavements, gutters, curbs, and walks. Other engineering advances included retaining walls, earth dams, subsurface drains, and an impoundment lake - all part of Kansas City's legacy that has influenced urban planning in cities throughout North America."
Kansas City is home to the largest municipal government in the state of Missouri. The city has a council/manager form of government. The role of city manager has diminished over the years. The non-elective office of city manager was created following excesses during the Pendergast days. The mayor is the head of the Kansas City City Council, which has 12 members (one member for each district, plus one at large member per district). The mayor is the presiding member. Kansas City holds city elections in every fourth odd numbered year. The last citywide election was held in May 2015. The officials took office in August 2015 and will hold the position until 2019.
Pendergast was the most prominent leader during the machine politics days. The most nationally prominent Democrat associated with the machine was Harry S Truman, who became a Senator, Vice President and then President of the United States from 1945 to 1953. Kansas City is the seat of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, one of two federal district courts in Missouri. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri is in St. Louis. It also is the seat of the Western District of the Missouri Court of Appeals, one of three districts of that court (the Eastern District is in St. Louis and the Southern District is in Springfield).
The Mayor, City Council, and City Manager are listed below:
Kansas City hosted the 1900 Democratic National Convention, the 1928 Republican National Convention and the 1976 Republican National Convention. The urban core of Kansas City consistently votes Democratic in presidential elections; however, on the state and local level Republicans often find success, especially in the Northland and other suburban areas of Kansas City.
Kansas City is represented by three members of the United States House of Representatives:
Some of the earliest organized violence in Kansas City erupted during the American Civil War. Shortly after the city's incorporation in 1850, so-called Bleeding Kansas erupted, affecting border ruffians and Jayhawkers. During the war, Union troops burned all occupied dwellings in Jackson County south of Brush Creek and east of Blue Creek to Independence in an attempt to halt raids into Kansas. After the war, the "Kansas City Times" turned outlaw Jesse James into a folk hero via its coverage. James was born in the Kansas City metro area at Kearney, Missouri, and notoriously robbed the Kansas City Fairgrounds at 12th Street and Campbell Avenue.
In the early 20th century under Pendergast, Kansas City became the country's "most wide open town". While this would give rise to Kansas City Jazz, it also led to the rise of the Kansas City mob (initially under Johnny Lazia), as well as the arrival of organized crime. In the 1970s, the Kansas City mob was involved in a gang war over control of the River Quay entertainment district, in which three buildings were bombed and several gangsters were killed. Police investigations gained after boss Nick Civella was recorded discussing gambling bets on Super Bowl IV (where the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Minnesota Vikings). The war and investigation led to the end of mob control of the Stardust Casino, which was the basis for the film "Casino", though the production minimizes the Kansas City connections.
, Kansas City ranked 18th on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s annual survey of crime rates for cities with populations over 100,000. Much of the city's violent crime occurs on the city's lower income East Side. Revitalizing the downtown and midtown areas has been fairly successful and now these areas have below average violent crime compared to other major downtowns. According to a 2007 analysis by "The Kansas City Star" and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, downtown experienced the largest drop in crime of any neighborhood in the city during the 2000s.
Many universities, colleges, and seminaries are in the Kansas City metropolitan area, including:
Kansas City is served by 16 school districts including 10 public school districts, with a significant portion being nationally ranked. There are also numerous private schools; Catholic schools in Kansas City are governed by the Diocese of Kansas City.
The following Public School Districts serve Kansas City:
"The Kansas City Star" is the area's primary newspaper. William Rockhill Nelson and his partner, Samuel Morss, first published the evening paper on September 18, 1880. The "Star" competed with the morning "Kansas City Times" before acquiring that publication in 1901. The "Times" name was discontinued in March 1990, when the morning paper was renamed the "Star".
Weekly newspapers include "The Call" (which is focused toward Kansas City's African-American community), the "Kansas City Business Journal", "The Pitch", "Ink", and the bilingual publications "Dos Mundos" and "KC Hispanic News".
The city is served by two major faith-oriented newspapers: The "Kansas City Metro Voice", serving the Christian community, and the "Kansas City Jewish Chronicle", serving the Jewish community. It is the headquarters of the "National Catholic Reporter", an independent Catholic newspaper.
The Kansas City media market (ranked 32nd by Arbitron and 31st by Nielsen) includes 10 television stations, 30 FM and 21 AM radio stations. Kansas City broadcasting jobs have been a stepping stone for national television and radio personalities, notably Walter Cronkite and Mancow Muller.
WDAF radio (now at 106.5 FM; original 610 AM frequency now occupied by KCSP) signed on in 1927 as an affiliate of the NBC Red Network, under the ownership of "The Star." In 1949, the "Star" signed on WDAF-TV as an affiliate of the NBC television network. The "Star" sold off the WDAF stations in 1957, following an antitrust investigation by the United States government (reportedly launched at Truman's behest, following a long-standing feud with the "Star") over the newspaper's ownership of television and radio stations. KCMO radio (originally at 810 AM, now at 710 AM) signed on KCMO-TV (now KCTV) in 1953. The respective owners of WHB (then at 710 AM, now at 810 AM) and KMBC radio (980 AM, now KMBZ), Cook Paint and Varnish Company and the Midland Broadcasting Company, signed on WHB-TV/KMBC-TV as a time-share arrangement on VHF channel 9 in 1953; KMBC-TV took over channel 9 full-time in June 1954, after Cook Paint and Varnish purchased Midland Broadcasting's stations.
The major broadcast television networks have affiliates in the Kansas City market (covering 32 counties in northwestern Missouri, with the exception of counties in the far northwestern part of the state that are within the adjacent Saint Joseph market, and northeastern Kansas); including WDAF-TV 4 (Fox), KCTV 5 (CBS), KMBC-TV 9 (ABC), KCPT 19 (PBS), KCWE 29 (The CW), KSHB-TV 41 (NBC) and KSMO-TV 62 (MyNetworkTV). Other television stations in the market include Saint Joseph-based KTAJ-TV 16 (TBN), Kansas City, Kansas-based TV25.tv (consisting of three locally owned stations throughout northeast Kansas, led by KCKS-LD 25, affiliated with several digital multicast networks), Lawrence, Kansas-based KMCI-TV 38 (independent), Spanish-language station KUKC-LP 48 (Univision), Spanish-language station KGKC 39 (Telemundo-KC), and KPXE-TV 50 (Ion Television).
Kansas City has been a locale for film and television productions. Between 1931 and 1982 Kansas City was home to the Calvin Company, a large movie production company that specialized in promotional and sales short films and commercials for corporations, as well as educational films for schools and the government. Calvin was an important venue for Kansas City arts, training local filmmakers who went on to Hollywood careers and also employing local actors, most of whom earned their main income in fields such as radio and television announcing. Kansas City native Robert Altman directed movies at the Calvin Company, which led him to shoot his first feature film, "The Delinquents", in Kansas City using many local players.
The 1983 television movie "The Day After" was filmed in Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas. The 1990s film "Truman", starring Gary Sinise, was filmed in the city. Other films shot in or around Kansas City include "Article 99", "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge", "Kansas City", "Paper Moon", "In Cold Blood", "Ninth Street", and "Sometimes They Come Back" (in and around nearby Liberty, Missouri). More recently, a scene in the controversial film "Brüno" was filmed in downtown Kansas City's historic Hotel Phillips.
Today, Kansas City is home to an active independent film community. The Independent Filmmaker's Coalition is an organization dedicated to expanding and improving independent filmmaking in Kansas City. The city launched the KC Film Office in October 2014 with the goal of better marketing the city for prospective television shows and movies to be filmed there. The City Council passed several film tax incentives in February 2016 to take effect in May 2016; the KC Film Office is coordinating its efforts with the State of Missouri to reinstate film incentives on a statewide level.
Originally, Kansas City was the launching point for travelers on the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails. Later, with the construction of the Hannibal Bridge across the Missouri River, it became the junction of 11 trunk railroads. More rail tonnage passes through the city than through any other U.S. city. Trans World Airlines (TWA) located its headquarters in the city, and had ambitious plans to turn the city into an air hub.
Missouri and Kansas were the first states to start building interstates with Interstate 70. Interstate 435, which encircles the entire city, is the second longest beltway in the nation. (Interstate 275 around Cincinnati, Ohio is the longest.) The Kansas City metro area has more limited-access highway lane-miles per capita than any other large US metro area, over 27% more than the second-place Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, over 50% more than the average American metropolitan area. From 2013 to 2017 the average commuting time was 21.8 minutes. The Sierra Club blames the extensive freeway network for excessive sprawl and the decline of central Kansas City. On the other hand, the relatively uncongested road network contributes significantly to Kansas City's position as one of America's largest logistics hubs.
Kansas City International Airport, airport code MCI (Mid-Continent International Airport) was built to TWA's specifications to make a world hub. Its original passenger-friendly design placed each of its gates
Like most American cities, Kansas City's mass transit system was originally rail-based. From 1870 to 1957, Kansas City's streetcar system was among the top in the country, with over of track at its peak. The rapid sprawl in the following years led this private system to be shut down.
On December 28, 1965, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) was formed via a bi-state compact created by the Missouri and Kansas legislatures. The compact gave the KCATA responsibility for planning, construction, owning and operating passenger transportation systems and facilities within the seven-county area.
In July 2005, the KCATA launched Kansas City's first bus rapid transit line, the Metro Area Express (MAX). MAX links the River Market, Downtown, Union Station, Crown Center and the Country Club Plaza. MAX operates and is marketed more like a rail system than a local bus line. A unique identity was created for MAX, including 13 modern diesel buses and easily identifiable "stations". MAX features (real-time GPS tracking of buses, available at every station), and stoplights automatically change in their favor if buses are behind schedule. In 2010, a second MAX line was added on Troost Avenue. The city is planning another MAX line down Prospect Avenue.
The Prospect MAX line launched in 2019 and Mayor Quinton Lucas announced the service would be fare-free indefinitely.
On December 12, 2012, a ballot initiative to construct a $102 million, 2-mile (3200 m) modern streetcar line in downtown Kansas City was approved by local voters. The streetcar route runs along Main Street from the River Market to Union Station; it debuted on May 6, 2016. A new non-profit corporation made up of private sector stakeholders and city appointees – the Kansas City Streetcar Authority – operates and maintains the system. Unlike many similar systems around the U.S., no fare is to be charged initially. Residents within the proposed Transportation Development District are determining the fate of the KC Streetcar's southern extension through Midtown and the Plaza to UMKC. The Port Authority of Kansas City is also studying running an extension to Berkley Riverfront Park.
In 2015, the KCATA, Unified Government Transit, Johnson County Transit, and IndeBus (all separate metro services) began merging into one coordinated transit service for the Kansas City region, called RideKC. The buses and other transit options will be branded as: RideKC Bus, RideKC MAX, RideKC Streetcar, and RideKC Bridj. RideKC Bridj is a micro transit service partnership between Ford Bridj and KCATA that began on March 7, 2016. Users download the Bridj app and use the service much like a taxi service. The merger and full coordination is expected to be complete by 2019.
A 2015 study by Walk Score ranked Kansas City as the 42nd most walkable out of the 50 largest U.S. cities. As a whole, the city has a score of 34 out of 100. However, several of the more densely populated neighborhoods have much higher scores: Westport has a score of 91; the Downtown Loop has a score of 85; the Crossroads scored 85; and the Plaza scored 83. Those ratings range from "A Walker's Paradise" to "Very Walkable." In April 2017, voters approved an $800 million general obligation bond, part of which is designated for sidewalk repairs and creating complete-streets.
According to the American Community Survey, 81.6 percent of working Kansas City residents commuted to work by driving alone, 7.9 percent carpooled, 2.7 percent used public transportation, and 1.7 percent walked to work. About 1.5 percent commuted by other means, including taxi, bicycle, or motorcycle. About 4.6 of working Kansas City residents worked at home.
In 2015, 11.4 percent of Kansas City households were without a car, which was virtually unchanged in 2016 (11.3 percent). The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Kansas City averaged 1.58 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household.
Kansas City has 15 sister cities:
Other articles connected with the culture of Kansas City: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17454 |
Kocher–Debre–Semelaigne syndrome
The Kocher–Debré–Semelaigne syndrome is hypothyroidism in infancy or childhood characterised by lower extremity or generalized muscular hypertrophy, myxoedema, short stature and cretinism. The absence of painful spasms and pseudomyotonia differentiates this syndrome from its adult form, which is Hoffmann syndrome.
The syndrome is named after Emil Theodor Kocher, Robert Debré and Georges Semelaigne.
Also known as Debre–Semelaigne syndrome or cretinism-muscular hypertrophy, hypothyroid myopathy, hypothyroidism-large muscle syndrome, hypothyreotic muscular hypertrophy in children, infantile myxoedema-muscular hypertrophy, myopathy-myxoedema syndrome, myxoedema-muscular hypertrophy syndrome, myxoedema-myotonic dystrophy syndrome.
Kocher–Debre–Semelaigne syndrome gives infant a Hercules appearance.
The age at which child presents with KDSS may vary from new born to as late as 11 years of age. This disease is very rare as only less than 10% of children with hypothyroid myopathy develops this condition. Along with features of hypothyroidism the main additional feature is muscle hypertrophy.It can happen in any muscle of the limbs, but commonly affects the proximal muscles giving the typical Hercules appearance. Even though the muscle appears enlarged, it is weak and so the affliction is pseudo hypertrophy especially of the calf muscles.
Other features are pseudomyotonia, myokymia,slow tendon reflex, slowed muscle contractions and relaxations, muscle stiffness, proximal muscle weakness and myopathy.The severity of these symptoms are determined by the period of hypothyroidism and the degree of deficiency of thyroid hormones.
EMG is either normal or may show myopathic low amplitude and short motor unit's potential (MUAPS). The enzymes creatine kinase is elevated usually.
The assumed cause of muscle hypertrophy in KDSS is an abnormal metabolism of carbohydrates leading to increased glycogen accumulation and increased mucopolysaccharide deposits in the muscles. Yet another speculation is an excess intra cellular calcium due to ineffective reuptake into the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which causes a sustained contraction and thereby hypertrophy.
In hypothyroidism the fast twitch muscle fiber is converted to slow twitch fiber, causing the slower reflex or hung up reflex.This may occur as a result of reduction in muscle mitochondrial oxidative capacity and beta-adrenergic receptors, as well as the induction of an insulin-resistant state, due to decrease in thyroid hormones.
The causes for muscle weakness is said to be decrease in muscle carnitine, decreased muscle oxidation, expression of a slower ATPase in myosin chain and decreased transport across the cell membrane.
The rigidity associated with congenital hypothyroidism may be due to abnormal development of basal ganglia.
The muscle hypertrophy and other symptoms are reversible on treatment with levothyroxine . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17455 |
Koi
Koi is an informal group name of the colored variants of "C. rubrofuscus". Several varieties are recognized by the Japanese. Koi varieties are distinguished by coloration, patterning, and scalation. Some of the major colors are white, black, red, orange, yellow, blue, and cream. The most popular category of koi is the "Gosanke", which is made up of the "Kohaku", "Taisho Sanshoku", and "Showa Sanshoku" varieties.
Carp are a large group of fish originally found in Central Europe and Asia. Various carp species were originally domesticated in East Asia, where they were used as food fish. Carp are coldwater fish, and their ability to survive and adapt to many climates and water conditions allowed the domesticated species to be propagated to many new locations, including Japan. Natural color mutations of these carp would have occurred across all populations. Carp were first bred for color mutations in China more than a thousand years ago, where selective breeding of the Prussian carp ("Carassius gibelio") led to the development of the goldfish ("Carassius auratus").
The Amur carp ("Cyprinus rubrofuscus"), a member of the cyprinid family species complex native to East Asia, was aquacultured as a food fish at least as long ago as the fifth century BC in China, and Jin Dynasty (fourth century AD) texts mentioned carp with various colors. The Amur carp was previously recognized as a subspecies of the common carp (as "C. c. haematopterus"), but recent authorities treat it as a separate species under the name "C. rubrofuscus".
Amur carp were first bred for color in Japan in the 1820s, in the town of Ojiya in the Niigata Prefecture on the northeastern coast of Honshu Island. The outside world was unaware of the development of color variations in Japanese koi until 1914, when the Niigata koi were exhibited at an annual exposition in Tokyo. From that time, interest in koi spread throughout Japan. From this original handful of koi, all other Nishikigoi varieties were bred, with the exception of the Ogon variety (single-colored, metallic koi), which was developed relatively recently.
The hobby of keeping koi eventually spread worldwide. They are sold in many pet aquarium shops, with higher-quality fish available from specialist dealers. Collecting koi has become a social hobby. Passionate hobbyists join clubs, share their knowledge and help each other with their koi.
The words "koi" and "nishikigoi" come from the Japanese reading of Classical Chinese words 鯉 (common carp) and 錦鯉 (brocaded carp) respectively. In both languages, the former can refer to many Asian carp species. In Japanese, "koi" is a homophone for another word that means "affection" or "love", so koi are symbols of love and friendship in Japan.
The first mention of the word "錦鯉" dates back to Tang Dynasty China in a poem by Lu Guimeng (? - 881 AD):
In the past, koi were commonly believed to have been bred from the common carp ("Cyprinus carpio"). Extensive hybridization between different populations, coupled with widespread translocations, have muddled the historical zoogeography of the common carp and its relatives. Traditionally, Amur carp ("C. rubrofuscus") were considered a subspecies of the common carp, often under the scientific name "C. carpio haematopterus". However, they differ in meristics from the common carp of Europe and Western Asia, leading recent authorities to recognize them as a separate species, "C. rubrofuscus" ("C. c. haematopterus" being a junior synonym). Although one study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was unable to find a clear genetic structure matching the geographic populations (possibly because of translocation of carp from separate regions), others based on mtDNA, microsatellite DNA and genomic DNA found a clear separation between the European/West Asian population and the East Asian population, with koi belonging in the latter. Consequently, recent authorities have suggested that the ancestral species of the koi is "C. rubrofuscus" (syn. "C. c. haematopterus") or at least an East Asian carp species instead of "C. carpio". Regardless, a taxonomic review of "Cyprinus" carp from eastern and southeastern Asia may be necessary, as the genetic variations do not fully match the currently recognized species pattern, with one study of mtDNA suggesting that koi are close to the Southeast Asian carp, but not necessarily the Chinese.
Koi varieties are distinguished by coloration, patterning, and scalation. Some of the major colors are white, black, red, yellow, blue, and cream. Although the possible colors are virtually limitless, breeders have identified and named a number of specific categories. The most notable category is "Gosanke", which is made up of the "Kohaku", "Taisho Sanshoku", and "Showa Sanshoku" varieties.
New koi varieties are still being actively developed. Ghost koi developed in the 1980s have become very popular in the United Kingdom; they are a hybrid of wild carp and Ogon koi, and are distinguished by their metallic scales. Butterfly koi (also known as longfin koi, or dragon carp), also developed in the 1980s, are notable for their long and flowing fins. They are hybrids of koi with Asian carp. Butterfly koi and ghost koi are considered by some to be not true "nishikigoi".
The major named varieties include:
Goldfish (金魚) were developed in China more than a thousand years ago by selectively breeding Prussian carp for color mutations. By the Song dynasty (960–1279), yellow, orange, white, and red-and-white colorations had been developed. Goldfish ("Carassius auratus") and Prussian carp ("Carassius gibelio") are now considered different species. Goldfish were introduced to Japan in the 16th century and to Europe in the 17th century. Koi, though, were developed from Amur carp in Japan in the 1820s. Koi are domesticated Amur carp ("Cyprinus rubrofuscus") that are selected or culled for color; they are not a different species, but a subspecies, and will revert to the original coloration within a few generations if allowed to breed freely.
The length of a koi can average up to about 3.28 feet. On average they also grow about 2 centimeters per month. On the other hand, goldfish may only grow to be around a foot. In general, goldfish tend to be smaller than koi, and have a greater variety of body shapes and fin and tail configurations. Koi varieties tend to have a common body shape, but have a greater variety of coloration and color patterns. They also have prominent barbels on the lip. Some goldfish varieties, such as the common goldfish, comet goldfish, and shubunkin, have body shapes and coloration that are similar to koi, and can be difficult to tell apart from koi when immature. Goldfish and koi can interbreed; however, as they were developed from different species of carp, their offspring are sterile.
The Amur carp is a hardy fish, and koi retain that durability. Koi are coldwater fish, but benefit from being kept in the range, and do not react well to long, cold, winter temperatures; their immune systems are very weak below 10 °C. Koi ponds usually have a metre or more of depth in areas of the world that become warm during the summer, whereas in areas that have harsher winters, ponds generally have a minimum of . Specific pond construction has been evolved by koi keepers intent on raising show-quality koi.
The bright colors of koi put them at a severe disadvantage against predators; a white-skinned "Kohaku" is a visual dinner bell against the dark green of a pond. Herons, kingfishers, otters, raccoons, mink, cats, foxes, badgers, and hedgehogs are all capable of emptying a pond of its fish. A well-designed outdoor pond has areas too deep for herons to stand, overhangs high enough above the water that mammals cannot reach in, and shade trees overhead to block the view of aerial passers-by. It may prove necessary to string nets or wires above the surface. A pond usually includes a pump and filtration system to keep the water clear.
Koi are an omnivorous fish. They eat a wide variety of foods, including peas, lettuce, and watermelon. Koi food is designed not only to be nutritionally balanced, but also to float so as to encourage them to come to the surface. When they are eating, koi can be checked for parasites and ulcers. Naturally, koi are bottom feeders with a mouth configuration adapted for that. Some koi have a tendency to eat mostly from the bottom, so food producers create a mixed sinking and floating combination food. Koi recognize the persons feeding them and gather around them at feeding times. They can be trained to take food from one's hand. In the winter, their digestive systems slow nearly to a halt, and they eat very little, perhaps no more than nibbles of algae from the bottom. Feeding is not recommended when the water temperature drops below . Care should be taken by hobbyists that proper oxygenation, pH stabilization, and off-gassing occur over the winter in small ponds, so they do not perish. Their appetites do not come back until the water becomes warm in the spring.
Koi have been reported to achieve ages of 100–200 years. One famous scarlet koi named "Hanako" was owned by several individuals, the last of whom was Komei Koshihara. In July 1974, a study of the growth rings of one of the koi's scales reported that Hanako was 226 years old. Some sources give an accepted age for the species at little more than 50 years.
Koi are very hardy. With proper care, they resist many of the parasites that affect more sensitive tropical fish species, such as "Trichodina, Epistylis", and "Ichthyophthirius multifiliis" infections. Water pH is important for maintaining koi's health. Water changes help reduce the risk of diseases and keep koi from being stressed. Two of the biggest health concerns among koi breeders are the koi herpes virus (KHV) and rhabdovirus carpio, which causes spring viraemia of carp (SVC). No treatment is known for either disease. Some koi farms in Israel use the KV3 vaccine, developed by Prof. M. Kotler from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and produced by Kovax, to immunise fish against KHV. Israel is currently the only country in the world to vaccinate koi against the KHV. The vaccine is injected into the fish when they are under one year old, and is accentuated by using an ultraviolet light. The vaccine has a 90% success rate and when immunized, the fish cannot succumb to a KHV outbreak and neither can the immunised koi pass KHV onto other fish in a pond. Only biosecurity measures such as prompt detection, isolation, and disinfection of tanks and equipment can prevent the spread of the disease and limit the loss of fish stock. In 2002, spring viraemia struck an ornamental koi farm in Kernersville, North Carolina, and required complete depopulation of the ponds and a lengthy quarantine period. For a while after this, some koi farmers in neighboring states stopped importing fish for fear of infecting their own stocks.
When koi naturally breed on their own they tend to spawn in the spring and summer seasons. The male will start following the female, swimming right behind her and nudging her. After the female koi releases her eggs they sink to the bottom of the pond and stay there. A sticky outer shell around the egg helps keep it in place so it does not float around. Although the female can produce many spawns, many of the fry do not survive due to being eaten by others. On average if the egg survives around 4–7 days the fry will be hatched from the egg.
Like most fish, koi reproduce through spawning in which a female lays a vast number of eggs and one or more males fertilize them. Nurturing the resulting offspring (referred to as "fry") is a tricky and tedious job, usually done only by professionals. Although a koi breeder may carefully select the parents they wish based on their desired characteristics, the resulting fry nonetheless exhibit a wide range of color and quality.
Koi produce thousands of offspring from a single spawning. However, unlike cattle, purebred dogs, or more relevantly, goldfish, the large majority of these offspring, even from the best champion-grade koi, are not acceptable as "nishikigoi" (they have no interesting colors) or may even be genetically defective. These unacceptable offspring are culled at various stages of development based on the breeder's expert eye and closely guarded trade techniques. Culled fry are usually destroyed or used as feeder fish (mostly used for feeding arowana due to the belief that it will enhance its color), while older culls, within their first year between 3 and 6 inches long (also called "tosai"), are often sold as lower-grade, pond-quality koi.
The semi-randomized result of the koi's reproductive process has both advantages and disadvantages for the breeder. While it requires diligent oversight to narrow down the favorable result that the breeder wants, it also makes possible the development of new varieties of koi within relatively few generations.
Koi have been accidentally or deliberately released into the wild in every continent except Antarctica. They quickly revert to the natural coloration of an Amur carp within a few generations. In many areas, they are considered an invasive species and a pest. In the state of Queensland in Australia, they are considered noxious fish.
Koi greatly increase the turbidity of the water because they are constantly stirring up the substrate. This makes waterways unattractive, reduces the abundance of aquatic plants, and can render the water unsuitable for swimming or drinking, even by livestock. In some countries, koi have caused so much damage to waterways that vast amounts of money and effort have been spent trying to eradicate them, largely unsuccessfully.
In many areas of North America, koi are introduced into the artificial "water hazards" and ponds on golf courses to keep water-borne insect larvae under control through predation.
The koi is symbolic in Japanese culture and is closely associated with the country's national identity. The koi is a symbol of luck, prosperity, and good fortune in Japan.
In Sri Lanka, interior courtyards most often have one or several fish ponds dedicated to koi. Sri Lanka is the sixth largest cultivator of ornamental fish in the world after Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17459 |
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun (August 4, 1859 – February 19, 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to consciousness, subject, perspective and environment. He published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, works of non-fiction and some essays.
The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism. He argued that the main object of modernist literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, that writers should describe the "whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow". Hamsun is considered the "leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the 20th century", with works such as "Hunger" (1890), "Mysteries" (1892), "Pan" (1894), and "Victoria" (1898). His later works—in particular his "Nordland novels"—were influenced by the Norwegian new realism, portraying everyday life in rural Norway and often employing local dialect, irony, and humour. Hamsun only published one poetry collection, "The Wild Choir", that has been set to music by several composers.
Hamsun is considered to be "one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past hundred years" ("ca." 1890–1990). He pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, and influenced authors such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Maxim Gorky, Stefan Zweig, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, John Fante and Ernest Hemingway. Isaac Bashevis Singer called Hamsun "the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect—his subjectiveness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun".
On August 4, 2009, the Knut Hamsun Centre was opened in Hamarøy. Since 1916, several of Hamsun's works have been adapted into motion pictures.
Knut Hamsun was born as Knud Pedersen in Lom in the Gudbrandsdal valley of Norway. He was the fourth son (of seven children) of Tora Olsdatter and Peder Pedersen. When he was three, the family moved to Hamsund, Hamarøy in Nordland. They were poor and an uncle had invited them to farm his land for him.
At nine Knut was separated from his family and lived with his uncle Hans Olsen, who needed help with the post office he ran. Olsen used to beat and starve his nephew, and Hamsun later stated that his chronic nervous difficulties were due to the way his uncle treated him.
In 1874 he finally escaped back to Lom; for the next five years he did any job for money; he was a store clerk, peddler, shoemaker's apprentice, sheriff's assistant, and an elementary-school teacher.
At 17 he became a ropemaker's apprentice; at about the same time he started to write. He asked businessman Erasmus Zahl to give him significant monetary support, and Zahl agreed. Hamsun later used Zahl as a model for the character "Mack" appearing in his novels "Pan" (1894), "Dreamers" (1904), "Benoni" (1908) and "Rosa" (1908).
He spent several years in America, traveling and working at various jobs, and published his impressions under the title "Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv" (1889).
Working all those odd jobs paid off, and he published his first book: "Den Gaadefulde: En Kjærlighedshistorie fra Nordland" ("The Enigmatic Man: A Love Story from Northern Norway", 1877). It was inspired from the experiences and struggles he endured from his jobs.
In his second novel "Bjørger" (1878), he attempted to imitate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson's writing style of the Icelandic saga narrative. The melodramatic story follows a poet, Bjørger, and his love for Laura. This book was published under the pseudonym Knud Pedersen Hamsund. This book later served as the basis for "Victoria: En Kærligheds Historie" (1898; translated as "Victoria: A Love Story", 1923).
Hamsun first received wide acclaim with his 1890 novel "Hunger" ("Sult"). The semiautobiographical work described a young writer's descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty in the Norwegian capital of Kristiania (modern name Oslo). To many, the novel presages the writings of Franz Kafka and other twentieth-century novelists with its internal monologue and bizarre logic.
A theme to which Hamsun often returned is that of the perpetual wanderer, an itinerant stranger (often the narrator) who shows up and insinuates himself into the life of small rural communities. This wanderer theme is central to the novels "Mysteries", "Pan", "Under the Autumn Star", "The Last Joy", "Vagabonds", "Rosa", and others.
Hamsun's prose often contains rapturous depictions of the natural world, with intimate reflections on the Norwegian woodlands and coastline. For this reason, he has been linked with the spiritual movement known as pantheism ("There is no God," he once wrote. "Only gods."). Hamsun saw mankind and nature united in a strong, sometimes mystical bond. This connection between the characters and their natural environment is exemplified in the novels "Pan", "A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings", and the epic "Growth of the Soil", "his monumental work" credited with securing him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1920.
During World War II, Hamsun put his support behind the German war effort. He courted and met with high-ranking Nazi officers, including Adolf Hitler. Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote a long and enthusiastic diary entry concerning a private meeting with Hamsun; according to Goebbels Hamsun's "faith in German victory is unshakable". In 1940 Hamsun wrote that "the Germans are fighting for us". After Hitler's death, he published a short obituary in which he described him as "a warrior for mankind" and "a preacher of the gospel of justice for all nations."
After the war, he was detained by police on June 14, 1945, for treason, then committed to a hospital in Grimstad ("Grimstad sykehus") "due to his advanced age", according to Einar Kringlen (a professor and medical doctor). In 1947 he was tried in Grimstad, and fined. Norway's supreme court reduced the fine from 575,000 to 325,000 Norwegian kroner.
After the war, Hamsun's views on the Germans during the war were a serious grief for the Norwegians, and they tried to separate their world-famous writer from his Nazi beliefs. At the trial Hamsun had pleaded ignorance. Deeper explanations involve his contradictory personality, his distaste for "hoi polloi", his inferiority complex, a profound distress at the spread of indiscipline, antipathy toward the interwar democracy, and especially his anglophobia.
Knut Hamsun died on February 19, 1952, aged 92, in Grimstad. His ashes are buried in the garden of his home at Nørholm.
Thomas Mann described him as a "descendant of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche." Arthur Koestler was a fan of his love stories. H. G. Wells praised "Markens Grøde" (1917) for which Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a fan of his modern subjectivism, use of flashbacks, his use of fragmentation, and his lyricism. A character in Charles Bukowski's book "Women" referred to him as the greatest writer who has ever lived.
A fifteen-volume edition of Hamsun's complete works was published in 1954. In 2009, to mark the 150-year anniversary of his birth, a new 27-volume edition of his complete works was published, including short stories, poetry, plays, and articles not included in the 1954 edition. For this new edition, all of Hamsun's works underwent slight linguistic modifications in order to make them more accessible to contemporary Norwegian readers. Fresh English translations of two of his major works, "Growth of the Soil" and "Pan", were published in 1998.
Hamsun's works remain popular. In 2009, a Norwegian biographer stated, "We can’t help loving him, though we have hated him all these years ... That’s our Hamsun trauma. He’s a ghost that won’t stay in the grave."
Along with August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, and Sigrid Undset, Hamsun formed a quartet of Scandinavian authors who became internationally known for their works. Hamsun pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue, as found in material by, for example, Joyce, Proust, Mansfield and Woolf.
In 1898, Hamsun married Bergljot Göpfert (née Bech), who bore daughter Victoria, but the marriage ended in 1906. Hamsun then married Marie Andersen (1881-1969) in 1909 and she was his companion until the end of his life. They had four children: sons Tore and Arild and daughters Ellinor and Cecilia.
Marie wrote about her life with Hamsun in two memoirs. She was a promising actress when she met Hamsun but ended her career and traveled with him to Hamarøy. They bought a farm, the idea being "to earn their living as farmers, with his writing providing some additional income".
After a few years they decided to move south, to Larvik. In 1918 they bought Nørholm, an old, somewhat dilapidated manor house between Lillesand and Grimstad. The main residence was restored and redecorated. Here Hamsun could occupy himself with writing undisturbed, although he often travelled to write in other cities and places (preferably in spartan housing).
In his younger years, Hamsun had leanings of an anti-egalitarian and racist bend. In "The Cultural Life of Modern America" (1889), he expressed his firm opposition to miscegenation: "The Negros are and will remain Negros, a nascent human form from the tropics, rudimentary organs on the body of white society. Instead of founding an intellectual elite, America has established a mulatto studfarm."
Following the Second Boer War, he adopted increasingly conservative views. He also came to be known as a prominent advocate of Germany and German culture, as well as a steadfast opponent of the British Empire and the Soviet Union. During both World War I and World War II, he publicly expressed his sympathy for the German Empire and Nazi Germany.
His sympathies were heavily influenced by the Second Boer War, which was perceived by Hamsun as British aggression against a weak nation, as well as by his Anglophobia and Anti-Americanism. During the 1930s, most of the Norwegian right-wing newspapers and political parties were sympathetic in various degrees to fascist regimes in Europe, and Hamsun came to be a prominent advocate of such views. During WWII, he continued to express his support for Germany, and his public statements led to controversy; in particular, in the immediate aftermath of the war. When World War II began, he was 80 years old, almost deaf, and his main source of information was the conservative newspaper "Aftenposten", which had been sympathetic to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany from the beginning. He suffered two intracranial hemorrhages during the war.
Hamsun wrote several newspaper articles in the course of the war, including his notorious 1940 assertion that "the Germans are fighting for us, and now are crushing England's tyranny over us and all neutrals". In 1943, he sent Germany's minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels his Nobel Prize medal as a gift. His biographer Thorkild Hansen interpreted this as part of the strategy to get an audience with Hitler. Hamsun was eventually invited to meet with Hitler; during the meeting, he complained about the German civilian administrator in Norway, Josef Terboven, and asked that imprisoned Norwegian citizens be released, enraging Hitler. Otto Dietrich describes the meeting in his memoirs as the only time that another person was able to get a word in edgeways with Hitler. He attributes the cause to Hamsun's deafness. Regardless, Dietrich notes that it took Hitler three days to get over his anger. Hamsun also on other occasions helped Norwegians who had been imprisoned for resistance activities and tried to influence German policies in Norway.
Nevertheless, a week after Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote a eulogy for him, saying “He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations.” Following the end of the war, angry crowds burned his books in public in major Norwegian cities and Hamsun was confined for several months in a psychiatric hospital.
Hamsun was forced to undergo a psychiatric examination, which concluded that he had "permanently impaired mental faculties," and on that basis the charges of treason were dropped. Instead, a civil liability case was raised against him, and in 1948 he had to pay a ruinous sum to the Norwegian government of 325,000 kroner ($65,000 or £16,250 at that time) for his alleged membership in Nasjonal Samling and for the moral support he gave to the Germans, but was cleared of any direct Nazi affiliation. Whether he was a member of Nasjonal Samling or not and whether his mental abilities were impaired is a much debated issue even today. Hamsun stated he was never a member of any political party. He wrote his last book "Paa giengrodde Stier" ("On Overgrown Paths") in 1949, a book many take as evidence of his functioning mental capabilities. In it, he harshly criticizes the psychiatrists and the judges and, in his own words, proves that he is not mentally ill.
The Danish author Thorkild Hansen investigated the trial and wrote the book "The Hamsun Trial" (1978), which created a storm in Norway. Among other things Hansen stated: "If you want to meet idiots, go to Norway," as he felt that such treatment of the old Nobel Prize-winning author was outrageous. In 1996, Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell based the movie "Hamsun" on Hansen's book. In "Hamsun", Swedish actor Max von Sydow plays Knut Hamsun; his wife Marie is played by Danish actress Ghita Nørby.
Benoni and Rosa
The August Trilogy
Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer translated some of his works.
Hamsun's works have been the basis of 25 films and television mini-series adaptations, starting in 1916.
The book "Mysteries" was the basis of a 1978 film of the same name (by the Dutch film company Sigma Pictures), directed by Paul de Lussanet, starring Sylvia Kristel, Rutger Hauer, Andrea Ferreol and Rita Tushingham.
"Landstrykere" (Wayfarers) is a Norwegian film from 1990 directed by Ola Solum.
"The Telegraphist" is a Norwegian movie from 1993 directed by Erik Gustavson. It is based on the novel "Dreamers" ("Sværmere", also published in English as "Mothwise").
"Pan" has been the basis of four films between 1922 and 1995. The latest adaptation, the Danish film of the same name, was directed by Henning Carlsen, who also directed the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish coproduction of the 1966 film "Sult" from Hamsun's novel of the same name.
Remodernist filmmaker Jesse Richards has announced he is in preparations to direct an adaptation of Hamsun's short story "The Call of Life".
A biopic entitled "Hamsun" was released in 1996, directed by Jan Troell, starring Max von Sydow as Hamsun. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17461 |
Karen Kain
Karen Alexandria Kain (born March 28, 1951) is a Canadian former ballet dancer, and the artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada.
Kain's mother enrolled her daughter in ballet training because she believed it would improve her postural alignment, poise, and discipline. The family moved from Ancaster to Erindale Woodlands, Toronto Township when Kain was in grade 6 (age 11, 1962) so she could begin training at the National Ballet School of Canada. (The majority of Toronto Township, including Erindale Woodlands, is now Mississauga.) Upon graduating in 1969, she was invited to join the National Ballet of Canada. She also participated in Girl Guides of Canada programs as a member.
Kain became a principal dancer in 1971, performing central roles in a wide array of ballets, eventually becoming well known in Canada, with the help of legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev.
She worked as a guest artist with Roland Petit's Ballet National de Marseilles, the Bolshoi Ballet, the London Festival Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Hamburg Ballet, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, and the Eliot Feld Ballet. Kain is a subject of The Portraits of Andy Warhol, c. 1980.
In 1977, Kain stopped dancing, but started again in 1981 with the National Ballet of Canada, where she performed for 15 more years. In 1996, Kain reunited with Frank Augustyn to appear in her husband Ross Petty's panto production of "Robin Hood" at Toronto's Elgin Theatre. Kain retired as a professional dancer in 1997.
In 1998, she returned to the National Ballet of Canada as part of the senior management team, in the role of artistic associate. She supported artistic director James Kudelka against principal dancer Kimberley Glasco in a wrongful-dismissal suit. In 2005, she succeeded Kudelka as artistic director.
Kain was the founding board president of Canada's Dancer Transition Resource Centre. Kain's autobiography, "Movement Never Lies", was published in 1994 by McClelland and Stewart.
In 1973, she won silver in the women's competition and another silver for best pas de deux (with Frank Augustyn) at the second International Ballet Competition in Moscow.
In 1976, she became an Officer of the Order of Canada and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1991. She was made a member of the Order of Ontario in 1990. She holds honorary degrees from the University of Toronto, York University, McMaster University, Trent University, and the University of British Columbia. In May 1998, the French Government named her an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. Among Kain's other honours are the National Arts Centre Award, a companion award of the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards (1997) and the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement (2002). In 1996, she became the first Canadian to receive the Cartier Lifetime Achievement Award. The choreographer Marguerite Derricks cited Kain as one of her heroes. in 1989 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made a documentary about her, "Karen Kain, Prima Ballerina". Kain had an arts based public middle school in Etobicoke named after her (Karen Kain School of the Arts) in 2008. In 2012, Kain received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. In 1998, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
Kain has been married since 1983 to Ross Petty, a stage and film actor, and producer of theatrical pantomime productions in Canada for over 20 years. Kain's brother, Kevin Kain, is a noted tropical medicine expert based in Toronto, Ontario; she has three younger siblings and two nephews - Dylan and Taylor Kain.
In 1976, Kain appeared in a televised version of the ballet "Giselle" in the highly coveted title role, alongside Nadia Potts, Frank Augustyn, and Anne Ditchburn. The production was first shown in 1986. In 1985, Kain starred in an episode of the popular Canadian TV series "Seeing Things". Kain was also alluded to in the 2003 movie directed by Denys Arcand, ""The Barbarian Invasions"", when Rémy Girard reminisced about his past love affairs. Kain did a TV commercial for The Art Shoppe, a furniture store in Toronto during the 1970s | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17466 |
Keiretsu
A is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. In the legal sense, it is a type of informal business group that are loosely organized alliances within the social world of Japan's business community. The "keiretsu" maintained dominance over the Japanese economy for the second half of the 20th century, and, to a lesser extent, continues to do so in the early 21st century.
The member's companies own small portions of the shares in each other's companies, centered on a core bank; this system helps insulate each company from stock market fluctuations and takeover attempts, thus enabling long-term planning in projects. It is a key element of the manufacturing industry in Japan.
The prototypical "keiretsu" appeared in Japan during the "economic miracle" following World War II and the collapse of family-controlled vertical monopolies called "zaibatsu".
The zaibatsu had been at the heart of economic and industrial activity within the Empire of Japan since Japanese industrialization accelerated during the Meiji Era. They held great influence over Japanese national and foreign policies which only increased following the Japanese victories in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and World War I.During the inter-war period the zaibatsu aided Japanese militarism and benefited from their conquest of East Asia by receiving lucrative contracts.
Prior to World War II, Japan's industrialized economy was dominated by four major zaibatsu: Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda and Mitsui. They focused on steel, banking, international trading and various other key sectors in the economy, all of which was controlled by a holding company. Apart from this, they remained in close connection to influential banks that provided funding to their various projects.
The "zaibatsu" had been viewed with some ambivalence by the Japanese military, which nationalized a significant portion of their production capability during World War II. Some assets were also highly damaged by the destruction of the war.
After the surrender of Japan the Allied occupation forces partially attempted to dissolve the "zaibatsu" which had worked closely with the militarists during the first half of the 20th Century and during the war. Many of the economic advisors accompanying the SCAP administration had experience with the New Deal program under President Franklin Roosevelt, and were highly suspicious of monopolies and restrictive business practices, which they felt to be both inefficient, and to be a form of corporatocracy (and thus inherently anti-democratic).
During the occupation of Japan, 16 "zaibatsu" were targeted for complete dissolution, and 26 more for reorganization after dissolution. Among the "zaibatsu" targeted for dissolution in 1947 were Asano, Furukawa, Nakajima, Nissan, Nomura, and Okura. Their controlling families' assets were seized, holding companies eliminated, and interlocking directorships, essential to the old system of intercompany coordination, were outlawed. Matsushita (which later took the name Panasonic), while not a "zaibatsu", was originally also targeted for dissolution, but was saved by a petition signed by 15,000 of its unionized workers and their families.
However, complete dissolution of the "zaibatsu" was never achieved, mostly because the United States government rescinded the orders in an effort to reindustrialize Japan as a bulwark against Communism in Asia. "Zaibatsu" as a whole were widely considered to be beneficial to the Japanese economy and government, and the opinions of the Japanese public, the "zaibatsu" workers and management, and the entrenched bureaucracy regarding plans for "zaibatsu" dissolution ranged from unenthusiastic to disapproving. Additionally, the changing politics of the Occupation during the reverse course served as a crippling, if not terminal, roadblock to "zaibatsu" elimination.
Even today, banks and trading companies remain at the top of the pyramid, having access to and control over a portion of each company that forms part of the "keiretsu". Shareholders succeeded over the family control of the cartel. This was made possible with relaxing of Japanese laws whereby holding companies could become stockholding companies.
Cartels and groupings of various kinds are common in Japan.
The two types of "keiretsu", horizontal and vertical, can be further categorized as:
The primary aspect of a horizontal" keiretsu" (also known as financial "keiretsu") is that it is set up around a Japanese bank through cross-shareholding relationships with other companies. The bank assists these companies with a range of financial services. The leading horizontal Japanese "keiretsu", also referred to as the “Big Six”, include: Fuyo, Sanwa, Sumitomo, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and DKB Group. Horizontal "keiretsu" may also have vertical relationships, called branches.
Horizontal "keiretsu" peaked around 1988, when over half of the value in the Japanese stock market consisted of cross-shareholdings. Since then, banks have gradually reduced their cross-shareholdings. The Japanese corporate governance code, effective from June 2015, requires listed companies to disclose a rationale for their cross-shareholdings. Partly as a result of this requirement, the three Japanese "megabanks" descended from the six major "keiretsu" banks (namely Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group) have indicated plans to further reduce their balance of cross-shareholding investments.
Vertical "keiretsu" (also known as industrial" keiretsu") are used to link suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors of one industry. Examples of this type include Toyota, Toshiba, and Nissan. One or more sub-companies are created to benefit the parent company (for example, Toyota or Honda). Banks have less influence on distribution "keiretsu". This vertical model is further divided into levels called tiers. The second tier constitutes major suppliers, followed by smaller manufacturers, who make up the third and fourth tiers. The lower the tier, the greater the risk of economic disruption; moreover, due to low position in the "keiretsu" hierarchy, profit margins are low.
It is noted that some of these vertical keiretsus, may belong to one or another horizontal keiretsu. Some of these vertical "keiretsu" are family businesses; examples of family-owned "keiretsu" include the Hitotsubashi/Shogakukan, Kodansha and APA groups. There are studies that found these vertical "keiretsus," particularly those that belong to the same keiretsu, are more likely to form alliances than the other types or even those companies where one or two have "keiretsu" affiliations. Vertical keiretsu is considered an effective and competitive organizational model in the car industry.
At the center of the "big six" "keiretsu" are a bank and a trading company (sogo shosha). Japanese banks are allowed to have equity in other firms with a quota of less than 5% of the total number of shares issued by the company (Anti-Monopoly Law Reform of 1977). Banks play a crucial role in the smooth functioning of this organization. They assess the investment projects and provide loans when required. The trading companies (sogo sosha) deal in imports and exports of an assorted range of commodities throughout the world. Each major company has its own "President's Club", enabling interaction of core members to better help decide their strategies.
The Japanese "keiretsu" took various preventive measures to avoid takeovers from foreign companies. One of them was "interlocking" or "cross-holding" of shares. This method was established by Article 280 of Commerce Law. By doing so, each company held a stake in the other's company. This helped reduce the pressure on management to achieve short-term goals at the expense of long-term growth. Besides that, interlocking of shares serves as a tool for monitoring and disciplining the group's firms. The level of group orientation or strength between the member companies is determined by the "interlocking shares ratio" (the ratio of shares owned by other group firms to total shares issued) and the "intragroup loans ratio" (the ratio of loans received from financial institutions in the group to total loans received).
Industries such as banking, insurance, steel, trading, manufacturing, electric, gas and chemicals are all part of the horizontal "keiretsu" web. The member companies follow the "One-Set Policy" whereby the groups avoid direct competition between member firms.
The One-Set Policy:
In the 1920s, government officials maintained close relations with the "zaibatsu", and the roots of their influence remained strong throughout the rest of the 20th Century. The "keiretsu" have great influence on Japanese industrial and economic policy. The preferential buying habits of the "keiretsu" kept foreign investors and foreign goods out of their markets, which America criticized as "barriers to free trade". This enabled the "keiretsu" to enjoy monopoly privileges over the Japanese market, thus maintaining high prices for their goods, as they had full dominance over the price and distribution of products and services throughout the supply side. It is believed that due to this practice, Japan in the late 1980s imported far less than it should have ($40 billion less as per a report by the Brookings Institution).
In such a work environment, the probability of an employee to remain working in the same company for his entire working life was very high. Moreover, this framework allowed rapid co-operative development (sharing vital information, reduction in cost of R&D and higher quality products) within a "keiretsu".
During the occupation of Japan, under the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, a partially successful attempt was made to dissolve the "zaibatsu" in the late 1940s. Sixteen "zaibatsu" were targeted for complete dissolution, and 26 more for reorganization after dissolution. However, the companies formed from the dismantling of the "zaibatsu" were later reintegrated. The dispersed corporations were reinterlinked through share purchases to form horizontally integrated alliances across many industries. Where possible, "keiretsu" companies would also supply one another, making the alliances vertically integrated, as well. In this period, official government policy promoted the creation of robust trade corporations that could withstand heavy pressures from intensified trade competition.
The major "keiretsu" were each centered on one bank, which lent money to the "keiretsu" member companies and held equity positions in the companies. Each bank had great control over the companies in the "keiretsu" and acted as a monitoring and emergency bail-out entity. One effect of this structure was to minimize the presence of hostile takeovers in Japan, because no entities could challenge the power of the banks.
Although the divisions between them have blurred in recent years, there have been eight major postwar "keiretsu":
Toyota is considered the biggest of the vertically integrated "keiretsu" groups, although the company is rather considered as a "emerged" keiretsu, along with Softbank, Seven & I Holdings Co.. The banks at the top are not as large as normally required, so it is actually considered to be more horizontally integrated than other "keiretsu".
The Japanese recession in the 1990s had profound effects on the "keiretsu". Many of the largest banks were hit hard by bad loan portfolios and forced to merge or go out of business. This had the effect of blurring the lines between the individual "keiretsu": Sumitomo Bank and Mitsui Bank, for instance, became Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in 2001, while Sanwa Bank (the banker for the Hankyu-Toho Group) became part of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
Generally, these causes gave rise to a strong notion in the Japanese business community that the old "keiretsu" system was not an effective business model, and led to an overall loosening of "keiretsu" alliances. While they still exist, they are not as centralized or integrated as they were before the 2000s. For instance, many troubled Japanese companies are faced with a new reality in which receiving financial support from their main banks are getting harder and unlikely than ever before. The companies include Sharp Corporation and Toshiba, both the iconic Japanese electronics companies.
This changed environment, in turn, has led to a growing corporate acquisition industry in Japan, as companies are no longer able to be easily "bailed out" by their banks, as well as rising derivative litigation by more independent shareholders.
The "keiretsu" model is fairly unique to Japan. The closest foreign counterpart would be the Korean "chaebol", but many diversified non-Japanese businesses groups have been described as "keiretsu", such as the Virgin Group (UK), and Tata Group (India), and the Colombian Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño.
Some industry consortiums and alliances have also been described in this way. The most common examples are the airline code-sharing alliances, such as Oneworld and Star Alliance. While those arrangements link a broad range of companies around a common organization, they groupings tend to have minimal financial entanglement and are generally designed around gaining access to foreign markets within industries that governments consider sensitive such as mining and aviation when foreign ownership is limited or even banned.
The automotive and industries have created broad cross-ownership networks across nations, but the national companies are normally independently managed. Banks cited as being central to "keiretsu"-like systems include Deutsche Bank and some "keiretsu"-like systems, generally referred to as trusts, were created by investment banks in the United States such as JP Morgan and Mellon Financial/Mellon family beginning in the late 19th century (roughly the same period they were created in Japan), but they were largely curtailed through anti-trust legislation championed by Theodore Roosevelt in the early part of the 20th century. A form of "keiretsu" can also be found in the cross-shareholdings of the large media companies throughout most developed nations. These are largely designed to link content producers to particular distribution channels, and larger content projects, such as expensive movies, are often incorporated with ownership spread across a number of larger companies.
Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer and University of Tokyo professor Yoshiro Miwa have argued that the postwar "keiretsu" are a "fable" created by Marxist thinkers in the 1960s so as to argue that monopoly capital dominated the Japanese economy. They point to the sparsity and tenuousness of cross-shareholding relationships within the "keiretsu", the inconsistency in members' relationships with the "main banks" of each "keiretsu", and the lack of power and reach of the "zaibatsu" alumni "lunch clubs" which are often argued to form a core of "keiretsu" governance.
By April 2015, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari, representing the two largest economies of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, were involved in bilateral talks regarding agriculture and auto parts, the "two largest obstacles for Japan." These bilateral accords would open each other's markets for products such as rice, pork and automobiles.
During the two-day ministerial TPP negotiating session held in Singapore in May, 2015, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and veteran negotiator, Wendy Cutler, and Oe Hiroshi, of the Japanese Gaimusho, held bilateral trade talks regarding one of the most contentious trade issues, automobiles. American negotiators wanted the Japanese to open their entire "keiretsu" structure, a cornerstone of the Japanese economy, to American automobiles. They wanted Japanese dealer networks such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, and Mazda to sell American cars. The successful conclusion of these bilateral talks was necessary before the other ten TPP members could complete the trade deal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17467 |
Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Kurt Georg Kiesinger (; 6 April 1904 – 9 March 1988) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1 December 1966 to 21 October 1969. Before he became Chancellor he served as Minister President of Baden-Württemberg from 1958 to 1966 and as President of the Federal Council from 1962 to 1963. He was Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1967 to 1971.
Kiesinger studied law and worked as a lawyer in Berlin from 1935 to 1940. To avoid conscription, he found work at the Foreign Office in 1940, and became deputy head of the Foreign Office's broadcasting department. During his service at the Foreign Office, he was denounced by two colleagues for his anti-Nazi stance. He had nevertheless joined the Nazi Party in 1933, but remained a largely inactive member. In 1946 he became a member of the Christian Democratic Union. He was elected to the Bundestag in 1949, and was a member of the Bundestag until 1958 and again from 1969 to 1980. He left federal politics for eight years to serve as Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, and subsequently became Chancellor by forming a grand coalition with Willy Brandt's Social Democratic Party.
Kiesinger was considered an outstanding orator and mediator, and was dubbed "Silver Tongue." He was an author of poetry and various books, and founded the universities of Konstanz and Ulm as Minister President of Baden-Württemberg.
Born in Ebingen, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg), Kiesinger studied law in Berlin and worked as a lawyer in Berlin from 1935 to 1940. As a student, he joined the (non-"couleur" wearing) Roman Catholic corporations and Askania-Burgundia Berlin. He became a member of the Nazi Party in February 1933, but remained a largely inactive member. In 1940, he was called to arms but avoided mobilization by finding a job in the Foreign Office's broadcasting department, rising quickly to become deputy head of the department from 1943 to 1945 and the department's liaison with the Propaganda Ministry. After the war, he was interned and spent 18 months in the Ludwigsburg camp before being released as a case of mistaken identity.
During the controversies of 1966, the magazine "Der Spiegel" unearthed a Memorandum dated 7 November 1944 (six months before the end of the war in Europe) in which two colleagues denounced to SS chief Heinrich Himmler a conspiracy including Kiesinger that was allegedly propagating defeatism. They accused Kiesinger specifically of hampering anti-Jewish actions within his department.
Kiesinger joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1946. From 1946 he gave private lessons to law students, and in 1948 he resumed his practice as a lawyer. In 1947 he also became unpaid secretary-general of CDU in Württemberg-Hohenzollern.
In the federal election in 1949 he was elected to the Bundestag. In 1951 he became a member of the CDU executive board. During that time, he became known for his rhetorical brilliance, as well as his in-depth knowledge of foreign affairs. However, despite the recognition he enjoyed within the Christian Democrat parliamentary faction, he was passed over during various cabinet reshuffles. Consequently, he decided to switch from federal to state politics.
Kiesinger became Minister President of the state of Baden-Württemberg on 17 December 1958, an office in which he served until 1 December 1966. As Minister President he founded two universities, the University of Konstanz and the University of Ulm.
In 1966 following the collapse of the existing CDU/CSU-FDP coalition, Kiesinger was elected to replace Ludwig Erhard as Chancellor, heading a new CDU/CSU-SPD alliance. The government formed by Kiesinger remained in power for nearly three years with the SPD leader Willy Brandt as Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Kiesinger reduced tensions with the Soviet bloc nations establishing diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia but he opposed any major conciliatory moves. A number of progressive reforms were also realised during Kiesinger's time as Chancellor. Pension coverage was extended in 1967 via the abolition of the income-ceiling for compulsory membership. In education, student grants were introduced, together with a university building programme, while a constitutional reform of 1969 empowered the federal government to be involved with the Länder in educational planning through joint planning commission. Vocational training legislation was also introduced, while a reorganisation of unemployment insurance promoted retraining schemes, counselling and advice services and job creation places. In addition, under the “Lohnfortzahlunggesetz” of 1969, employers had to pay all employees’ wages for the first 6 weeks of sickness. In August 1969, the Landabgaberente (a higher special pension for farmers willing to cede farms that were unprofitable according to certain criteria) was introduced.
One of his low points as Chancellor was in 1968 when Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld, who campaigned with her husband Serge Klarsfeld against Nazi criminals, publicly slapped him in the face during the 1968 Christian Democrat convention, while calling him a Nazi. She did so in French and – whilst being dragged out of the room by two ushers – repeated her words in German saying ""Kiesinger! Nazi! Abtreten!"" ("Kiesinger! Nazi! Step down!") Kiesinger, holding his left cheek, did not respond. Up to his death he refused to comment on the incident and in other opportunities he denied explicitly that he had been opportunistic by joining the NSDAP in 1933 (although he admitted to joining the German Foreign Ministry to dodge his 1940 draft by the Wehrmacht). Other prominent critics included the writers Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass (in 1966, Grass had written an open letter urging Kiesinger not to accept the chancellorship).
After the election of 1969, the SPD preferred to form a coalition with the FDP, ending the uninterrupted post-war reign of the CDU chancellors. Kiesinger was succeeded as Chancellor by Willy Brandt. Kiesinger continued to head the CDU/CSU in opposition until July 1971 and remained a member of the Bundestag until 1980. Of his memoirs only part one ("Dark and Bright Years") was completed, covering the years up to 1958. He died in Tübingen on 9 March 1988, four weeks before his 84th birthday. After a requiem mass in Stuttgart's St. Eberhard Church, his funeral procession was followed by protesters (mainly students) who wanted his former membership in the Nazi Party remembered.
1 December 1966 – 21 October 1969
Changes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17470 |
Lynx
A lynx (; plural lynx or lynxes) is any of the four species (Canada lynx, Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx, bobcat) within the medium-sized wild cat genus "Lynx". The name "lynx" originated in Middle English via Latin from the Greek word λύγξ, derived from the Indo-European root "leuk-" ('light, brightness') in reference to the luminescence of its reflective eyes.
Two other cats that are sometimes called lynxes, the caracal (desert lynx) and the jungle cat (jungle lynx), are not members of the genus "Lynx".
Lynx have a short tail, characteristic tufts of black hair on the tips of their ears, large, padded paws for walking on snow and long whiskers on the face. Under their neck they have a ruff which has black bars resembling a bow tie, although this is often not visible.
Body colour varies from medium brown to goldish to beige-white, and is occasionally marked with dark brown spots, especially on the limbs. All species of lynx have white fur on their chests, bellies and on the insides of their legs, fur which is an extension of the chest and belly fur. The lynx's colouring, fur length and paw size vary according to the climate in their range. In the Southwestern United States, they are short-haired, dark in colour and their paws are smaller and less padded. As climates get colder and more northerly, lynx have progressively thicker fur, lighter colour, and their paws are larger and more padded to adapt to the snow. Their paws may be larger than a human hand or foot.
The smallest species are the bobcat and the Canada lynx, while the largest is the Eurasian lynx, with considerable variations within species.
The four living species of the genus "Lynx" are believed to have evolved from the "Issoire lynx", which lived in Europe and Africa during the late Pliocene to early Pleistocene. The Pliocene felid "Felis rexroadensis" from North America has been proposed as an even earlier ancestor; however, this was larger than any living species, and is not currently classified as a true lynx.
Of the four lynx species, the Eurasian lynx ("Lynx lynx") is the largest in size. It is native to European, Central Asian, and Siberian forests. While its conservation status has been classified as "least concern", populations of Eurasian lynx have been reduced or extirpated from Europe, where it is now being reintroduced.
The Eurasian lynx is the third largest predator in Europe after the brown bear and the grey wolf. It is a strict carnivore, consuming about one or two kilograms of meat every day. The Eurasian lynx is one of the widest-ranging.
During the summer, the Eurasian lynx has a relatively short, reddish or brown coat which is replaced by a much thicker silver-grey to greyish-brown coat during winter. The lynx hunts by stalking and jumping on its prey, helped by the rugged, forested country in which it resides. A favorite prey for the lynx in its woodland habitat is roe deer. It will feed however on whatever animal appears easiest, as it is an opportunistic predator much like its cousins.
The Canada lynx ("Lynx canadensis"), or Canadian lynx, is a North American felid that ranges in forest and tundra regions across Canada and into Alaska, as well as some parts of the northern United States. Historically, the Canadian lynx ranged from Alaska across Canada and into many of the northern U.S. states. In the eastern states, it resided in the transition zone in which boreal coniferous forests yielded to deciduous forests. By 2010, after an 11-year effort, it had been successfully reintroduced into Colorado, where it had become extirpated in the 1970s. In 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the Canada lynx a threatened species in the lower 48 states.
The Canada lynx is a good climber and swimmer; it constructs rough shelters under fallen trees or rock ledges. It has a thick coat and broad paws, and is twice as effective as the bobcat at supporting its weight on the snow. The Canada lynx feeds almost exclusively on snowshoe hares; its population is highly dependent on the population of this prey animal. It will also hunt medium-sized mammals and birds if hare numbers fall.
The Iberian lynx ("Lynx pardinus") is an endangered species native to the Iberian Peninsula in Southern Europe. It was the most endangered cat species in the world, but conservation efforts have changed its status from critical to endangered. According to the Portuguese conservation group SOS Lynx, if this species dies out, it will be the first feline extinction since the "Smilodon" 10,000 years ago. The species used to be classified as a subspecies of the Eurasian lynx, but is now considered a separate species. Both species occurred together in central Europe in the Pleistocene epoch, being separated by habitat choice. The Iberian lynx is believed to have evolved from "Lynx issiodorensis".
In 2004, a Spanish government survey showed just two isolated breeding populations of Iberian lynx in southern Spain, totaling about 100 lynx (including only 25 breeding females). An agreement signed in 2003 by the Spanish Environment Ministry and the Andalusian Environment Council seeks to breed the Iberian lynx in captivity. Three Iberian lynx cubs were born as part of the Spanish program in 2005, at the Centro El Acebuche facility in Doñana National Park.
As a result of the Spanish government program and efforts by others (such as the WWF and the EU's Life projects), the Iberian lynx "has recovered from the brink of extinction"; from 2000 to 2015, the population of Iberian lynx more than tripled. The IUCN reassessed the species from "critically endangered" to "endangered" in 2015. A 2014 census of the species showed 327 animals in Andalucia in the "reintroduction areas" of Sierra Morena and Montes de Toledo (Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), the Matachel Valley (Extremadura, Spain), and the Guadiana Valley (Portugal).
The bobcat ("Lynx rufus") is a North American wild cat. With 13 recognized subspecies, the bobcat is common throughout southern Canada, the continental United States, and northern Mexico. The bobcat is an adaptable predator that inhabits deciduous, coniferous, or mixed woodlands, but unlike other "Lynx", does not depend exclusively on the deep forest, and ranges from swamps and desert lands to mountainous and agricultural areas, its spotted coat serving as camouflage. The population of the bobcat depends primarily on the population of its prey. Nonetheless, the bobcat is often killed by larger predators such as coyotes.
The bobcat resembles other species of the genus "Lynx", but is on average the smallest of the four. Its coat is variable, though generally tan to grayish brown, with black streaks on the body and dark bars on the forelegs and tail. The ears are black-tipped and pointed, with short, black tufts. There is generally an off-white color on the lips, chin, and underparts. Bobcats in the desert regions of the southwest have the lightest-colored coats, while those in the northern, forested regions have the darkest.
The lynx is usually solitary, although a small group of lynx may travel and hunt together occasionally. Mating takes place in the late winter and once a year the female gives birth to between one and four kittens. The gestation time of the lynx is about 70 days. The young stay with the mother for one more winter, a total of around nine months, before moving out to live on their own as young adults. The lynx creates its den in crevices or under ledges. It feeds on a wide range of animals from white-tailed deer, reindeer, roe deer, small red deer, and chamois, to smaller, more usual prey: snowshoe hares, fish, foxes, sheep, squirrels, mice, turkeys and other birds, and goats. It also eats ptarmigans, voles, and grouse.
The lynx inhabits high altitude forests with dense cover of shrubs, reeds, and tall grass. Although this cat hunts on the ground, it can climb trees and can swim swiftly, catching fish.
The Eurasian lynx ranges from central and northern Europe across Asia up to Northern Pakistan and India. In Iran, they live in Mount Damavand area. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Eurasian lynx was considered extinct in the wild in Slovenia and Croatia. A resettlement project, begun in 1973, has successfully reintroduced lynx to the Slovenian Alps and the Croatian regions of Gorski Kotar and Velebit, including Croatia's Plitvice Lakes National Park and Risnjak National Park. In both countries, the lynx is listed as an endangered species and protected by law. The lynx was distributed throughout Japan during Jōmon period, but no archeological evidence thereafter suggesting extinction at that time.
Several lynx resettlement projects begun in the 1970s have been successful in various regions of Switzerland. Since the 1990s, there have been numerous efforts to resettle the Eurasian lynx in Germany, and since 2000, a small population can now be found in the Harz mountains near Bad Lauterberg.
The lynx is found in the Białowieża Forest in northeastern Poland, in Estonia and in the northern and western parts of China, particularly the Tibetan Plateau. In Romania, the numbers exceed 2,000, the largest population in Europe outside of Russia, although most experts consider the official population numbers to be overestimated.
The lynx is more common in northern Europe, especially in Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and the northern parts of Russia. The Swedish population is estimated to be 1200–1500 individuals, spread all over the country, but more common in middle Sweden and in the mountain range. The lynx population in Finland was 1900–2100 individuals in 2008, and the numbers have been increasing every year since 1992. The lynx population in Finland is estimated currently to be larger than ever before. Lynx in Britain were wiped out in the 17th century, but there have been calls to reintroduce them to curb the numbers of deer.
The endangered Iberian lynx lives in southern Spain and formerly in eastern Portugal. There is an Iberian lynx reproduction center outside Silves in the Algarve in southern Portugal.
The two "Lynx" species in North America, Canada lynx and bobcats, are both found in the temperate zone. While the bobcat is common throughout southern Canada, the continental United States and northern Mexico, the Canada lynx is present mainly in boreal forests of Canada and Alaska.
The lynx is considered a national animal in North Macedonia and is displayed on the reverse of the 5 denar coin.
It is also the national animal of Romania. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17479 |
Leisure
Leisure has often been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores, and education, as well as necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. Situationist International proposes that leisure does not evolve from free time, and free-time is an illusory concept that is rarely fully "free"; economic and social forces appropriate free time from the individual and sell it back to them as the commodity known as "leisure". Certainly most people's leisure activities are not a completely free choice and may be constrained by social pressures, e.g. people may be coerced into spending time gardening by the need to keep up with the standard of neighbouring gardens or go to a party because of social pressures.
Leisure as experience usually emphasizes dimensions of perceived freedom and choice. It is done for "its own sake", for the quality of experience and involvement. Other classic definitions include Thorsten Veblen's (1899) of "nonproductive consumption of time." Different disciplines have definitions reflecting their common issues: for example, sociology on social forces and contexts and psychology as mental and emotional states and conditions. From a research perspective, these approaches have an advantage of being quantifiable and comparable over time and place.
Leisure studies and sociology of leisure are the academic disciplines concerned with the study and analysis of leisure. Research has shown that practicing creative leisure activities is interrelated with the emotional creativity. Recreation differs from leisure in that it is a purposeful activity that includes the experience of leisure in activity contexts. Economists consider that leisure times are valuable to a person like wages that they could earn for the same time spend towards the activity. If it were not, people would have worked instead of taking leisure. However, the distinction between leisure and unavoidable activities is not a rigidly defined one, e.g. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility. A related concept is social leisure, which involves leisurely activities in social settings, such as extracurricular activities, e.g. sports, clubs. Another related concept is that of family leisure. Relationships with others is usually a major factor in both satisfaction and choice.
The concept of leisure as a human right was realised in article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Leisure has historically been the privilege of the Upper class. Opportunities for leisure came with more money, or organization, and less working time, rising dramatically in the mid-to-late 19th century, starting in Great Britain and spreading to other rich nations in Europe. It spread as well to the United States, although that country had a reputation in Europe for providing much less leisure despite its wealth. Immigrants to the United States discovered they had to work harder than they did in Europe. Economists continue to investigate why Americans work longer hours. In a recent book, Laurent Turcot argues that leisure was not created in the 19th century but is imbricated in the occidental world since the beginning of history.
In Canada, leisure in the country is related to the decline in work hours and is shaped by moral values, and the ethnic-religious and gender communities. In a cold country with winter's long nights, and summer's extended daylight, favorite leisure activities include horse racing, team sports such as hockey, singalongs, roller skating and board games. The churches tried to steer leisure activities, by preaching against drinking and scheduling annual revivals and weekly club activities. By 1930 radio played a major role in uniting Canadians behind their local or regional hockey teams. Play-by-play sports coverage, especially of ice hockey, absorbed fans far more intensely than newspaper accounts the next day. Rural areas were especially influenced by sports coverage.
Leisure by the mid-19th century was no longer an individualistic activity. It was increasingly organized. In the French industrial city of Lille, with a population of 80,000 in 1858, the cabarets or taverns for the working class numbered 1300, or one for every three houses. Lille counted 63 drinking and singing clubs, 37 clubs for card players, 23 for bowling, 13 for skittles, and 18 for archery. The churches likewise have their social organizations. Each club had a long roster of officers, and a busy schedule of banquets, festivals and competitions.
As literacy, wealth, ease of travel, and a broadened sense of community grew in Britain from the mid-19th century onward, there was more time and interest in leisure activities of all sorts, on the part of all classes.
Opportunities for leisure activities increased because real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to decline. In urban Britain, the nine-hour day was increasingly the norm; 1874 factory act limited the workweek to 56.5 hours. The movement toward an eight-hour day. Furthermore, system of routine annual vacations came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class. Some 200 seaside resorts emerged thanks to cheap hotels and inexpensive railway fares, widespread banking holidays and the fading of many religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays.
By the late Victorian era, the leisure industry had emerged in all British cities, and the pattern was copied across Western Europe and North America. It provided scheduled entertainment of suitable length and convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These include sporting events, music halls, and popular theater. By 1880 football was no longer the preserve of the social elite, as it attracted large working-class audiences. Average gate was 5,000 in 1905, rising to 23,000 in 1913. That amounted to 6 million paying customers with a weekly turnover of £400,000. Sports by 1900 generated some three percent of the total gross national product in Britain. Professionalization of sports was the norm, although some new activities reached an upscale amateur audience, such as lawn tennis and golf. Women were now allowed in some sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics.
Leisure was primarily a male activity, with middle-class women allowed in at the margins. There were class differences with upper-class clubs, and working-class and middle-class pubs. Heavy drinking declined; there was more betting on outcomes. Participation in sports and all sorts of leisure activities increased for average English people, and their interest in spectator sports increased dramatically.
By the 1920s the cinema and radio attracted all classes, ages, and genders in very large numbers. Giant palaces were built for the huge audiences that wanted to see Hollywood films. In Liverpool 40 percent of the population attended one of the 69 cinemas once a week; 25 percent went twice. Traditionalists grumbled about the American cultural invasion, but the permanent impact was minor.
The British showed a more profound interest in sports, and in greater variety, that any rival. They gave pride of place to such moral issues as sportsmanship and fair play. Cricket became symbolic of the Imperial spirit throughout the Empire. Soccer proved highly attractive to the urban working classes, which introduced the rowdy spectator to the sports world. In some sports, there was significant controversy in the fight for amateur purity especially in rugby and rowing. New games became popular almost overnight, including golf, lawn tennis, cycling and hockey. Women were much more likely to enter these sports than the old established ones. The aristocracy and landed gentry, with their ironclad control over land rights, dominated hunting, shooting, fishing and horse racing.
Cricket had become well-established among the English upper class in the 18th century, And was a major factor in sports competition among the public schools. Army units around the Empire had time on their hands, and encouraged the locals to learn cricket so they could have some entertaining competition. Most of the Empire embraced cricket, with the exception of Canada. Cricket test matches (international) began by the 1870s; the most famous is that between Australia and Britain for "The Ashes."
The range of leisure activities extends from the very informal and casual to highly organised and long-lasting activities. A significant subset of leisure activities are hobbies which are undertaken for personal satisfaction, usually on a regular basis, and often result in satisfaction through skill development or recognised achievement, sometimes in the form of a product. The list of hobbies is ever changing as society changes.
Substantial and fulfilling hobbies and pursuits are described by Stebbins as "serious leisure". The "Serious Leisure Perspective" is a way of viewing the wide range of leisure pursuits in three main categories: casual leisure, serious leisure, and project-based Leisure.
""Serious leisure" is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer ... that is highly substantial, interesting, and fulfilling and where ... participants find a [leisure] career...". For example, collecting stamps or maintaining a public wetland area.
People undertaking serious leisure can be categorised as amateurs, volunteers or hobbyists. Their engagement is distinguished from casual leisure by a high level of perseverance, effort, knowledge and training required and durable benefits and the sense that one can create in effect a leisure career through such activity.
The range of serious leisure activities is growing rapidly in modern times with developed societies having greater leisure time, longevity and prosperity. The Internet is providing increased support for amateurs and hobbyists to communicate, display and share products.
As literacy and leisure time expanded after 1900, reading became a popular pastime. New additions to adult fiction doubled during the 1920s, reaching 2800 new books a year by 1935. Libraries tripled their stocks, and saw heavy demand for new fiction. A dramatic innovation was the inexpensive paperback, pioneered by Allen Lane (1902–70) at Penguin Books in 1935. The first titles included novels by Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie. They were sold cheap (usually sixpence) in a wide variety of inexpensive stores such as Woolworth's. Penguin aimed at an educated middle class "middlebrow" audience. It avoided the downscale image of American paperbacks. The line signaled cultural self-improvement and political education. The more polemical Penguin Specials, typically with a leftist orientation for Labour readers, were widely distributed during World War II. However the war years caused a shortage of staff for publishers and book stores, and a severe shortage of rationed paper, worsened by the air raid on Paternoster Square in 1940 that burned 5 million books in warehouses.
Romantic fiction was especially popular, with Mills and Boon the leading publisher. Romantic encounters were embodied in a principle of sexual purity that demonstrated not only social conservatism, but also how heroines could control their personal autonomy. Adventure magazines became quite popular, especially those published by DC Thomson; the publisher sent observers around the country to talk to boys and learn what they wanted to read about. The story line in magazines and cinema that most appealed to boys was the glamorous heroism of British soldiers fighting wars that were perceived as exciting and just.
""Casual leisure" is immediately, intrinsically rewarding; and it is a relatively short-lived, pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it." For example, watching TV or going for a swim. In 2018 the diary of United States President Donald Trump was leaked to the media, showing a large proportion of each day devoted to leisure in unstructured free time – listed by his staff under the euphemism: "executive time".
""Project-based leisure" is a short-term, moderately complicated, either one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time." For example, working on a single Wikipedia article or building a garden feature.
Time available for leisure varies from one society to the next, although anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherers tend to have significantly more leisure time than people in more complex societies. As a result, band societies such as the Shoshone of the Great Basin came across as extraordinarily lazy to European colonialists.
Workaholics, less common than the social myths, are those who work compulsively at the expense of other activities. They prefer to work rather than spend time socializing and engaging in other leisure activities.
European and American men statistically have more leisure time than women, due to both household and parenting responsibilities and increasing participation in the paid employment. In Europe and the United States, adult men usually have between one and nine hours more leisure time than women do each week.
Family leisure is defined as time that parents and children spend together in free time or recreational activities, and it can be expanded to address intergenerational family leisure as time that grandparents, parents, and grandchildren spend together in free time or recreational activities. Leisure can become a central place for the development of emotional closeness and strong family bonds. Contexts such as urban/rural shape the perspectives, meanings, and experiences of family leisure. For example, leisure moments are part of work in rural areas, and the rural idyll is enacted by urban families on weekends, but both urban and rural families somehow romanticize rural contexts as ideal spaces for family making (connection to nature, slower and more intimate space, notion of a caring social fabric, tranquillity, etc.). Also, much "family leisure" requires tasks that are most often assigned to women.family leisure also includes playing together with family members on the weekend day.
chating with each other ,among elders ,grandfather, grandmother also contributes a lot.
Leisure is important across the lifespan and can facilitate a sense of control and self-worth . Children's leisure time is an important part of their daily lives and it constitutes an important factor in socializing, developing skills and shaping personal identities . Older adults, specifically, can benefit from physical, social, emotional, cultural, and spiritual aspects of leisure. Leisure engagement and relationships are commonly central to "successful" and satisfying aging . For example, engaging in leisure with grandchildren can enhance feelings of generativity, whereby older adults can achieve well-being by leaving a legacy beyond themselves for future generations . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17503 |
Leslie Caron
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (; born 1 July 1931) is a French-American actress and dancer who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003. Her autobiography, "Thank Heaven", was published in 2010 in the UK and US, and in 2011 in a French version. Veteran documentarian Larry Weinstein's "Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 28 June 2016.
Caron is best known for the musical films "An American in Paris" (1951) her film debut, "Lili" (1953), "Daddy Long Legs" (1955), and "Gigi" (1958), and for the nonmusical films "Fanny" (1961), "The L-Shaped Room" (1962), and "Father Goose" (1964). She received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. In 2006, her performance in "" won her an Emmy for guest actress in a drama series. She is fluent in French, English, and Italian. She is one of the few dancers or actresses who have danced with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Rudolf Nureyev.
Caron was born in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Seine (now Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), the daughter of Margaret (née Petit), a Franco-American dancer on Broadway, and Claude Caron, a French chemist, pharmacist, perfumer, and boutique owner. While her older brother Aimery Caron became a chemist like their father, Leslie was prepared for a performing career from childhood by her mother.
Caron started her career as a ballerina. Gene Kelly discovered her in the Roland Petit company "" and cast her to appear opposite him in the musical "An American in Paris" (1951), a role in which a pregnant Cyd Charisse was originally cast. This role led to a long-term MGM contract and a sequence of films which included the musical "The Glass Slipper" (1955) and the drama "The Man with a Cloak" (1951), with Joseph Cotten and Barbara Stanwyck. Still, Caron has said of herself: "Unfortunately, Hollywood considers musical dancers as hoofers. Regrettable expression."
She also starred in the successful musicals "Lili" (1953), with Mel Ferrer; "Daddy Long Legs" (1955), with Fred Astaire, and "Gigi" (1958) with Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier.
In 1953, Caron was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in "Lili." For her performance in the British drama "The L-Shaped Room" (1962), she won the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress and Golden Globe awards, and was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.
In the 1960s and thereafter, Caron worked in European films, as well. Her later film assignments included "Father Goose" (1964), with Cary Grant; Ken Russell's "Valentino" (1977), in the role of silent-screen legend Alla Nazimova; and Louis Malle's "Damage" (1992). Sometime in 1970, Caron was one of the many actresses considered for the lead role of Eglantine Price in Disney's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," losing the role to British actress Angela Lansbury.
In 1967, she was a member of the jury of the 5th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1989, she was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.
Caron has continued to act, appearing in the film "Chocolat" (2000). During the 1980s, she appeared in several episodes of the soap opera "Falcon Crest" as Nicole Sauguet. She is one of the few actresses from the classic era of MGM musicals who are still active in film—a group that includes Rita Moreno, Margaret O'Brien, and June Lockhart. Her other later credits include "Funny Bones" (1995) with Jerry Lewis and Oliver Platt; "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells" (2000) with Judi Dench and Cleo Laine; and "Le Divorce" (2003), directed by James Ivory, with Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts.
On 30 June 2003, Caron traveled to San Francisco to appear as the special guest star in "," a retrospective concert staged by San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon Company. In 2007, her guest appearance on "" earned her a 2007 Primetime Emmy Award. On 27 April 2009, Caron traveled to New York as an honored guest at a tribute to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe at the Paley Center for Media.
For her contributions to the film industry, Caron was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 8 December 2009 with a motion pictures star located at 6153 Hollywood Boulevard. In February 2010, she played Madame Armfeldt in "A Little Night Music" at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, which also featured Greta Scacchi and Lambert Wilson.
In 2016, Caron appeared in the ITV television series "The Durrells" as the Countess Mavrodaki.
In September 1951, Caron married American George Hormel II, a grandson of the founder of the Hormel meat-packing company. They divorced in 1954. During that period, while under contract to MGM, she lived in Laurel Canyon, in a Normandie style 1927 mansion, near the country store on Laurel Canyon Blvd. One bedroom was all mirrored for her dancing rehearsals.
Her second husband was British theatre director Peter Hall. They married in 1956 and had two children: Christopher John Hall (TV producer) in 1957 and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer, painter, and actress, in 1958. Her son-in-law, married to Jennifer, is Glenn Wilhide, the producer and screenwriter.
Caron had an affair with Warren Beatty (1961). When she and Hall divorced in 1965, Beatty was named as a co-respondent and was ordered by the London court to pay the costs of the case.
In 1969, Caron married Michael Laughlin, the producer of the film "Two-Lane Blacktop;" they divorced in 1980.
Caron was also romantically linked to Dutch television actor Robert Wolders from 1994 to 1995.
From June 1993 until September 2009, Caron owned and operated the hotel and restaurant "Auberge la Lucarne aux Chouettes" (The Owls' Nest), located in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, located about south of Paris. Unhappy with the lack of work in France, Caron left Paris for England in 2013.
In her autobiography, "Thank Heaven," she states that she obtained American citizenship in time to vote for Barack Obama for president.
Books by Leslie Caron
Articles by Leslie Caron
Articles by Leslie Caron | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17505 |
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; , ), officially known as the Republic of Latvia (, ), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. Since its independence, Latvia has been referred to as one of the Baltic states. It is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia has 1,957,200 inhabitants and a territory of . The country has a temperate seasonal climate. The Baltic Sea moderates the climate, although the country has four distinct seasons and snowy winters.
After centuries of Swedish, Polish and Russian rule, a rule mainly executed by the Baltic German aristocracy, the Republic of Latvia was established on 18 November 1918 when it broke away from the Russian Empire and declared independence in the aftermath of World War I. However, by the 1930s the country became increasingly autocratic after the coup in 1934 establishing an authoritarian regime under Kārlis Ulmanis. The country's de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II, beginning with Latvia's forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union, followed by the invasion and occupation by Nazi Germany in 1941, and the re-occupation by the Soviets in 1944 (Courland Pocket in 1945) to form the Latvian SSR for the next 45 years.
The peaceful Singing Revolution, starting in 1987, called for Baltic emancipation from Soviet rule and condemning the Communist regime's illegal takeover. It ended with the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia on 4 May 1990 and restoring de facto independence on 21 August 1991. Latvia is a democratic sovereign state, parliamentary republic. Its capital Riga served as the European Capital of Culture in 2014. Latvian is the official language. Latvia is a unitary state, divided into 119 administrative divisions, of which 110 are municipalities and nine are cities. Latvians and Livonians are the indigenous people of Latvia. Latvian and Lithuanian are the only two surviving Baltic languages.
Despite foreign rule from the 13th to 20th centuries, the Latvian nation maintained its identity throughout the generations via the language and musical traditions. However, as a consequence of centuries of Russian rule (1710–1918) and later Soviet occupation, 26.9% of the population of Latvia are ethnic Russians, some of whom (10.7% of Latvian residents) have not gained citizenship, leaving them with no citizenship at all. Until World War II, Latvia also had significant minorities of ethnic Germans and Jews. Latvia is historically predominantly Lutheran Protestant, except for the Latgale region in the southeast, which has historically been predominantly Roman Catholic. The Russian population is largely Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Latvia is a high-income advanced economy and ranks 39th in the Human Development Index. It performs favorably in measurements of civil liberties, press freedom, internet freedom, democratic governance, living standards, and peacefulness. Latvia is a member of the European Union, Eurozone, NATO, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, CBSS, the IMF, NB8, NIB, OECD, OSCE, and WTO. A full member of the Eurozone, it began using the euro as its currency on 1 January 2014, replacing the Latvian lats.
The name "Latvija" is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes (along with Couronians, Selonians and Semigallians), which formed the ethnic core of modern Latvians together with the Finnic Livonians. Henry of Latvia coined the latinisations of the country's name, "Lettigallia" and "Lethia", both derived from the Latgalians. The terms inspired the variations on the country's name in Romance languages from "Letonia" and in several Germanic languages from "Lettland".
Around 3000 BC, the proto-Baltic ancestors of the Latvian people settled on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Balts established trade routes to Rome and Byzantium, trading local amber for precious metals. By 900 AD, four distinct Baltic tribes inhabited Latvia: Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians (in Latvian: "kurši", "latgaļi", "sēļi" and "zemgaļi"), as well as the Finnic tribe of Livonians ("lībieši") speaking a Finnic language.
In the 12th century in the territory of Latvia, there were 14 lands with their rulers: Vanema, Ventava, Bandava, Piemare, Duvzare, Ceklis, Megava, Pilsāts, Upmale, Sēlija, Koknese, Jersika, Tālava and Adzele.
Although the local people had contact with the outside world for centuries, they became more fully integrated into the European socio-political system in the 12th century. The first missionaries, sent by the Pope, sailed up the Daugava River in the late 12th century, seeking converts. The local people, however, did not convert to Christianity as readily as the Church had hoped.
German crusaders were sent, or more likely decided to go on their own accord as they were known to do. Saint Meinhard of Segeberg arrived in Ikšķile, in 1184, traveling with merchants to Livonia, on a Catholic mission to convert the population from their original pagan beliefs. Pope Celestine III had called for a crusade against pagans in Northern Europe in 1193. When peaceful means of conversion failed to produce results, Meinhard plotted to convert Livonians by force of arms.
In the beginning of the 13th century, Germans ruled large parts of today's Latvia. Together with Southern Estonia, these conquered areas formed the crusader state that became known as Terra Mariana or Livonia. In 1282, Riga, and later the cities of Cēsis, Limbaži, Koknese and Valmiera, became part of the Hanseatic League. Riga became an important point of east–west trading and formed close cultural links with Western Europe.
After the Livonian War (1558–1583), Livonia (Latvia) fell under Polish and Lithuanian rule. The southern part of Estonia and the northern part of Latvia were ceded to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and formed into the Duchy of Livonia ("Ducatus Livoniae Ultradunensis"). Gotthard Kettler, the last Master of the Order of Livonia, formed the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia. Though the duchy was a vassal state to Poland, it retained a considerable degree of autonomy and experienced a golden age in the 16th century. Latgalia, the easternmost region of Latvia, became a part of the Inflanty Voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, and Russia struggled for supremacy in the eastern Baltic. After the Polish–Swedish War, northern Livonia (including Vidzeme) came under Swedish rule. Riga became the capital of Swedish Livonia and the largest city in the entire Swedish Empire. Fighting continued sporadically between Sweden and Poland until the Truce of Altmark in 1629. In Latvia, the Swedish period is generally remembered as positive; serfdom was eased, a network of schools was established for the peasantry, and the power of the regional barons was diminished.
Several important cultural changes occurred during this time. Under Swedish and largely German rule, western Latvia adopted Lutheranism as its main religion. The ancient tribes of the Couronians, Semigallians, Selonians, Livs, and northern Latgallians assimilated to form the Latvian people, speaking one Latvian language. Throughout all the centuries, however, an actual Latvian state had not been established, so the borders and definitions of who exactly fell within that group are largely subjective. Meanwhile, largely isolated from the rest of Latvia, southern Latgallians adopted Catholicism under Polish/Jesuit influence. The native dialect remained distinct, although it acquired many Polish and Russian loanwords.
The capitulation of Estonia and Livonia in 1710 and the Treaty of Nystad, ending the Great Northern War in 1721, gave Vidzeme to Russia (it became part of the Riga Governorate). The Latgale region remained part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as Inflanty Voivodeship until 1772, when it was incorporated into Russia. The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia became an autonomous Russian province (the Courland Governorate) in 1795, bringing all of what is now Latvia into the Russian Empire. All three Baltic provinces preserved local laws, German as the local official language and their own parliament, the Landtag.
During the Great Northern War (1700–1721), up to 40 percent of Latvians died from famine and plague. Half the residents of Riga were killed by plague in 1710–1711.
The emancipation of the serfs took place in Courland in 1817 and in Vidzeme in 1819. In practice, however, the emancipation was actually advantageous to the landowners and nobility, as it dispossessed peasants of their land without compensation, forcing them to return to work at the estates "of their own free will".
During the 19th century, the social structure changed dramatically. A class of independent farmers established itself after reforms allowed the peasants to repurchase their land, but many landless peasants remained. There also developed a growing urban proletariat and an increasingly influential Latvian bourgeoisie. The Young Latvian () movement laid the groundwork for nationalism from the middle of the century, many of its leaders looking to the Slavophiles for support against the prevailing German-dominated social order. The rise in use of the Latvian language in literature and society became known as the First National Awakening. Russification began in Latgale after the Polish led the January Uprising in 1863: this spread to the rest of what is now Latvia by the 1880s. The Young Latvians were largely eclipsed by the New Current, a broad leftist social and political movement, in the 1890s. Popular discontent exploded in the 1905 Russian Revolution, which took a nationalist character in the Baltic provinces.
During these two centuries Latvia experienced economic and construction boom – ports were expanded (Riga became the largest port in the Russian Empire), railways built; new factories, banks, and a University were established; many residential, public (theatres and museums), and school buildings were erected; new parks formed; and so on. Riga's boulevards and some streets outside the Old Town date from this period.
Worth mentioning is the fact that numeracy was also higher in the Estonian and Latvian parts of the Russian Empire, which may have been influenced by the Protestant religion of the inhabitants.
World War I devastated the territory of what became the state of Latvia, and other western parts of the Russian Empire. Demands for self-determination were initially confined to autonomy, until a power vacuum was created by the Russian Revolution in 1917, followed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Russia and Germany in March 1918, then the Allied armistice with Germany on 11 November 1918. On 18 November 1918, in Riga, the People's Council of Latvia proclaimed the independence of the new country, with Kārlis Ulmanis becoming the head of the provisional government.
The General representative of Germany August Winnig formally handed over political power to the Latvian Provisional Government on 26 November.
The war of independence that followed was part of a general chaotic period of civil and new border wars in Eastern Europe. By the spring of 1919, there were actually three governments: the Provisional government headed by Kārlis Ulmanis, supported by Tautas padome and the Inter-Allied Commission of Control; the Latvian Soviet government led by Pēteris Stučka, supported by the Red Army; and the Provisional government headed by Andrievs Niedra and supported by the Baltische Landeswehr and the German Freikorps unit "Iron Division".
Estonian and Latvian forces defeated the Germans at the Battle of Wenden in June 1919, and a massive attack by a predominantly German force—the West Russian Volunteer Army—under Pavel Bermondt-Avalov was repelled in November. Eastern Latvia was cleared of Red Army forces by Latvian and Polish troops in early 1920 (from the Polish perspective the Battle of Daugavpils was a part of the Polish–Soviet War).
A freely elected Constituent assembly convened on 1 May 1920, and adopted a liberal constitution, the "Satversme", in February 1922. The constitution was partly suspended by Kārlis Ulmanis after his coup in 1934 but reaffirmed in 1990. Since then, it has been amended and is still in effect in Latvia today. With most of Latvia's industrial base evacuated to the interior of Russia in 1915, radical land reform was the central political question for the young state. In 1897, 61.2% of the rural population had been landless; by 1936, that percentage had been reduced to 18%.
By 1923, the extent of cultivated land surpassed the pre-war level. Innovation and rising productivity led to rapid growth of the economy, but it soon suffered from the effects of the Great Depression. Latvia showed signs of economic recovery, and the electorate had steadily moved toward the centre during the parliamentary period. On 15 May 1934, Ulmanis staged a bloodless coup, establishing a nationalist dictatorship that lasted until 1940. After 1934, Ulmanis established government corporations to buy up private firms with the aim of "Latvianising" the economy.
Early in the morning of 24 August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression pact, called the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The pact contained a secret protocol, revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945, according to which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence". In the north, Latvia, Finland and Estonia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. A week later, on 1 September 1939, Germany and on 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland.
After the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, most of the Baltic Germans left Latvia by agreement between Ulmanis' government and Nazi Germany under the Heim ins Reich programme. In total 50,000 Baltic Germans left by the deadline of December 1939, with 1,600 remaining to conclude business and 13,000 choosing to remain in Latvia. Most of those who remained left for Germany in summer 1940, when a second resettlement scheme was agreed. The racially approved being resettled mainly in Poland, being given land and businesses in exchange for the money they had received from the sale of their previous assets.
On 5 October 1939, Latvia was forced to accept a "mutual assistance" pact with the Soviet Union, granting the Soviets the right to station between 25,000 and 30,000 troops on Latvian territory.
State administrators were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres. Elections were held with single pro-Soviet candidates listed for many positions. The resulting people's assembly immediately requested admission into the USSR, which the Soviet Union granted. Latvia, then a puppet government, was headed by Augusts Kirhenšteins. The Soviet Union incorporated Latvia on 5 August 1940, as The "Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic."
The Soviets dealt harshly with their opponents – prior to Operation Barbarossa, in less than a year, at least 34,250 Latvians were deported or killed. Most were deported to Siberia where deaths were estimated at 40 percent, officers of the Latvian army being shot on the spot.
On 22 June 1941 German troops attacked Soviet forces in Operation Barbarossa. There were some spontaneous uprisings by Latvians against the Red Army which helped the Germans. By 29 June Riga was reached and with Soviet troops killed, captured or retreating, Latvia was left under the control of German forces by early July. The occupation was followed immediately by SS Einsatzgruppen troops who were to act in accordance with the Nazi Generalplan Ost which required the population of Latvia to be cut by 50 percent.
Under German occupation, Latvia was administered as part of "Reichskommissariat Ostland". Latvian paramilitary and Auxiliary Police units established by the occupation authority participated in the Holocaust and other atrocities. 30,000 Jews were shot in Latvia in the autumn of 1941. Another 30,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were killed in the Rumbula Forest in November and December 1941, to reduce overpopulation in the ghetto and make room for more Jews being brought in from Germany and the West. There was a pause in fighting, apart from partisan activity, until after the siege of Leningrad ended in January 1944 and the Soviet troops advanced, entering Latvia in July and eventually capturing Riga on 13 October 1944.
More than 200,000 Latvian citizens died during World War II, including approximately 75,000 Latvian Jews murdered during the Nazi occupation. Latvian soldiers fought on both sides of the conflict, mainly on the German side, with 140,000 men in the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, The 308th Latvian Rifle Division was formed by the Red Army in 1944. On occasions, especially in 1944, opposing Latvian troops faced each other in battle.
In the 23rd block of the Vorverker cemetery, a monument was erected after the Second World War for the people of Latvia, who had died in Lübeck from 1945 to 1950.
In 1944, when Soviet military advances reached Latvia, heavy fighting took place in Latvia between German and Soviet troops, which ended in another German defeat. In the course of the war, both occupying forces conscripted Latvians into their armies, in this way increasing the loss of the nation's "live resources". In 1944, part of the Latvian territory once more came under Soviet control. The Soviets immediately began to reinstate the Soviet system. After the German surrender, it became clear that Soviet forces were there to stay, and Latvian national partisans, soon joined by some who had collaborated with the Germans, began to fight against the new occupier.
Anywhere from 120,000 to as many as 300,000 Latvians took refuge from the Soviet army by fleeing to Germany and Sweden. Most sources count 200,000 to 250,000 refugees leaving Latvia, with perhaps as many as 80,000 to 100,000 of them recaptured by the Soviets or, during few months immediately after the end of war, returned by the West.
The Soviets reoccupied the country in 1944–1945, and further deportations followed as the country was collectivised
and Sovieticised.
On 25 March 1949, 43,000 rural residents ("kulaks") and Latvian nationalists were deported to Siberia in a sweeping Operation Priboi in all three Baltic states, which was carefully planned and approved in Moscow already on 29 January 1949. This operation had the desired effect of reducing the anti Soviet partisan activity. Between 136,000 and 190,000 Latvians, depending on the sources, were imprisoned or deported to Soviet concentration camps (the Gulag) in the post war years, from 1945 to 1952. Some managed to escape arrest and joined the partisans.
In the post-war period, Latvia was made to adopt Soviet farming methods. Rural areas were forced into collectivization. An extensive program to impose bilingualism was initiated in Latvia, limiting the use of Latvian language in official uses in favor of using Russian as the main language. All of the minority schools (Jewish, Polish, Belarusian, Estonian, Lithuanian) were closed down leaving only two media of instructions in the schools: Latvian and Russian. An influx of laborers, administrators, military personnel and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics started. By 1959 about 400,000 people arrived from other Soviet republics and the ethnic Latvian population had fallen to 62%.
Since Latvia had maintained a well-developed infrastructure and educated specialists, Moscow decided to base some of the Soviet Union's most advanced manufacturing in Latvia. New industry was created in Latvia, including a major machinery factory RAF in Jelgava, electrotechnical factories in Riga, chemical factories in Daugavpils, Valmiera and Olaine—and some food and oil processing plants. Latvia manufactured trains, ships, minibuses, mopeds, telephones, radios and hi-fi systems, electrical and diesel engines, textiles, furniture, clothing, bags and luggage, shoes, musical instruments, home appliances, watches, tools and equipment, aviation and agricultural equipment and long list of other goods. Latvia had its own film industry and musical records factory (LPs). However, there were not enough people to operate the newly built factories. To maintain and expand industrial production, skilled workers were migrating from all over the Soviet Union, decreasing the proportion of ethnic Latvians in the republic. The population of Latvia reached its peak in 1990 at just under 2.7 million people.
In late 2018 the National Archives of Latvia released a full alphabetical index of some 10,000 people recruited as agents or informants by the Soviet KGB. 'The publication, which followed two decades of public debate and the passage of a special law, revealed the names, code names, birthplaces and other data on active and former KGB agents as of 1991, the year Latvia regained its independence from the Soviet Union.'
In the second half of the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev started to introduce political and economic reforms in the Soviet Union that were called glasnost and perestroika. In the summer of 1987, the first large demonstrations were held in Riga at the Freedom Monument—a symbol of independence. In the summer of 1988, a national movement, coalescing in the Popular Front of Latvia, was opposed by the Interfront. The Latvian SSR, along with the other Baltic Republics was allowed greater autonomy, and in 1988, the old pre-war Flag of Latvia flew again, replacing the Soviet Latvian flag as the official flag in 1990.
In 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a resolution on the "Occupation of the Baltic states", in which it declared the occupation "not in accordance with law", and not the "will of the Soviet people". Pro-independence Popular Front of Latvia candidates gained a two-thirds majority in the Supreme Council in the March 1990 democratic elections. On 4 May 1990, the Supreme Council adopted the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia, and the Latvian SSR was renamed Republic of Latvia.
However, the central power in Moscow continued to regard Latvia as a Soviet republic in 1990 and 1991. In January 1991, Soviet political and military forces tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the Republic of Latvia authorities by occupying the central publishing house in Riga and establishing a Committee of National Salvation to usurp governmental functions. During the transitional period, Moscow maintained many central Soviet state authorities in Latvia.
In spite of this, 73% of all Latvian residents confirmed their strong support for independence on 3 March 1991, in a non-binding advisory referendum. The Popular Front of Latvia advocated that all permanent residents be eligible for Latvian citizenship, helping to sway many ethnic Russians to vote for independence. However, universal citizenship for all permanent residents was not adopted. Instead, citizenship was granted to persons who had been citizens of Latvia at the day of loss of independence at 1940 as well as their descendants. As a consequence, the majority of ethnic non-Latvians did not receive Latvian citizenship since neither they nor their parents had ever been citizens of Latvia, becoming non-citizens or citizens of other former Soviet republics. By 2011, more than half of non-citizens had taken naturalization exams and received Latvian citizenship. Still, today there are 290,660 non-citizens in Latvia, which represent 14.1% of the population. They have no citizenship of any country, and cannot vote in Latvia.
The Republic of Latvia declared the end of the transitional period and restored full independence on 21 August 1991, in the aftermath of the failed Soviet coup attempt.
The Saeima, Latvia's parliament, was again elected in 1993. Russia ended its military presence by completing its troop withdrawal in 1994 and shutting down the Skrunda-1 radar station in 1998. The major goals of Latvia in the 1990s, to join NATO and the European Union, were achieved in 2004. The NATO Summit 2006 was held in Riga.
Language and citizenship laws have been opposed by many Russophones. Citizenship was not automatically extended to former Soviet citizens who settled during the Soviet occupation, or to their offspring. Children born to non-nationals after the reestablishment of independence are automatically entitled to citizenship. Approximately 72% of Latvian citizens are Latvian, while 20% are Russian; less than 1% of non-citizens are Latvian, while 71% are Russian. The government denationalized private property confiscated by the Soviets, returning it or compensating the owners for it, and privatized most state-owned industries, reintroducing the prewar currency. Albeit having experienced a difficult transition to a liberal economy and its re-orientation toward Western Europe, Latvia is one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union. In 2014, Riga was the European Capital of Culture, the euro was introduced as the currency of the country and a Latvian was named vice-president of the European Commission. In 2015 Latvia held the presidency of Council of the European Union. Big European events have been celebrated in Riga such as the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 and the European Film Awards 2014. On 1 July 2016, Latvia became a member of the OECD.
Latvia lies in Northern Europe, on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea and northwestern part of the East European Craton (EEC), between latitudes 55° and 58° N (a small area is north of 58°), and longitudes 21° and 29° E (a small area is west of 21°). Latvia has a total area of of which land, agricultural land, forest land and inland water.
The total length of Latvia's boundary is . The total length of its land boundary is , of which is shared with Estonia to the north, with the Russian Federation to the east, with Belarus to the southeast and with Lithuania to the south. The total length of its maritime boundary is , which is shared with Estonia, Sweden and Lithuania. Extension from north to south is and from west to east .
Most of Latvia's territory is less than above sea level. Its largest lake, Lubāns, has an area of , its deepest lake, Drīdzis, is deep. The longest river on Latvian territory is the Gauja, at in length. The longest river flowing through Latvian territory is the Daugava, which has a total length of , of which is on Latvian territory. Latvia's highest point is Gaiziņkalns, . The length of Latvia's Baltic coastline is . An inlet of the Baltic Sea, the shallow Gulf of Riga is situated in the northwest of the country.
Latvia has a temperate climate that has been described in various sources as either humid continental () or oceanic/maritime (Köppen "Cfb").
Coastal regions, especially the western coast of the Courland Peninsula, possess a more maritime climate with cooler summers and milder winters, while eastern parts exhibit a more continental climate with warmer summers and harsher winters.
Latvia has four pronounced seasons of near-equal length. Winter starts in mid-December and lasts until mid-March. Winters have average temperatures of and are characterized by stable snow cover, bright sunshine, and short days. Severe spells of winter weather with cold winds, extreme temperatures of around and heavy snowfalls are common. Summer starts in June and lasts until August. Summers are usually warm and sunny, with cool evenings and nights. Summers have average temperatures of around , with extremes of . Spring and autumn bring fairly mild weather.
2019 was the warmest year in the history of weather observation in Latvia with an average temperature higher.
Most of the country is composed of fertile lowland plains and moderate hills. In a typical Latvian landscape, a mosaic of vast forests alternates with fields, farmsteads, and pastures. Arable land is spotted with birch groves and wooded clusters, which afford a habitat for numerous plants and animals. Latvia has hundreds of kilometres of undeveloped seashore—lined by pine forests, dunes, and continuous white sand beaches.
Latvia has the 5th highest proportion of land covered by forests in the European Union, after Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Slovenia. Forests account for or 56% of the total land area.
Latvia has over 12,500 rivers, which stretch for . Major rivers include the Daugava River, Lielupe, Gauja, Venta, and Salaca, the largest spawning ground for salmon in the eastern Baltic states. There are 2,256 lakes that are bigger than , with a collective area of . Mires occupy 9.9% of Latvia's territory. Of these, 42% are raised bogs; 49% are fens; and 9% are transitional mires. 70% percent of the mires are untouched by civilization, and they are a refuge for many rare species of plants and animals.
Agricultural areas account for or 29% of the total land area. With the dismantling of collective farms, the area devoted to farming decreased dramatically – now farms are predominantly small. Approximately 200 farms, occupying , are engaged in ecologically pure farming (using no artificial fertilizers or pesticides).
Latvia's national parks are Gauja National Park in Vidzeme (since 1973), Ķemeri National Park in Zemgale (1997), Slītere National Park in Kurzeme (1999), and Rāzna National Park in Latgale (2007).
Latvia has a long tradition of conservation. The first laws and regulations were promulgated in the 16th and 17th centuries. There are 706 specially state-level protected natural areas in Latvia: four national parks, one biosphere reserve, 42 nature parks, nine areas of protected landscapes, 260 nature reserves, four strict nature reserves, 355 nature monuments, seven protected marine areas and 24 microreserves. Nationally protected areas account for or around 20% of Latvia's total land area. Latvia's Red Book (Endangered Species List of Latvia), which was established in 1977, contains 112 plant species and 119 animal species. Latvia has ratified the international Washington, Bern, and Ramsare conventions.
The 2012 Environmental Performance Index ranks Latvia second, after Switzerland, based on the environmental performance of the country's policies.
Access to biocapacity in Latvia is much higher than world average. In 2016, Latvia had 8.5 global hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory, much more than the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. In 2016 Latvia used 6.4 global hectares of biocapacity per person - their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they use less biocapacity than Latvia contains. As a result, Latvia is running a biocapacity reserve.
Approximately 30,000 species of flora and fauna have been registered in Latvia. Common species of wildlife in Latvia include deer, wild boar, moose, lynx, bear, fox, beaver and wolves. Non-marine molluscs of Latvia include 159 species.
Species that are endangered in other European countries but common in Latvia include: black stork ("Ciconia nigra"), corncrake ("Crex crex"), lesser spotted eagle ("Aquila pomarina"), white-backed woodpecker ("Picoides leucotos"), Eurasian crane ("Grus grus"), Eurasian beaver ("Castor fiber"), Eurasian otter ("Lutra lutra"), European wolf ("Canis lupus") and European lynx ("Felis lynx").
Phytogeographically, Latvia is shared between the Central European and Northern European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Latvia belongs to the ecoregion of Sarmatic mixed forests. 56 percent of Latvia's territory is covered by forests, mostly Scots pine, birch, and Norway spruce.
Several species of flora and fauna are considered national symbols. Oak ("Quercus robur", ), and linden ("Tilia cordata", ) are Latvia's national trees and the daisy ("Leucanthemum vulgare", ) its national flower. The white wagtail ("Motacilla alba", ) is Latvia's national bird. Its national insect is the two-spot ladybird ("Adalia bipunctata", ). Amber, fossilized tree resin, is one of Latvia's most important cultural symbols. In ancient times, amber found along the Baltic Sea coast was sought by Vikings as well as traders from Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire. This led to the development of the Amber Road.
Several nature reserves protect unspoiled landscapes with a variety of large animals. At Pape Nature Reserve, where European bison, wild horses, and recreated aurochs have been reintroduced, there is now an almost complete Holocene megafauna also including moose, deer, and wolf.
Latvia is a unitary state, currently divided into 110 one-level municipalities () and 9 republican cities () with their own city council and administration: Daugavpils, Jēkabpils, Jelgava, Jūrmala, Liepāja, Rēzekne, Riga, Valmiera, and Ventspils. There are four historical and cultural regions in Latvia – Courland, Latgale, Vidzeme, Zemgale, which are recognised in Constitution of Latvia. Selonia, a part of Zemgale, is sometimes considered culturally distinct region, but it is not part of any formal division. The borders of historical and cultural regions usually are not explicitly defined and in several sources may vary. In formal divisions, Riga region, which includes the capital and parts of other regions that have a strong relationship with the capital, is also often included in regional divisions; e.g., there are five planning regions of Latvia (), which were created in 2009 to promote balanced development of all regions. Under this division Riga region includes large parts of what traditionally is considered Vidzeme, Courland, and Zemgale. Statistical regions of Latvia, established in accordance with the EU Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, duplicate this division, but divides Riga region into two parts with the capital alone being a separate region.
The largest city in Latvia is Riga, the second largest city is Daugavpils and the third largest city is Liepaja.
The 100-seat unicameral Latvian parliament, the "Saeima", is elected by direct popular vote every four years. The president is elected by the "Saeima" in a separate election, also held every four years. The president appoints a prime minister who, together with his cabinet, forms the executive branch of the government, which has to receive a confidence vote by the "Saeima". This system also existed before World War II. The most senior civil servants are the thirteen Secretaries of State.
Latvia is a member of the United Nations, European Union, Council of Europe, NATO, OECD, OSCE, IMF, and WTO. It is also a member of the Council of the Baltic Sea States and Nordic Investment Bank. It was a member of the League of Nations (1921–1946). Latvia is part of the Schengen Area and joined the Eurozone on 1 January 2014.
Latvia has established diplomatic relations with 158 countries. It has 44 diplomatic and consular missions and maintains 34 embassies and 9 permanent representations abroad. There are 37 foreign embassies and 11 international organisations in Latvia's capital Riga. Latvia hosts one European Union institution, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).
Latvia's foreign policy priorities include co-operation in the Baltic Sea region, European integration, active involvement in international organisations, contribution to European and transatlantic security and defence structures, participation in international civilian and military peacekeeping operations, and development co-operation, particularly the strengthening of stability and democracy in the EU's Eastern Partnership countries.
Since the early 1990s, Latvia has been involved in active trilateral Baltic states co-operation with its neighbours Estonia and Lithuania, and Nordic-Baltic co-operation with the Nordic countries. The Baltic Council is the joint forum of the interparliamentary Baltic Assembly (BA) and the intergovernmental Baltic Council of Ministers (BCM). Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB-8) is the joint co-operation of the governments of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden. Nordic-Baltic Six (NB-6), comprising Nordic-Baltic countries that are European Union member states, is a framework for meetings on EU-related issues. Interparliamentary co-operation between the Baltic Assembly and Nordic Council was signed in 1992 and since 2006 annual meetings are held as well as regular meetings on other levels. Joint Nordic-Baltic co-operation initiatives include the education programme NordPlus and mobility programmes for public administration, business and industry and culture. The Nordic Council of Ministers has an office in Riga.
Latvia participates in the Northern Dimension and Baltic Sea Region Programme, European Union initiatives to foster cross-border co-operation in the Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe. The secretariat of the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture (NDPC) will be located in Riga. In 2013 Riga hosted the annual Northern Future Forum, a two-day informal meeting of the prime ministers of the Nordic-Baltic countries and the UK. The Enhanced Partnership in Northern Europe or "e-Pine" is the U.S. Department of State diplomatic framework for co-operation with the Nordic-Baltic countries.
Latvia hosted the 2006 NATO Summit and since then the annual Riga Conference has become a leading foreign and security policy forum in Northern Europe. Latvia held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2015.
According to the reports by Freedom House and the US Department of State, human rights in Latvia are generally respected by the government: Latvia is ranked above-average among the world's sovereign states in democracy, press freedom, privacy and human development.
More than 56% of leading positions are held by women in Latvia, which ranks 1st in Europe; Latvia ranks 1st in the world in women's rights sharing the position with five other European countries according to World Bank.
The country has a large ethnic Russian community, which was guaranteed basic rights under the constitution and international human rights laws ratified by the Latvian government.
Approximately 206,000 non-citizens – including stateless persons – have limited access to some political rights – only citizens are allowed to participate in parliamentary or municipal elections, although there are no limitations in regards to joining political parties or other political organizations. In 2011, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities "urged Latvia to allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections." Additionally, there have been reports of police abuse of detainees and arrestees, poor prison conditions and overcrowding, judicial corruption, incidents of violence against ethnic minorities, and societal violence and incidents of government discrimination against homosexuals.
The National Armed Forces (Latvian: "Nacionālie Bruņotie Spēki (NAF)") of Latvia consists of the Land Forces, Naval Forces, Air Force, National Guard, Special Tasks Unit, Military Police, NAF staff Battalion, Training and Doctrine Command, and Logistics Command. Latvia's defence concept is based upon the Swedish-Finnish model of a rapid response force composed of a mobilisation base and a small group of career professionals. From 1 January 2007, Latvia switched to a professional fully contract-based army.
Latvia participates in international peacekeeping and security operations. Latvian armed forces have contributed to NATO and EU military operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996–2009), Albania (1999), Kosovo (2000–2009), Macedonia (2003), Iraq (2005–2006), Afghanistan (since 2003), Somalia (since 2011) and Mali (since 2013). Latvia also took part in the US-led Multi-National Force operation in Iraq (2003–2008) and OSCE missions in Georgia, Kosovo and Macedonia. Latvian armed forces contributed to a UK-led Battlegroup in 2013 and the Nordic Battlegroup in 2015 under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) of the European Union. Latvia acts as the lead nation in the coordination of the Northern Distribution Network for transportation of non-lethal ISAF cargo by air and rail to Afghanistan. It is part of the Nordic Transition Support Unit (NTSU), which renders joint force contributions in support of Afghan security structures ahead of the withdrawal of Nordic and Baltic ISAF forces in 2014. Since 1996 more than 3600 military personnel have participated in international operations, of whom 7 soldiers perished. Per capita, Latvia is one of the largest contributors to international military operations.
Latvian civilian experts have contributed to EU civilian missions: border assistance mission to Moldova and Ukraine (2005–2009), rule of law missions in Iraq (2006 and 2007) and Kosovo (since 2008), police mission in Afghanistan (since 2007) and monitoring mission in Georgia (since 2008).
Since March 2004, when the Baltic states joined NATO, fighter jets of NATO members have been deployed on a rotational basis for the Baltic Air Policing mission at Šiauliai Airport in Lithuania to guard the Baltic airspace. Latvia participates in several NATO Centres of Excellence: Civil-Military Co-operation in the Netherlands, Cooperative Cyber Defence in Estonia and Energy Security in Lithuania. It plans to establish the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga.
Latvia co-operates with Estonia and Lithuania in several trilateral Baltic defence co-operation initiatives:
Future co-operation will include sharing of national infrastructures for training purposes and specialisation of training areas "(BALTTRAIN)" and collective formation of battalion-sized contingents for use in the NATO rapid-response force. In January 2011, the Baltic states were invited to join NORDEFCO, the defence framework of the Nordic countries. In November 2012, the three countries agreed to create a joint military staff in 2013.
Latvia is a member of the World Trade Organization (1999) and the European Union (2004). On 1 January 2014, the Euro became the country's currency, superseding the Lats. According to statistics in late 2013, 45% of the population supported the introduction of the euro, while 52% opposed it. Following the introduction of the Euro, Eurobarometer surveys in January 2014 showed support for the Euro to be around 53%, close to the European average.
Since the year 2000, Latvia has had one of the highest (GDP) growth rates in Europe. However, the chiefly consumption-driven growth in Latvia resulted in the collapse of Latvian GDP in late 2008 and early 2009, exacerbated by the global economic crisis, shortage of credit and huge money resources used for the bailout of Parex bank. The Latvian economy fell 18% in the first three months of 2009, the biggest fall in the European Union.
The economic crisis of 2009 proved earlier assumptions that the fast-growing economy was heading for implosion of the economic bubble, because it was driven mainly by growth of domestic consumption, financed by a serious increase of private debt, as well as a negative foreign trade balance. The prices of real estate, which were at some points growing by approximately 5% a month, were long perceived to be too high for the economy, which mainly produces low-value goods and raw materials.
Privatisation in Latvia is almost complete. Virtually all of the previously state-owned small and medium companies have been privatised, leaving only a small number of politically sensitive large state companies. The private sector accounted for nearly 68% of the country's GDP in 2000.
Foreign investment in Latvia is still modest compared with the levels in north-central Europe. A law expanding the scope for selling land, including to foreigners, was passed in 1997. Representing 10.2% of Latvia's total foreign direct investment, American companies invested $127 million in 1999. In the same year, the United States of America exported $58.2 million of goods and services to Latvia and imported $87.9 million. Eager to join Western economic institutions like the World Trade Organization, OECD, and the European Union, Latvia signed a Europe Agreement with the EU in 1995—with a 4-year transition period. Latvia and the United States have signed treaties on investment, trade, and intellectual property protection and avoidance of double taxation.
In 2010 Latvia launched a Residence by Investment program (Golden Visa) in order to attract foreign investors and make local economy benefit from it. This program allows investors to get Latvia residence permit by investing at least €250,000 in property or in an enterprise with at least 50 employees and an annual turnover of at least €10M.
The Latvian economy entered a phase of fiscal contraction during the second half of 2008 after an extended period of credit-based speculation and unrealistic appreciation in real estate values. The national account deficit for 2007, for example, represented more than 22% of the GDP for the year while inflation was running at 10%.
Latvia's unemployment rate rose sharply in this period from a low of 5.4% in November 2007 to over 22%. In April 2010 Latvia had the highest unemployment rate in the EU, at 22.5%, ahead of Spain, which had 19.7%.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate in economics for 2008, wrote in his New York Times Op-Ed column on 15 December 2008:
The most acute problems are on Europe's periphery, where many smaller economies are experiencing crises strongly reminiscent of past crises in Latin America and Asia: Latvia is the new Argentina
However, by 2010, commentators noted signs of stabilisation in the Latvian economy. Rating agency Standard & Poor's raised its outlook on Latvia's debt from negative to stable. Latvia's current account, which had been in deficit by 27% in late 2006 was in surplus in February 2010. Kenneth Orchard, senior analyst at Moody's Investors Service argued that:
The strengthening regional economy is supporting Latvian production and exports, while the sharp swing in the current account balance suggests that the country's 'internal devaluation' is working.
The IMF concluded the First Post-Program Monitoring Discussions with the Republic of Latvia in July 2012 announcing that Latvia's economy has been recovering strongly since 2010, following the deep downturn in 2008–09. Real GDP growth of 5.5 percent in 2011 was underpinned by export growth and a recovery in domestic demand. The growth momentum has continued into 2012 and 2013 despite deteriorating external conditions, and the economy is expected to expand by 4.1 percent in 2014. The unemployment rate has receded from its peak of more than 20 percent in 2010 to around 9.3 percent in 2014.
The transport sector is around 14% of GDP. Transit between Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan as well as other Asian countries and the West is large.
The four biggest ports of Latvia are located in Riga, Ventspils, Liepāja and Skulte. Most transit traffic uses these and half the cargo is crude oil and oil products. Free port of Ventspils is one of the busiest ports in the Baltic states. Apart from road and railway connections, Ventspils is also linked to oil extraction fields and transportation routes of Russian Federation via system of two pipelines from Polotsk, Belarus.
Riga International Airport is the busiest airport in the Baltic states with 7.8 million passengers in 2019. It has direct flight to over 80 destinations in 30 countries. The only other airport handling regular commercial flights is Liepāja International Airport.
airBaltic is the Latvian flag carrier airline and a low-cost carrier with hubs in all three Baltic States, but main base in Riga, Latvia.
Latvian Railway's main network consists of 1,860 km of which 1,826 km is 1,520 mm Russian gauge railway of which 251 km are electrified, making it the longest railway network in the Baltic States. Latvia's railway network is currently incompatible with European standard gauge lines. However, Rail Baltica railway, linking Helsinki-Tallinn-Riga-Kaunas-Warsaw is under construction and is set to be completed in 2026.
National road network in Latvia totals 1675 km of main roads, 5473 km of regional roads and 13 064 km of local roads. Municipal roads in Latvia totals 30 439 km of roads and 8039 km of streets. The best known roads are A1 (European route E67), connecting Warsaw and Tallinn, as well as European route E22, connecting Ventspils and Terehova. In 2017 there were a total of 803,546 licensed vehicles in Latvia.
Latvia has three big hydroelectric power stations in Pļaviņu HES (825MW), Rīgas HES (402 MW) and Ķeguma HES-2 (192 MW). In the recent years a couple of dozen of wind farms as well as biogas or biomass power stations of different scale have been built in Latvia.
Latvia operates Inčukalns underground gas storage facility, one of the largest underground gas storage facilities in Europe and the only one in the Baltic states. Unique geological conditions at Inčukalns and other locations in Latvia are particularly suitable for underground gas storage.
The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2018 was estimated at 1.61 children born/woman, which is lower than the replacement rate of 2.1. In 2012, 45.0% of births were to unmarried women. The life expectancy in 2013 was estimated at 73.19 years (68.13 years male, 78.53 years female). As of 2015, Latvia is estimated to have the lowest male-to-female ratio in the world, at 0.85 males/female. In 2017 there were 1 054 433 female and 895 683 male living in Latvian territory. Every year more boys are born. Until the age of 39, there are more male than female. From the age of 40 – more female. And from 70 females are 2,3 times more than males.
Latvia's population has been multiethnic for centuries, though the demographics shifted dramatically in the 20th century due to the World Wars, the emigration and removal of Baltic Germans, the Holocaust, and occupation by the Soviet Union. According to the Russian Empire Census of 1897, Latvians formed 68.3% of the total population of 1.93 million; Russians accounted for 12%, Jews for 7.4%, Germans for 6.2%, and Poles for 3.4%.
As of March 2011, Latvians form about 62.1% of the population, while 26.9% are Russians, Belarusians 3.3%, Ukrainians 2.2%, Poles 2.2%, Lithuanians 1.2%, Jews 0.3%, Romani people 0.3%, Germans 0.1%, Estonians 0.1% and others 1.3%. 250 people identify as Livonians (Baltic Finnic people native to Latvia). There were 290,660 non-citizens living in Latvia or 14.1% of Latvian residents, mainly ethnic Russians who arrived after the occupation of 1940 and their descendants.
In some cities, e.g., Daugavpils and Rēzekne, ethnic Latvians constitute a minority of the total population. Despite the fact that the proportion of ethnic Latvians has been steadily increasing for more than a decade, ethnic Latvians also make up slightly less than a half of the population of the capital city of Latvia – Riga.
The share of ethnic Latvians had fallen from 77% (1,467,035) in 1935 to 52% (1,387,757) in 1989. In 2011, there were even fewer Latvians than in 1989, though their share of the population was larger – 1,285,136 (62.1% of the population).
The sole official language of Latvia is Latvian, which belongs to the Baltic language sub-group of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Another notable language of Latvia is the nearly extinct Livonian language of the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, which enjoys protection by law; Latgalian – as a dialect of Latvian is also protected by Latvian law but as a historical variation of the Latvian language. Russian, which was widely spoken during the Soviet period, is still the most widely used minority language by far (in 2011, 34% spoke it at home, including people who were not ethnically Russian).
While it is now required that all school students learn Latvian, schools also include English, German, French and Russian in their curricula. English is also widely accepted in Latvia in business and tourism. there were 109 schools for minorities that use Russian as the language of instruction (27% of all students) for 40% of subjects (the remaining 60% of subjects are taught in Latvian).
On 18 February 2012, Latvia held a constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%.
Beginning in 2019, instruction in Russian language will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, as well as general instruction in Latvian public high schools, except for subjects related to culture and history of the Russian minority, such as Russian language and literature classes.
The largest religion in Latvia is Christianity (79%). The largest groups were:
In the Eurobarometer Poll 2010, 38% of Latvian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", while 48% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 11% stated that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".
Lutheranism was more prominent before the Soviet occupation, when it was a majority religion of ~60% due to strong historical links with the Nordic countries and to the influence of the Hansa in particular and Germany in general. Since then, Lutheranism has declined to a slightly greater extent than Roman Catholicism in all three Baltic states. The Evangelical Lutheran Church, with an estimated 600,000 members in 1956, was affected most adversely. An internal document of 18 March 1987, near the end of communist rule, spoke of an active membership that had shrunk to only 25,000 in Latvia, but the faith has since experienced a revival.
The country's Orthodox Christians belong to the Latvian Orthodox Church, a semi-autonomous body within the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2011, there were 416 religious Jews, 319 Muslims and 102 Hindus. Most of the Hindus are local converts from the work of the Hare Krishna movement; some are foreign workers from India. As of 2004 there were more than 600 Latvian neopagans, "Dievturi" (The Godskeepers), whose religion is based on Latvian mythology. About 21% of the total population is not affiliated with a specific religion.
The University of Latvia and Riga Technical University are two major universities in the country, both established on the basis of Riga Polytechnical Institute and located in Riga. Other important universities, which were established on the base of State University of Latvia, include the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies (established in 1939 on the basis of the Faculty of Agriculture) and Riga Stradiņš University (established in 1950 on the basis of the Faculty of Medicine). Both nowadays cover a variety of different fields. The University of Daugavpils is another significant centre of education.
Latvia closed 131 schools between 2006 and 2010, which is a 12.9% decline, and in the same period enrolment in educational institutions has fallen by over 54,000 people, a 10.3% decline.
Latvian policy in science and technology has set out the long-term goal of transitioning from labor-consuming economy to knowledge-based economy. By 2020 the government aims to spend 1.5% of GDP on research and development, with half of the investments coming from the private sector. Latvia plans to base the development of its scientific potential on existing scientific traditions, particularly in organic chemistry, medical chemistry, genetic engineering, physics, materials science and information technologies. The greatest number of patents, both nationwide and abroad, are in medical chemistry.
The Latvian healthcare system is a universal programme, largely funded through government taxation. It is among the lowest-ranked healthcare systems in Europe, due to excessive waiting times for treatment, insufficient access to the latest medicines, and other factors. There were 59 hospitals in Latvia in 2009, down from 94 in 2007 and 121 in 2006.
Traditional Latvian folklore, especially the dance of the folk songs, dates back well over a thousand years. More than 1.2 million texts and 30,000 melodies of folk songs have been identified.
Between the 13th and 19th centuries, Baltic Germans, many of whom were originally of non-German ancestry but had been assimilated into German culture, formed the upper class. They developed distinct cultural heritage, characterised by both Latvian and German influences. It has survived in German Baltic families to this day, in spite of their dispersal to Germany, the United States, Canada and other countries in the early 20th century. However, most indigenous Latvians did not participate in this particular cultural life. Thus, the mostly peasant local pagan heritage was preserved, partly merging with Christian traditions. For example, one of the most popular celebrations is Jāņi, a pagan celebration of the summer solstice—which Latvians celebrate on the feast day of St. John the Baptist.
In the 19th century, Latvian nationalist movements emerged. They promoted Latvian culture and encouraged Latvians to take part in cultural activities. The 19th century and beginning of the 20th century is often regarded by Latvians as a classical era of Latvian culture. Posters show the influence of other European cultures, for example, works of artists such as the Baltic-German artist Bernhard Borchert and the French Raoul Dufy. With the onset of World War II, many Latvian artists and other members of the cultural elite fled the country yet continued to produce their work, largely for a Latvian émigré audience.
The Latvian Song and Dance Festival is an important event in Latvian culture and social life. It has been held since 1873, normally every five years. Approximately 30,000 performers altogether participate in the event. Folk songs and classical choir songs are sung, with emphasis on a cappella singing, though modern popular songs have recently been incorporated into the repertoire as well.
After incorporation into the Soviet Union, Latvian artists and writers were forced to follow the socialist realism style of art. During the Soviet era, music became increasingly popular, with the most popular being songs from the 1980s. At this time, songs often made fun of the characteristics of Soviet life and were concerned about preserving Latvian identity. This aroused popular protests against the USSR and also gave rise to an increasing popularity of poetry. Since independence, theatre, scenography, choir music, and classical music have become the most notable branches of Latvian culture.
During July 2014, Riga hosted the 8th World Choir Games as it played host to over 27,000 choristers representing over 450 choirs and over 70 countries. The festival is the biggest of its kind in the world and is held every two years in a different host city.
Starting in 2019 Latvia hosts the inaugural Riga Jurmala Music Festival, a new festival in which world-famous orchestras and conductors perform across four weekends during the summer. The festival takes place at the Latvian National Opera, the Great Guild, and the Great and Small Halls of the Dzintari Concert Hall. This year features the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Russian National Orchestra.
Latvian cuisine typically consists of agricultural products, with meat featuring in most main meal dishes. Fish is commonly consumed due to Latvia's location on the Baltic Sea. Latvian cuisine has been influenced by the neighbouring countries. Common ingredients in Latvian recipes are found locally, such as potatoes, wheat, barley, cabbage, onions, eggs, and pork. Latvian food is generally quite fatty, and uses few spices.
Grey peas and ham are generally considered as staple foods of Latvians. Sorrel soup ("skābeņu zupa") is also consumed by Latvians. Rupjmaize is a dark bread made from rye, considered the national staple.
Ice hockey is usually considered the most popular sport in Latvia. Latvia has had many famous hockey stars like Helmuts Balderis, Artūrs Irbe, Kārlis Skrastiņš and Sandis Ozoliņš and more recently Zemgus Girgensons, whom the Latvian people have strongly supported in international and NHL play, expressed through the dedication of using the NHL's All Star Voting to bring Zemgus to number one in voting. Dinamo Riga is the country's strongest hockey club, playing in the Kontinental Hockey League. The national tournament is the Latvian Hockey Higher League, held since 1931. The 2006 IIHF World Championship was held in Riga.
The second most popular sport is basketball. Latvia has a long basketball tradition, as the Latvian national basketball team won the first ever EuroBasket in 1935 and silver medals in 1939, after losing the final to Lithuania by one point. Latvia has had many European basketball stars like Jānis Krūmiņš, Maigonis Valdmanis, Valdis Muižnieks, Valdis Valters, Igors Miglinieks, as well as the first Latvian NBA player Gundars Vētra. Andris Biedriņš is one of the most well-known Latvian basketball players, who played in the NBA for the Golden State Warriors and the Utah Jazz. Current NBA players include Kristaps Porziņģis, who plays for the Dallas Mavericks, and Dāvis Bertāns, who plays for the Washington Wizards. Former Latvian basketball club Rīgas ASK won the Euroleague tournament three times in a row before becoming defunct. Currently, VEF Rīga, which competes in EuroCup, is the strongest professional basketball club in Latvia. BK Ventspils, which participates in EuroChallenge, is the second strongest basketball club in Latvia, previously winning LBL eight times and BBL in 2013. Latvia was one of the EuroBasket 2015 hosts.
Other popular sports include football, floorball, tennis, volleyball, cycling, bobsleigh and skeleton. The Latvian national football team's only major FIFA tournament participation has been the 2004 UEFA European Championship.
Latvia has participated successfully in both Winter and Summer Olympics. The most successful Olympic athlete in the history of independent Latvia has been Māris Štrombergs, who became a two-time Olympic champion in 2008 and 2012 at Men's BMX.
In Boxing, Mairis Briedis is the first Latvian to win a boxing world title, having held the WBC cruiserweight title from 2017 to 2018, and the WBO cruiserweight title in 2019.
In 2017, Latvian tennis player Jeļena Ostapenko won the 2017 French Open Women's singles title being the first unseeded player to do so in the open era. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17514 |
Luxembourg
Luxembourg ( ; ; ; ), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. Its capital, Luxembourg City, is one of the four official capitals of the European Union (together with Brussels, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg) and the seat of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest judicial authority in the EU. Its culture, people, and languages are highly intertwined with its neighbours, making it essentially a mixture of French and German cultures, as evident by the nation's three official languages: French, German, and the national language of Luxembourgish. The repeated invasions by Germany, especially in World War II, resulted in the country's strong will for mediation between France and Germany and, among other things, led to the foundation of the European Union.
With an area of , it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe. In 2019, Luxembourg had a population of 626,108, which makes it one of the least-populous countries in Europe, but by far the one with the highest population growth rate. Foreigners account for nearly half of Luxembourg's population. As a representative democracy with a constitutional monarch, it is headed by Grand Duke Henri and is the world's only remaining sovereign grand duchy. Luxembourg is a developed country, with an advanced economy and one of the world's highest GDP (PPP) per capita despite being one of the smallest countries in Europe. The City of Luxembourg with its old quarters and fortifications was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 due to the exceptional preservation of the vast fortifications and the old city.
The history of Luxembourg is considered to begin in 963, when count Siegfried acquired a rocky promontory and its Roman-era fortifications known as "Lucilinburhuc", "little castle", and the surrounding area from the Imperial Abbey of St. Maximin in nearby Trier. Siegfried's descendants increased their territory through marriage, war and vassal relations. At the end of the 13th century, the counts of Luxembourg reigned over a considerable territory. In 1308, Henry VII, Count of Luxembourg became King of the Germans and later Holy Roman Emperor. The House of Luxembourg produced four emperors during the High Middle Ages. In 1354, Charles IV elevated the county to the Duchy of Luxembourg. The duchy eventually became part of the Burgundian Circle and then one of the Seventeen Provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands.
Over the centuries, the City and Fortress of Luxembourg, of great strategic importance situated between the Kingdom of France and the Habsburg territories, was gradually built up to be one of the most reputed fortifications in Europe. After belonging to both the France of Louis XIV and the Austria of Maria Theresa, Luxembourg became part of the First French Republic and Empire under Napoleon.
The present-day state of Luxembourg first emerged at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Grand Duchy, with its powerful fortress, became an independent state under the personal possession of William I of the Netherlands with a Prussian garrison to guard the city against another invasion from France. In 1839, following the turmoil of the Belgian Revolution, the purely French-speaking part of Luxembourg was ceded to Belgium and the Luxembourgish-speaking part (except the Arelerland, the area around Arlon) became what is the present state of Luxembourg.
Luxembourg is a founding member of the European Union, OECD, United Nations, NATO, and Benelux. The city of Luxembourg, which is the country's capital and largest city, is the seat of several institutions and agencies of the EU. Luxembourg served on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2013 and 2014, which was a first in the country's history. As of 2020, Luxembourg citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 187 countries and territories, ranking the Luxembourgish passport fifth in the world, tied with Denmark and Spain.
The recorded history of Luxembourg begins with the acquisition of Lucilinburhuc (today Luxembourg Castle) situated on the Bock rock by Siegfried, Count of Ardennes, in 963 through an exchange act with St. Maximin's Abbey, Trier. Around this fort, a town gradually developed, which became the centre of a state of great strategic value.
In the 14th and early 15th centuries, three members of the House of Luxembourg reigned as Holy Roman Emperors. In 1437, the House of Luxembourg suffered a succession crisis, precipitated by the lack of a male heir to assume the throne, which led to the territories being sold by Duchess Elisabeth to Philip the Good of Burgundy.
In the following centuries, Luxembourg's fortress was steadily enlarged and strengthened by its successive occupants, the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and the French.
After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Luxembourg was disputed between Prussia and the Netherlands. The Congress of Vienna formed Luxembourg as a Grand Duchy within the German Confederation. The Dutch king became, in personal union, the grand duke. Although he was supposed to rule the grand duchy as an independent country with an administration of its own, in reality he treated it similarly to a Dutch province. The Fortress of Luxembourg was manned by Prussian troops for the German Confederation. This arrangement was revised by the 1839 First Treaty of London, from which date Luxembourg's full independence is reckoned.
At the time of the Belgian Revolution of 1830–1839, and by the 1839 Treaty establishing full independence, Luxembourg's territory was reduced by more than half, as the predominantly francophone western part of the country was transferred to Belgium. In 1842 Luxembourg joined the German Customs Union (Zollverein). This resulted in the opening of the German market, the development of Luxembourg's steel industry, and expansion of Luxembourg's railway network from 1855 to 1875, particularly the construction of the Luxembourg-Thionville railway line, with connections from there to the European industrial regions. While Prussian troops still manned the fortress, in 1861, the Passerelle was opened, the first road bridge spanning the Pétrusse river valley, connecting the Ville Haute and the main fortification on the Bock with Luxembourg railway station, opened in 1859, on the then fortified Bourbon plateau to the south.
After the Luxembourg Crisis of 1866 nearly led to war between Prussia and France, the Grand Duchy's independence and neutrality were again affirmed by the 1867 Second Treaty of London, Prussia's troops were withdrawn from the Fortress of Luxembourg, and its Bock and surrounding fortifications were dismantled.
The King of the Netherlands remained Head of State as Grand Duke of Luxembourg, maintaining a personal union between the two countries until 1890. At the death of William III, the throne of the Netherlands passed to his daughter Wilhelmina, while Luxembourg (then restricted to male heirs by the Nassau Family Pact) passed to Adolph of Nassau-Weilburg.
At the time of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, despite allegations about French use of the Luxembourg railways for passing soldiers from Metz (then part of France) through the Duchy, and for forwarding provisions to Thionville, Luxembourg's neutrality was respected by Germany, and neither France nor Germany invaded the country. But in 1871, as a result of Germany's victory over France, Luxembourg's boundary with Lorraine, containing Metz and Thionville, changed from being a frontier with a part of France to a frontier with territory annexed to the German Empire as Alsace-Lorraine under the Treaty of Frankfurt. This allowed Germany the military advantage of controlling and expanding the railways there.
In August 1914, Imperial Germany violated Luxembourg's neutrality in the war by invading it in the war against France. This allowed Germany to use the railway lines, while at the same time denying them to France. Nevertheless, despite the German occupation, Luxembourg was allowed to maintain much of its independence and political mechanisms.
In 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, Luxembourg's neutrality was again violated when the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany entered the country, "entirely without justification". In contrast to the First World War, under the German occupation of Luxembourg during World War II, the country was treated as German territory and informally annexed to the adjacent province of the Third Reich. A government in exile based in London supported the Allies, sending a small group of volunteers who participated in the Normandy invasion. Luxembourg was liberated in September 1944, and became a founding member of the United Nations in 1945. Luxembourg's neutral status under the constitution formally ended in 1948, and in 1949 it became a founding member of NATO.
In 1951, Luxembourg became one of the six founding countries of the European Coal and Steel Community, which in 1957 would become the European Economic Community and in 1993 the European Union. In 1999 Luxembourg joined the Eurozone. In 2005, a referendum on the EU treaty establishing a constitution for Europe was held.
The steel industry exploiting the Red Lands' rich iron-ore grounds in the beginning of the 20th century drove the country's industrialisation. After the decline of the steel industry in the 1970s, the country focused on establishing itself as a global financial centre and developed into the banking hub it is reputed for. Since the beginning of the 21st century, its governments have focused on developing the country into a knowledge economy, with the founding of the University of Luxembourg and a national space programme, projecting the first involvement in a robotic lunar expedition by 2020.
Luxembourg is described as a "full democracy", with a parliamentary democracy headed by a constitutional monarch. Executive power is exercised by the Grand Duke and the cabinet, which consists of several other ministers. The Constitution of Luxembourg, the supreme law of Luxembourg, was adopted on 17 October 1868. The Grand Duke has the power to dissolve the legislature, in which case new elections must be held within three months. However, since 1919, sovereignty has resided with the Nation, exercised by the Grand Duke in accordance with the Constitution and the law.
Legislative power is vested in the Chamber of Deputies, a unicameral legislature of sixty members, who are directly elected to five-year terms from four constituencies. A second body, the Council of State ("Conseil d'État"), composed of twenty-one ordinary citizens appointed by the Grand Duke, advises the Chamber of Deputies in the drafting of legislation.
The Grand Duchy has three lower tribunals ("justices de paix"; in Esch-sur-Alzette, the city of Luxembourg, and Diekirch), two district tribunals (Luxembourg and Diekirch), and a Superior Court of Justice (Luxembourg), which includes the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation. There is also an Administrative Tribunal and an Administrative Court, as well as a Constitutional Court, all of which are located in the capital.
Luxembourg is divided into 12 cantons, which are further divided into 102 communes. Twelve of the communes have city status; the city of Luxembourg is the largest.
Luxembourg has long been a prominent supporter of European political and economic integration. In 1921, Luxembourg and Belgium formed the Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU) to create a regime of inter-exchangeable currency and a common customs, foreshadowing later efforts at European integration. Luxembourg is a member of the Benelux Economic Union and was one of the founding members of the European Economic Community (now the European Union). It also participates in the Schengen Group (named after the Luxembourg village of Schengen where the agreements were signed), whose goal is the free movement of citizens among member states. At the same time, the majority of Luxembourgers have consistently believed that European unity makes sense only in the context of a dynamic transatlantic relationship, and thus have traditionally pursued a pro-NATO, pro-US foreign policy.
Luxembourg is the site of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Auditors, the Statistical Office of the European Communities ("Eurostat") and other vital EU organs. The Secretariat of the European Parliament is located in Luxembourg, but the Parliament usually meets in Brussels and sometimes in Strasbourg.
The Army is situated on the "Härebierg" which is Luxemburgish and translates to "men's mountain". The army is under civilian control, with the Grand Duke as Commander-in-Chief. The Minister for Defence, currently François Bausch, oversees army operations. The professional head of the army is the Chief of Defence, who answers to the minister and holds the rank of general.
Being a landlocked country, it has no navy. Luxembourg also lacks an air force, though the 17 NATO AWACS aeroplanes are, for convenience, registered as aircraft of Luxembourg. In accordance with a joint agreement with Belgium, both countries have put forth funding for one A400M military cargo plane.
Luxembourg has participated in the Eurocorps, has contributed troops to the UNPROFOR and IFOR missions in former Yugoslavia, and has participated with a small contingent in the current NATO SFOR mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Luxembourg troops have also deployed to Afghanistan, to support ISAF. The army has also participated in humanitarian relief missions such as setting up refugee camps for Kurds and providing emergency supplies to Albania.
Luxembourg is one of the smallest countries in Europe, and ranked 167th in size of all the 194 independent countries of the world; the country is about in size, and measures long and wide. It lies between latitudes 49° and 51° N, and longitudes 5° and 7° E.
To the east, Luxembourg borders the German "Bundesländer" of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, and to the south, it borders the French "région" of Grand Est (Lorraine). The Grand Duchy borders the Belgian Walloon Region, in particular the latter's provinces of Luxembourg and Liège, part of which comprises the German-speaking Community of Belgium, to the west and to the north, respectively.
The northern third of the country is known as the 'Oesling', and forms part of the Ardennes. It is dominated by hills and low mountains, including the Kneiff near Wilwerdange, which is the highest point, at 560 metres (1,837 ft). Other mountains are the 'Buurgplaaz' at 559 metres near Huldange and the 'Napoléonsgaard' at 554 metres near Rambrouch. The region is sparsely populated, with only one town (Wiltz) with a population of more than four thousand people.
The southern two-thirds of the country is called the "Gutland", and is more densely populated than the Oesling. It is also more diverse and can be divided into five geographic sub-regions. The Luxembourg plateau, in south-central Luxembourg, is a large, flat, sandstone formation, and the site of the city of Luxembourg. Little Switzerland, in the east of Luxembourg, has craggy terrain and thick forests. The Moselle valley is the lowest-lying region, running along the southeastern border. The Red Lands, in the far south and southwest, are Luxembourg's industrial heartland and home to many of Luxembourg's largest towns.
The border between Luxembourg and Germany is formed by three rivers: the Moselle, the Sauer, and the Our. Other major rivers are the Alzette, the Attert, the Clerve, and the Wiltz. The valleys of the mid-Sauer and Attert form the border between the Gutland and the Oesling.
According to the 2012 Environmental Performance Index, Luxembourg is one of the world's best performers in environmental protection, ranking 4th out of 132 assessed countries Luxembourg also ranks 6th among the top ten most livable cities in the world by Mercer's.
Luxembourg has an oceanic climate (Köppen: "Cfb"), marked by high precipitation, particularly in late summer. The summers are warm and winters cool.
Luxembourg's stable and high-income market economy features moderate growth, low inflation, and a high level of innovation. Unemployment is traditionally low, although it had risen to 6.1% by May 2012, due largely to the effect of the 2008 global financial crisis. In 2011, according to the IMF, Luxembourg was the second richest country in the world, with a per capita GDP on a purchasing-power parity (PPP) basis of $80,119. Its GDP per capita in purchasing power standards was 261% of the EU average (100%) in 2019. Luxembourg is ranked 13th in The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, 26th in the United Nations Human Development Index, and 4th in the Economist Intelligence Unit's quality of life index.
The industrial sector, which was dominated by steel until the 1960s, has since diversified to include chemicals, rubber, and other products. During the past decades, growth in the financial sector has more than compensated for the decline in steel production. Services, especially banking and finance, account for the majority of economic output. Luxembourg is the world's second largest investment fund centre (after the United States), the most important private banking centre in the Eurozone and Europe's leading centre for reinsurance companies. Moreover, the Luxembourg government has aimed to attract Internet start-ups, with Skype and Amazon being two of the many Internet companies that have shifted their regional headquarters to Luxembourg. Other high-tech companies have established themselves in Luxembourg, including 3D scanner developer/manufacturer Artec 3D.
In April 2009, concern about Luxembourg's banking secrecy laws, as well as its reputation as a tax haven, led to its being added to a "grey list" of nations with questionable banking arrangements by the G20. In response, the country soon after adopted OECD standards on exchange of information and was subsequently added into the category of "jurisdictions that have substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard". In March 2010, the "Sunday Telegraph" reported that most of Kim Jong-Il's $4 billion in secret accounts is in Luxembourg banks. Amazon.co.uk also benefits from Luxembourg tax loopholes by channeling substantial UK revenues as reported by "The Guardian" in April 2012. Luxembourg ranked third on the Tax Justice Network's 2011 Financial Secrecy Index of the world's major tax havens, scoring only slightly behind the Cayman Islands. In 2013, Luxembourg is ranked as the 2nd safest tax haven in the world, behind Switzerland.
In early November 2014, just days after becoming head of the European Commission, the Luxembourg's former Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was hit by media disclosures—derived from a document leak known as Luxembourg Leaks—that Luxembourg under his premiership had turned into a major European centre of corporate tax avoidance.
Agriculture employed about 2.1% percent of Luxembourg's active population in 2010, when there were 2200 agricultural holdings with an average area per holding of 60 hectares.
Luxembourg has especially close trade and financial ties to Belgium and the Netherlands (see Benelux), and as a member of the EU it enjoys the advantages of the open European market.
With $171 billion in May 2015, the country ranks eleventh in the world in holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. However, securities owned by non-Luxembourg residents, but held in custodial accounts in Luxembourg, are also included in this figure.
, public debt of Luxembourg was at $15,687,000,000, or a per capita debt of $25,554. The debt to GDP was 22.10%.
Luxembourg has road, rail and air transport facilities and services. The road network has been significantly modernised in recent years with of motorways connecting the capital to adjacent countries. The advent of the high-speed TGV link to Paris has led to renovation of the city's railway station and a new passenger terminal at Luxembourg Airport was opened in 2008. Luxembourg city reintroduced trams in December 2017 and there are plans to open light-rail lines in adjacent areas within the next few years.
The number of cars per 1000 persons amount to 680.1 in Luxembourg — higher than all but two states, namely the Principality of Monaco and the British overseas territory of Gibraltar.
On 29 February 2020 Luxembourg became the first country to introduce no-charge public transportation which will be almost completely funded through tax revenue.
The telecommunications industry in Luxembourg is liberalised and the electronic communications networks are significantly developed. Competition between the different operators is guaranteed by the legislative framework Paquet Telecom of the Government of 2011 which transposes the European Telecom Directives into Luxembourgish law. This encourages the investment in networks and services. The regulator ILR – Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation ensures the compliance to these legal rules.
Luxembourg has modern and widely deployed optical fiber and cable networks throughout the country. In 2010, the Luxembourg Government launched its National strategy for very high-speed networks with the aim to become a global leader in terms of very high-speed broadband by achieving full 1 Gbit/s coverage of the country by 2020. In 2011, Luxembourg had an NGA coverage of 75%. In April 2013 Luxembourg featured the 6th highest download speed worldwide and the 2nd highest in Europe: 32,46 Mbit/s. The country's location in Central Europe, stable economy and low taxes favour the telecommunication industry.
It ranks 2nd in the world in the development of the Information and Communication Technologies in the ITU ICT Development Index and 8th in the Global Broadband Quality Study 2009 by the University of Oxford and the University of Oviedo.
Luxembourg is connected to all major European Internet Exchanges (AMS-IX Amsterdam, DE-CIX Frankfurt, LINX London), datacenters and POPs through redundant optical networks. In addition, the country is connected to the virtual meetme room services (vmmr) of the international data hub operator Ancotel. This enables Luxembourg to interconnect with all major telecommunication operators and data carriers worldwide. The interconnection points are in Frankfurt, London, New York and Hong Kong. Luxembourg has established itself as one of the leading financial technology (FinTech) hubs in Europe, with the Luxembourg government supporting initiatives like the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology.
Some 20 data centres are operating in Luxembourg. Six data centers are Tier IV Design certified: three of ebrc, two of LuxConnect and one of European Data Hub. In a survey on nine international data centers carried out in December 2012 and January 2013 and measuring availability (up-time) and performance (delay by which the data from the requested website was received), the top three positions were held by Luxembourg data centers.
The people of Luxembourg are called Luxembourgers. The immigrant population increased in the 20th century due to the arrival of immigrants from Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, and Portugal, with the majority coming from the latter: in 2013 there were about 88,000 inhabitants with Portuguese nationality. In 2013, there were 537,039 permanent residents, 44.5% of which were of foreign background or foreign nationals; the largest foreign ethnic groups were the Portuguese, comprising 16.4% of the total population, followed by the French (6.6%), Italians (3.4%), Belgians (3.3%) and Germans (2.3%). Another 6.4% were of other EU background, while the remaining 6.1% were of other non-EU, but largely other European, background.
Since the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, Luxembourg has seen many immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. Annually, over 10,000 new immigrants arrive in Luxembourg, mostly from the EU states, as well as Eastern Europe. In 2000 there were 162,000 immigrants in Luxembourg, accounting for 37% of the total population. There were an estimated 5,000 illegal immigrants in Luxembourg in 1999.
The linguistic situation of Luxembourg is characterized by the existence of a language specific to the local population (Luxembourgish), which is partially mutually intelligible with the neighboring High German, as well as the historical presence of the French and German languages.
Three languages are recognised as official in Luxembourg: French, German and Luxembourgish, a Franconian language of the Moselle region that is also spoken in neighbouring parts of Belgium, Germany and France. Though Luxembourgish is part of the West Central German group of High German languages, more than 5,000 words in the language are of French origin. The first printed sentences in Luxembourgish appeared in a weekly journal, the "Luxemburger Wochenblatt", in the second edition on 14 April 1821.
Apart from being one of the three official languages, Luxembourgish is also considered the national language of the Grand Duchy; it is the mother tongue or "language of the heart" for the local population.
Every citizen or resident has the right to address the administration in the language of their choice among the three official languages and to be answered in that language.
Due to the historical influence of the Napoleonic Code on the legal system of the Grand Duchy, French is the sole language of the legislation. French is generally the preferred language of the government, administration and justice. The parliamentary debates are however mostly conducted in Luxembourgish, whereas the written government communications and the official documents (e.g. administrative or judicial decisions, passports etc.) are drafted only in French.
Each of the three languages is used as the primary language in certain spheres of everyday life, without being exclusive. Luxembourgish is the language that Luxembourgers generally use to speak to each other, but it is seldom used as written language and the numerous expatriate workers (approximately 60% of the population) generally do not use it to speak to each other. Since the 1980s, however, an increasing number of novels have been written in Luxembourgish. Most official business is carried out in French. German is very often used in much of the media along with French. French is mostly used for written communications to the public (written official statements, advertising displays, road signs etc. are generally in French).
A 2009 survey pointed out that French was the language spoken by most inhabitants (99%), followed by Luxembourgish (82%), German (81%), and English (72%).
Although professional life is largely multilingual, French is described by private sector business leaders as the main working language of their companies (56%), followed by Luxembourgish (20%), English (18%), and German (6%).
Due to the large community of Portuguese origin, the Portuguese language is de facto fairly present in Luxembourg though it remains limited to the relationships inside this community; although Portuguese does not have any official status, the administration sometimes holds certain informative documents available in Portuguese.
Luxembourg is a secular state, but the state recognises certain religions as officially mandated religions. This gives the state a hand in religious administration and appointment of clergy, in exchange for which the state pays certain running costs and wages. Currently, religions covered by such arrangements are Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Greek Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Russian Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Mennonitism, and Islam.
Since 1980 it has been illegal for the government to collect statistics on religious beliefs or practices. An estimation by the CIA Factbook for the year 2000 is that 87% of Luxembourgers are Catholic, including the grand ducal family, the remaining 13% being made up of Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and those of other or no religion. According to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, 70.4% are Christian, 2.3% Muslim, 26.8% unaffiliated, and 0.5% other religions.
According to a 2005 Eurobarometer poll, 44% of Luxembourg citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", whereas 28% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force", and 22% that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force".
Luxembourg's education system is trilingual: the first years of primary school are in Luxembourgish, before changing to German; while in secondary school, the language of instruction changes to French. Proficiency in all three languages is required for graduation from secondary school, but half the students leave school without a certified qualification, with the children of immigrants being particularly disadvantaged. In addition to the three national languages, English is taught in compulsory schooling and much of the population of Luxembourg can speak English. The past two decades have highlighted the growing importance of English in several sectors, in particular the financial sector. Portuguese, the language of the largest immigrant community, is also spoken by large segments of the population, but by relatively few from outside the Portuguese-speaking community.
The University of Luxembourg is the only university based in Luxembourg. In 2014, Luxembourg School of Business, a graduate business school, has been created through private initiative and has received the accreditation from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research of Luxembourg in 2017. Two American universities maintain satellite campuses in the country, Miami University (Dolibois European Center) and Sacred Heart University (Luxembourg Campus).
According to data from the World Health Organization, healthcare spending on behalf of the government of Luxembourg topped $4.1 Billion, amounting to about $8,182 for each citizen in the nation. The nation of Luxembourg collectively spent nearly 7% of its Gross Domestic Product on health, placing it among the highest spending countries on health services and related programs in 2010 among other well-off nations in Europe with high average income among its population.
Luxembourg has been overshadowed by the culture of its neighbours. It retains a number of folk traditions, having been for much of its history a profoundly rural country. There are several notable museums, located mostly in the capital. These include the National Museum of History and Art (NMHA), the Luxembourg City History Museum, and the new Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art (Mudam). The National Museum of Military History (MNHM) in Diekirch is especially known for its representations of the Battle of the Bulge. The city of Luxembourg itself is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, on account of the historical importance of its fortifications.
The country has produced some internationally known artists, including the painters Théo Kerg, Joseph Kutter and Michel Majerus, and photographer Edward Steichen, whose "The Family of Man" exhibition has been placed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register, and is now permanently housed in Clervaux. Movie star Loretta Young was of Luxembourgish descent.
Luxembourg was the first city to be named European Capital of Culture twice. The first time was in 1995. In 2007, the European Capital of Culture was to be a cross-border area consisting of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Rheinland-Pfalz and Saarland in Germany, the Walloon Region and the German-speaking part of Belgium, and the Lorraine area in France. The event was an attempt to promote mobility and the exchange of ideas, crossing borders physically, psychologically, artistically and emotionally.
Luxembourg was represented at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010 with its own pavilion. The pavilion was based on the transliteration of the word Luxembourg into Chinese, "Lu Sen Bao", which means "Forest and Fortress". It represented Luxembourg as the "Green Heart in Europe".
Unlike most countries in Europe, sport in Luxembourg is not concentrated upon a particular national sport, but encompasses a number of sports, both team and individual. Despite the lack of a central sporting focus, over 100,000 people in Luxembourg, out of a total population of near 500,000–600,000, are licensed members of one sports federation or another. The largest sports venue in the country is d'Coque, an indoor arena and Olympic swimming pool in Kirchberg, north-eastern Luxembourg City, which has a capacity of 8,300. The arena is used for basketball, handball, gymnastics, and volleyball, including the final of the 2007 Women's European Volleyball Championship. The national stadium (also the country's largest) is the Stade Josy Barthel, in western Luxembourg City; named after the country's only official Olympic gold medallist, the stadium has a capacity of 8,054.
Luxembourg cuisine reflects its position on the border between the Latin and Germanic worlds, being heavily influenced by the cuisines of neighboring France and Germany. More recently, it has been enriched by its many Italian and Portuguese immigrants.
Most native Luxembourg dishes, consumed as the traditional daily fare, share roots in the country's folk dishes the same as in neighboring Germany.
Luxembourg sells the most alcohol in Europe per capita. However, the large proportion of alcohol purchased by customers from neighboring countries contributes to the statistically high level of alcohol sales per capita; this level of alcohol sales is thus not representative of the actual alcohol consumption of the Luxembourg population.
The main languages of media in Luxembourg are French and German. The newspaper with the largest circulation is the German-language daily "Luxemburger Wort". Because of the strong multilingualism in Luxembourg, newspapers often alternate articles in French and articles in German, without translation. In addition there are both English and Portuguese radio and national print publications, but accurate audience figures are difficult to gauge since the national media survey by ILRES is conducted in French.
Luxembourg is known in Europe for its radio and television stations (Radio Luxembourg and RTL Group). It is also the uplink home of SES, carrier of major European satellite services for Germany and Britain.
Due to a 1988 law that established a special tax scheme for audiovisual investment, the film and co-production in Luxembourg has grown steadily. There are some 30 registered production companies in Luxembourg.
Luxembourg won an Oscar in 2014 in the Animated Short Films category with "Mr Hublot". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17515 |
Location parameter
In statistics, a location parameter of a probability distribution is a scalar- or vector-valued parameter formula_1, which determines the "location" or shift of the distribution. In the literature of location parameter estimation, the probability distributions with such parameter are found to be formally defined in one of the following equivalent ways:
A direct example of location parameter is the parameter formula_6 of the normal distribution. To see this, note that the p.d.f. (probability density function) formula_7 of a normal distribution formula_8 can have the parameter formula_6 factored out and be written as:
thus fulfilling the first of the definitions given above.
The above definition indicates, in the one-dimensional case, that if formula_1 is increased, the probability density or mass function shifts rigidly to the right, maintaining its exact shape.
A location parameter can also be found in families having more than one parameter, such as location–scale families. In this case, the probability density function or probability mass function will be a special case of the more general form
where formula_1 is the location parameter, "θ" represents additional parameters, and formula_14 is a function parametrized on the additional parameters.
An alternative way of thinking of location families is through the concept of additive noise. If formula_1 is a constant and "W" is random noise with probability density formula_16 then formula_17 has probability density formula_18 and its distribution is therefore part of a location family.
For the continuous univariate case, consider a probability density function formula_19, where formula_20 is a vector of parameters. A location parameter formula_1 can be added by defining:
it can be proved that formula_23 is a p.d.f. by verifying if it respects the two conditions formula_24 and formula_25. formula_23 integrates to 1 because:
now making the variable change formula_28 and updating the integration interval accordingly yields:
because formula_30 is a p.d.f. by hypothesis. formula_24 follows from formula_23 sharing the same image of formula_33, which is a p.d.f. so its image is contained in formula_34. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17516 |
Larry Wall
Larry Arnold Wall (born September 27, 1954) is an American computer programmer and author. He created the Perl programming language.
Wall grew up in Los Angeles and then Bremerton, Washington, before starting higher education at Seattle Pacific University in 1976, majoring in chemistry and music and later pre-medicine with a hiatus of several years working in the university's computing center before graduating with a bachelor's degree in Natural and Artificial Languages.
While in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, Wall and his wife were studying linguistics with the intention of finding an unwritten language, perhaps in Africa, and creating a writing system for it. They would then use this new writing system to translate various texts into the language, among them the Bible. Due to health reasons these plans were cancelled, and they remained in the United States, where Wall instead joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after he finished graduate school.
Wall is an active member of the New Life, Church of the Nazarene.
Wall is the author of the codice_1 Usenet client and the widely used codice_2 program. He has won the International Obfuscated C Code Contest twice and was the recipient of the first Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software in 1998.
Beyond his technical skills, Wall has a reputation for his wit and often sarcastic sense of humour, which he displays in the comments to his source code or on Usenet. For example: "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise" and:
Wall developed the Perl interpreter and language while working for System Development Corporation, which later became part of Unisys. He is the co-author of "Programming Perl" (often referred to as the "Camel Book" and published by O'Reilly), which is the definitive resource for Perl programmers; and edited the "Perl Cookbook". He then became employed full-time by O'Reilly Media to further develop Perl and write books on the subject.
Wall's training as a linguist is apparent in his books, interviews, and lectures. He often compares Perl to a natural language and explains his decisions in Perl's design with linguistic rationale. He also often uses linguistic terms for Perl language constructs, so instead of traditional terms such as "variable", "function", and "accessor" he sometimes says "noun", "verb", and "topicalizer".
Wall's Christian faith has influenced some of the terminology of Perl, such as the name itself, a biblical reference to the "pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:46). Similar references are the function name "bless", and the organization of Raku (previously known as Perl 6) design documents with categories such as "apocalypse" and "exegesis". Wall has also alluded to his faith when he has spoken at conferences, including August 23, 1999 at the Perl Conference 3.0 in Monterey, CA.
Wall continues to oversee further development of Perl and serves as the benevolent dictator for life of the Perl project. The official Perl documentation states that: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17519 |
Leet
Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words based on a system of suffixes and alternate meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
The term "leet" is derived from the word "elite", used as an adjective to describe formidable prowess or accomplishment, especially in the fields of online gaming and computer hacking. The leet lexicon includes spellings of the word as "1337" or "l33t".
Leet originated within bulletin board systems (BBS) in the 1980s, where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective has been credited with the original coining of the term, in their text-files of that era. One theory is that it was developed to defeat text filters created by BBS or Internet Relay Chat system operators for message boards to discourage the discussion of forbidden topics, like cracking and hacking. Creative misspellings and ASCII-art-derived words were also a way to attempt to indicate one was knowledgeable about the culture of computer users.
Once the reserve of hackers, crackers, and script kiddies, leet has since entered the mainstream. It is now also used to mock newbies, also known colloquially as noobs, or newcomers, on web sites, or in gaming communities. Some consider emoticons and ASCII art, like smiley faces, to be leet, while others maintain that leet consists of only symbolic word encryption. More obscure forms of leet, involving the use of symbol combinations and almost no letters or numbers, continue to be used for its original purpose of encrypted communication. It is also sometimes used as a script language. Variants of leet have been used for censorship purposes for many years; for instance "@$$" (ass) and "$#!+" (shit) are frequently seen to make a word appear censored to the untrained eye but obvious to a person familiar with leet.
Leet symbols, especially the number 1337, are Internet memes that have spilled over into popular culture. Signs that show the numbers "1337" are popular motifs for pictures and shared widely across the Internet.
One of the hallmarks of leet is its unique approach to orthography, using substitutions of other characters, letters or otherwise, to represent a letter or letters in a word. For more-casual use of leet, the primary strategy is to use homoglyphs, symbols that closely resemble (to varying degrees) the letters for which they stand. The choice of symbol is not fixed—anything the reader can make sense of is valid. However, this practice is not extensively used in regular leet; more often it is seen in situations where the argot (i.e., secret language) characteristics of the system are required, either to exclude newbies or outsiders in general, i.e., anything that the "average" reader "cannot" make sense of is valid; a valid reader should himself try to make sense, if deserving of the underlying message. Another use for Leet orthographic substitutions is the creation of paraphrased passwords. Limitations imposed by websites on password length (usually no more than 36) and the characters permitted (usually alphanumeric and underscore) require less extensive forms of Leet when used in this application.
Some examples of leet include "B1ff" and "n00b", a term for the stereotypical newbie; the l33t programming language; and the web-comics "Megatokyo" and "Homestuck", which contain characters who speak leet.
Text rendered in leet is often characterized by distinctive, recurring forms.
Leet can be pronounced as a single syllable, , rhyming with "eat," by way of aphesis of the initial vowel of "elite". It may also be pronounced as two syllables, . Like hacker slang, leet enjoys a looser grammar than standard English. The loose grammar, just like loose spelling, encodes some level of emphasis, ironic or otherwise. A reader must rely more on intuitive parsing of leet to determine the meaning of a sentence rather than the actual sentence structure. In particular, speakers of leet are fond of verbing nouns, turning verbs into nouns (and back again) as forms of emphasis, e.g. "Austin rocks" is weaker than "Austin roxxorz" (note spelling), which is weaker than "Au5t1N is t3h r0xx0rz" (note grammar), which is weaker than something like "0MFG D00D /\Ü571N 15 T3H l_l83Я 1337 Я0XX0ЯZ" (OMG, dude, Austin is the über-elite rocks-er!). In essence, all of these mean "Austin rocks," not necessarily the other options. Added words and misspellings add to the speaker's enjoyment. Leet, like hacker slang, employs analogy in construction of new words. For example, if "haxored" is the past tense of the verb "to hack" (hack → haxor → haxored), then "winzored" would be easily understood to be the past tense conjugation of "to win," even if the reader had not seen that particular word before.
Leet has its own colloquialisms, many of which originated as jokes based on common typing errors, habits of new computer users, or knowledge of cyberculture and history. Leet is not solely based upon one language or character set. Greek, Russian, and other languages have leet forms, and leet in one language may use characters from another where they are available. As such, while it may be referred to as a "cipher", a "dialect", or a "language", leet does not fit squarely into any of these categories. The term "leet" itself is often written "31337", or "1337", and many other variations. After the meaning of these became widely familiar, "10100111001" came to be used in its place, because it is the binary form of "1337" decimal, making it more of a puzzle to interpret. An increasingly common characteristic of leet is the changing of grammatical usage so as to be deliberately incorrect. The widespread popularity of deliberate misspelling is similar to the cult following of the "All your base are belong to us" phrase. Indeed, the online and computer communities have been international from their inception, so spellings and phrases typical of non-native speakers are quite common.
Many words originally derived from leet slang have now become part of the modern Internet slang, such as "pwned". The original driving forces of new vocabulary in leet were common misspellings and typing errors such as "teh" (generally considered lolspeak), and intentional misspellings, especially the "z" at the end of words ("skillz"). Another prominent example of a surviving leet expression is "w00t", an exclamation of joy. w00t is sometimes used as a backronym for "We owned the other team."
New words (or corruptions thereof) may arise from a need to make one's username unique. As any given Internet service reaches more people, the number of names available to a given user is drastically reduced. While many users may wish to have the username "CatLover," for example, in many cases it is only possible for one user to have the moniker. As such, degradations of the name may evolve, such as "C@7L0vr." As the leet cipher is highly dynamic, there is a wider possibility for multiple users to share the "same" name, through combinations of spelling and transliterations.
Additionally, "leet"—the word itself—can be found in the screen-names and gamertags of many Internet and video games. Use of the term in such a manner announces a high level of skill, though such an announcement may be seen as baseless hubris.
"Warez" (nominally ) is a plural shortening of "software", typically referring to cracked and redistributed software. "Phreaking" refers to the hacking of telephone systems and other non-Internet equipment. "Teh" originated as a typographical error of "the", and is sometimes spelled "t3h". "j00" takes the place of "you", originating from the affricate sound that occurs in place of the palatal approximant, , when "you" follows a word ending in an alveolar plosive consonant, such as or . Also, from German, is "über", which means "over" or "above"; it usually appears as a prefix attached to adjectives, and is frequently written without the umlaut over the "u".
"Haxor", and derivations thereof, is leet for "hacker", and it is one of the most commonplace examples of the use of the "-xor" suffix. "Suxxor" (pronounced suck-zor) is a derogatory term which originated in warez culture and is currently used in multi-user environments such as multiplayer video games and instant messaging; it, like "haxor", is one of the early leet words to use the "-xor" suffix. "Suxxor" is a modified version of "sucks" (the phrase "to suck"), and the meaning is the same as the English slang. "Suxxor" can be mistaken with "Succer/Succker" if used in the wrong context. Its negative definition essentially makes it the opposite of "roxxor", and both can be used as a verb or a noun. The letters "ck" are often replaced with the Greek Χ (chi) in other words as well.
Within leet, the term "n00b", and derivations thereof, is used extensively. The word means and derives from "newbie" (as in new and inexperienced or uninformed), and is used as a means of segregating them as less than the "elite," or even "normal," members of a group.
"Owned" and "pwn3d" (generally pronounced "owned" and "poned", respectively) both refer to the domination of a player in a video game or argument (rather than just a win), or the successful hacking of a website or computer.
As is a common characteristic of leet, the terms have also been adapted into noun and adjective forms, "ownage" and "pwnage", which can refer to the situation of "pwning" or to the superiority of its subject (e.g., "He is a very good player. He is pwnage.").
"Pr0n" is slang for "pornography". This is a deliberately inaccurate spelling/pronunciation for "porn", where a zero is often used to replace the letter O. It is sometimes used in legitimate communications (such as email discussion groups, Usenet, chat rooms, and Internet web pages) to circumvent language and content filters, which may reject messages as offensive or spam. The word also helps prevent search engines from associating commercial sites with pornography, which might result in unwelcome traffic. "Pr0n" is also sometimes spelled backwards (n0rp) to further obscure the meaning to potentially uninformed readers. It can also refer to ASCII art depicting pornographic images, or to photos of the internals of consumer and industrial hardware. "Prawn", a spoof of the misspelling, has started to come into use, as well; in "", a pornographer films his movies on "Prawn Island". Conversely, in the RPG "Kingdom of Loathing", "prawn", referring to a kind of crustacean, is spelled "pr0n", leading to the creation of food items such as "pr0n chow mein".
"b&" or banned refers to when an individual is no longer allowed into an online community. Words containing -and-, anned-, ant-, or a similar sound can be replaced by the "&" symbol, meaning sandbox could be spelled as &box or even &[] (e.g. "skyrim is the best &box of 216 noCAP"). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18562 |
Lois Lane
Lois Lane is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, she first appeared in "Action Comics" #1 (June 1938). Lois is an award-winning journalist for the Metropolis newspaper the "Daily Planet" and the primary love interest of the superhero Superman and his alter-ego, Clark Kent. In DC continuity, she is also his wife and the mother of their son, Jon Kent, the current Superboy in the DC Universe.
Lois' physical appearance was originally based on Joanne Carter, a model hired by Joe Shuster. For her character, Jerry Siegel was inspired by actress Glenda Farrell's portrayal of the fictional reporter Torchy Blane in a series of films. Siegel took her name from actress Lola Lane. She was also influenced by the real-life journalist Nellie Bly.
Depictions of the character have varied spanning the comics and other media adaptations. The original Golden Age version of Lois Lane, as well as versions of her from the 1970s onwards, portrays Lois as a dauntless journalist and intellectually equal to Superman. During the Silver Age of Comics, she was the star of "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane", a comic book series that had a light and humorous tone. Beginning in 2015, she is the protagonist in the young adult novel series, "Lois Lane", by writer Gwenda Bond.
Lois is among the best-known female comic book characters. She has appeared in various media adaptations. Actress Noel Neill first portrayed Lois Lane in the 1940s "Superman" film series and later reprised her role in the 1950s television series "Adventures of Superman", replacing Phyllis Coates from season two. Margot Kidder played the character in four Superman films in the 1970s and 1980s, Kate Bosworth in the 2006 film "Superman Returns", and Amy Adams in the DC Extended Universe. In the 1990s television series, she was portrayed by Teri Hatcher in "" and Erica Durance in the 2000s series, "Smallville". Most recently Elizabeth Tulloch plays Lois in the Arrowverse shows, including the upcoming television series "Superman & Lois". Actresses who have voiced Lois in animated adaptations include Joan Alexander in the Fleischer Superman animated film series and Dana Delany in "", among others.
Writer Jerry Siegel first conceived Lois Lane in 1934, when Siegel and Joe Shuster were still developing Superman. One of the major influence on Lois' characterization was actress Glenda Farrell and her portrayal of the fictional reporter Torchy Blane in a series of Warner Bros. films. The Torchy Blane movies were popular second features during the later 1930s. On the conception of Lois Lane, Siegel stated in the 1988 "Time" magazine:
Artist Joe Shuster based Lois' physical appearance on a model named Joanne Carter. Carter had placed an ad in the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" newspaper in the Situation Wanted column, advertising herself as a model. Shuster corresponded with her and hired her as the model for Lois Lane. Shuster's depiction of Lois was modeled on her hairstyle and facial features. "To me she was Lois Lane. She was a great inspiration for me, though. She encouraged me, she was very enthusiastic about the strip; it meant a lot to me." Shuster said about Joanne Carter.
Joanne Carter married co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1948. On working with Joe Shuster for Lois Lane, Carter said in the 1983 "Nemo" magazine interview: "Joe was redrawing the strip, and it was going to be more realistic, rather than cartoony. I used to model for him every Saturday until he had enough drawings. He made so many stock drawings that it got to a point where he didn't need any more. We became such good friends by that time we decided we would always stay friends."
Lois Lane made her debut in ""Action Comics" #1" (June 1938) the first published Superman story. She was one of the first female comic book characters appearing in the superhero comics. Lois is the daughter of Ella and Sam Lane, in earlier comics, her parents were farmers in a town called Pittsdale. The modern comics depicts Lois as a former Army brat, born at Ramstein Air Base with Lois having been trained by her father, a US Army General, in areas such as hand-to-hand combat and the use of firearms. She has one younger sibling, her sister Lucy Lane. Lois is a journalist for the "Daily Planet", one of the best investigative reporters and the best at the newspaper she works at. Lois has shown obtaining superpowers and becoming a superhero, some of her superhero identities are Superwoman and Red Tornado of Earth 2.
Aspects of Lois' personality have varied over the years, depending on the comic book writers handling of the character and American social attitudes toward women at the time. In most incarnations, she is shown to be an independent person who is smart, determined and strong-willed. Her physical appearance has varied over the years, depending either on contemporary fashion or media adaptations. In the 1990s, when the television series "" began airing Lois received a haircut that made her look more like actress Teri Hatcher, and her eyes were typically violet to match her character on "". From the late 1980s through the 1990s she was depicted with auburn hair in the comic books.
In the 1940s, Lois had a newspaper comic strip, "Lois Lane, Girl Reporter", a direct spin-off of the Superman comic strip running at the time. A similar title comic series began appearing in the "Superman" comic book in 1944, starting with "Superman" #28. In 1958, DC Comics gave Lois a comic book series, "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane". The series focuses on her solo adventures and start publication in April 1958. In the 1960s, the series was one of DC's most popular titles and was the top ten best-selling comic books in America. She had a series featured in "The Superman Family" comic book from 1974 to 1982. In 2015, she received her own young adult novel series written by author Gwenda Bond. Published by Switch Press the series include: "Lois Lane: Fallout", "Lois Lane: Double Down" and "Lois Lane: Triple Threat". Released in 2019, "Lois Lane", a 12-issue series by writer Greg Rucka and artist Mike Perkins investigates threats and conspiracies in the DC Universe. Published by DC Comics in August 2020, "Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge" by Grace Ellis and Brittney Williams is a graphic novel for young readers.
Lois is the character most commonly associated with Superman, and throughout their long history, she has always been the most prominent love interest in Clark Kent/Superman's life. In the 1990s, after Clark proposes to Lois and reveals to her that he is Superman, she married him in the comic book "" (Dec. 1996). The couple's biological child in DC Comics canon was born in "Convergence: Superman #2" (July 2015) a son named Jonathan Samuel Kent, who eventually becomes Superboy.
In the Golden Age comics, Lois was an aggressive, career-minded reporter for the "Daily Star" (the newspaper's name was changed to the "Daily Planet" in "Action Comics" #23 in 1940). After Clark Kent joined the paper and Superman debuted around the same time, Lois found herself attracted to Superman but displeased with her new journalistic competition in the form of Kent.
Starting early as the 1940s, Lois began to suspect that Clark Kent was Superman, and started to make various attempts at uncovering his secret identity, all of which backfired because of Superman's efforts. The first such story appears in "Superman" #17 (July–August 1942). This theme became particularly pronounced in the 1950s and 1960s Silver Age comic books.
Lois gained her first series of stories (without Superman) starting with "Superman" #28 (May–June 1944), "Lois Lane, Girl Reporter", running in the "Superman" comic book for a number of years, had Lois defeating bad guys and getting front-page stories on her own, without any help from Superman.
In the Golden Age comics, Lois had a niece named Susie Tompkins, whose main trait was getting into trouble by telling exaggerated tall tales and fibs to adults. Susie's last appearance was in "Superman" #95 (February 1955). Subsequent comics presented Lois' only sibling, Lucy, as single and childless.
When the reading audience of superhero comic books became predominately young boys in the mid to late 1950s, the focus of Superman stories shifted toward science fiction inspired plots involving extraterrestrials, fantasy creatures, and bizarre plots.
Lois' main interests in various late 1950s and 1960s stories became vying with her rival Lana Lang for Superman's affections, attempting to prove Clark Kent and Superman were one and the same or otherwise getting Superman into marriage. Superman's rationale for resisting her matrimonial desires was that marrying her would put her in increased danger from his enemies and that she could not keep his secret identity hidden. Regardless, Lois married several times in the Superman stories of this era, including to a Superman impostor from Kandor, the villainous Zak-Kul and a man from the future. All these marriages were either annulled or otherwise forgotten.
Lois became more and more popular during the 1950s, and after appearing as the lead character in two issues of DC's title "Showcase" in 1957, DC Comics created an ongoing series for the character, titled "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane" beginning in April 1958 and running for 137 issues until October 1974. Most stories were about Lois' romance with Superman, and were drawn by artist Kurt Schaffenberger; indeed, Schaffenberger's rendition of Lois became cited by many as the "definitive" version of Lois, and he was often asked by DC editor Mort Weisinger to redraw other artists' depictions of Lois Lane in other DC titles where she appeared. So many stories depicted Lois and marriage that the cover of a 1968 80-Page Giant that reprinted several such stories, the "All-Wedding Issue", described the magazine as "featuring Lois' schemes and dreams to marry Superman!".
The series "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane" became one of DC's most popular titles, the third best-selling comic in 1962 and 1965. The title featured the first appearance of the Silver Age Catwoman, after an absence from the comics for over a decade.
While Lois suspicious of Superman's secret identity as early as "Superman" #7 (1940), her suspicions grew during the early Silver Age, with many stories in her series focusing on her attempts to prove Superman and Clark Kent were one and the same. Stories showed Superman using various means to protect his secret identity from Lois, including his Superman robots or Batman disguising himself as Clark/Superman.
By the end of the 1960s, as attitudes toward women's role in American society changed, Lois' character changed as well. In "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane" #80 (Jan. 1968), the character's fashions were updated to a then more contemporary look. Stories in the 1970s depicted Lois as fully capable and less reliant on Superman. She engaged in more adventures without Superman being involved and was much less interested in discovering Superman's secret identity.
Lois had a series featured in "The Superman Family" (an anthology title started in the mid-1970s after the cancellation of "Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane" and "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen") from 1974 to 1982. In her series, Lois regularly battled criminals and often defeated them using her quick wits and considerable skill in the Kryptonian martial art of Klurkor, taught to her by Kryptonian survivors in the bottle city of Kandor. There were several cameos of the New Gods, including Desaad and Darkseid. Lois Lane was the backup series in "The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl" in 1982 to 1983.
During the Silver and Bronze Age, Lois' backstory became more fully fleshed out, with various stories explaining her life before becoming employed at the "Daily Planet". This backstory was attributed to the Lois Lane of Earth-One.
As summarized in various stories, Lois was born to Sam and Ella Lane and grew up on their farm in the small town of Pittsdale. While Lois was a toddler, she encountered a rattlesnake in the woods near the Lane family farm. The snake was scared away by one of Kal-El's baby toys which had landed nearby in one of Jor-El's experimental rockets. At the age of two, Lois suffered measles, and at the age of three, whooping cough. At an unspecified time during Lois' childhood, her younger sister Lucy Lane was born.
During Lois' adolescence, she won a youth contest run by the "Daily Planet", with the prize being a trip to Metropolis to spend a week working as a cub reporter for the newspaper. There, she first met Clark Kent of Smallville, who was the other winner of the contest. Lois found Clark dull and became more interested in asking him for information about Superboy after learning Clark came from Smallville. During the week in Metropolis, Lois made a bet with Clark to see who would get the most scoops, which turned out to be Lois, as Clark was forced to constantly go into action as Superboy. Lois met Superboy for the first time while uncovering a criminal enterprise for one of her stories. At the end of the week, Clark paid off Lois' bet (an ice cream sundae), and the two returned to their respective hometowns. Lois would meet Superboy (but not Clark Kent) again during her adolescence while attending an all-girls summer camp near Smallville. There, Lois met Lana Lang, a fellow camper, for the first time. Lois would make further attempts at landing a job with the "Daily Planet" during her teenage years and spent time writing for her hometown's newspaper, the "Pittsdale Star".
Upon finishing high school, Lois left Pittsdale and attended Raleigh College to study journalism. While in college, Lois worked for the student newspaper, the "Raleigh Review", as a reporter and eventually its co-editor. After graduating from college, Lois became permanently employed at the "Daily Planet". Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen later joined the "Planet"s staff but Lois remained the newspaper's star reporter, winning the Pulitzer Prize. She was very dependent on Superman, however; he told her that having to rescue her so often from problems she caused prevented him from helping others. For example, when late for a deadline Lois jumped off a cliff expecting Superman to catch her "as he has done a thousand times", and fly her to her destination. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show what she would do if trapped in an underground mine with rescue impossible before the air ran out, Lois admitted that she would impatiently await Superman because "I've got a deadline to meet."
After the 1985–1986 miniseries "Crisis on Infinite Earths" writer John Byrne revised the Superman legend and eliminated the Silver Age version of Lois from continuity. Before this happened, a final non-canonical imaginary story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" was written by Alan Moore, meant as a send-off for the pre-Crisis versions of the characters, including Lois. Published at the same time but in Earth-One continuity was a two-issue miniseries, "Lois Lane", in which she investigates missing children.
Lois underwent a character alteration beginning with John Byrne's "The Man of Steel" miniseries, which significantly rewrote Superman's origin and history. In this modern version of events, Lois was portrayed as a tough-as-nails reporter who rarely needed rescuing. She was depicted as strong, opinionated, yet sensitive.
Lois' first real relationship in this version was with Jose Delgado, who she later came to know acted as a vigilante. José's legs are shattered in a battle with a Lexcorp cyborg/human hybrid gone amok. Delgado eventually recovered. He and Lois would have several on and off experiences together before the relationship completely disintegrated, due to Delgado accepting help from a Lexcorp subsidiary ARL.
Another major change made was that Lois did not fall in love with just Superman, although she was attracted to him. One reason was the revised nature of the Superman/Clark Kent relationship. In the original Silver Age stories, Superman had been the man who disguised himself as Clark Kent. In this newly revised concept, it was Clark Kent who lived a life in which his activity as Superman was decidedly secondary. Lois initially resented the rookie Clark Kent getting the story on Superman as his first piece when she had spent ages trying to get an interview. This sometimes ill-tempered rivalry remained the case until "The Adventures of Superman" #460–463 and "Action Comics" #650.
Following Clark's brief rampage under the influence of the Eradicator, Lois was hesitant to forgive Clark for "selling out" to Collin Thornton and running "Newstime" Magazine, but forgave him in a span of mere minutes when he returned to ask for his job back. Clark elected to repay Lois by finally letting go of his self-imposed inhibitions and passionately kissed her. The two became a couple, and eventually, Lois accepted a proposal of marriage. Clark shortly after revealed to her that he was Superman.
DC Comics had planned on Lois and Clark being married in 1993's "Superman vol. 2" #75. With the then-upcoming television show "", DC decided they did not want to have the two married in the comics and not married on TV. Partially as a result of this, Superman was killed in "Superman" #75 instead, dying in Lois' arms after a battle royal with the monster Doomsday. After a period of time, Superman returned to life, and both he and Lois resumed their relationship, though not without a few problems (such as a brief reappearance of Clark's former college girlfriend, the mermaid Lori Lemaris). Lois eventually decided to take an overseas assignment to assert her independence and not be dependent on Clark, who had begun to overprotect her. When Clark became convinced Lois was in danger, he and her father Sam allied to aid her secretly.
When Lois returned to Metropolis, she had been through several life-threatening exploits and was slightly amused when Clark informed her his powers had been depleted, and that he was her editor (due to Perry White's cancer). Upon discovering Clark still had her wedding ring within a handkerchief, Lois warmly broke down, teasing Clark and finally agreeing to become his wife.
Lois and Clark were finally married in the comic book "" (Dec. 1996), which featured the work of nearly every living artist who had ever worked on Superman. The issue was published during the week of October 6, 1996, coinciding with an episode of the television series "", which featured the wedding of the two characters. "The Wedding Album" itself spent part of its opening pages accommodating and reconciling the then-current comic storyline of Lois and Clark having broken off their engagement.
Since their marriage, Clark and Lois continue to be one of the strongest relationships in comics. In 2006, the couple took the next step in adopting a newly arrived Kryptonian boy, who they named Chris Kent. The boy is later discovered to be the son of Jor-El's foe, General Zod. Although initially uneasy about raising a super-powered child, Lois has shown immense aptitude of being 'Mommy Lois.' Following a devastating battle with Zod, Chris sacrificed himself to seal the Phantom Zone rift, trapping himself inside with Zod's forces, leaving Lois without her son.
In the second issue of "Final Crisis", Lois and Perry are caught in an explosion triggered by Clayface destroying the "Daily Planet" and Lois is critically injured. In the third issue, it is revealed that only Clark's heat vision is keeping her heart beating. Clark is visited by a mysterious phantom who insists that he must depart Earth immediately if he is to save his wife's life. The story is continued in the 3D tie-in comic "Superman Beyond", where the female Monitor Zillo Valla stops time around Lois, allowing Superman to leave her side for a while, recruiting him and several of his multiversal doppelgangers in a mission to save the entire Multiverse, promising care for Lois. After defeating the dark Monitor Mandrakk, Superman brings back a distilled drop of The Bleed and administers it to Lois through a kiss, restoring her to full health. Lois is later seen in "Final Crisis" #6, one of the few still free humans.
After the events of "" Superman must leave Earth for an undetermined amount of time swearing off his Earthly connections in the eyes of his fellow Kryptonians to keep an eye on General Zod the New Kryptonian military commander, but he secretly tells Lois he still considers her his wife and will come back to her. In the issues of "Action Comics" Lois has reunited with Christopher Kent who has aged to adulthood in the past months and became the new Metropolis hero Nightwing. Supergirl and Lana visit Lois' apartment to tell her the bad news that her sister Lucy Lane was killed during a battle with Supergirl. Lois doesn't believe that her sister is dead and refuses to accept the news until she has irrefutable proof. Lois asks Supergirl for a recovered piece of Superwoman's costume.
Lois hands her exposé in and the government is after her for treason. With agents on her tail, she makes a mad dash for it. When Lois is in custody, her father Sam Lane is there to greet her in an interview room in an unnamed facility. Sam tells Lois the only reason he has been lenient with her is because she is his daughter, while he does love her the planet will always come first over his family and threatens to make her disappear forever if she continues. Lois returns to the "Daily Planet" under cover of night and explains all to Perry. She points out the whole paper is at risk and everyone connected to it if her exposé runs. Perry understands and though he must protect the paper he is first and foremost a good journalist and nudges Lois in the right direction; he won't run the story but noted it must get out to the people somehow. Enlightened, she quits the "Daily Planet", as Lois gets her edge back. It was later revealed she never really quit the "Daily Planet".
Lois learns her father's forces destroyed New Krypton. She is kidnapped by Lucy and taken to Sam's secret base. There, Lois argues with her father, saying the Kryptonians think of him as a genocidal maniac. In the war between New Krypton and Earth, Supergirl finds them and threatens to kill Sam. Lois stops her, saying her father will be judged for his war crimes. Sam takes a gun and commits suicide. Later, Lois visits the imprisoned Lucy. She expresses disbelief on what her sister has become. Lois says while she will not miss her father, she will miss her sister.
In "", Superman begins a journey through America to reconnect with the American people, and Lois, though confused at first, supports his choice. Lois later travels to Rushmark and finds an old college friend Brian, who invites her to have dinner with him and his wife. When Lois leaves Brian's home she is met by Superman. The two reaffirm their love to each other and go to Chicago. There, Lois helps Superman arrest a violent father who has been attacking his wife and son. Later, Lois and Superman investigate a factory in Des Moines. Lois wants to publish an article, which would reveal the workers' illegal activities, but Superman forces her not to. Feeling betrayed, Lois returns to Metropolis and does not speak to Superman for a while. When Lois is kidnapped by Lisa Jennings, a woman who wants to destroy Superman, he rescues her. With the danger over. Superman apologizes to Lois about what happened in Des Moines. Lois replies that she wrote the article anyway, saying that she was a reporter before she was his wife. Knowing that his wife did the right thing, Superman kisses her. The two then return home.
In 2011, DC Comics relaunched its titles and its main continuity was rebooted with the New 52. Lois now works for Morgan Edge heading up the media division of the "Daily Planet". She views Clark as a friend and is unaware that he is Superman.
Lois investigates the story of twenty people who developed metahuman powers after being kidnapped by Brainiac. Her search leads her to a U.S. senator, who revealed to be one of the Twenty. The senator dies, but not before transferring his powers to Lois, who falls into a coma. Lois later awakes from her coma at the hospital, with Jonathan Carroll at her side. Lois manifests psychic powers and helps Superman fight the Psychic Pirate. During the fight, Lois learns that Clark is Superman but falls back into a coma. After defeating the Psychic Pirate, Superman brings Lois back to the hospital. Later, the Parasite attacks the hospital and attempts to steal Lois' powers. Superman tricks the Parasite into absorbing Lois' psionic energy. The power overwhelms the Parasite, causing him to collapse. Lois awakens from her coma but she does not seem to remember Superman's identity.
Lois is the main character in the "Superman: Lois Lane" #1 one-shot. In this story, Lois' sister, Lucy, asks for her help in finding her roommate Amanda Suresh, who had been kidnapped by a mysterious group called "the Cartel." According to Lucy, Amanda had been taking a drug that transformed her into a monster. As Lois investigates the Cartel, she gets captured and taken to the Cartel's headquarters. There, Lois finds out the Cartel had been capturing people who had been mutated by the drug. Lois escapes and rescues Amanda when the captured monsters cause a riot. As she returns home, Lois finds out Lucy had been taking the drug. As Lucy apologizes for putting all three in danger, Lois chooses to publish her story about the Cartel.
In the "", set five years in the possible future of the New 52-verse. Lois is considered the most successful freelance reporter on the planet and her blog "The Fast Lane" is one of the most read and well-respected sources of news in the world.
In the miniseries "Convergence", which featured many Post-"Crisis" DC Universe characters, including a married Superman and his pregnant wife Lois Lane, deal with the impending birth of their child, as Superman is called to protect the city. "Convergence" shows the birth of their son, Jonathan Samuel Kent.
Following "Convergence", DC announced the spin-off comic book series "", debuting in October 2015 by Dan Jurgens and Lee Weeks. The eight-issue series is set several years after the "Convergence" event, where Clark and Lois and their son Jonathan has been living and working in the New 52 universe. The couple now lives in California and has changed their last name to White (a tribute to Perry White). Lois has become an anonymous author, publishing several critically acclaimed books under the alias name "Author X." While Clark continues his superhero duty, protecting cities and civilians quietly behind the scenes. Their son, Jonathan, eventually began to develop superpowers of his own (similar to those of his father Superman) and learned the truth about his parents' true origin.
In June 2016, DC Comics relaunched its entire line of comic book titles with DC Rebirth. The publisher once again re-established the Post-"Crisis" Superman as the principal Superman in DC comics, along with his wife, Lois Lane, and their son, Jonathan Samuel Kent.
Lois began to investigate the disappearance of her New 52 counterpart, and after learning the apparent death of her other-self, she returns to the "Daily Planet" posing as her counterpart. Following a confrontation with Mister Mxyzptlk, Lois and Superman's essence is merged with their New 52 counterpart, creating a new DC Universe.
Released in July 2019 to July 2020, Lois stars in a 12-issue limited series "Lois Lane" written by Greg Rucka and art by Mike Perkins. The series sees Lois as she investigates stories of conspiracy, intrigue and murder in the DC Universe. Writer Greg Rucka intended for the series to focus on Lois' legacy as a hard-boiled journalist and the investigative world which she inhabits, with the series reflecting the state of modern journalism in the world today.
Lois Lane has become a superhero and gained superpowers several times in the comics, animation, and live-action series.
Lois was the first person to assume the Superwoman persona and has become the superheroine on several occasions. Her first appearance as Superwoman (as well as Superwoman's first appearance in DC Comics) was in "Action Comics" #60 (May 1943). The story is set in a dream sequence, where, after Lois is hit by a truck, she dreams a transfusion of Superman's blood gives her superpowers and she becomes Superwoman. In "Superman" #45, Lois believes Hocus and Pocus—a pair of fraudulent magicians—have given her superpowers, and with Superman's help and intervention, Lois once again becomes Superwoman. In "Action Comics" #156, Lois actually gains superpowers from one of Lex Luthor's inventions, which launches a short-lived career as "Superwoman." In "The Superman Family" #207, the Earth-Two Lois gained superpowers from her husband, after Superman brought an extraterrestrial plant into their home, with Lois losing the powers after the death of the plant. Other stories have Lois transformed into Superwoman when Superman transfers some of his powers to Lois, or due to Mr. Mxyzptlk's interference. On "Smallville" in the episode "Prophecy," Jor-El gives Lois all of Clark's powers for one day.
In the original Crime Syndicate of America on Earth-Three, Lois Lane and Superwoman were two separate individual characters. Superwoman is a supervillain and Lois married Earth-Three's greatest champion, Alexander Luthor. The pre-Crisis version of the characters perished when Earth-Three was destroyed during the events of "Crisis on Infinite Earths". In the graphic novel "", Superwoman, a member of the Crime Syndicate is the alternate version of Lois Lane. She is an Amazon by birth and the chief editor of the "Daily Planet". She inhabits the same antimatter universe which contains the planet Qward. The New 52 version of Superwoman of Earth-3 is also named Lois Lane and is part of the Crime Syndicate.
In "All-Star Superman", the 12-issue comic book series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, Lois becomes a Kryptonian Superwoman for 24 hours. In the story, Superman (who believed he was dying) revealed his secret identity to her and takes Lois to his Fortress of Solitude to spend her birthday. While at his Arctic sanctuary, he presents Lois with her birthday present, a formula called "Exo-Genes" created by Superman from his own DNA, that allows Lois to have his powers for twenty-four hours. With her new Kryptonian powers and new Superwoman costume (made by Superman), the two spend the whole day together on different adventures and shared a kiss on the moon. At the end of the story, Superman proclaims his love for Lois, before he flies off into the sun to repair it. Lois later appeared as Superwoman in the animated All-Star Superman film, voiced by Christina Hendricks.
In DC Rebirth, the "New 52" Lois and Lana gained superpowers due to the solar energy explosion caused by the death of the New 52 Superman. This results in both Lois and Lana becoming Superwoman, with Lois possessing all of Superman's traditional powers, while Lana has the ability to absorb solar energy and release it in other forms. Lois later dies at the hands of a female Bizarro, being overloaded with solar energy the same way Superman was killed.
Following the DC relaunch, the series "" debuted in 2012, set on the parallel world of that name. It depicts a modern take on the Golden Age world, starring the Justice Society of America and superheroes of that period.
In "Earth 2", Lois Lane is married to Superman. When Clark's cousin, Kara arrived on earth, she stayed with Clark's parents, before moving in and living with Clark and Lois. Lois considers Kara as her daughter and Kara calls Lois mom. Five years prior to the start of the story, during the first Apokoliptian invasion of Earth 2, Lois was killed by one of Darkseid's assassins at the Daily Planet, she died in her husband's arms. Superman and many other heroes of Earth 2 perished in the war.
Five years later, as various heroes begin to rise and various gods from Apokolips begin to wreak havoc again. Lois' consciousness is revealed to have survived and was downloaded into the robot body of Red Tornado by her father Sam Lane. Lois, now as Red Tornado, possessed the power of wind manipulation and cyclone generation abilities. Lois bands together with Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Batman (Thomas Wayne), Accountable (Jimmy Olsen) and the other gathered heroes to fight against the forces of Apokolips. After a protracted battle with what was thought to be a surviving brainwashed Superman, Lois realizes he is, in fact, a Bizarro, and takes advantage of his deteriorating form to disintegrate him with a cyclone blast. In the story, Lois is referred to by Doctor Fate as the "Resurrection hope".
During Superman's rampage and destruction on Earth 2, Lois is among a group that discovers Val-Zod, a Kryptonian, hidden in a cell beneath Arkham. Lois helps Val feel accepted and welcomed on Earth 2, learn to control his superpower, and overcome his agoraphobia (due to his prolonged travel in space to Earth). Val-Zod eventually becomes the new Superman of Earth 2.
In the second Apokoliptian invasion of Earth 2, Lois and Kara are reunited, after Kara and Huntress return to Earth 2 from Prime Earth. Lois, along with Kara, Val, Huntress, Batman and other heroes, fights against the armies of Apokolips and new villains appearing across Earth 2. While searching for Huntress beneath the fire pits of Earth 2 in DeSaad's cloning facility, Lois, Val, Kara and Batman found the real Superman who has been held captive for five years. He was revived by DeSaad and was used as the genetic source for the Kryptonian clones. The extraction of his DNA corrupted his body leaving him without any powers. Lois and Superman reunite briefly, before he sacrificed himself one last time, destroying the Parademon facilities using his corrupt DNA. After Superman's death, Lois gave Kara the symbol from his uniform, which was then worn by Kara in remembrance.
In the final days of Earth 2, Lois' instincts as a journalist lead her to attempt to preserve and record the history and stories of Earth 2 in her large memory bank in the hope that someday, someone will read the data and rebuild this world. After the destruction of Earth 2, Lois and the remaining civilians and heroes of Earth 2 relocated to a new world.
The writer of "Earth 2", Tom Taylor, specifically resurrected Lois Lane on Earth 2 after he was told to kill off the character in the "Injustice" comic series. Taylor stated "bringing Lois in was quite a personal thing, because having to do such horrible, horrible things to her in Injustice, the first thing I asked when I got on the book was if I could bring back Lois. Then it was just a matter of working out exactly how." Taylor received "Women in Refrigerators" criticism for his "Injustice" comic stories. Bringing back Lois as Red Tornado was Taylor's way to "unfridge" Lois. As Taylor noted, in Lois' first appearance as Red Tornado, Lois literally came out of a blue refrigerator. Other reasons for bringing back Lois involve Superman, Taylor commented "While evil bastard Superman is out there killing and maiming and destroying, I wanted Lois to exist as the counterpoint to this. She's the beating heart at the center. She's the good Ying to Superman's evil Yang. Where there's Lois, there's hope."
Nicola Scott, the long-time artist on Earth 2, on drawing Red Tornado Lois, "I wanted Lois to be Lois, despite the fact that she’s metal. I wanted to make sure she looked really feminine and really beautiful, so all she’d need is a flesh coating and a wig and she’d be good to go."
DC Comics instituted its multiverse system in the early 1960s for organizing its continuity and introduced the Earth-Two Superman in "Justice League of America" #73 (August 1969). This retcon declared the Golden Age Superman and Lois Lane stories (i.e. comics published from 1938 through the early 1950s) as having taken place on the parallel world of "Earth-Two" versus the then mainstream (Silver Age) universe of "Earth-One".
In "Action Comics" #484 (June 1978), a flashback story reveals Earth-Two's Lois became infatuated with Clark Kent after the latter lost his memory of his superheroic identity (thanks to a spell cast by the old Justice Society of America enemy, the Wizard), with the result of Clark acting more aggressive and extroverted. Clark and Lois began to date each other and were soon married. During the honeymoon, Lois discovered that Clark was indeed Superman, and after recruiting the aid of the Wizard, restored Clark's memory.
The now-married Lois and Clark appeared in a series of stories in "The Superman Family" #195 – #199 and #201 – #222 titled "Mr and Mrs Superman", which presented their further adventures early in their marriage. Susie Tompkins made a return as a recurring character. Years later, Lois and Clark acted as parental figures for Power Girl, Superman's cousin, after she arrived on Earth.
During the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" miniseries, the Earth-Two Lois Lane was seemingly seen for the final time, as Lois, the Earth-Two Superman, and the Superboy of Earth-Prime are taken by Earth-Three's Alexander Luthor Jr. into a paradise-like dimension at the end of the story. Following the events of "Crisis on Infinite Earths," this version of Lois was retroactively removed from DC's continuity.
In 2005's "Infinite Crisis" miniseries, it was revealed that the Earth-Two Lois Lane Kent, along with Superboy, Alexander Luthor Jr., and Superman, have been watching the events of the post-Crisis DC Universe from their pocket dimension. Out of the four observers, she is the only one who still believes that the new universe is just going through a rough patch; Superboy Prime and Alex Luthor are convinced that Earth is utterly corrupt, and Kal-L is slowly becoming swayed to their way of thinking. This version of Lois is frail, and dying for reasons not explicitly revealed, though probably connected to her octogenarian status. This was the main reason for Kal-L's determination to restore Earth-Two, as he believed that Lois' health would recover once back on her proper Earth. Despite the restoration of Earth-Two, Lois Lane Kent died in the arms of her husband, Superman, in "Infinite Crisis" #5, regardless of Kal-L's protests that he could not let her die. After Kal-L died at the hands of Superboy-Prime at the end of "Infinite Crisis" #7, he commented that he finally understood Lois' final words ""It's... not... going..."" as meaning that it would never end for them, and one day it would be understood that even the heroes who had been lost in the original Crisis were still out there somewhere. After his demise, they are shown reunited in the stars, while their bodies are buried on Earth alongside Kon-El's, who gave his life to stop Superboy-Prime's attempts to restore his Earth.
Lois later returns as a sinister Black Lantern with her husband in the "Blackest Night" crossover. Her first task is to kidnap Martha Kent with her spouse, and stating that she and Kal-L wish for Kal-El, Connor Kent, and Martha, to be reunited with Jonathan Kent in death. She proved unable to deal with the resourcefulness of Martha Kent, and was set ablaze by the widow, but kept regenerating until Krypto intervened, ripping the black ring out of her hand and preventing regeneration for long enough to allow Superman and Conner Kent to destroy the Black Lantern powerhouses attacking Smallville, and reaching town to aid others unhindered.
Black Lantern Lois later appears to Power Girl, claiming that she has escaped the ring's corrupting influence, and needs her help. This was just a ploy to get close enough to her husband's body, which was being held in the JSA headquarters after his black ring had been removed. Black Lantern Lois "sacrifices" herself by removing her ring and giving it to Kal-L, restoring him to full undead status, and causing her own body to become inert.
During the years 1942–1985 Editora Brasil-América and Editora Abril which published the Brazilian versions of Superman comics, Lois Lane's name was translated to "Miriam Lane" and later to "Miriam Lois Lane." In Spanish speaking countries, her name was translated to "Luisa Lane" in comics, TV series and movies.
In the alternate timeline of the "Flashpoint" event, a young Lois Lane sneaks into the facility where her father Sam Lane is stationed to bring him a birthday cake. During a breakout, Lois briefly encounters Kal-El and Neil Sinclair. Sinclair attempts to pursue revenge against her father for the experiments that were performed on him. Sam traps Sinclair and himself in the Phantom Zone.
Years later, Lois is reporting on a fashion show in Montmartre when the Atlanteans flooded Europe. She is saved by the Amazons who take her to "New Themiscyra" (the United Kingdom). Once there, she learns that Jimmy Olsen, who dies in the flood while trying to save an old man, was an agent of Cyborg. Lois agrees to spy on the Amazons for Cyborg. When the time comes for her to undergo a near-fatal "conversion" into the Amazonian ranks, she escapes, aided by Penny Black, who is wounded by Artemis in the process.
During this time, Lois walks through the remains of the London Underground and encounters Grifter and the Resistance. Lois soon joins the Resistance. After meeting up with the recovering Penny, she uses Cyborg's device to locate her missing armor at Westminster. Lois later broadcasts a message to the world that the Amazons have imprisoned people in internment. The Amazons in Westminster attempt to kill her. Lois is then rescued by Kal-El (who comes to protect her from Sinclair who has returned). During the fight, Kal-El manages to destroy Sinclair, but Lois is caught in the blast. Before Lois dies in the arms of Kal-El, she tells him to save the people.
In the digital prequel comic to the video game "", Lois is married to Superman and is pregnant with their child. While on a story at the docks with Jimmy Olsen, she is kidnapped by The Joker and Harley Quinn and taken to a submarine where they perform surgery on her. When the Joker is captured by the Justice League, he informs them he has planted a nuclear bomb in Metropolis and wired the detonator to Lois's heart, set to go off when she dies. While under the influence of Scarecrow's kryptonite-laced fear gas, Superman mistakes Lois for Doomsday and, in an attempt to protect his family, unknowingly flies up into space with her, killing both Lois and their unborn child in the process. When she dies, a nuclear bomb obliterates Metropolis. Superman, devastated by the death of Lois and their unborn child, kills the Joker and begins his campaign for world domination. Her death causes him to turn darker, as he becomes more willing to kill to protect the world.
In Year Three of the series, Superman was put in a magic comatose sleep, where events played out differently in his dream scenario. In this dream world, Superman imagines he had broken free of the fear gas in time to save Lois and their unborn child. Lois eventually gave birth to their daughter Lara Lane-Kent. Superman and Lois live a happy and normal life, raising their daughter Lara, who eventually develop superpowers and with her father's guidance becomes a superhero of her own. Superman is eventually awakened from his slumber by Ares and is left feeling angrier and bitterer after realizing and living the life he could've had with Lois and their child. In Year Five, in an alternate world, Lois and Clark are shown happily visiting Clark's parents, telling them that she is pregnant.
"DC Comics Bombshells", a comic book series set in an alternate history of World War II, Eloisa "Lois" Lane is a mixed-race 17-year-old newspaper hawker from Metropolis' Cuban district. When criminals working for Killer Frost kidnaps her, she is rescued by the Batgirls (a group of female vigilantes) and partners with them to defeat Hugo Strange, the man who crippled her mother. Later in the series, she gets a job working at the "Gotham Gazette" for Vicki Vale and eventually begins dating Supergirl.
In an alternate reality, Nightwing activates a device ending an ongoing war between the super-powered beings and depowers ninety percent of the superhero population, and leads to a future where superpower is outlawed. Lois is a Blue Lantern and a member of the Titans, who form a resistance against the anti-metahuman government.
Published in 2004, "" is a four-issue miniseries written by Kurt Busiek and art by Stuart Immonen. Set in the real world where superheroes only exist in comic books. Clark Kent, living in a small town in Kansas, discovers that he has the same powers as Superman, the fictional superhero he was named after. Years later, Clark moves to New York, working as a writer and secretly saving people with his abilities. He meets Lois Chaudhari, an Indian American designer on a blind date (set up by friends because their names resemble the fictional couple Clark Kent and Lois Lane). The two quickly fall in love, got married and had twin daughters Jane and Carol Kent, who also inherit their father's powers.
"Gotham City Garage", a digital-first comic book series written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, reimagines DC superheroes and villains as bikers in a post-apocalyptic world. Governor Lex Luthor controls the modern utopia Gotham City and the rest of the continent is a wasteland. Lois Lane runs a rebel news radio station "The Frequency". When Barda ask for help, Lois and Jimmy Olsen join her in the resistance.
"Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Death of Superman", an anthology series that explores alternate takes on classic DC stories set in a different world in the Dark Multiverse. After Superman is killed by Doomsday, filled with anger and grief, Lois merges with the Eradicator and gains Kryptonian powers so she can take revenge on the corrupt world and those who let Superman die.
Lois Lane has had several (mostly cameo) appearances alongside Clark Kent in past works of Marvel Comics, namely in "X-Men" Vol.1 #98, "Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man" (1976), "The Mighty Thor" #341 (1984), "Excalibur" Vol.1 #8, "Ghost Rider" Vol.3 #66 (1995), and "Marvels Epilogue" (September 2019).
"Lois Lane, Girl Reporter" is a newspaper comic strip featuring Lois Lane, a spin-off from the Superman comic strip and topper to the Superman Sunday strip in the "Cleveland Plain Dealer". Twelve comic strips were produced and originally ran between October 24, 1943 to February 27, 1944. Lois also appears in the "Superman" daily newspaper comic strip, distributed by McClure Syndicate which ran continuously from January 1939 to May 1966 with a separate Sunday strip added on November 5, 1939.
A graphic novel by writer Grace Ellis and artist Brittney Williams, and focus on a 13-year-old Lois Lane as she navigates the confusing worlds of social media and friendship during summer break in the sleepy town of Liberty View. Scheduled for release in August 2020, it is part of DC's original graphic novels aimed at young readers.
Lois has appeared in several self-titled miniseries, one-shots and collected editions:
Lois is the protagonist in the young adult novel series, "Lois Lane", written by Gwenda Bond and published by Switch Press. The series follows the adventures of Lois Lane as a savvy, whip-smart, and unafraid contemporary teenage high school girl. The first book in the series, "Fallout", was revealed by the author in 2014 and was released on May 1, 2015. Bond revealed the second book, "Double Down", in July 2015, and the book was released on May 1, 2016.
On the series, Bond said: "Lois is an icon, of course, a superhero without any superpowers ... except her unmatched bravery and smarts. Not to mention her sense of humor and her commitment to truth and justice. She's also one of my all-time favorite characters—which is why I jumped at the chance to write a novel featuring a teen Lois, moving to Metropolis and becoming a reporter for the first time. And, most of all, to get to put Lois front and center in the starring role, obviously."
Based on the ABC television series "" four original novels were published in 1996:
Since her debut in the comic books in 1938, Lois has appeared in various media adaptations including radio, animations, films, television, video games and Broadway musical. Actresses who have portrayed Lois Lane include Noel Neill, Phyllis Coates, Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher, Erica Durance, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, and Elizabeth Tulloch, and voiced by actresses such as Joan Alexander, Dana Delany, Stana Katic, Rebecca Romijn, and numerous others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18564 |
Linker (computing)
In computing, a linker or link editor is a computer system program that takes one or more object files generated by a compiler or an assembler and combines them into a single executable file, library file, or another 'object' file.
A simpler version that writes its output directly to memory is called the "loader", though loading is typically considered a separate process.
Computer programs typically are composed of several parts or modules; these parts/modules need not all be contained within a single object file, and in such cases refer to each other by means of symbols as addresses into other modules, which are mapped into memory addresses when linked for execution. Typically, an object file can contain three kinds of symbols:
For most compilers, each object file is the result of compiling one input source code file. When a program comprises multiple object files, the linker combines these files into a unified executable program, resolving the symbols as it goes along.
Linkers can take objects from a collection called a "library" or runtime library. Most linkers do not include the whole library in the output; they include only the files that are referenced by other object files or libraries. Library linking may thus be an iterative process, with some referenced modules requiring additional modules to be linked, and so on. Libraries exist for diverse purposes, and one or more system libraries are usually linked in by default.
The linker also takes care of arranging the objects in a program's address space. This may involve "relocating" code that assumes a specific base address into another base. Since a compiler seldomly knows where an object will reside, it often assumes a fixed base location (for example, zero). Relocating machine code may involve re-targeting of absolute jumps, loads and stores.
The executable output by the linker may need another relocation pass when it is finally loaded into memory (just before execution). This pass is usually omitted on hardware offering virtual memory: every program is put into its own address space, so there is no conflict even if all programs load at the same base address. This pass may also be omitted if the executable is a position independent executable.
On some Unix variants, such as SINTRAN III, the process performed by a linker (assembling object files into a program) was called "loading" (as in loading executable code onto a file). Additionally, in some operating systems, the same program handles both the jobs of linking and loading a program (dynamic linking).
Many operating system environments allow dynamic linking, deferring the resolution of some undefined symbols until a program is run. That means that the executable code still contains undefined symbols, plus a list of objects or libraries that will provide definitions for these. Loading the program will load these objects/libraries as well, and perform a final linking.
This approach offers two advantages:
There are also disadvantages:
Static linking is the result of the linker copying all library routines used in the program into the executable image. This may require more disk space and memory than dynamic linking, but is more portable, since it does not require the presence of the library on the system where it runs. Static linking also prevents "DLL hell", since each program includes exactly the versions of library routines that it requires, with no conflict with other programs. A program using just a few routines from a library does not require the entire library to be installed.
As the compiler has no information on the layout of objects in the final output, it cannot take advantage of shorter or more efficient instructions that place a requirement on the address of another object. For example, a jump instruction can reference an absolute address or an offset from the current location, and the offset could be expressed with different lengths depending on the distance to the target. By first generating the most conservative instruction (usually the largest relative or absolute variant, depending on platform) and adding "relaxation hints", it is possible to substitute shorter or more efficient instructions during the final link. In regard to jump optimizations this is also called "automatic jump-sizing". This step can be performed only after all input objects have been read and assigned temporary addresses; the linker relaxation pass subsequently reassigns addresses, which may in turn allow more potential relaxations to occur. In general, the substituted sequences are shorter, which allows this process to always converge on the best solution given a fixed order of objects; if this is not the case, relaxations can conflict, and the linker needs to weigh the advantages of either option.
While instruction relaxation typically occurs at link-time, inner-module relaxation can already take place as part of the optimizing process at compile-time. In some cases, relaxation can also occur at load-time as part of the relocation process or combined with dynamic dead-code elimination techniques.
In IBM System/360 mainframe environments such as OS/360, including z/OS for the z/Architecture mainframes, this type of program is known as a "linkage editor". As the name implies a linkage "editor" has the additional capability of allowing the addition, replacement, and/or deletion of individual program sections. Operating systems such as OS/360 have format for executable load-modules containing supplementary data about the component sections of a program, so that an individual program section can be replaced, and other parts of the program updated so that relocatable addresses and other references can be corrected by the linkage editor, as part of the process.
One advantage of this is that it allows a program to be maintained without having to keep all of the intermediate object files, or without having to re-compile program sections that haven't changed. It also permits program updates to be distributed in the form of small files (originally card decks), containing only the object module to be replaced. In such systems, object code is in the form and format of 80-byte punched-card images, so that updates can be introduced into a system using that medium. In later releases of OS/360 and in subsequent systems, load-modules contain additional data about versions of components modules, to create a traceable record of updates. It also allows one to add, change, or remove an overlay structure from an already linked load module.
The term "linkage editor" should not be construed as implying that the program operates in a user-interactive mode like a text editor. It is intended for batch-mode execution, with the editing commands being supplied by the user in sequentially organized files, such as punched cards, DASD, or magnetic tape, and tapes were often used during the initial installation of the OS.
"Linkage editing" (IBM nomenclature) or "consolidation" or "collection" (ICL nomenclature) refers to the "linkage editor's" or "consolidator's" act of combining the various pieces into a relocatable binary, whereas the loading and relocation into an absolute binary at the target address is normally considered a separate step.
The GNU linker (or GNU ld) is the GNU Project's implementation of the Unix command ld. GNU ld runs the linker, which creates an executable file (or a library) from object files created during compilation of a software project. A "linker script" may be passed to GNU ld to exercise greater control over the linking process. The GNU linker is part of the GNU Binary Utilities (binutils). Two versions of ld are provided in binutils: the traditional GNU ld based on bfd, and an ELF-only version called gold.
Possible origins of the name "ld" are "LoaD" and "Link eDitor".
GNU linker is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18566 |
Legendre symbol
In number theory, the Legendre symbol is a multiplicative function with values 1, −1, 0 that is a quadratic character modulo an odd prime number "p": its value at a (nonzero) quadratic residue mod "p" is 1 and at a non-quadratic residue ("non-residue") is −1. Its value at zero is 0.
The Legendre symbol was introduced by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1798 in the course of his attempts at proving the law of quadratic reciprocity. Generalizations of the symbol include the Jacobi symbol and Dirichlet characters of higher order. The notational convenience of the Legendre symbol inspired introduction of several other "symbols" used in algebraic number theory, such as the Hilbert symbol and the Artin symbol.
Let formula_1 be an odd prime number. An integer formula_2 is a quadratic residue modulo formula_1 if it is congruent to a perfect square modulo formula_1 and is a quadratic nonresidue modulo formula_1 otherwise. The Legendre symbol is a function of formula_2 and formula_1 defined as
Legendre's original definition was by means of the explicit formula
By Euler's criterion, which had been discovered earlier and was known to Legendre, these two definitions are equivalent. Thus Legendre's contribution lay in introducing a convenient "notation" that recorded quadratic residuosity of "a" mod "p". For the sake of comparison, Gauss used the notation "a"R"p", "a"N"p" according to whether "a" is a residue or a non-residue modulo "p". For typographical convenience, the Legendre symbol is sometimes written as ("a" | "p") or ("a"/"p"). The sequence ("a" | "p") for "a" equal to 0, 1, 2... is periodic with period "p" and is sometimes called the Legendre sequence, with {0,1,−1} values occasionally replaced by {1,0,1} or {0,1,0}. Each row in the following table can be seen to exhibit periodicity, just as described.
The following is a table of values of Legendre symbol formula_10 with "p" ≤ 127, "a" ≤ 30, "p" odd prime.
There are a number of useful properties of the Legendre symbol which, together with the law of quadratic reciprocity, can be used to compute it efficiently.
Let "p" and "q" be distinct odd primes. Using the Legendre symbol, the quadratic reciprocity law can be stated concisely:
Many proofs of quadratic reciprocity are based on Legendre's formula
In addition, several alternative expressions for the Legendre symbol were devised in order to produce various proofs of the quadratic reciprocity law.
The above properties, including the law of quadratic reciprocity, can be used to evaluate any Legendre symbol. For example:
Or using a more efficient computation:
The article Jacobi symbol has more examples of Legendre symbol manipulation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18567 |
Laconia incident
The "Laconia" incident was a series of events surrounding the sinking of a British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean on 12 September 1942, during World War II, and a subsequent aerial attack on German and Italian submarines involved in rescue attempts. , carrying 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers and prisoners of war, was torpedoed and sunk by , a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the commander, Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations. "U-156" broadcast their position on open radio channels to all Allied powers nearby, and were joined by the crews of several other U-boats in the vicinity.
After surfacing and picking up survivors, who were accommodated on the foredeck, "U-156" headed on the surface under Red Cross banners to rendezvous with Vichy French ships and transfer the survivors. En route, the U-boat was spotted by a B-24 Liberator bomber of the US Army Air Forces. The aircrew, having reported the U-boat's location, intentions and the presence of survivors, were then ordered to attack the sub. The B-24 killed dozens of "Laconia"s survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing "U-156" to cast their remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
Rescue operations were continued by other vessels. Another U-boat, , was also attacked by US aircraft and forced to dive. A total of 1,113 survivors were rescued; however, 1,619 were killed – mostly Italian POWs. The event changed the general attitude of Germany's naval personnel towards rescuing stranded Allied seamen. The commanders of the were quickly issued the Laconia Order by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, which specifically forbade any such attempt and ushered in unrestricted submarine warfare for the remainder of the war.
The B-24 pilots mistakenly reported they had sunk , and were awarded medals for bravery. Neither the US pilots nor their commander were punished or investigated, and the matter was quietly forgotten by the US military. During the later Nuremberg trials, a prosecutor attempted to cite the Laconia Order as proof of war crimes by Dönitz and his submariners. The ploy backfired and caused much embarrassment to the United States after the incident's full report had emerged.
was built in 1921 as a civilian ocean liner. During World War II she was requisitioned for the war effort, and by 1942 had been converted into a troopship. At the time of the incident she was transporting mostly Italian prisoners of war from Cape Town to Freetown, under the command of Captain Rudolph Sharp. The ship was carrying 463 officers and crew, 87 civilians, 286 British soldiers, 1,793 Italian prisoners and 103 Polish soldiers acting as guards of the prisoners.
Sharp had previously commanded , which had been sunk by German bombs on 17 June 1940, off the French port of Saint-Nazaire, while taking part in Operation Aerial, the evacuation of British nationals and troops from France, two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation.
At 10 p.m., on 12 September 1942, was on patrol off the coast of western Africa, midway between Liberia and Ascension Island. The submarine's commanding officer, Werner Hartenstein, spotted the large British ship sailing alone and attacked it. Armed ships—which meant most merchantmen and troop transports—constituted legitimate targets for attack without warning. Armed as such, the "Laconia" fell into this category, and at 10:22 p.m. she transmitted a message on the 600-meter (500 kHz) band: "SSS SSS 0434 South / 1125 West Laconia torpedoed." "SSS" was the code signifying "under attack by submarine". Additional messages were transmitted, but there is no record these were received by any other vessel or station.
Although there were sufficient lifeboats for the entire ship's complement, including the Italian prisoners, heavy listing prevented half from being launched until the vessel had settled. The prisoners were abandoned in the locked cargo holds as the ship sank, but most managed to escape by breaking down hatches or climbing up ventilation shafts. Several were shot when a group of prisoners rushed a lifeboat, and a large number were bayoneted to death to prevent their boarding of one of the few lifeboats available. The Polish guards were armed with rifles with fixed bayonets; however, they were not loaded and the guards carried no ammunition. Witnesses indicate that few of the prisoners were shot. Instead, most of the casualties were bayoneted.
By the time the last lifeboats were launched most survivors had already entered the water, so some lifeboats had few passengers. Only one life raft left the ship with prisoners on board; the rest jumped into the ocean. Survivors later recounted how Italians in the water were either shot or had their hands severed by axes if they tried to climb into a lifeboat. The blood soon attracted sharks. Corporal Dino Monte, one of the few Italian survivors, stated "... sharks darted among us. Grabbing an arm, biting a leg. Other larger beasts swallowed entire bodies." As "Laconia" was going under, "U-156" surfaced to capture the ship's surviving senior officers. To their surprise, they saw over 2,000 people struggling in the water.
Realising that the passengers were primarily POWs and civilians, Hartenstein immediately began rescue operations whilst flying the Red Cross flag. "Laconia" sank at 11:23 p.m., over an hour after the attack. At 1:25 a.m. on 13 September, Hartenstein sent a coded radio message to the alerting them to the situation. It read: "Sunk by Hartenstein, British Laconia, Qu FF7721, 310 deg. Unfortunately with 1,500 Italian POWs; 90 fished out of the water so far. Request orders."
The head of submarine operations, Admiral Karl Dönitz, immediately ordered seven U-boats from the wolfpack Eisbär, which had been gathering to take part in a planned surprise attack on Cape Town to divert to the scene to pick up survivors. Dönitz then informed Berlin of the situation and actions he had taken. Hitler was furious and ordered that the rescue be abandoned. Admiral Erich Raeder ordered Dönitz to disengage the Eisbär boats, which included Hartenstein's "U-156," and send them to Cape Town as per the original plan. Raeder then ordered , commanded by Erich Würdemann, , under "Korvettenkapitän" Harro Schacht, and the Italian submarine to intercept Hartenstein to take on his survivors and then to proceed to the "Laconia" site and rescue any Italians they could find. Raeder also requested the Vichy French to send warships from Dakar and Ivory Coast to collect the Italian survivors from the three submarines.
The Vichy French, in response, sent the 7,600-ton cruiser from Dakar, and two sloops, the fast 660-ton "Annamite" and the slower 2,000-ton , from Conakry, French Guinea, and Cotonou, Dahomey, respectively. Dönitz disengaged the Eisbär boats and informed Hartenstein of Raeder's orders, but he substituted "Kapitänleutnant" Helmut Witte's for "U-156" in the Eisbär group and sent the order: "All boats, including Hartenstein, only take as many men into the boat as will allow it to be fully ready for action when submerged."
"U-156" was soon crammed above and below decks with nearly 200 survivors, including five women, and had another 200 in tow aboard four lifeboats. At 6 a.m. on 13 September, Hartenstein broadcast a message on the band in English—not in code—to all shipping in the area, giving his position, requesting assistance with the rescue effort, and promising not to attack. It read: "If any ship will assist the shipwrecked Laconia crew I will not attack her, providing I am not being attacked by ship or air force. I picked up 193 men. 4°-53" South, 11°-26" West. – German submarine."
The British in Freetown intercepted this message but, believing it might be a ruse of war, refused to credit it. Two days later, on 15 September, a message was passed to the Americans that "Laconia" had been torpedoed and the British merchant ship was en route to pick up survivors. The "poorly composed message" implied that "Laconia" had only been sunk that day and made no mention that the Germans were involved in a rescue attempt under a cease-fire or that neutral French ships were also en route.
"U-156" remained on the surface at the scene for the next two and a half days. At 11:30 a.m. on 15 September, she was joined by "U-506", and a few hours later by both and the . The four submarines, with lifeboats in tow and hundreds of survivors standing on their decks, headed for the African coastline and a rendezvous with the Vichy French surface warships that had set out from Senegal and Dahomey.
During the night the submarines became separated. On 16 September at 11:25 a.m., "U-156" was spotted by an American B-24 Liberator bomber flying from a secret airbase on Ascension. The submarine was travelling with a Red Cross flag draped across her gun deck. Hartenstein signalled to the pilot in both Morse code and English requesting assistance. A British officer also messaged the aircraft: "RAF officer speaking from German submarine, "Laconia" survivors on board, soldiers, civilians, women, children."
Lieutenant James D. Harden of the US Army Air Forces did not respond to the messages; turning away, he notified his base of the situation. The senior officer on duty that day, Captain Robert C. Richardson III, who claimed that he did not know that this was a Red Cross-sanctioned German rescue operation, ordered the B-24 to "sink the sub." Richardson later claimed he believed that the rules of war at the time did not permit a combat ship to fly Red Cross flags. He feared that the German submarine would attack the two Allied freighters diverted by the British to the site. He assumed that the German submarine was rescuing only the Italian POWs. In his tactical assessment, he believed that the submarine might discover and shell the secret Ascension airfield and fuel tanks, thus cutting off a critical Allied resupply air route to British forces in Egypt and Soviet forces in Russia.
Harden flew back to the scene of the rescue effort, and at 12:32 p.m., attacked with bombs and depth charges. One landed among the lifeboats in tow behind "U-156", killing dozens of survivors, while others straddled the submarine itself, causing minor damage. Hartenstein cast adrift those lifeboats still afloat and ordered the survivors on his deck into the water. The submarine submerged slowly to give those still on the deck a chance to get into the water and escape. According to Harden's report, he made four runs at the submarine. On the first three the depth charges and bombs failed to release, on the fourth he dropped two bombs. The crew of the Liberator were later awarded medals for the alleged sinking of "U-156", when they had in fact only sunk two lifeboats.
Ignoring "Commander" Hartenstein's request that they stay in the area to be rescued by the Vichy French, two lifeboats decided to head for Africa. One, which began the journey with 68 people on board, reached the African coast 27 days later with only 16 survivors. The other was rescued by a British trawler after 40 days at sea. Only four of its 52 occupants were still alive.
Unaware of the attack, "U-507", "U-506", and "Cappellini" continued to pick up survivors. The following morning Commander Revedin of "Cappellini" found that he was rescuing survivors who had been set adrift by "U-156." At 11:30 a.m. Revedin received the following message: "Bordeaux to Cappellini: Reporting attack already undergone by other submarines. Be ready to submerge for action against the enemy. Put shipwrecked on rafts except women, children, and Italians, and make for minor grid-square 56 of grid-square 0971 where you will land remainder shipwrecked on to French ships. Keep British prisoners. Keep strictest watch enemy planes and submarines. End of message."
"U-507" and "U-506" received confirmation from headquarters of the attack on "U-156" and were asked for the number of survivors rescued. "Commander" Schacht of "U-507" replied that he had 491, of whom 15 were women and 16 were children. "Commander" Wurdemann of "U-506" confirmed 151, including nine women and children. The next message from headquarters ordered them to cast adrift all the British and Polish survivors, mark their positions and instruct them to remain exactly where they were, then proceed with all haste to the rescue rendezvous. The respective commanders chose not to cast any survivors adrift.
The order given by Richardson has been called a Allied war crime. Under the conventions of war at sea, ships—including submarines—engaged in rescue operations are held to be immune from attack.
Five B-25s from Ascension's permanent squadron and Hardin's B-24 continued to search for submarines from dawn till dusk. On 17 September, one B-25 sighted "Laconia"s lifeboats and informed "Empire Haven" of their position. Hardin's B-24 sighted "U-506", which had 151 survivors on board including nine women and children, and attacked. On the first run the bombs failed to drop, "U-506" crash dived and on the second run the B-24 dropped two bombs and two depth charges but they caused no damage.
That same day, the British at Freetown sent an ambiguous message to Ascension informing them that three French ships from Dakar were en route. Captain Richardson assumed the French intended to invade Ascension so the submarine hunting was cancelled in order to prepare for an invasion.
The French cruiser picked up 52 survivors, all British, while still from the rendezvous point. "Gloire" then met with the sloop "Annamite" with both meeting "U-507" and "U-506" at the rendezvous point at a little after 2 p.m. on 17 September. With the exception of two British officers kept aboard "U-507," the survivors were all transferred to the rescue ships. "Gloire" sailed off on her own and within four hours rescued another 11 lifeboats. At 10 p.m., "Gloire" found another lifeboat and proceeded to a planned rendezvous with "Annamite".
At 1 a.m., a lookout spotted a light on the horizon, which was investigated despite this meaning "Gloire" would not be able to make the rendezvous, and a further 84 survivors were rescued. A new rendezvous was arranged, the ships meeting at 9:30 a.m. with "Annamite" transferring her survivors to "Gloire". A count was then taken: 373 Italians, 70 Poles and 597 British who included 48 women and children. "Gloire" arrived at Dakar on 21 September to resupply before sailing for Casablanca, arriving there on 25 September. On arrival, Colonel Baldwin, on behalf of all the British survivors, presented the captain of "Cappellini" with a letter that read as follows:
The submarine "Cappellini" had been unable to find the French warships so radioed for instructions and awaited a response. The French sloop "Dumont-d’Urville" was sent to rendezvous with "Cappellini" and by chance rescued a lifeboat from the British cargo ship "Trevilley", which had been torpedoed on 12 September. After searching for other "Trevilley" survivors without luck, "Dumont-d’Urville" met "Cappellini" on 20 September. With the exception of six Italians and two British officers, the remaining survivors were transferred to "Dumont-d’Urville", which later transferred the Italians to "Annamite", which transported them to Dakar on 24 September. Of "Laconia"’s original complement of 2,732, only 1,113 survived. Of the 1,619 who died, 1,420 were Italian POWs.
From Casablanca, most of the survivors were taken to Mediouna to await transport to a prison camp in Germany. On 8 November, the Allied invasion of North Africa began liberating the survivors, who were taken aboard the ship "Anton" which landed them in the United States.
One of the survivors, Gladys Foster, wrote a detailed description of the sinking, the rescue and then subsequent two-month internment in Africa. Gladys was the wife of Chaplain to the Forces the Rev. Denis Beauchamp Lisle Foster, who was stationed in Malta. She was on board the ship with her 14-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Barbara Foster, travelling back to Britain. During the mayhem of the sinking the two were separated and it was not until days later that Gladys discovered her daughter had survived and was on another raft. She was urged to write her recollection not long after landing back in London.
Doris Hawkins, a missionary nurse survived the "Laconia" incident and spent 27 days adrift in Lifeboat Nine, finally coming ashore on the coast of Liberia. She was returning to England after five years in Palestine, with 14-month-old Sally Kay Readman, who was lost to the sea as they were transferred into the lifeboat.
Doris Hawkins wrote a pamphlet entitled "Atlantic Torpedo" after her eventual return to England, published by Victor Gollancz in 1943. In it she writes of the moments when Sally was lost: "We found ourselves on top of the arms and legs of a panic-stricken mass of humanity. The lifeboat, filled to capacity with men, women and children, was leaking badly and rapidly filling with water; at the same time it was crashing against the ship’s side. Just as Sally was passed over to me, the boat filled completely and capsized, flinging us all into the water. I lost her. I did not hear her cry even then, and I am sure that God took her immediately to Himself without suffering. I never saw her again."
Doris Hawkins was one of 16 survivors (out of 69 in the lifeboat when it was cast adrift from the U-boat). She spent the remaining war years personally visiting the families of people who perished in the lifeboat, returning mementos entrusted to her by them in their dying moments. In Doris's words, "It is impossible to imagine why I should have been chosen to survive when so many did not. I have been reluctant to write the story of our experiences, but in answer to many requests I have done so; and if it strengthens someone’s faith, if it is an inspiration to any, if it brings home to others, hitherto untouched, all that 'those who go down to the sea in ships' face for our sakes, hour by hour, day by day, year in and year out – it will not have been written in vain".
Survivor Jim McLoughlin states in "One Common Enemy" that after the incident Hartenstein asked him if he was in the Royal Navy, which he was, and then asked why a passenger ship was armed, stating, "If it wasn't armed, I would not have attacked." McLoughlin believes this indicates Hartenstein had thought it was a troop transport rather than a passenger ship; by signalling to the Royal Navy, "Laconia" was acting as a auxiliary ship.
The "Laconia" incident had far-reaching consequences. Up until that point, it was common for U-boats to assist torpedoed survivors with food, water, simple medical care for the wounded, and a compass bearing to the nearest landmass. It was extremely rare for survivors to be brought on board as space on a U-boat was barely enough for its own crew. On 17 September 1942, in response to the incident, Admiral Karl Dönitz issued an order named "Triton Null", later known as the Laconia Order. In it, Dönitz prohibited U-boat crews from attempting rescues; survivors were to be left in the sea. Even afterwards, U-boats still occasionally provided aid for survivors.
At the Nuremberg trials held by the Allies in 1946, Dönitz was indicted for war crimes. The issuance of the Laconia Order was the centrepiece of the prosecution case, a decision that backfired badly. Its introduction allowed the defence to recount at length the numerous instances in which German submariners acted with humanity where in similar situations the Allies behaved callously. Dönitz pointed out that the order itself was a direct result of this callousness and the attack on a rescue operation by US aircraft.
The Americans had also practised unrestricted submarine warfare, under their own equivalent to the Laconia Order, which had been in force since they entered the war. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, provided unapologetic written testimony on Dönitz's behalf at his trial that the US Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the very first day the United States entered the war. This testimony led the Nuremberg Tribunal to not impose a sentence upon Dönitz, for this breach of law, even though he was convicted of the count.
The Naval War College journal, "International Law Studies", covers interpretations of international law during armed conflicts and how these laws were applied by each party. In volume 65, chapter three: "The Law of Naval Operations", the "Laconia" incident is examined in the context of the application of international law to World War II submarine warfare:
Bibliography
Other sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18569 |
Leon Theremin
Leon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen ; – 3 November 1993) was a Russian and Soviet inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States Ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.
Leon Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire in 1896 into a family of French Huguenot and German ancestry. He had a sister named Helena.
In the seventh class of his high school before an audience of students and parents he demonstrated various optical effects using electricity.
By the age of 17, when he was in his last year of high school, he had his own laboratory at home for experimenting with high-frequency circuits, optics and magnetic fields. His cousin, Kirill Fedorovich Nesturkh, then a young physicist, invited him to attend the defense of the dissertation of Abram Fedorovich Ioffe. Physics lecturer Vladimir Konstantinovich Lebedinskiy had explained to Theremin the dispute over Ioffe's work on the electron. On 9 May 1913 Theremin and his cousin attended Ioffe's dissertation defense. Ioffe's subject was on the elementary photoelectric effect, the magnetic field of cathode rays and related investigations. In 1917 Theremin wrote that Ioffe talked of electrons, the photoelectric effect and magnetic fields as parts of an objective reality that surrounds us every day, unlike others that talked more of somewhat abstract formulae and symbols. Theremin wrote that he found this explanation revelatory and that it fit a scientific – not abstract – view of the world, different scales of magnitude, and matter. From then on Theremin endeavoured to study the microcosm, in the same way he had studied the macrocosm with his hand-built telescope. Later, Kyrill introduced Theremin to Ioffe as a young experimenter and physicist, and future student of the university.
Theremin recalled that while still in his last year of school, he had built a million-volt Tesla coil and noticed a strong glow associated with his attempts to ionise the air. He then wished to further investigate the effects using university resources. A chance meeting with Abram Fedorovich Ioffe led to a recommendation to see Karl Karlovich Baumgart, who was in charge of the physics laboratory equipment. Karl then reserved a room and equipment for Theremin's experiments. Abram Fedorovich suggested Theremin also look at methods of creating gas fluorescence under different conditions and of examining the resulting light's spectra. However, during these investigations Theremin was called up for World War I military service.
Although only in his second academic year, the deanery of the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy recommended that Theremin go to the Nikolayevska Military Engineering School in Petrograd (previously Saint Petersburg), which usually only accepted students in their fourth year. Theremin recalled that Ioffe reassured him that the war would not last long and that military experience would be useful for scientific applications.
Beginning his military service in 1916, Theremin finished the Military Engineering School in six months, progressed through the Graduate Electronic School for Officers, and attained the military radio-engineer diploma in the same year. In the course of the next three and a half years he oversaw the construction of a radio station in Saratov to connect the Volga area with Moscow, graduated from Petrograd University, became deputy leader of the new Military Radiotechnical Laboratory in Moscow, and finished as the broadcast supervisor of the radio transmitter at "Tsarskoye Selo" near Petrograd (then renamed "Detskoye Selo").
During the Russian civil war, in October 1919 White Army commander Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich advanced on Petrograd from the side of "Detskoye Selo", apparently intending to capture the radio station to announce a victory over the Bolsheviks. Theremin and others evacuated the station, sending equipment east on rail cars. Theremin then detonated explosives to destroy the 120-meter-high antennae mast before traveling to Petrograd to set up an international listening station. There he also trained radio specialists but reported difficulties obtaining food and working with foreign experts whom he described as narrow-minded pessimists.
Theremin recalled that on an evening when his hopes of overcoming these obstructing experts reached a low ebb, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe telephoned him. Ioffe asked Theremin to come to his newly founded Physical Technical Institute in Petrograd, and the next day he invited him to start work at developing measuring methods for high-frequency electrical oscillations.
The day after Ioffe's invitation, Theremin started at the institute. He worked in diverse fields: applying the Laue effect to the new field of X-ray analysis of crystals; using hypnosis to improve measurement-reading accuracy; working with Ivan Pavlov's laboratory; and using gas-filled lamps as measuring devices. He built a high-frequency oscillator to measure the dielectric constant of gases with high precision; Ioffe then urged him to look for other applications using this method, and shortly made the first motion detector for use as a "radio watchman".
While adapting the dielectric device by adding circuitry to generate an audio tone, Theremin noticed that the pitch changed when his hand moved around. In October 1920 he first demonstrated this to Ioffe who called in other professors and students to hear. Theremin recalled trying to find the notes for tunes he remembered from when he played the cello, such as the Swan by Saint-Saëns. By November 1920 Theremin had given his first public concert with the instrument, now modified with a horizontal volume antenna replacing the earlier foot-operated volume control. He named it the "etherphone", to be known as the Терменвокс (Termenvox) in the Soviet Union, as the "Thereminvox" in Germany, and later as the "theremin" in the United States.
On 24 May 1924 Theremin married 20-year-old Katia (Ekaterina Pavlovna) Konstantinova, and they lived together in his parents' apartment on Marat street.
In 1925 Theremin went to Germany to sell both the radio watchman and Termenvox patents to the German firm Goldberg and Sons. According to Glinsky, this was the Soviet's "decoy for capitalists" to obtain both Western profits from sales and technical knowledge.
During this time Theremin was also working on a wireless television with 16 scan lines in 1925, improving to 32 scan lines and then 64 using interlacing in 1926, and he demonstrated moving, if blurry, images on 7 June 1927. His device was the first functioning television apparatus in Russia.
After being sent on a lengthy tour of Europe starting 1927 – including London, Paris and towns in Germany – during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin found his way to the United States, arriving on 30 December 1927 with his first wife Katia. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in the United States in 1928 and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.
Theremin set up a laboratory in New York in the 1930s, where he further refined the theremin and experimented with other inventions and new electronic musical instruments. These included the Rhythmicon, commissioned by the American composer and theorist Henry Cowell.
In 1930, ten thereminists performed on stage at Carnegie Hall. Two years later, Theremin conducted the first-ever electronic orchestra, featuring the theremin and other electronic instruments including a "fingerboard" theremin which resembled a cello in use (Theremin was a cellist).
In 1931, he worked with composer Henry Cowell to build an instrument called the rhythmicon. They were lucky to have gotten it to market as quickly as they did as brothers Otto and Benjamin Miessner had almost completed a similar instrument with the same name.
Theremin's mentors during this time were some of society's foremost scientists, composers, and musical theorists, including composer Joseph Schillinger and physicist (and amateur violinist) Albert Einstein.
At this time, Theremin worked closely with fellow Soviet émigré and theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (née Reisenberg). Theremin had several times
proposed to her, but she chose to marry attorney Robert Rockmore, and thereafter used his name professionally.
Federal Bureau of Prisons hired Theremin to build a metal detector for Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
Theremin was interested in a role for the theremin in dance music. He developed performance locations that could automatically react to dancers' movements with varied patterns of sound and light.
The Soviet consulate had apparently demanded he divorce Katia. Afterwards, while working with the American Negro Ballet Company, the inventor married a young African-American prima ballerina Lavinia Williams. Their marriage caused shock and disapproval in his social circles, but the ostracized couple remained together.
Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938. At the time, the reasons for his return were unclear; some claimed that he was simply homesick, while others believed that he had been kidnapped by Soviet officials. Beryl Campbell, one of Theremin's dancers, said his wife Lavinia "called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio" and that "some Russians had come in" and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country.
Many years later, it was revealed that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States. However, Theremin himself once told Bulat Galeyev that he decided to leave himself because he was anxious about the approaching war. Shortly after he returned he was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated and published, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a "sharashka" (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system), together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev, and other well-known scientists and engineers. The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956.
During his work at the "sharashka", where he was put in charge of other workers, Theremin created the Buran eavesdropping system. A precursor to the modern laser microphone, it worked by using a low-power infrared beam from a distance to detect sound vibrations in glass windows. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the secret police organization NKVD (the predecessor of the KGB), used the Buran device to spy on the British, French and US embassies in Moscow. According to Galeyev, Beria also spied on Stalin; Theremin kept some of the tapes in his flat. In 1947, Theremin was awarded the Stalin prize for inventing this advance in Soviet espionage technology.
Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing, hidden in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States carved in wood. In 1945, Soviet school children presented the concealed bug to the U.S. Ambassador as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s residential office in Moscow and intercepted confidential conversations there during the first seven years of the Cold War, until it was accidentally discovered in 1952.
After his "release" from the "sharashka" in 1947, Theremin volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966. By 1947 Theremin had remarried, to Maria Guschina, his third wife, and they had two children: Lena and Natalia.
Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music for 10 years where he taught, and built theremins, electronic cellos and some terpsitones (another invention of Theremin). There he was discovered by Harold Schonberg, the chief music critic of "The New York Times", who was visiting the Conservatory. But when an article by Schonberg appeared mentioning Theremin, the Conservatory's Managing Director declared that "electricity is not good for music; electricity is to be used for electrocution" and had his instruments removed from the Conservatory. Further electronic music projects were banned, and Theremin was summarily dismissed.
In the 1970s, Leon Theremin was a Professor of Physics at Moscow State University (Department of Acoustics) developing his inventions and supervising graduate students.
After 51 years in the Soviet Union Theremin started travelling, first visiting France in June 1989 and then the United States in 1991, each time accompanied by his daughter Natalia. Theremin was brought to New York by filmmaker Steven M. Martin where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore. He also made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993 before dying in Moscow in 1993 at the age of 97.
Theremin died on Wednesday 3 November 1993 in Moscow.
The feature-length documentary film, "" was released in 1993.
His life story and his Great Seal bug invention were featured in a of the "".
In 2000, University of Illinois Press published "Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage" by Albert Glinsky, with a foreword by Robert Moog.
In 2014, Canadian writer Sean Michaels published the novel "Us Conductors", which was inspired by the relationship between Leon Theremin and Clara Rockmore. The novel won the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18571 |
Linear prediction
Linear prediction is a mathematical operation where future values of a discrete-time signal are estimated as a linear function of previous samples.
In digital signal processing, linear prediction is often called linear predictive coding (LPC) and can thus be viewed as a subset of filter theory. In system analysis, a subfield of mathematics, linear prediction can be viewed as a part of mathematical modelling or optimization.
The most common representation is
where formula_2 is the predicted signal value, formula_3 the previous observed values, with formula_4, and formula_5 the predictor coefficients. The error generated by this estimate is
where formula_7 is the true signal value.
These equations are valid for all types of (one-dimensional) linear prediction. The differences are found in the way the predictor coefficients formula_5 are chosen.
For multi-dimensional signals the error metric is often defined as
where formula_10 is a suitable chosen vector norm. Predictions such as formula_2 are routinely used within Kalman filters and smoothers to estimate current and past signal values, respectively.
The most common choice in optimization of parameters formula_5 is the root mean square criterion which is also called the autocorrelation criterion. In this method we minimize the expected value of the squared error formula_13, which yields the equation
for 1 ≤ "j" ≤ "p", where "R" is the autocorrelation of signal "x""n", defined as
and "E" is the expected value. In the multi-dimensional case this corresponds to minimizing the L2 norm.
The above equations are called the normal equations or Yule-Walker equations. In matrix form the equations can be equivalently written as
where the autocorrelation matrix formula_17 is a symmetric, formula_18 Toeplitz matrix with elements formula_19 is the autocorrelation vector formula_20, and formula_21, the parameter vector.
Another, more general, approach is to minimize the sum of squares of the errors defined in the form
where the optimisation problem searching over all formula_5 must now be constrained with formula_24.
On the other hand, if the mean square prediction error is constrained to be unity and the prediction error equation is included on top of the normal equations, the augmented set of equations is obtained as
where the index formula_26 ranges from 0 to formula_27, and formula_17 is a formula_29 matrix.
Specification of the parameters of the linear predictor is a wide topic and a large number of other approaches have been proposed. In fact, the autocorrelation method is the most common and it is used, for example, for speech coding in the GSM standard.
Solution of the matrix equation formula_16 is computationally a relatively expensive process. The Gaussian elimination for matrix inversion is probably the oldest solution but this approach does not efficiently use the symmetry of formula_17. A faster algorithm is the Levinson recursion proposed by Norman Levinson in 1947, which recursively calculates the solution. In particular, the autocorrelation equations above may be more efficiently solved by the Durbin algorithm.
In 1986, Philippe Delsarte and Y.V. Genin proposed an improvement to this algorithm called the split Levinson recursion, which requires about half the number of multiplications and divisions. It uses a special symmetrical property of parameter vectors on subsequent recursion levels. That is, calculations for the optimal predictor containing formula_27 terms make use of similar calculations for the optimal predictor containing formula_33 terms.
Another way of identifying model parameters is to iteratively calculate state estimates using Kalman filters and obtaining maximum likelihood estimates within expectation–maximization algorithms.
For equally-spaced values, a polynomial interpolation is a linear combination of the known values. If the discrete time signal is estimated to obey a polynomial of degree formula_34 then the predictor coefficients formula_5 are given by the corresponding row of the triangle of binomial transform coefficients. This estimate might be suitable for a slowly varying signal with low noise. The predictions for the first few values of formula_27 are | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18572 |
Leto
In Greek mythology, Leto (; "Lētṓ"; Λατώ, "Lātṓ" in Doric Greek) is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria. She is the mother of Apollo and Artemis.
The island of Kos is claimed to be her birthplace. However, Diodorus, in 2.47 states clearly that Leto was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos. In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eye of Zeus. Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and search for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera in her jealousy caused all lands to shun her. She eventually found an island that was not attached to the ocean floor, therefore it was not considered land and she could give birth. This is her only active mythic role: once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played. In Roman mythology, Leto's Roman equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan "Letun".
There are several explanations for the origin of the goddess and the meaning of her name. Older sources speculated that the name is related to the Greek λήθη "lḗthē" (lethe, oblivion) and λωτός "lotus" (the fruit that brings oblivion to those who eat it). It would thus mean "the hidden one".
In 20th-century sources "Leto" is traditionally derived from Lycian "lada", "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia. Lycian "lada" may also be the origin of the Greek name Λήδα "Leda". Other scholars (Paul Kretschmer, Erich Bethe, Pierre Chantraine and R. S. P. Beekes) have suggested a Pre-Greek origin.
Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards as the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized. In Greek inscriptions, the children of Leto are referred to as the "national gods" of the country. Her sanctuary, the Letoon near Xanthos, predated Hellenic influence in the region, however, and united the Lycian confederacy of city-states. The Hellenes of Kos also claimed Leto as their own. Another sanctuary, more recently identified, was at Oenoanda in the north of Lycia. There was a further Letoon at Delos.
Leto was intensely worshipped in Lycia, Anatolia. In Delos and Athens she was worshipped primarily as an adjunct to her children. Herodotus reported a temple to her in Egypt supposedly attached to a floating island called "Khemmis" in Buto, which also included a temple to an Egyptian god Greeks identified by "interpretatio graeca" as Apollo. There, Herodotus was given to understand, the goddess whom Greeks recognised as Leto was worshipped in the form of Wadjet, the cobra-headed goddess of Lower Egypt.
Leto was also worshipped in Crete, whether one of "certain Cretan
goddesses, or Greek goddesses in their Cretan form, influenced by the Minoan goddess". Veneration of a local Leto is attested at Phaistos (where it is purported that she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis at the islands known today as the Paximadia (also known as Letoai in ancient Crete) and at Lato, which bore her name. As "Leto Phytia" she was a mother-deity.
Pindar calls the goddess "Leto Chryselakatos", an epithet that was attached to her daughter Artemis as early as Homer. "The conception of a goddess enthroned like a queen and equipped with a spindle seems to have originated in Asiatic worship of the Great Mother", O. Brendel notes, but a lucky survival of an inscribed inventory of her temple on Delos, where she was the central figures of the Delian trinity, records her cult image as sitting on a wooden throne, clothed in a linen "chiton" and a linen "himation".
According to Hyginus (Fabulae) when Hera, the goddess of marriage and family, and the wife of Zeus, discovered that Leto was pregnant by Zeus, Hera banned Leto from giving birth on "terra firma", the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under the sun.
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus (Biblioteca) "Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo."
Antoninus Liberalis hints that Leto came down from Hyperborea in the guise of a she-wolf, or that she sought out the "wolf-country" of Lycia, formerly called Tremilis, which she renamed to honour wolves that had befriended her. Another late source, Aelian, also links Leto with wolves and Hyperboreans:
Wolves are not easily delivered of their young, only after twelve days and twelve nights, for the people of Delos maintain that this was the length of time that it took Leto to travel from the Hyperboreoi to Delos.
Leto found the barren floating island of Delos, still bearing its archaic name of Asterios, which was neither mainland nor a real island and gave birth there, promising the island wealth from the worshippers who would flock to the obscure birthplace of the splendid god who was to come. As a gesture of gratitude, Delos was secured with four pillars and later became sacred to Apollo.
Callimachus wrote that it is remarkable that Leto brought forth Artemis, the elder twin, without travail.
By contrast, according to the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, Leto labored for nine nights and nine days for Apollo, in the presence of all the first among the deathless goddesses as witnesses: Dione, Rhea, Ichnaea, Themis and the sea-goddess Amphitrite. Only Hera kept apart, perhaps to kidnap Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor. Instead, Artemis, having been born first, assisted with the birth of Apollo. Another version, in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and in an Orphic hymn, states that Artemis was born before Apollo, on the island of Ortygia, and that she helped Leto cross the sea to Delos the next day to give birth to Apollo there.
According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to witness the birth of Apollo were responding to a public occasion in the rites of a dynasty, where the authenticity of the child must be established beyond doubt from the first moment. The dynastic rite of the witnessed birth must have been familiar to the hymn's hearers. The dynasty that is so concerned about being authenticated in this myth is the new dynasty of Zeus and the Olympian Pantheon, and the goddesses at Delos who bear witness to the rightness of the birth are the great goddesses of the old order. Demeter was not present and Aphrodite was not either, but Rhea attended. The goddess Dione (in her name simply the "Goddess") is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a mere feminine form of Zeus (see entry Dodona). If that was the case, she would not have assembled there.
Leto was threatened and assailed in her wanderings by chthonic monsters of the ancient earth and old ways, and these became the enemies of Apollo and Artemis. One was the giant Tityos, a phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, but was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and/or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode.
Another ancient earth creature that had to be overcome was the dragon Python, which lived in a cleft of the mother-rock beneath Delphi and beside the Castalian Spring. Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterward, since though Python was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god.
Niobe, a queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion, boasted of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven sons and seven daughters, while Leto had only two. For her hubris, Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, and Artemis killed her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared (Chloris, usually). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Zeus after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and either turned to stone as she wept or killed herself. Her tears formed the river Achelous. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death when the gods themselves entombed them.
The Niobe narrative appears in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (Book VI) where Latona (Leto) has demanded the women of Thebes to go to her temple and burn incense. Niobe, queen of Thebes, enters in the midst of the worship and insults the goddess, claiming that having beauty, better parentage and more children than Latona, she is more fit to be worshipped than the goddess. To punish this insolence, Latona begs Apollo and Artemis to avenge her against Niobe and to uphold her honor. Obedient to their mother, the twins slay Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters, leaving her childless, and her husband Amphion kills himself. Niobe is unable to move from grief and seemingly turns to marble, though she continues to weep, and her body is transported to a high mountain peak in her native land.
Leto's introduction into Lycia was met with resistance. There, according to Ovid's "Metamorphoses", when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from a pond in Lycia. The peasants there refused to allow her to do so by stirring the mud at the bottom of the pond. Leto turned them into frogs for their inhospitality, forever doomed to swim in the murky waters of ponds and rivers.
This scene, usually called Latona and the Lycian Peasants or Latona and the Frogs, was popular in Northern Mannerist art, allowing a combination of mythology with landscape painting and peasant scenes, thus combining history painting and genre painting. It is represented in the central fountain, the "Bassin de Latone", in the garden terrace of Versailles.
In Crete, at the city of Dreros, Spyridon Marinatos uncovered an eighth-century post-Minoan hearth house temple in which there were found three unique figures of Apollo, Artemis and Leto made of brass sheeting hammered over a shaped core ("sphyrelata"). Walter Burkert notes that in Phaistos she appears in connection with an initiation cult. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18574 |
La Malinche
Marina or Malintzin (c. 1500 – c. 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche , was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played a key role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 women slaves given to the Spaniards by the natives of Tabasco in 1519. Later, she gave birth to Cortés's first son, Martín, who is considered one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry).
The historical figure of Marina has been intermixed with Aztec legends (such as that of La Llorona, a ghost woman who weeps for her lost children). Her reputation has been altered over the years according to changing social and political perspectives, especially after the Mexican Revolution, when she was portrayed in dramas, novels, and paintings as an evil or scheming temptress. In Mexico today, La Malinche remains iconically potent. She is understood in various and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or simply as symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. The term "malinchista" refers to a disloyal compatriot, especially in Mexico.
Malinche is known by many names. She was baptized as Marina, and was referred to as such by the Spaniards, often preceded with honorific . The Nahuas called her 'Malintzin', derived from 'Malina' (a Nahuatl rendering of her Spanish name) and the honorific suffix . According to the historian Camilla Townsend, the vocative suffix is sometimes added at the end of the name, giving the form "Malintzine", which would be shortened to 'Malintze', and heard by the Spaniards as 'Malinche'. Another possibility is that the Spaniards simply did not hear the 'whispered' of the name "Malintzin".
Her name at birth is unknown. It has been popularly assumed since at least the 19th century that she was originally named 'Malinalli' (Nahuatl for 'grass'), after the day sign on which she was supposedly born, and that Marina was chosen as her Christian name on account of phonetic similarity, but modern historians have rejected these propositions. The Nahuas associate the day sign 'Malinalli' with bad or even 'evil' connotations, and they are known to avoid using such day signs as personal names. Moreover, there would be little reason for the Spaniards to ask the natives what their personal names were before christening them with similar-sounding Spanish names.
Another title that is often assumed to be part of her original name is 'Tenepal'. In the annotation made by the Nahua historian Chimalpahin on his copy of Gómara's biography of Cortés, 'Malintzin Tenepal' is used repeatedly in reference to Malinche. According to the linguist and historian Frances Karttunen, Tenepal is probably derived from the Nahuatl root which means “lip-possessor, one who speaks vigorously” or “one who has a facility with words”, and postposition , which means “by means of”. The historian James Lockhart, however, suggests that Tenepal might be derived from or "somebody's tongue". In any case, it seems that 'Malintzin Tenepal' was intended to be a calque of Spanish , with ("the interpreter", literally "the tongue") being her Spanish sobriquet.
Malinche's birthdate is unknown, but it is estimated to be around 1500, and likely no later than 1505. She was born in an that was either a part or a tributary of a Mesoamerican state whose center was located on the bank of the Coatzacoalcos River to the east of the Aztec Empire. Records disagree about the exact name of the where she was born into. In three unrelated legal proceedings that occurred not long after her death, various witnesses who claimed to have known her personally, including her own daughter, said that she was born in Olutla. The of her grandson also mentioned Olutla as her birthplace. Her daughter also added that the of Olutla was related to Tetiquipaque, although the nature of this relationship is unclear. In the "Florentine Codex", Malinche's homeland is mentioned as "Teticpac", which is most likely the singular form of Tetiquipaque. Gómara writes that she came from "Uiluta" (presumably a variant of "Olutla"), although he departs from other sources by writing that it was in the region of Jalisco. Díaz, on the other hand, gives "Painalla" as her birthplace.
Her family is reported to be of noble background; Gómara writes that her father was related to a local ruler, while Díaz recounts that her parents themselves were rulers. Townsend notes that while Olutla at the time probably had a Popoluca majority, the ruling elite, which Malinche supposedly belonged to, would have been Nahuatl-speaking. Another hint that supports her noble origin is her apparent ability to understand the courtly language of (“lordly speech”), a Nahuatl register that is significantly different from the commoner's speech and has to be learned. The fact that she was often referred to as a , at the time when it was not commonly used even in Spain, also indicates that she was viewed as a noblewoman, although it is also possible that the honorific was attributed to her because of her important role in the conquest.
Probably between the age of 8 and 12, Malinche was either sold or kidnapped into slavery. Díaz famously wrote that after her father's death, she was given away to merchants by her mother and stepfather so that their own son (Malinche's stepbrother) could succeed as heir. Some scholars, historians and literary critics alike, have cast doubt upon Díaz's account of her origin. Nevertheless, Townsend considers it likely that some of her people were complicit in trafficking her, regardless of the reason. Malinche was taken to Xicalango, a major port city in the region. She was later purchased by a group of Chontal Maya who brought her to the town of Potonchán. It was here that Malinche started to learn the Chontal Maya language, and perhaps also Yucatec Maya. This would later enable her to communicate with Jerónimo de Aguilar, another interpreter for Cortes who also spoke Yucatec Maya, alongside his native Spanish.
Early in his expedition to Mexico, Cortés was confronted by the Mayas at Potonchán. After suffering a significant loss of lives in the battle that ensued, the Mayas asked for peace, and in the following days, presented the Spaniards with gifts of food and gold, as well as twenty slave women. Malinche was one of the women presented to the Spaniards. She and the other women were baptized and subsequently distributed among Cortés's men, not only as servants, but also to provide sexual services. Malinche was given to Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, one of Cortés's captains who was also a first cousin to the count of Cortés's hometown, Medellín.
Malinche's linguistic gift went undiscovered until the Spaniards first encounter with the Nahuatl-speaking people at San Juan de Ulúa. Moctezuma's emissaries had come to inspect them, but Aguilar found himself unable to understand their words. When it was realized that Malinche was able to converse with the emissaries, she and Aguilar were set aside by Cortés, who, according to Gómara, promised her “more than liberty” if she would assist him in finding and communicating with Moctezuma. Cortés took Malinche back from Puertocarrero, who was later given another indigenous woman before he was sent back to Spain. Through Aguilar and Malinche, Cortés talked with Moctezuma's emissaries. The emissaries also brought artists to make paintings of Malinche, Cortés, and the rest of the group, as well as their ships and weapons, to be sent as records for Moctezuma. Díaz later said that the Nahuas also addressed Cortés as "Malinche"; they apparently took her as a point of reference for the group.
From then on, Malinche would work together with Aguilar to bridge communication between the Spaniards and the Nahuas; Cortés would speak Spanish with Aguilar, who then translated into Yucatec Maya for Malinche, who in turn translated into Nahuatl, before reversing the process. The translation chain grew even longer when, after the emissaries left, they met the Totonacs, whose language was unintelligible to both Malinche and Aguilar. There, Malinche asked for Nahuatl interpreters. Karttunen remarks that "it is a wonder any communication was accomplished at all", for Cortés's Spanish words had to be translated into Maya, Nahuatl, and Totonac before reaching the locals, whose answers then went back through the same chain. It was from the meeting with the Totonacs that the Spaniards first learned of those who were hostile to Moctezuma. After founding the town of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz in order to be freed from the legal restriction of what was supposed to be an exploratory mission, the Spaniards stayed for two months in a nearby Totonac settlement, securing a formal alliance with the Totonacs and prepared for a march towards Tenochtitlan.
The first major polity that they encounter on the way to Tenochtitlan was Tlaxcala. Although the Tlaxcalans were initially hostile to the Spaniards and their allies, they later permitted the Spaniards to enter the city. The Tlaxcalans negotiated an alliance with the Spaniards through Malinche and Aguilar. Later Tlaxcalan records of this meeting feature scenes where Malinche appears prominent, bridging the communication between the two sides as the Tlaxcalans presented the Spaniards with gifts of food and noblewomen to cement the alliance. After several days in Tlaxcala, Cortés continued the journey to Tenochtitlan by the way of Cholula, accompanied by a large number of Tlaxcalan soldiers.
The Spaniards were received at Cholula and housed for several days, until, as the Spaniards claimed, the Cholulans stopped giving them food, dug secret pits, built a barricade around the city, and hid a large Aztec army in the outskirt in preparation for an attack against the Spaniards. Somehow, the Spaniards learned of this plot, and, in a preemptive strike, assembled and massacred the Cholulans. Later accounts specifically claimed that the plot was uncovered by Malinche. According to the version provided by Díaz, she was approached by a Cholulan noblewoman who promised her a marriage to the woman's son if she were to switch side. Malinche, pretending to go along with the suggestion, learned from the woman about the plot, and reported all the details to Cortés. This story has often been cited as an example of Malinche's “betrayal” to her people. However, the veracity of the story has been questioned by modern historians such as Hassig and Townsend. It has been suggested that the Tlaxcalans were the real mastermind behind the massacre. Cholula had previously supported Tlaxcala before joining the Aztec Empire one or two years prior, and losing them as an ally was a hard hit for the Tlaxcalans, whose state was now completely encircled by the Aztecs. It is possible that the attack on the Cholulans was in fact a test from the Tlaxcalans for the Spaniards' trustworthiness. In this view, thus, Malinche's “heroic” discovery of the purported plot is only a part of the justification for the massacre.
The combined forces reached Tenochtitlan in early November 1519, and was met by Moctezuma in a causeway leading to the city. Malinche was in the middle of this event, translating the conversation between Cortés and Moctezuma. Gomara writes that Moctezuma was "speaking through Malinche and Aguilar", although other records indicate that Malinche was already translating directly, as she had quickly learned some Spanish herself. Moctezuma's flowery speech delivered through Malinche at the meeting has been claimed by the Spaniards to represent a submission, but this interpretation is not followed by modern historians. The deferential nature of the speech can be explained by Moctezuma's usage of , a Nahuatl register known for its indirection and complex set of reverential affixes. Despite Malinche's apparent ability to understand , it is possible that some nuances were lost in translation, and the Spaniards, deliberately or not, might have misinterpreted Moctezuma's actual words.
Following the fall of Tenochtitlán in late 1521 and the birth of her son Martín Cortés in 1522, Marina stayed in a house Cortés built for her in the town of Coyoacán, eight miles south of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital city, while it was being rebuilt as Mexico City. Cortés took Marina to quell a rebellion in Honduras in 1524–1526 when she is seen serving again as interpreter (suggestive of a knowledge of Maya dialects beyond Chontal and Yucatán). While in the mountain town of Orizaba in central Mexico, she married Juan Jaramillo, a Spanish hidalgo. Some contemporary scholars have estimated that she died less than a decade after the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan at some point before February 1529. She was survived by her son Don Martín, who would be raised primarily by his father's family, and a daughter Doña María, who would be raised by Jaramillo and his second wife Doña Beatriz de Andrada.
For the conquistadores, having a reliable interpreter was important enough, but there is evidence that Marina's role and influence were larger still. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier who, as an old man, produced the most comprehensive of the eye-witness accounts, the "Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España" ("True Story of the Conquest of New Spain"), speaks repeatedly and reverentially of the "great lady" Doña Marina (always using the honorific title Doña). "Without the help of Doña Marina", he writes, "we would not have understood the language of New Spain and Mexico." Rodríguez de Ocaña, another conquistador, relates Cortés' assertion that after God, Marina was the main reason for his success.
The evidence from indigenous sources is even more interesting, both in the commentaries about her role, and in her prominence in the codex drawings made of conquest events. Although to some Marina may be known as a traitor, she was not viewed as such by all the Tlaxcalan. In some depictions they portrayed her as "larger than life," sometimes larger than Cortés, in rich clothing, and an alliance is shown between her and the Tlaxcalan instead of them and the Spaniards. They respected and trusted her and portrayed her in this light generations after the Spanish conquest.
In the "Lienzo de Tlaxcala (History of Tlaxcala)", for example, not only is Cortés rarely portrayed without Marina poised by his side, but she is shown at times on her own, seemingly directing events as an independent authority. If she had been trained for court life, as in Díaz's account, her relationship to Cortés may have followed the familiar pattern of marriage among native elite classes. The role of the Nahua wife acquired through an alliance would have been to assist her husband achieve his military and diplomatic objectives.
Today's historians give great credit to Marina's diplomatic skills, with some "almost tempted to think of her as the real conqueror of Mexico." In fact, old conquistadors on various occasions would remember that one of her greatest skills had been her ability to convince other Indians of what she herself could see clearly, which was that it was useless in the long run to stand against Spanish metal and Spanish ships. In contrast with earlier parts of Díaz del Castillo's account, after Marina's diplomacy began assisting Cortés, the Spanish were forced into combat on one more occasion.
Had La Malinche not been part of the Conquest of Mexico for her linguistic gift, communication between the Spanish and the Indigenous would have been much harder. La Malinche knew to speak in different registers and tones between certain Indigenous tribes and people. For the Nahua audiences, she spoke rhetorically, formally, and high-handedly. This shift into formality gave the Nahua the impression that she was a noblewoman who knew what she was talking about.
Malinche's image has become a mythical archetype that Hispanic American artists have represented in various forms of art. Her figure permeates historical, cultural, and social dimensions of Hispanic American cultures. In modern times and in several genres, she is compared with the La Llorona (folklore story of the woman weeping for lost children), and the Mexican soldaderas (women who fought beside men during the Mexican Revolution) for their brave actions.
La Malinche's legacy is one of myth mixed with legend, and the opposing opinions of the Mexican people about the legendary woman. Some see her as a founding figure of the Mexican nation, while others continue to see her as a traitor—as may be assumed from a legend that she had a twin sister who went North, and from the pejorative nickname "La Chingada" associated with her twin.
Feminist interventions into the figure of Malinche began in 1960s. The work of Rosario Castellanos was particularly significant; Chicanas began to refer to her as a "mother" as they adopted her as symbolism for duality and complex identity. Castellanos's subsequent poem "La Mallinche" recast her not as a traitor but as a victim. Mexican feminists defended Malinche as a woman caught between cultures, forced to make complex decisions, who ultimately served as a mother of a new race.
Today in Mexican Spanish, the words "malinchismo" and "malinchista" are used to denounce Mexicans who are perceived as denying their own cultural heritage by preferring foreign cultural expressions.
Some historians believe that La Malinche saved her people from the Aztecs, who held a hegemony throughout the territory and demanded tribute from its inhabitants. Some Mexicans also credit her with having brought Christianity to the New World from Europe, and for having influenced Cortés to be more humane than he would otherwise have been. It is argued, however, that without her help, Cortés would not have been successful in conquering the Aztecs as quickly, giving the Aztec people enough time to adapt to new technology and methods of warfare. From that viewpoint, she is seen as one who betrayed the indigenous people by siding with the Spaniards. Recently a number of feminist Latinas have decried such a categorization as scapegoating.
President José López Portillo commissioned a sculpture of Cortés, Doña Marina, and their son Martín, which was placed in front of Cortés' house in the Coyoacan section of Mexico City. Once López Portillo left office, the sculpture was removed to an obscure park in the capital. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18576 |
Limited-stop
In public transit, particularly tram or train transportation, a limited-stop (or sometimes referred to as semi-fast service) service is a service that stops less frequently than a local service. Many limited-stop or semi-fast services are a combination of commuter rail and express train.
The term is normally used on routes with a mixture of fast and slow services, and can differ in meaning, depending on how it is used by different transit agencies. The main benefits of limited-stop or semi-fast services is the ability to utilise skip-stop calling pattern to maximise capacity along the line, as opposed to a commuter service stopping at every station which slows trailing express trains down.
On railways, the layout of the tracks and number and length of platforms at stations normally limit the extent to which a blend of fast/semi-fast/slow services can be operated.
In Australia, particularly in Brisbane and Sydney, limited stop services are formed by commuter trains that run as limited stops or express services from the city centre to the edge of the suburban area and then as all stops in the interurban area (an example of such an express pattern can be seen on the Gold Coast line). The same occurs in Helsinki, Finland, by VR commuter rail.
In the United Kingdom, some railway stations have tracks for which there are no platforms, allowing a larger number of fast trains to pass them without stopping. They may go down the middle of the station or down the side such as at , , and (the middle track at Totnes is used only in the summer by Great Western Railway services between and ).
Traditionally, limited-stop bus services usually operate on an identical or similar route to one or more local bus routes, serve only serve some of the bus stops, and skip others, which are served by local routes. Typically, the stops that are served by limited stop routes are chosen so that stops are evenly spaced or are transfer points, major intersections, or popular destinations.
Limited stop bus service is sometimes viewed as a form of bus rapid transit (BRT) but differs by not sharing most of the common features of bus rapid transit such as unique route branding, off-vehicle fare collection, signal preemption, frequent all-day service, and dedicated right-of-way, such as bus-only lanes. For example, the RapidRide lines in Seattle, Washington are existing local King County Metro routes but with fewer stops and some BRT features being adopted at some stations.
There are forms of limited-stop bus service other than the traditional type characterized by serving only some of the stops. Some bus routes with portions of the route are non-stop are referred to as limited stop by the transit agency that operates the route.
One form is a route that operates partially on a highway. It is more similar to an express bus route than the traditional limited stop route. However, the non-stop portion of the route is typically shorter than that of an express route, and the fare structure of the transit agency cause a limited stop route to have a lower fare than an express route.
One example of this type of route would be Metro Transit Route 114 in Minneapolis, MN. The route originates at the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis, then it travels several miles on Interstates 35W and 94, before it begins to operate as local service through the Uptown area of Minneapolis.
Another form of limited stop bus service includes local routes that may operate certain trips with limited or non-stop sections. For example, to aid commute times for downtown workers, Metro Transit Route 12 in Minneapolis operates during peak hours as non-stop for approximately eight blocks between Franklin Avenue and Uptown Transit Station, but the route serves all stops along that section at other times. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18578 |
Limburg (Netherlands)
Limburg (, ; Dutch and Limburgish: "(Nederlands-)Limburg") is the southernmost of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands. The province is in the southeastern part of the country, stretched out from the north, where it touches the province of Gelderland. Its northern part has the province of North Brabant to its west. Its long eastern boundary is the international border with the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Much of the west border runs along the River Maas, bordering the Flemish province which is also named Limburg. On the south end it borders the Walloon province of Liège. The Vaalserberg is on the extreme south-eastern point, marking the tripoint of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.
Limburg's major cities are the provincial capital Maastricht (pop. 121,565), as well as Venlo (pop. 101,603) in the Northeast, and Sittard-Geleen (pop. 92,661) and Heerlen (pop. 86,832) in the south. More than half of the population, approximately 650,000 people, live in the south of Limburg, which corresponds to roughly one-third of the province's area proper. In South Limburg, most people live in the urban agglomerations of Maastricht, Parkstad and Sittard-Geleen.
Limburg has a highly distinctive character. The social and economic trends that have affected the province in recent decades have generated a process of change and renewal which has enabled Limburg to transform its peripheral location into a highly globalized regional nexus, linking the Netherlands to the Ruhr metro area in Germany and the southern part of the Benelux region. A less appreciated consequence of this international gateway location is rising international crime, often drug-related, especially in the southernmost part of the province.
Limburg's name derives from the Belgian fortified town of the same name, Limbourg-sur-Vesdre, now in the nearby province of Liège, immediately south of Limburg. The name of Limbourg-sur-Vesdre was important to the region because it had been the seat of the medieval Duchy of Limburg.
There are several proposals concerning the etymology of Limbourg. The second part, "bourg" or "burg" is common in placenames, and refers to a fortified town. The first part is often suggested to refer to lime or linden trees (species of "Tilia"). The historian Jean-Louis Kupper has proposed that its founder Frederick, Duke of Lower Lorraine named it after Limburg Abbey in Germany. He favours a derivation from a Germanic word "lint" meaning "dragon".
Ironically the area under the direct lordship of the old Duchy did not overlap at all with the modern Belgian and Dutch provinces named after it today, though the medieval Duchy was a high status title in the region. On the other hand, while the Duchy's effective power was limited, the Duchy and what is now South Limburg (referred to as Overmaas) did have a long history of connection under the lordship of the Dukes of Brabant. During this long period, from the Middle Ages until the French Revolution, they were sometimes referred to collectively under one name (Overmaas or Limburg).
After 1794, it was the French Republic which unified the region, along with Belgian Limburg, and removed all ties to the old feudal society (the "ancien regime"). The new name, as with all the names of the "départements", was based on natural features such as rivers, in this case Meuse-Inférieure or Neder-Maas ("Lower Meuse").
After the defeat of Napoleon the newly-created United Kingdom of the Netherlands desired a new name for this province. It was decided that the historic connection to the duchy of Limburg was to be restored, albeit only in name.
The current province Limburg of the Netherlands only came into existence in 1839, after the finalization of the separation of Belgium from the Netherlands which had begun in 1830. The two Limburgs had been brought together under French revolutionary administration some decades earlier, but they and the surrounding region shared much of their history. For long periods of history however, the region was not united under the same rule.
For centuries, the strategic location of the current province, stretching along the Maas river route, made it a much-coveted region among Europe's major powers. Romans, Carolingians, Habsburg Spaniards, Prussians, Habsburg Austrians and France have all ruled parts of Limburg.
The first inhabitants of whom traces have been found were Neanderthals who camped in South Limburg. In Neolithic times, flint was mined in underground mines.
In 53 BC, Julius Caesar conquered the area, and wrote that he had extinguished the name of the Eburones, the inhabitants of most of the area of current Limburg, as a punishment for their revolt under Ambiorix. After this, the area was populated by a nation known as the Tungri, whose Roman capital Tongeren is today in Belgium, 15 km from Maastricht. The north-south route along the Maas was crossed by the Via Belgica, a road crossing South Limburg and connecting the two local capitals of Tongeren and Cologne. "Mosa Trajectum" (Maastricht) and "Coriovallum" (Heerlen) were founded by the Romans upon this route. The area became strongly Romanized. Bishop Servatius introduced Christianity in Roman Maastricht, where he died in 384. Maastricht appears to have taken over from Tongeren for some time as regional capital for the Romanized and Christian population, before the bishopric was re-established in Liège, 25 km south of Maastricht.
As Roman authority in the area weakened, Franks took over from the Romans, but the area came to flourish under their rule, with Cologne continuing to be the most important local capital. The Maas valley, especially the middle and southern part of the current province, formed an important part of the heartland of Merovingian Austrasia.
With the rise of the Carolingian dynasty, who were themselves from this region, the Maas valley became more culturally and politically one of the most important regions in Europe. In 714 Susteren Abbey was founded, as far as is known the first proprietary abbey in the current Netherlands. The main benefactor was Plectrude, the consort of Pepin of Herstal. Charles Martel was born in nearby Herstal. Charlemagne made Aachen, today a German city which has suburban sprawl stretching into South Limburg, the capital of the Frankish empire.
After the death of Charlemagne, the Frankish dominions were again split between kings. While the Austrasian lands remained a separate "Middle Kingdom", sometimes now referred to as Lotharingia in the treaties of Verdun (843), and Prüm (855), in the 870 Treaty of Meerssen, signed in South Limburg itself, Lotharingia was divided. The river Meuse became the border between the Western- and Eastern Frankish kingdoms, placing most of the current Dutch province of Limburg on the western boundary of the Eastern Frankish kingdom, with Belgian Limburg in the Western Kingdom. In the Treaty of Ribemont of 888, the Eastern Kingdom was granted control of the whole of Lotharingia, including all of the modern Netherlands and Luxembourg, and most of modern Belgium.
During the period of West Frankish control under the Treaty of Meerssen, effective Frankish power in the area of the current Netherlands more or less collapsed. For two or more years a large Viking army, operating from a place on or near the Meuse called Ascloa (or Hasloa or Haslon), wrought havoc in the neighbourhood. The damage was such that the emperor, Charles the Fat was forced to assemble a large multinational army, that in 882 unsuccessfully besieged this island.
In the 10th century, the Eastern kingdom consolidated its control of Lotharingia and became the Holy Roman Empire. In the first decades of this empire the founding imperial family has close ties to areas in current northern Limburg. The emperor Otto III for instance was born in 980 in Kessel, practically on the current border between Limburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, just east from Gennep. In 1080 in Genneperhuis, just north of Gennep, Norbert of Gennep was born as a son of the count of Gennep. He was the founder of the order of the Premonstratensians.
South Limburg in the early Middle Ages was mainly made up of the lordships of Valkenburg, Dalhem, and Herzogenrath. All of these lands were however united with the Duchy of Limburg, under the rule of the Duchy of Brabant, when they were known collectively as the Lands of Overmaas.
The Duchy of Limburg and its dependencies first came under Brabantian control in 1288, as a result of the Battle of Worringen, then in the 15th century under the Duchy of Burgundy. By 1473, the Lands of Overmaas and the Duchy of Limburg formed one unified delegation to the States General of the Burgundian Netherlands. Both the terms Overmaas and Limburg came to be used loosely to refer to this sparsely populated province of the so-called Seventeen Provinces. Maastricht was never part of this polity: as a condominium, souvereignty over this city was held jointly by the prince-bishops of Liège and the dukes of Brabant. Also, the central and northern part of present-day Limburg belonged to different political entities, notably the Duchy of Jülich and the Duchy of Guelders.
By the late Middle Ages, most of the present day province Limburg's territory was part of either the Duchy of Brabant, the Duchy of Gelderland, the Duchy of Jülich, the Principality of Liège or the prince-bishop of Cologne. These dukes and bishops were nominal subordinates of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but in practice acted as independent sovereigns who were often at war with each other. These conflicts were often fought in and over Limburg, contributing to its fragmentation and a loss of economic importance.
Limburg was the scene of many bloody battles during the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), in which the Dutch Republic threw off Habsburg Spanish rule. At the Battle of Mookerheyde (14 April 1574), two brothers of Prince William of Orange-Nassau and thousands of "Dutch" mercenaries lost their lives. Most Limburgians fought on the Spanish side, being Catholics and being opposed to the Calvinist Hollanders.
In the early modern era, Limburg was largely divided between Spain (and its successor, Austria), Prussia, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, the Principality of Liège and many independent small fiefs.
In 1673, Louis XIV personally commanded the siege of Maastricht by French troops. During the siege, one of his brigadiers, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan, perished. He subsequently became known as a major character in "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas, père (1802–1870).
The modern boundaries of Dutch Limburg, along with its neighbour, Belgian Limburg, were basically set during the period after the French revolution, which erased much of the "ancien regime" of Europe, with all its old boundaries and titles. These two provinces were part of a new French département, named (like many départments) after the river running through it, "Meuse-Inférieure", meaning simply "lower Maas".
Following the Napoleonic Era, the great powers (the United Kingdom, Prussia, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire and France) united the region with the new Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. A new province was formed which was to receive the name "Maastricht" after its capital. The first king, William I, who did not want the medieval name to be lost, insisted that it be changed to "Province of Limburg". As such, the name of the new province derived from the old Duchy of Limburg that had existed until 1648 on the southern borders of the new province.
When the Catholic and French-speaking Belgians split away from the mainly Calvinist northern Netherlands in the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the Province of Limburg was at first almost entirely under Belgian rule. However, by the 1839 Treaty of London, the province was divided in two, with the eastern part going to the Netherlands and the western part to Belgium, a division that remains today.
With the Treaty of London, what is now the Belgian Province of Luxembourg was handed over to Belgium and removed from the German Confederation. To appease Prussia, which had also lost access to the Meuse after the Congress of Vienna, the Dutch province of Limburg (but not the cities of Maastricht and Venlo because without them Limburg's population equalled that of the Province of Luxembourg, 150,000 ), was joined to the German Confederation between September 5, 1839 and August 23, 1866 as Duchy of Limburg. On 11 May 1867, the Duchy, which from 1839 on had been "de jure" a separate polity in personal union with the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was reincorporated into the latter with the 1867 Treaty of London, though the term "Duchy of Limburg" remained in some official use until February 1907. Another idiosyncrasy survives today: the head of the province, referred to as the "King's Commissioner" in other provinces, is addressed as "Governor" in Limburg.
The Second World War cost the lives of many civilians in Limburg, and a large number of towns and villages were destroyed by bombings and artillery battles. Various cemeteries, too, bear witness to this dark chapter in Limburg's history. Almost 8,500 American soldiers, who perished during the liberation of the Netherlands, lie buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten. Other big war cemeteries are to be found at Overloon (British soldiers) and the Ysselsteyn German war cemetery was constructed in the Municipality of Venray for the 31,000 German soldiers who lost their lives.
According to the research of Herman van Rens, the residents of Limburg were especially active in hiding local and refugee Jews during the Holocaust, to the extent that the Jewish population even increased during the war. Jews in hiding were three times as likely to survive in Limburg as in Amsterdam.
In December 1991, the European Community (now European Union) held a summit in Maastricht. At that summit, the "Treaty on European Union" or so-called Maastricht Treaty was signed by the European Community member states. With that treaty, the European Union came into existence.
"Limburg mijn Vaderland" (Limburg my Fatherland) is the official anthem of both Belgian and Dutch Limburg.
Although standard Dutch is the official language, and the language most-used, Limburg has its own dialect, called Limburgish (Dutch: "Limburgs"). It has been an official regional language since 1997 and it receives moderate protection under Chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The Dutch, German, and Belgian governments do not recognise it as an official language.
Limburgish is spoken by an estimated 1.6 million people in Dutch Limburg, Belgian Limburg, and Germany. There are many different dialects of Limburgish; almost every town and village has its own. A lot of isoglosses cross through Limburg. No single dialect can fully represent Limburgish as a whole. Dialects in the north, nearby Venray and Gennep, are classified as South Guelderish and are closely connected to the dialects in the northeast of Brabant (Land van Cuijk) and the region of Nijmegen. Dialects in the southeast (near Aachen) are closer to Ripuarian and are sometimes classified as Southeast Limburgish. Dialects in the western part of Limburg, surrounding Weert, are influenced by the neighbouring dialects of southeast Brabant, which means that the tone is more Brabantic than in the rest of Limburg.
The provincial council (States-Provincial - "Provinciale Staten") has 47 seats, and is headed by a King's Commissioner ("Commissaris van de Koning") who unofficially is called the Governor. While the provincial council is elected by the inhabitants, the King's Commissioner is appointed by the King and the cabinet of the Netherlands. Since 2011 Theo Bovens (CDA) holds the office of 'Governor'.
Since the 2011 elections the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) was the largest party in the council, although the Party for Freedom (PVV) won the most votes during the election. However, two members of the PVV left the party, taking their seats with them, which lost the PVV their number one status.
Since the 2015 elections the CDA (11 seats) has again been the largest party, followed by the PVV (9 seats) and the Socialist Party (SP) (8 seats).
The province's daily affairs are taken care of by the Provincial-Executive ("Gedeputeerde Staten"), which are also headed by the King's Commissioner; its members ("gedeputeerden") can be compared with ministers.
Results of the elections for the States-Provincial:
The Provincial-Executive 2015-2019 consists of the following parties: CDA, SP, VVD, D66 and PvdA.
Limburg is a salient of the Netherlands into Belgium.
Compared to the rest of the Netherlands the southern part of Limburg is less flat, slightly undulated. The highest point in the continental Netherlands is the Vaalserberg (meaning 'mountain' of Vaals) with a height of 322.4 metres (1,058 ft) above NAP, rising approximately 110 metres above the village Vaals, where three countries (Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) border each other at the so-called "Three-country-point".
Limburg's main river is the Meuse, which passes through the province's entire length from south to north.
Limburg's surface is largely formed by deposits from the Meuse, consisting of river clay, fertile loessial soil and large deposits of pebblestone, currently being quarried for the construction industry. In the north of the province, further away from the riverbed, the soil primarily consists of sand and peat.
Limburg makes up one region of the International Organization for Standardization world region code system, having the code -LI.
The province of Limburg has 31 municipalities.
From North to South: Gennep, Venray, Weert, Venlo, Roermond, Sittard, Geleen, Heerlen, Valkenburg, Kerkrade, Vaals, Maastricht.
The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 44.5 billion € in 2018, accounting for 5.7% of the Netherlands economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 34,700 € or 115% of the EU27 average in the same year.
In the past peat and coal were mined in Limburg. In 1965–75 the coal mines were finally closed. As a result, 60,000 people lost their jobs in the two coal mining areas, Heerlen-Kerkrade-Brunssum and Sittard-Geleen. A difficult period of economic readjustment started. The Dutch government partly eased the pain by moving several government offices (including Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP and CBS Statistics Netherlands) to Heerlen.
The state-owned corporation that once mined in Limburg, DSM, is now a major chemical company, still operating in Limburg. In 2002 DSM sold its petrochemical division (naphtha crackers and polyolefin plants) to SABIC of Saudi Arabia. In 2010, the agro and melamine business groups were sold to OCI Nitrogen. SABIC is located on the Chemelot campus in Sittard-Geleen, which is bounded by the Chemelot Industrial Park, one of Western Europe's biggest industrial sites. At this moment 8000 people work at Chemelot, of which 1000 are active at the Campus. The innovation and licensing division Stamicarbon of DSM was sold in 2009 to Maire Tecnimont, the parent company of an engineering, main contracting and licensing group that operates worldwide in the oil, gas & petrochemicals, power, infrastructure and civil engineering sectors. Stamicarbon is based in Sittard-Geleen.
VDL Nedcar in Born (Sittard-Geleen) is the only large-scale car manufacturer in the Netherlands, currently manufacturing MINI's and BMW X1's. Other industries include Rockwool in Roermond, Océ copiers and printers manufacturers in Venlo and a paper factory in Maastricht. There are four large beer breweries in Limburg.
Southern Limburg has long been one of the country's two main fruit growing areas, but over the last four decades, many fruit growing areas have been replaced by water as a result of gravel quarrying near the Meuse.
Tourism is an essential sector of the economy, especially in the hilly southern part of the province. The town of Valkenburg is the main centre.
In 2005, the two provincial newspapers, "De Limburger" and "Limburgs Dagblad," merged.
Essential elements in Limburgian culture are
Choral singing is popular in Limburg. One of its best-known choruses is the Mastreechter Staar (Maastricht Star), which performs nationally and internationally.
Every four years the World Music Contest, a competition for professional, amateur and military band sometimes called the Olympic Games of brass band music is held in Kerkrade.
In 2013 and 2009 the winner in the World Concert Division was the Koninklijke Harmonie Sainte Cécile, from Eijsden (Limburg)
Also held in Kerkrade (situated on the German border) is the Schlagerfestival, a nationally broadcast event presenting singers of German-language pop music called Schlagers.
Since 1969 yearly on the Pentecost weekend an international pop music festival called Pinkpop Festival takes place in the southern part of Limburg; initially at Geleen, since 1988 at Schaesberg.
More nationally or internationally known musicians from this province are mentioned hereunder in section "Famous Limburgians".
The Limburg Symphony Orchestra, that resided and rehearsed in Maastricht, and was the oldest symphony orchestra of the Netherlands (founded in 1883) following elimination of government grants merged with "Het Brabants Orkest" to form a single ensemble with the new name of the "philharmonie zuidnederland", as of April 2013.
Many places in both Netherlands' and Belgian Limburg still have their own (by now folkloristic) schutterij. Yearly there's a festival, in which all 160 of them compete for the highest honours to be gained, in the "OLS" (Oud Limburgs Schuttersfeest), which is held in either a place in Belgian or Netherlands' Limburg.
In Limburg there are currently four professional Football clubs; Roda JC Kerkrade, VVV-Venlo, MVV Maastricht and Fortuna Sittard. Fortuna Sittard and VVV-Venlo compete in the highest Dutch division, the Eredivisie. The others compete in the second highest division.
The annual bike classic Amstel Gold Race is run in the southern part of Limburg. The area has also staged the UCI Road World Championships six times, once hosted by Heerlen and five times by Valkenburg.
Team handball is the third most popular sport in Limburg. The women's team, HV Swift Roermond, has won the national championship in the highest division 19 times. The male teams, Sittardia (Sittard), Vlug en Lenig (Geleen) and BFC (Beek), which in 2008 merged as the "Limburg Lions", have in total won the national championship 25 times.
Regarding the dedication of religions, in this province the percentages are divided as follows:
Roman Catholic (67.8%), no affiliation (22.5%), Islam (4.4%), Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2.4%), Other Christian denominations (2.6%), Hinduism (0.2%), Buddhism (0.2%), Judaism (0.1%) .
Politics, science, other
Entertainment, arts
Sports
("List of famous Belgian Limburgians: Famous Limburgians (Belgium)")
In 2012, from April 5 to October 7 the ten yearly world horticulture expo "Floriade" was held in Venlo.
Nationally and internationally known are nature films and nature television series produced by filmdirector Maurice Nijsten and nature protector Jo Erkens. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18582 |
Ligand
In coordination chemistry, a ligand is an ion or molecule (functional group) that binds to a central metal atom to form a coordination complex. The bonding with the metal generally involves formal donation of one or more of the ligand's electron pairs. The nature of metal–ligand bonding can range from covalent to ionic. Furthermore, the metal–ligand bond order can range from one to three. Ligands are viewed as Lewis bases, although rare cases are known to involve Lewis acidic "ligands".
Metals and metalloids are bound to ligands in virtually all circumstances, although gaseous "naked" metal ions can be generated in a high vacuum. Ligands in a complex dictate the reactivity of the central atom, including ligand substitution rates, the reactivity of the ligands themselves, and redox. Ligand selection is a critical consideration in many practical areas, including bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry, homogeneous catalysis, and environmental chemistry.
Ligands are classified in many ways, including: charge, size (bulk), the identity of the coordinating atom(s), and the number of electrons donated to the metal (denticity or hapticity). The size of a ligand is indicated by its cone angle.
The composition of coordination complexes have been known since the early 1800s, such as Prussian blue and copper vitriol. The key breakthrough occurred when Alfred Werner reconciled formulas and isomers. He showed, among other things, that the formulas of many cobalt(III) and chromium(III) compounds can be understood if the metal has six ligands in an octahedral geometry. The first to use the term "ligand" were Alfred Werner and Carl Somiesky, in relation to silicon chemistry. The theory allows one to understand the difference between coordinated and ionic chloride in the cobalt ammine chlorides and to explain many of the previously inexplicable isomers. He resolved the first coordination complex called hexol into optical isomers, overthrowing the theory that chirality was necessarily associated with carbon compounds.
In general, ligands are viewed as electron donors and the metals as electron acceptors. This is because the ligand and central metal are bonded to one another, and the ligand is providing both electrons to the bond (lone pair of electrons) instead of the metal and ligand each providing one electron. Bonding is often described using the formalisms of molecular orbital theory. The HOMO (Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital) can be mainly of ligands or metal character.
Ligands and metal ions can be ordered in many ways; one ranking system focuses on ligand 'hardness' (see also hard/soft acid/base theory). Metal ions preferentially bind certain ligands. In general, 'hard' metal ions prefer weak field ligands, whereas 'soft' metal ions prefer strong field ligands. According to the molecular orbital theory, the HOMO of the ligand should have an energy that overlaps with the LUMO (Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital) of the metal preferential. Metal ions bound to strong-field ligands follow the Aufbau principle, whereas complexes bound to weak-field ligands follow Hund's rule.
Binding of the metal with the ligands results in a set of molecular orbitals, where the metal can be identified with a new HOMO and LUMO (the orbitals defining the properties and reactivity of the resulting complex) and a certain ordering of the 5 d-orbitals (which may be filled, or partially filled with electrons). In an octahedral environment, the 5 otherwise degenerate d-orbitals split in sets of 2 and 3 orbitals (for a more in depth explanation, see crystal field theory).
The energy difference between these 2 sets of d-orbitals is called the splitting parameter, Δo. The magnitude of Δo is determined by the field-strength of the ligand: strong field ligands, by definition, increase Δo more than weak field ligands. Ligands can now be sorted according to the magnitude of Δo (see the table below). This ordering of ligands is almost invariable for all metal ions and is called spectrochemical series.
For complexes with a tetrahedral surrounding, the d-orbitals again split into two sets, but this time in reverse order.
The energy difference between these 2 sets of d-orbitals is now called Δt. The magnitude of Δt is smaller than for Δo, because in a tetrahedral complex only 4 ligands influence the d-orbitals, whereas in an octahedral complex the d-orbitals are influenced by 6 ligands. When the coordination number is neither octahedral nor tetrahedral, the splitting becomes correspondingly more complex. For the purposes of ranking ligands, however, the properties of the octahedral complexes and the resulting Δo has been of primary interest.
The arrangement of the d-orbitals on the central atom (as determined by the 'strength' of the ligand), has a strong effect on virtually all the properties of the resulting complexes. E.g., the energy differences in the d-orbitals has a strong effect in the optical absorption spectra of metal complexes. It turns out that valence electrons occupying orbitals with significant 3 d-orbital character absorb in the 400–800 nm region of the spectrum (UV–visible range). The absorption of light (what we perceive as the color) by these electrons (that is, excitation of electrons from one orbital to another orbital under influence of light) can be correlated to the ground state of the metal complex, which reflects the bonding properties of the ligands. The relative change in (relative) energy of the d-orbitals as a function of the field-strength of the ligands is described in Tanabe–Sugano diagrams.
In cases where the ligand has low energy LUMO, such orbitals also participate in the bonding. The metal–ligand bond can be further stabilised by a formal donation of electron density back to the ligand in a process known as "back-bonding." In this case a filled, central-atom-based orbital donates density into the LUMO of the (coordinated) ligand. Carbon monoxide is the preeminent example a ligand that engages metals via back-donation. Complementarily, ligands with low-energy filled orbitals of pi-symmetry can serve as pi-donor.
Especially in the area of organometallic chemistry, ligands are classified as L and X (or combinations of the two). The classification scheme – the "CBC Method" for Covalent Bond Classification – was popularized by M.L.H. Green and "is based on the notion that there are three basic types [of ligands]... represented by the symbols L, X, and Z, which correspond respectively to 2-electron, 1-electron and 0-electron neutral ligands." Another type of ligand worthy of consideration is the LX ligand which as expected from the used conventional representation will donate three electrons if NVE (Number of Valence Electrons) required. Example is alkoxy ligands( which is regularly known as X ligand too). L ligands are derived from charge-neutral precursors and are represented by amines, phosphines, CO, N2, and alkenes. X ligands typically are derived from anionic precursors such as chloride but includes ligands where salts of anion do not really exist such as hydride and alkyl. Thus, the complex IrCl(CO)(PPh3)2 is classified as an MXL3 complex, since CO and the two PPh3 ligands are classified as Ls. The oxidative addition of H2 to IrCl(CO)(PPh3)2 gives an 18e− ML3X3 product, IrClH2(CO)(PPh3)2. EDTA4− is classified as an L2X4 ligand, as it features four anions and two neutral donor sites. Cp is classified as an L2X ligand.
Denticity (represented by "κ") refers to the number of times a ligand bonds to a metal through noncontiguous donor sites. Many ligands are capable of binding metal ions through multiple sites, usually because the ligands have lone pairs on more than one atom. Ligands that bind via more than one atom are often termed "chelating". A ligand that binds through two sites is classified as "bidentate", and three sites as "tridentate". The "bite angle" refers to the angle between the two bonds of a bidentate chelate. Chelating ligands are commonly formed by linking donor groups via organic linkers. A classic bidentate ligand is ethylenediamine, which is derived by the linking of two ammonia groups with an ethylene (−CH2CH2−) linker. A classic example of a polydentate ligand is the hexadentate chelating agent EDTA, which is able to bond through six sites, completely surrounding some metals. The number of times a polydentate ligand binds to a metal centre is symbolized by ""κn"", where "n" indicates the number of sites by which a ligand attaches to a metal. EDTA4−, when it is hexidentate, binds as a "κ"6-ligand, the amines and the carboxylate oxygen atoms are not contiguous. In practice, the n value of a ligand is not indicated explicitly but rather assumed. The binding affinity of a chelating system depends on the chelating angle or bite angle.
Complexes of polydentate ligands are called "chelate" complexes. They tend to be more stable than complexes derived from monodentate ligands. This enhanced stability, the chelate effect, is usually attributed to effects of entropy, which favors the displacement of many ligands by one polydentate ligand. When the chelating ligand forms a large ring that at least partially surrounds the central atom and bonds to it, leaving the central atom at the centre of a large ring. The more rigid and the higher its denticity, the more inert will be the macrocyclic complex. Heme is a good example: the iron atom is at the centre of a porphyrin macrocycle, being bound to four nitrogen atoms of the tetrapyrrole macrocycle. The very stable dimethylglyoximate complex of nickel is a synthetic macrocycle derived from the anion of dimethylglyoxime.
Hapticity (represented by "η") refers to the number of "contiguous" atoms that comprise a donor site and attach to a metal center. Butadiene forms both "η"2 and "η"4 complexes depending on the number of carbon atoms that are bonded to the metal.
Trans-spanning ligands are bidentate ligands that can span coordination positions on opposite sides of a coordination complex.
Unlike polydentate ligands, ambidentate ligands can attach to the central atom in two places. A good example of this is thiocyanate, SCN−, which can attach at either the sulfur atom or the nitrogen atom. Such compounds give rise to linkage isomerism. Polyfunctional ligands, see especially proteins, can bond to a metal center through different ligand atoms to form various isomers.
A bridging ligand links two or more metal centers. Virtually all inorganic solids with simple formulas are coordination polymers, consisting of metal ion centres linked by bridging ligands. This group of materials includes all anhydrous binary metal ion halides and pseudohalides. Bridging ligands also persist in solution. Polyatomic ligands such as carbonate are ambidentate and thus are found to often bind to two or three metals simultaneously. Atoms that bridge metals are sometimes indicated with the prefix ""μ"". Most inorganic solids are polymers by virtue of the presence of multiple bridging ligands. Bridging ligands, capable of coordinating multiple metal ions, have been attracting considerable interest because of their potential use as building blocks for the fabrication of functional multimetallic assemblies.
Binucleating ligands bind two metals. Usually binucleating ligands feature bridging ligands, such as phenoxide, pyrazolate, or pyrazine, as well as other donor groups that bind to only one of the two metals.
Some ligands can bond to a metal center through the same atom but with a different number of lone pairs. The bond order of the metal ligand bond can be in part distinguished through the metal ligand bond angle (M−X−R). This bond angle is often referred to as being linear or bent with further discussion concerning the degree to which the angle is bent. For example, an imido ligand in the ionic form has three lone pairs. One lone pair is used as a sigma X donor, the other two lone pairs are available as L-type pi donors. If both lone pairs are used in pi bonds then the M−N−R geometry is linear. However, if one or both these lone pairs is nonbonding then the M−N−R bond is bent and the extent of the bend speaks to how much pi bonding there may be. "η"1-Nitric oxide can coordinate to a metal center in linear or bent manner.
A spectator ligand is a tightly coordinating polydentate ligand that does not participate in chemical reactions but removes active sites on a metal. Spectator ligands influence the reactivity of the metal center to which they are bound.
Bulky ligands are used to control the steric properties of a metal center. They are used for many reasons, both practical and academic. On the practical side, they influence the selectivity of metal catalysts, e.g., in hydroformylation. Of academic interest, bulky ligands stabilize unusual coordination sites, e.g., reactive coligands or low coordination numbers. Often bulky ligands are employed to simulate the steric protection afforded by proteins to metal-containing active sites. Of course excessive steric bulk can prevent the coordination of certain ligands.
Chiral ligands are useful for inducing asymmetry within the coordination sphere. Often the ligand is employed as an optically pure group. In some cases, such as secondary amines, the asymmetry arises upon coordination. Chiral ligands are used in homogeneous catalysis, such as asymmetric hydrogenation.
Hemilabile ligands contain at least two electronically different coordinating groups and form complexes where one of these is easily displaced from the metal center while the other remains firmly bound, a behaviour which has been found to increase the reactivity of catalysts when compared to the use of more traditional ligands.
Non-innocent ligands bond with metals in such a manner that the distribution of electron density between the metal center and ligand is unclear. Describing the bonding of non-innocent ligands often involves writing multiple resonance forms that have partial contributions to the overall state.
Virtually every molecule and every ion can serve as a ligand for (or "coordinate to") metals. Monodentate ligands include virtually all anions and all simple Lewis bases. Thus, the halides and pseudohalides are important anionic ligands whereas ammonia, carbon monoxide, and water are particularly common charge-neutral ligands. Simple organic species are also very common, be they anionic (RO− and ) or neutral (R2O, R2S, R3−"x"NH"x", and R3P). The steric properties of some ligands are evaluated in terms of their cone angles.
Beyond the classical Lewis bases and anions, all unsaturated molecules are also ligands, utilizing their pi electrons in forming the coordinate bond. Also, metals can bind to the σ bonds in for example silanes, hydrocarbons, and dihydrogen (see also: Agostic interaction).
In complexes of non-innocent ligands, the ligand is bonded to metals via conventional bonds, but the ligand is also redox-active.
In the following table the ligands are sorted by field strength (weak field ligands first):
The entries in the table are sorted by field strength, binding through the stated atom (i.e. as a terminal ligand). The 'strength' of the ligand changes when the ligand binds in an alternative binding mode (e.g., when it bridges between metals) or when the conformation of the ligand gets distorted (e.g., a linear ligand that is forced through steric interactions to bind in a nonlinear fashion).
In this table other common ligands are listed in alphabetical order.
A ligand exchange (also ligand substitution) is a type of chemical reaction in which a ligand in a compound is replaced by another. One type of pathway for substitution is the ligand dependent pathway. In organometallic chemistry this can take place via associative substitution or by dissociative substitution. Another form of ligand exchange is seen in the nucleophilic abstraction reaction.
BioLiP is a comprehensive ligand–protein interaction database, with the 3D structure of the ligand–protein interactions taken from the Protein Data Bank. MANORAA is a webserver for analyzing conserved and differential molecular interaction of the ligand in complex with protein structure homologs from the Protein Data Bank. It provides the linkage to protein targets such as its location in the biochemical pathways, SNPs and protein/RNA baseline expression in target organ. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18589 |
Lincos language
Lincos (an abbreviation of the Latin phrase "lingua cosmica") is a constructed language first described in 1960 by Dr. Hans Freudenthal in his book "Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1". It is a language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions. Freudenthal considered that such a language should be easily understood by beings not acquainted with any Earthling syntax or language. Lincos was designed to be capable of encapsulating "the whole bulk of our knowledge."
The Lincos "dictionary" is intended to be transmitted first before any additional messages. It teaches natural numbers by a series of repeated pulses, separated by pauses. It then teaches >, . . . There would need to be more pause than he shows around > to show an alien that > is a new separate symbol. Otherwise the alien can think the whole pattern is a new symbol of unknown meaning. Having introduced =, he shows binary notation for numbers . = 1, . . = 10 and so on. He goes on to multiplication, division, variables and constants, then propositional logic, set theory and first-order logic. He tries to introduce questions by leaving mathematical expressions unsolved: ? x x + 101 = 11
The next section of the Lincos dictionary introduces a word for second, "Sec," by playing pulses of various lengths, followed by Sec, and the number of seconds, "until the receiver may be expected to remark that the numbers... are proportional to the durations," thus teaching both that Sec is a unit of time, and exactly how long it is. He then introduces means for measuring durations, referring to moments in time, and talking about past and future events.
The third section is perhaps the most complex, and attempts to convey the concepts and language necessary to describe behavior and conversation between individuals. It uses examples to introduce actors speaking to each other, asking questions, disapproving, quoting other people, knowing and wanting things, promising, and playing. The first steps (since he has introduced sets of numbers and questions) are to introduce some new symbols (distinctive patterns of pulses), say they are NOT numbers, and transmit sequences showing two of these new symbols separated by the word "Inq," and followed by a question about an equation, then the symbols reversed, followed by the answer (example below). He expects that after many repetitions, the recipient will decide these new symbols are entities asking and answering the questions, rather than some other context for the questions.
Finally, the fourth section describes the concepts and language relating to mass, space, and motion. This last section goes so far as to describe physical features of human beings and of the Solar System.
A second book was planned but never written that would have added four more sections to the dictionary: "Matter", "Earth", "Life" and "Behavior 2". Other researchers have since extended the language somewhat on their own. One example is CosmicOS. Another is a second-generation "Lingua Cosmica" developed by the Dutch-Swedish astronomer and mathematician Alexander Ollongren of Leiden University, using constructive logic.
Freudenthal's book on Lincos discusses it with many technical words from linguistic and logical theory, usually without defining them, which may have reduced its general interest, though the main chapters can be understood without these technical terms: appellatives, binding, formalization, function, lexicology, logistical, ostensive, quasi-general, semantics, syntax, variables, etc.
For decades, no actual transmissions were made using Lincos; it remained largely a theoretical exercise, until Canadian astrophysicists Yvan Dutil and Stéphane Dumas, working at the Canadian Defense Research Establishment, created a noise-resistant coding system for messages aimed at communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations. In 1999, the astrophysicists encoded a message in Lincos and used the Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope in Ukraine to beam it towards close stars. This is known as Cosmic Call. The experiment was repeated (using other close stars as target) in 2003. The message was a series of pages describing some basic mathematics, physics and astronomy. The Dutil–Dumas experiment was promoted by an organization called "Encounter 2001".
Some researchers have explored the similar issues in communicating with intelligent animals such as cetaceans. Lincos messages (even if sent by pulses of sound rather than radio) are complex and need to reach the most patient, logically oriented members of the target species. A far simpler approach aimed at average members of a species can cover numbers, >, How to Design Beacons for Humanity's Afterlife. Wolfram. Jan 2018
In the Stanisław Lem novel "His Master's Voice", Lincos is mentioned together with Loglan. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18591 |
Lascaux
Lascaux (, "Lascaux Cave"; , ) is the setting of a complex of caves near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 parietal wall paintings cover the interior walls and ceilings of the cave. The paintings represent primarily large animals, typical local and contemporary fauna that correspond with the fossil record of the Upper Paleolithic time. The drawings are the combined effort of many generations, and with continued debate, the age of the paintings is estimated at around 17,000 years (early Magdalenian). Lascaux was inducted into the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 1979, as an element of the "Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley".
On 12 September 1940, the entrance to the Lascaux Cave was discovered by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat when his dog, Robot, fell in a hole. Ravidat returned to the scene with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas. They entered the cave through a shaft that they believed might be a legendary secret passage to the nearby Lascaux Manor. The teenagers discovered that the cave walls were covered with depictions of animals. Galleries that suggest continuity, context or simply represent a cavern were given names. Those include the "Hall of the Bulls", the "Passageway", the "Shaft", the "Nave", the "Apse", and the "Chamber of Felines". They returned along with the Abbé Henri Breuil on 21 September 1940; Breuil would make many sketches of the cave, some of which are used as study material today due to the extreme degradation of many of the paintings. Breuil was accompanied by Denis Peyrony (curator of the Prehistory Museum at Les Eyzies), Jean Bouyssonie and Dr Cheynier.
The cave complex was opened to the public on 14 July 1948, and initial archaeological investigations began a year later, focusing on the Shaft. By 1955, carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, and other contaminants produced by 1,200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings. As air condition deteriorated, fungi and lichen increasingly infested the walls. Consequently, the cave was closed to the public in 1963, the paintings were restored to their original state, and a monitoring system on a daily basis was introduced.
Conservation problems in the original cave have made the creation of replicas more important.
"Lascaux II", an exact copy of the "Great Hall of the Bulls" and the "Painted Gallery" was displayed at the Grand Palais in Paris, before being displayed from 1983 in the cave's vicinity (about away from the original cave), a compromise and attempt to present an impression of the paintings' scale and composition for the public without harming the originals. A full range of Lascaux's parietal art is presented a few kilometres from the site at the "Centre of Prehistoric Art", Le Parc du Thot, where there are also live animals representing ice-age fauna.
The paintings for this site were duplicated with the same type of materials as iron oxide, charcoal and ochre which were believed to be used 19 thousand years ago. Other facsimiles of Lascaux have also been produced over the years.
" Lascaux III" is a series of five exact reproductions of the cave art (the Nave and Shaft) that, since 2012, have traveled around the world allowing knowledge of Lascaux to be shared far from the original.
"Lascaux IV" is a new copy of all the painted areas of the cave that forms part of the International Centre for Parietal Art (Centre International de l'Art Pariétal). Since December 2016 this larger and more accurate replica which integrates digital technology into the display is presented in a new museum built by Snøhetta inside the hill overlooking Montignac.
In its sedimentary composition, the Vézère drainage basin covers one fourth of the "département" of the Dordogne, the northernmost region of the Black Périgord. Before joining the Dordogne River near Limeuil, the Vézère flows in a south-westerly direction. At its centre point, the river's course is marked by a series of meanders flanked by high limestone cliffs that determine the landscape. Upstream from this steep-sloped relief, near Montignac and in the vicinity of Lascaux, the contours of the land soften considerably; the valley floor widens, and the banks of the river lose their steepness.
The Lascaux valley is located some distance from the major concentrations of decorated caves and inhabited sites, most of which were discovered further downstream. In the environs of the village of Eyzies-de-Tayac Sireuil, there are no fewer than 37 decorated caves and shelters, as well as an even greater number of habitation sites from the Upper Paleolithic, located in the open, beneath a sheltering overhang, or at the entrance to one of the area's karst cavities. This is the highest concentration in Europe.
The cave contains nearly 6,000 figures, which can be grouped into three main categories: animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The paintings contain no images of the surrounding landscape or the vegetation of the time. Most of the major images have been painted onto the walls using red, yellow, and black colours from a complex multiplicity of mineral pigments including iron compounds such as iron oxide (ochre), hematite, and goethite, as well as manganese-containing pigments. Charcoal may also have been used but seemingly to a sparing extent. On some of the cave walls, the colour may have been applied as a suspension of pigment in either animal fat or calcium-rich cave groundwater or clay, making paint, that was swabbed or blotted on, rather than applied by brush. In other areas, the colour was applied by spraying the pigments by blowing the mixture through a tube. Where the rock surface is softer, some designs have been incised into the stone. Many images are too faint to discern, and others have deteriorated entirely.
Over 900 can be identified as animals, and 605 of these have been precisely identified. Out of these images, there are 364 paintings of equines as well as 90 paintings of stags. Also represented are cattle and bison, each representing 4 to 5% of the images. A smattering of other images include seven felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human. There are no images of reindeer, even though that was the principal source of food for the artists. Geometric images have also been found on the walls.
The most famous section of the cave is The Hall of the Bulls where bulls, equines, aurochs, stags and the only bear in the cave are depicted. The four black bulls, or aurochs, are the dominant figures among the 36 animals represented here. One of the bulls is long, the largest animal discovered so far in cave art. Additionally, the bulls appear to be in motion.
A painting referred to as "The Crossed Bison", found in the chamber called the Nave, is often submitted as an example of the skill of the Paleolithic cave painters. The crossed hind legs create the illusion that one bison is closer to the viewer than the other. This visual depth in the scene demonstrates a primitive form of perspective which was particularly advanced for the time.
The Hall of the Bulls, presents the most spectacular composition of Lascaux. Its calcite walls are not suitable for engraving, so it is only decorated with paintings, often of impressive dimensions: some are up to five metres long.
Two rows of aurochs face each other, two on one side and three on the other. The two aurochs on the north side are accompanied by about ten horses and a large enigmatic animal, with two straight lines on its forehead that earned it the nickname "unicorn". On the south side, three large aurochs are next to three smaller ones, painted red, as well as six small deer and the only bear in the cave, superimposed on the belly of an aurochs and difficult to read.
The Axial Diverticulum is also decorated with cattle and horses accompanied by deer and ibex. A drawing of a fleeing horse was brushed with manganese pencil 2.50 metres above the ground. Some animals are painted on the ceiling and seem to roll from one wall to the other. These representations, which required the use of scaffolding, are intertwined with many signs (sticks, dots and rectangular signs).
The Passage has a highly degraded decoration, notably through air circulation.
The Nave has four groups of figures: the Empreinte panel, the Black Cow panel, the Deer swimming panel and the Crossed Buffalo panel. These works are accompanied by many enigmatic geometric signs, including coloured checkers that H. Breuil called "coats of arms".
The Feline Diverticulum owes its name to a group of felines, one of which seems to urinate to mark its territory. Very difficult to access, one can see there engravings of wild animals of a rather naive style. There are also other animals associated with signs, including a representation of a horse seen from the front, exceptional in Paleolithic art where animals are generally represented in profiles or from a "twisted perspective".
The apse contains more than a thousand engravings, some of which are superimposed on paintings, corresponding to animals and signs. There is the only reindeer represented in Lascaux.
The Well presents the most enigmatic scene of Lascaux: an ithyphallic (erect sex) man with a bird's head seems to fall, perhaps knocked down by a buffalo gutted by a saga; at his side is represented an elongated object surmounted by a bird, perhaps a propeller; on the left a rhinoceros moves away. A horse is also present on the opposite wall. Two groups of signs are to be noted in this composition:
- between man and rhinos, three pairs of digitized punctuation marks found at the bottom of the Cat Diverticulum, in the most remote part of the cave;
- under man and bison, a complex barbed wire sign that can be found almost identically on other walls of the cave, but also on paddle points and on the sandstone lamp found nearby.
The interpretation of Palaeolithic Art is problematic, as it can be influenced by our own prejudices and beliefs. Some anthropologists and art historians theorize the paintings could be an account of past hunting success, or could represent a mystical ritual in order to improve future hunting endeavors. The latter theory is supported by the overlapping images of one group of animals in the same cave location as another group of animals, suggesting that one area of the cave was more successful for predicting a plentiful hunting excursion.
Applying the iconographic method of analysis to the Lascaux paintings (studying position, direction and size of the figures; organization of the composition; painting technique; distribution of the color planes; research of the image center), Thérèse Guiot-Houdart attempted to comprehend the symbolic function of the animals, to identify the theme of each image and finally to reconstitute the canvas of the myth illustrated on the rock walls.
Julien d'Huy and Jean-Loïc Le Quellec showed that certain angular or barbed signs of Lascaux may be analysed as "weapon" or "wounds". These signs affect dangerous animals—big cats, aurochs and bison—more than others and may be explained by a fear of the animation of the image. Another finding supports the hypothesis of half-alive images. At Lascaux, bison, aurochs and ibex are not represented side by side. Conversely, one can note a bison-horses-lions system and an aurochs-horses-deer-bears system, these animals being frequently associated. Such a distribution may show the relationship between the species pictured and their environmental conditions. Aurochs and bison fight one against the other, and horses and deer are very social with other animals. Bison and lions live in open plains areas; aurochs, deer and bears are associated with forests and marshes; ibex habitat is rocky areas, and horses are highly adaptive for all these areas. The Lascaux paintings' disposition may be explained by a belief in the real life of the pictured species, wherein the artists tried to respect their real environmental conditions.
Less known is the image area called the "Abside" (Apse), a roundish, semi-spherical chamber similar to an apse in a Romanesque basilica. It is approximately 4.5 metres in diameter (about 5 yards) and covered on every wall surface (including the ceiling) with thousands of entangled, overlapping, engraved drawings. The ceiling of the Apse, which ranges from 1.6 to 2.7 metres high (about 5.2 to 8.9 feet) as measured from the original floor height, is so completely decorated with such engravings that it indicates that the prehistoric people who executed them first constructed a scaffold to do so.
According to David Lewis-Williams and Jean Clottes who both studied presumably similar art of the San people of Southern Africa, this type of art is spiritual in nature relating to visions experienced during ritualistic trance-dancing. These trance visions are a function of the human brain and so are independent of geographical location. Nigel Spivey, a professor of classical art and archeology at the University of Cambridge, has further postulated in his series, "How Art Made the World", that dot and lattice patterns overlapping the representational images of animals are very similar to hallucinations provoked by sensory-deprivation. He further postulates that the connections between culturally important animals and these hallucinations led to the invention of image-making, or the art of drawing.
Leroi-Gourhan studied the cave from the 60s, his observation of the associations of animals and the distribution of species within the cave led him to develop a Structuralist theory that posited the existence of a genuine organization of the graphic space in Palaeolithic sanctuaries. This model is based on a masculine/feminine duality – which can be particularly observed in the bison/horse and aurochs/horse pairs – identifiable in both the signs and the animal representations. He also defined an ongoing evolution through four consecutive styles, from the Aurignacian to the Late Magdalenian. André Leroi-Gourhan did not publish a detailed analysis of the cave's figures. In his work Préhistoire de l’art occidental, published in 1965, he nonetheless put forward an analysis of certain signs and applied his explanatory model to the understanding of other decorated caves.
The opening of Lascaux Cave after World War II changed the cave environment. The exhalations of 1,200 visitors per day, presence of light, and changes in air circulation have created a number of problems. Lichens and crystals began to appear on the walls in the late 1950s, leading to closure of the caves in 1963. This led to restriction of access to the real caves to a few visitors every week, and the creation of a replica cave for visitors to Lascaux. In 2001, the authorities in charge of Lascaux changed the air conditioning system which resulted in regulation of the temperature and humidity. When the system had been established, an infestation of "Fusarium solani", a white mold, began spreading rapidly across the cave ceiling and walls. The mold is considered to have been present in the cave soil and exposed by the work of tradesmen, leading to the spread of the fungus which was treated with quicklime. In 2007, a new fungus, which has created grey and black blemishes, began spreading in the real cave.
As of 2008, the cave contained black mold. In January 2008, authorities closed the cave for three months, even to scientists and preservationists. A single individual was allowed to enter the cave for twenty minutes once a week to monitor climatic conditions. Now only a few scientific experts are allowed to work inside the cave and just for a few days a month, but the efforts to remove the mold have taken a toll, leaving dark patches and damaging the pigments on the walls. In 2009 the mold problem was pronounced stable. In 2011 the fungus seemed to be in retreat after the introduction of an additional, even stricter conservation program. Two research programs have been instigated at the CIAP concerning how to best treat the problem, and the cave also now possesses a powerful climatisation system designed to reduce the introduction of bacteria.
Organized through the initiative of the French Ministry of Culture, an international symposium titled "Lascaux and Preservation Issues in Subterranean Environments" was held in Paris on 26 and 27 February 2009, under the chairmanship of Jean Clottes. It brought together nearly three hundred participants from seventeen countries with the goal of confronting research and interventions conducted in Lascaux Cave since 2001 with the experiences gained in other countries in the domain of preservation in subterranean environments. The proceedings of this symposium were published in 2011. Seventy-four specialists in fields as varied as biology, biochemistry, botany, hydrology, climatology, geology, fluid mechanics, archaeology, anthropology, restoration and conservation, from numerous countries (France, United States, Portugal, Spain, Japan, and others) contributed to this publication.
In May 2018 "Ochroconis lascauxensis", a species of fungus of the Ascomycota phylum, was officially described and named after the place of its first emergence and isolation, the Lascaux cave. This followed on from the discovery of another closely related species "Ochroconis anomala", first observed inside the cave in 2000. The following year black spots began to appear among the cave paintings. No official announcement on the effect or progress of attempted treatments has ever been made.
The problem is ongoing, as are efforts to control the microbial and fungal growths in the cave. The fungal infection crises have led to the establishment of an International Scientific Committee for Lascaux and to rethinking how, and how much, human access should be permitted in caves containing prehistoric art. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18594 |
Lex Luthor
Alexander Joseph Luthor () is a fictional supervillain appearing in publications by the publisher DC Comics. The character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Lex Luthor originally appeared in "Action Comics" No. 23 (cover dated: April 1940). He has since endured as the archenemy of Superman.
Originally introduced as a mad scientist whose schemes Superman would routinely foil, Lex's portrayal has evolved over the years and his characterisation has deepened. In contemporary stories, Lex is portrayed as a wealthy, power-mad American business magnate, ingenious engineer, philanthropist to the city of Metropolis, and one of the most intelligent people in the world. A well-known public figure, he is the owner of a conglomerate called LexCorp. He is intent on ridding the world of the alien Superman, whom Lex Luthor views as an obstacle to his plans and as a threat to the very existence of humanity. Given his high status as a supervillain, however, he has often come into conflict with Batman and other superheroes in the DC Universe.
The character has traditionally lacked superpowers or a dual identity and typically appears with a bald head. He periodically wears his Warsuit, a high-tech battle suit giving him enhanced strength, flight, advanced weaponry, and other capabilities. The character was originally introduced as a diabolical recluse, but during the Modern Age, he was reimagined by writers as a devious, high-profile industrialist, who has crafted his public persona to avoid suspicion and arrest. He is well known for his philanthropy, donating vast sums of money to Metropolis over the years, funding parks, foundations, and charities.
The character was ranked 4th on IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time and as the 8th Greatest Villain by "Wizard" on its 100 Greatest Villains of All Time list. Luthor is one of a few genre-crossing villains whose adventures take place "in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended". Scott James Wells, Sherman Howard, John Shea, Michael Rosenbaum, and Jon Cryer have portrayed the character in television series, while Lyle Talbot, Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey, and Jesse Eisenberg have portrayed the character in films. Jackson Beck, Ray Owens, G. Stanley Jones, Michael Bell, Brian Dobson, Clancy Brown, J. S. Gilbert, Kevin Spacey, Powers Boothe, James Marsters, Chris Noth, Anthony LaPaglia, Steve Blum, Fred Tatasciore, Jason Isaacs, Kevin Michael Richardson, Mark Rolston, John DiMaggio, Keith Silverstein, James Woods, Rainn Wilson, Ike Barinholtz, Giancarlo Esposito and others have provided the character's voice in animated adaptations.
In his first story appearance, "Action Comics" No. 23 (April 1940), Luthor is depicted as a diabolical genius and is referred to only by his surname. He resides in a flying city suspended by a dirigible and plots to provoke a war between two European nations. Lois Lane and Clark Kent investigate, which results in Lois being kidnapped. Luthor battles Superman with a green ray but Luthor is ultimately defeated by Superman, and Lois is rescued. Superman destroys Luthor's dirigible with him still on it, implying Luthor may have died, although stories ending with Luthor's apparent death are common in his earliest appearances.
Luthor returns in "Superman" No. 4 and steals a weapon from the U.S. Army that is capable of causing earthquakes. Superman battles and defeats Luthor, and the earthquake device is destroyed by Superman. The scientist who made the device commits suicide to prevent its reinvention. In a story in the same issue, Luthor is also shown to have created a city on the sunken Lost continent of Pacifo and to have recreated prehistoric monsters, which he plans to unleash upon the world. Superman thwarts his plans, and Luthor appears to have been killed by the dinosaurs he created. Luthor returns in "Superman" No. 5 with a plan to place hypnotic gas in the offices of influential people. He intends to throw the nation into a depression with the help of corrupt financier Moseley, but the story ends with Superman defeating him.
In these early stories, Luthor's schemes are centered around financial gain or megalomaniacal ambitions; unlike most later incarnations, he demonstrates no strong animosity toward Superman beyond inevitable resentment of Superman's constant interference with his plans. Luthor's obsessive hatred of Superman came later in the character's development.
In Luthor's earliest appearances, he is shown as a middle-aged man with a full head of red hair. Less than a year later, however, an artistic mistake resulted in Luthor being depicted as completely bald in a newspaper strip. The original error is attributed to Leo Nowak, a studio artist who illustrated for the "Superman" dailies during this period. One hypothesis is that Nowak mistook Luthor for the Ultra-Humanite, a frequent foe of Superman who, in his Golden Age incarnation, resembled a balding, elderly man. Other evidence suggests Luthor's design was confused with that of a stockier, bald henchman in "Superman" No. 4 (Spring 1940); Luthor's next appearance occurs in "Superman" No. 10 (May 1941), in which Nowak depicted him as significantly heavier, with visible jowls. The character's abrupt hair loss has been made reference to several times over the course of his history. When the concept of the DC Multiverse began to take hold, Luthor's red-haired incarnation was rewritten as Alexei Luthor, Lex's counterpart from the Earth-Two parallel universe. In 1960, writer Jerry Siegel altered Luthor's backstory to incorporate his hair loss into his origin.
In 1944 Lex Luthor was the first character in a comic book (and one of the first in fiction) to use an atomic bomb. The United States Department of War asked this story line be delayed from publication, which it was until 1946, to protect the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. The War Department later asked for dailies of the "Superman" comic strip to be pulled in April 1945 which depicted Lex Luthor bombarding Superman with the radiation from a cyclotron.
Luthor vanished for a long time, coming back in Superboy No. 59 (Sept. 1957), in a story called "Superboy meets Amazing Man". A flying costumed bald man probably in his forties appears in Smallville and starts helping people using his fantastic inventions. He later moves his operations to the nearby town of Hadley. Superboy finds he is using his inventions to set the town up so he can rob their bank and stops him. In the last panel, Amazing Man is in jail and he tells Superboy he will regret it as sure as his name is Luthor and Superboy thinks that he will be Superman by the time Luthor gets out and that Luthor's talents might make him an archenemy.
In the origin story printed in "Adventure Comics" No. 271 (April 1960), young Lex Luthor is shown as an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy. The teenage Luthor saves Superboy from a chance encounter with kryptonite. In gratitude Superboy builds Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later he manages to create an artificial life-form, which Luthor loved as if it were his own child. Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor creates an antidote for kryptonite poisoning. However, an accidental fire breaks out in Luthor's lab. Superboy uses his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which cause Luthor to go bald; in the process, he also destroys Luthor's artificial life form. Believing Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributes his actions to jealousy and vows revenge. Luthor's revenge first came in the form of grandiose engineering projects in Smallville to prove his superiority over the superhero. However, the gesture proves a failure on multiple levels; for one, Superboy does not feel belittled, but instead is gladly supportive of Luthor pursuing his vindictive goal constructively. Furthermore, those projects also each go disastrously out of control and require Superboy's intervention, which Luthor rationalized as their being sabotaged by the superhero. These mounting embarrassments further deepen Lex's hate for Superboy for supposedly further humiliating him, and he unsuccessfully attempts to murder the superhero. This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one, and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have been a more noble person. These elements were played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novel "". This revenge causes Luthor's family to disown him and change their names to Thorul. It also leads to years of Superman, Luthor, and Supergirl concealing the truth from Luthor's sister, Lena Thorul. She was told her brother died in a rock climbing accident. She has ESP powers due to touching one of Luthor's inventions. Once she found out about Luthor being her brother and briefly lost her memory. However, Luthor broke out of prison and gave her flowers he had developed that removed the bad memory from her mind.
In the 1986 limited series "The Man of Steel", John Byrne redesigned Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s would recognize: an evil corporate executive. Byrne intentionally chose to base this new depiction of Luthor on businessmen Donald Trump and Ted Turner. Initially brutish and overweight, the character later evolved into a sleeker, more athletic version of his old self. Luthor is no longer recounted as having lost his hair in a chemical fire; rather, his hairline is shown to be receding naturally over time. Marv Wolfman, a writer on Action Comics who had one conversation with Byrne prior to Luthor's reboot recalled:
The Modern Age Lex Luthor is a product of child abuse and early poverty. Born in the Suicide Slum district of Metropolis, he is instilled with a desire to become a self-made man. As a teenager, he takes out a large insurance policy on his parents without their knowledge, then sabotages their car's brakes, causing their deaths. Upon graduating from MIT, Luthor founds his own business, LexCorp, which grows to dominate much of Metropolis.
Luthor does not physically appear in "The Man of Steel" until the fourth issue, which takes place over a year after Superman's arrival in Metropolis. When Lois Lane and Clark Kent are invited to a society gala aboard Luthor's yacht, terrorists seize the ship without warning, forcing Superman to intervene. Luthor observes Superman in action, and once the gunmen are dispatched, hands the hero a personal cheque in an attempt to hire him. When Luthor admits that he had not only anticipated the attack, but had arranged for it to occur to lure Superman out, the Mayor deputizes Superman to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. This, coupled with the indignation that Superman is the only person he could not buy off, threaten, or otherwise control, results in Luthor's pledge to destroy Superman at any cost. As such, he is more than willing to help other businessmen destroy other superbeings. He was instrumental in the apparent death of the Swamp Thing, which jeopardized many lives as the Parliament of Trees attempted to replace him.
Despite general acceptance of Byrne's characterization, as evidenced by subsequent adaptations in other media, some writers have called for a return to Luthor's original status as a mad scientist. Regarding the character's effectiveness as a corrupt billionaire, author Neil Gaiman commented:
Luthor's romantic aspirations toward Lois Lane, established early on in the series, become a focal point of the stories immediately following it. He is shown making repeated attempts to court her during "The Man of Steel", though Lois plainly does not return his feelings.
In the "Superman Adventures" comic line based on the TV series of the same name, Luthor's backstory is identical to that of the Modern Age origin with slight changes. Luthor is shown originating in Suicide Slum, but at an early age already aware of how his brilliance outshone other children and his plans to have all Metropolis look up to him one day. Luthor's baldness is never explained, save for a brief depiction of him with blond hair in childhood; it is assumed the hair loss was natural. Luthor's parents die during his teenage years, however their deaths were indeed accidental and with no foul play by Lex. As in the usual story, Lex uses the insurance payouts to kickstart his future by paying for his tuition to MIT and eventually starting LexCorp. His hatred of Superman is explained as the citizens of Metropolis have had more admiration for the Man of Steel than for Lex.
"", a limited series written by Mark Waid in 2004, offers an alternate look at Luthor's history, including his youth in Smallville, and his first encounter with Superman. The story has similarities to the 2001 television series "Smallville", which follows Clark Kent's life as a teenager and into early adulthood. One plot element shared by the comic and the show is Lex Luthor's problematic relationship with his wealthy father, Lionel.
"Birthright" also reinvents the Silver Age concept of Luthor befriending Clark Kent as a young man. During a failed attempt to communicate with Krypton, an explosion erupts which singes off Luthor's hair. Waid's original intention was to jettison the notion of Lex Luthor being an evil businessman, restoring his status as a mad scientist. He ultimately conceded, however, that the CEO Luthor would be easier for readers to recognize. In "Birthright", Luthor remains a wealthy corporate magnate; in contrast to Byrne's characterization however, LexCorp is founded upon Luthor's study of extraterrestrial life, thereby providing a link between him and Superman. In the retrospective section of the "Superman: Birthright" trade paperback, Waid explains:
"Birthright" was initially intended to establish a new origin for Superman and Luthor. To Waid's disappointment, however, the canonicity of the series was eventually discredited by stories that followed it. A concise biography for Luthor, later outlined in "Action Comics" No. 850, first appeared in the 2007 limited series "Countdown to Final Crisis" No. 34. Luthor's current origin appears to be a synthesis of aspects from the Silver Age continuity and "The Man of Steel" miniseries. Recent changes to DC Comics continuity were revealed to have been a result of the 2005 "Infinite Crisis" miniseries.
As outlined in a backup profile in the "52" weekly series, the post-"Action Comics" No. 850 Lex Luthor in this continuity is the son of business mogul Lionel Luthor and his socialite spouse, Leticia. As shown previously in "Superman: Birthright" and the Pre-"Crisis" stories, he spends part of his adolescence in Smallville, Kansas, where he meets Clark Kent, Lana Lang, and Pete Ross. In the 2009–2010 series "", however, Lex, his father, and his sister Lena Luthor are poor and Lionel is an abusive alcoholic.
In both versions, Lex Luthor leaves Smallville "under a cloud of rumor and suspicion", when his father is mysteriously killed. Luthor leaves behind his sister and migrates to Metropolis, where he founds LexCorp. Luthor becomes so powerful that he controls all the media in Metropolis and uses it to reinforce his public image as a wealthy benefactor. Rival newspaper "Daily Planet" had always stood free, condemning Luthor's actions in an outrageous editorial signed by Perry White. As a result, when Clark Kent is first inducted into the "Planet", the newspaper is almost bankrupt, dilapidated, and unable to afford new reporters. Thanks to Clark Kent's appearance as Superman and Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen being given exclusive interviews and photographs, the paper's circulation increases by 700%.
The paper's return is interrupted when the U.S. Army, led by Lois's father, General Sam Lane, forcibly shuts down the business. General Lane attempts to force Lois to tell them everything she knows about Superman, who is now a fugitive after he fled a military interrogation. Thanks to Jimmy's help, Lois manages to escape to help Superman. Sam arrives and orders Superman and Lois arrested. The crowd turns on the Army, however, and Superman orders the crowd to stop, telling them that they, not the Army, not Lex Luthor, nor himself, are meant to be Metropolis's saviors. Knowing Luthor's role in the Army's attack against him, Superman confronts him and tells him that Metropolis does not belong to him: "You don't own us." Lex objects, since Superman is not from Earth. Superman replies, "This is my home", and leaves. Luthor holds Superman responsible for Luthor losing his complete grip over the people of Metropolis, a grudge that lasts for an eternity. In both "JLA" and "52", Grant Morrison states that Luthor's ego leads him to believe that the only reason Superman commits good deeds is to somehow strike at Luthor and prove who is better, arguing that it is impossible for Superman to be as good as he appears to be.
Many times, Luthor has stated that he could have aided the entire human race if not for Superman's interference, claiming that he gives humanity a goal that they could realistically strive to duplicate, while Superman makes them reach for the impossible. Both Superman and Conner Kent have called him out on the hypocrisy of this statement, noting that he has regularly turned down easy opportunities to willingly help others, simply because he would have sacrificed an opportunity to kill Superman by doing so. They believe this shows that Luthor's ego is more important to him than humanity. Even when Superman was depowered after the Battle of Metropolis and remained out of sight for a year, the only thing Luthor accomplished in that time was the self-sabotaged 'Everyman' project, subsequently finding a long-buried Kryptonian warship which he uses to attack Metropolis. This prompted Superman to note that he spent his year without Superman to discover "a big destructive machine so [he] could break things" rather than achieve anything of worth to humanity, all the while claiming that Superman drove him to it. This idea of Luthor's fixation on his hatred for Superman was further reinforced when Luthor was briefly merged with a near-omnipotent entity that sought peace after its difficult 'childhood'. While merged with the entity, Luthor had the power to bring peace and bliss to the entire universe, potentially becoming a hero greater even than Superman, but Luthor fought against that power simply because he would have had to share that bliss with Superman as well.
In the Pre-"Crisis" continuity, Lex Luthor's driving ambitions are to kill Superman and enslave Earth as a stepping stone to dominating the universe. In "Action Comics" No. 291 (1960), Superman acknowledges that Luthor "could have been a mighty force for good in the world, yet he chose to direct his great scientific brain into criminal channels." Although none of his attempts to kill Superman work permanently (though a classic non-canonical story from 1961 entitled "The Death of Superman" has Luthor finally killing Superman after lulling him into complacency by pretending to go straight, although Supergirl then arrests him and he is exiled to the Phantom Zone), Luthor routinely manages to escape from prison and threaten the world again.
Despite being a noted criminal on Earth, Luthor is revered on the alien world of Lexor, where he rediscovered the planet's lost technology and rebuilt society for its inhabitants. He apparently lost a fight to Superman so that water could be transported to the desert planet, as he had reactivated digging machines but discovered that he could not find water. He and Superman had originally gone to the world to have a proper fight as Superman did not want to appear cowardly after Luthor over a radio challenged him to a fight, as this planet had a red sun meaning Superman lost his powers there. As a result, he becomes a hero in the eyes of Lexor's people, whereas Superman is detested as a villain. He eventually marries a local woman named Ardora. After its debut, Lexor appears sporadically in various Superman comics as a retreat for Luthor while he continues to wage assaults on Superman.
After a disastrous defeat by Superman, Luthor decides to retire and go to Lexor permanently. Once there, he finds he has fathered a son by Ardora, Lex Luthor Jr.. Luthor spends the next several weeks with his new family and acting as guardian and scientific advisor to the Lexorians. When it is discovered that Lexor has the same geological instability that destroyed Krypton, Luthor invents and installs a "Neutrarod" to deaden the planetary core's reactions. However, despite his sincere effort to reform, Luthor's pathological hatred for Superman resurfaces. He soon discovers an underground laboratory, dating from Lexor's technological age. Knowing that Superman will eventually locate him, Luthor uses the equipment to create a battlesuit and goes on a series of secretive marauding attacks, professing surprise at the pillage and plunder reported in the news. Superman ultimately arrives on Lexor to take Luthor back to Earth after one of Luthor's still-active machines threatened mass destruction. Luthor counterattacks with his battlesuit, revealing his true character to the now-disillusioned Lexorian people. During the battle, an energy salvo from the battlesuit accidentally overloads the Neutrarod, resulting in the annihilation of Lexor and all its inhabitants, including Luthor's wife and son.
Luthor eventually returns to Earth, unable to accept his own role in Lexor's destruction and blaming Superman for it, even psychologically blocking the memory, lest he go insane. The Lexorian battlesuit now enabled Luthor to fight Superman in hand-to-hand combat. Luthor's trademark battlesuit from this era—a heavily armored, flight-capable suit with kryptonite fixtures embedded in its gauntlets— was designed by George Pérez as part of the Super Powers toyline in the early 1980s and introduced as Luthor acted as Lexor's sovereign. It has reappeared in recent continuity, most notably during "Infinite Crisis".
During the 12-issue limited series "Crisis on Infinite Earths", Luthor allies himself with fellow Superman foe Brainiac to recruit an army of supervillains spanning the DC Multiverse, intending to take advantage of the confusion caused by the Crisis. However, once it becomes clear that it is as much in their interests to save the multiverse as anyone else's, Luthor and Brainiac reluctantly ally their faction with Superman and the other heroes. At the conclusion of the series, reality is altered so that each of the different universes fall into their proper place, converging into one. Afterward, Luthor is subsequently returned to prison with all his memories of the alliance forgotten.
The Silver/Bronze Age Lex Luthor met his non-canonical end in the "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" story line that closed out the Pre-"Crisis" Superman chronology. Luthor found Brainiac's robotic head and was fused with it. Brainiac took control of Luthor's body and sought to destroy Superman once and for all, teaming up with the Legion of Super-Villains. Fighting Brainiac's control, Luthor begged a super-powered Lana Lang to kill him; she complied by breaking his neck. Although Luthor died, Brainiac was able to retain control of the body for a short period of time before rigor mortis set in, and his head was forced to leave it, eventually running down.
As part of the continuity changes which followed "The Man of Steel" and "Superman: Secret Origin", Luthor is shown actively participating in the creation of three "Superman" villains, Parasite (indirectly), Bizarro (the failed result of an attempt to clone Superman), and the cyborg Metallo. Upon discovering that Metallo is powered by a 'heart' of kryptonite rock in "Superman" (vol. 2) No. 2, Luthor steals it to fashion a kryptonite ring for himself. He wears the alien ore around his finger as a symbol that he is untouchable, even to the Man of Steel, after carrying out a series of kidnappings to try to determine the nature of the connection between Superman and Clark Kent.
Although computer analysis of the assembled data revealed that Clark Kent and Superman were the same person, Luthor dismissed the results because he believed that someone as powerful as Superman would never choose to live a normal human life. Luthor eventually suffered from severe cancer brought on by long-term radiation exposure from the ring; before this, kryptonite was mistakenly assumed to produce a safe radiation that is harmless to humans. His hand requires amputation to prevent the cancer's spread, but by then it has already metastasized, and his condition is terminal.
Luthor decides to fake his own death by piloting a prototype jet on a proposed trip around the world and crashing it in the Andes; this is merely a cover for the removal of his brain from his cancer-ridden body and the growth of a cloned body around it, whereupon he passes himself off as his hitherto unknown, illegitimate 21-year-old son and heir, Lex Luthor II. His deception is benefited by a vibrant new body with a beard and full head of red hair, as well as assuming an Australian accent as part of his fake backstory. As Luthor II, he inherits control of LexCorp and seduces Supergirl (a protoplasmic clone of an alternate universe Lana Lang), due to his resemblance to her creator (the alternate universe's Luthor). Luthor's clone body eventually begins to deteriorate and age (and lose its hair) at a rapid rate, a side-effect of a disease that affects all clones. Meanwhile, Lois Lane discovers proof of Luthor's clone harvesting and false identity; with help from Superman, she exposes the truth, and a despondent Superman helps to apprehend Luthor. In the end, Luthor becomes a permanent prisoner in his own body, unable to even blink, and swearing vengeance on Superman.
Aid comes in the form of the demon Neron; Luthor is offered full health and vitality in exchange for services and his soul. Not believing in the existence of souls, he agrees. Returning to Metropolis, Luthor freely turns himself over to the police and is put on trial. He is acquitted on all counts when Luthor claims to have been kidnapped by renegade scientists from Cadmus Labs, who replaced him with a violent clone that is allegedly responsible for all the crimes with which Luthor is charged.
Deciding to turn to politics, Luthor becomes President of the United States, winning the election on a platform of promoting technological progress. His first action as president was to take a proposed moratorium on fossil-based fuels to the U.S. Congress.
Luthor is assisted by the extreme unpopularity of the previous administration's mishandling of the Gotham City earthquake crisis (as depicted in the "No Man's Land" storyline in the Batman titles), and his own seemingly heroic efforts to rebuild Gotham. After six months, Gotham is restored and rejoins America. Batman ultimately learns that the entire debacle was the fault of Luthor alone, as he attempted to take control of Gotham by forging deeds for the land in his name. This results in Bruce Wayne severing all commercial ties between the U.S. government and his company, Wayne Enterprises, in protest of Luthor's election as President. With Luthor having reacquired the kryptonite ring he once used against Superman, Superman, Batman and Lois Lane trick Luthor into thinking that he has thwarted their attempts to replace the ring with a fake when in reality he has been left with the fake. In response to Wayne Enterprises severing ties with his government, Luthor arranges the murder of Wayne's lover, Vesper Fairchild, and frames Wayne for the murder (as seen in ""), the plan being more successful than Luthor anticipated when his chosen assassin of David Cain realized Wayne's identity as Batman and set up a complex frame that also implicated Batman in the crime rather than just framing 'Bruce Wayne'.
An early triumph of Luthor's first term occurs around the time of the 2001 "Our Worlds at War" storyline, in which he discovers Clark Kent's secret identity and in which he coordinates the U.S. Army, Earth's superheroes, and a number of untrustworthy alien forces to battle the main villain of the story arc, Imperiex. As it is eventually revealed, however, Luthor knew about the alien invasion in advance and did nothing to alert Earth's heroes. This leads to the destruction of Topeka, Kansas, by an Imperiex probe and Luthor takes command of the crisis, hoping to establish his legacy as a great leader. Although Lex Luthor is able to devise a plan to destroy Imperiex's body, the plan is subsequently hijacked by Brainiac 13, requiring Superman to propose a new plan where Darkseid and Luthor coordinate their efforts to create a time portal so that a super-charged Superman can send Imperiex back in time to the moment after the Big Bang.
The initial story arc of the "Superman/Batman" ongoing series depicts the fall of Luthor's reign as U.S. President. In "The World's Finest" (more commonly referred to as "Public Enemies"), a cadre of superheroes eventually break ranks from the Justice League to oppose Luthor. Superman and Batman, who had previously forbidden any attempt to unseat Luthor from office by force, led the storming of the White House. This was predicated by an attempt on Luthor's part to link Superman to a kryptonite asteroid that is hurtling toward Earth, claiming that he had 'evidence'—which he declined to share while claiming that it would make the public laud his actions if they knew it—that the asteroid was being drawn to Earth by Superman, offering a billion dollar reward for Superman's capture that pitted Superman and Batman against an army of supervillains, all of whom they defeated. Luthor even attempted to send a team of superheroes after them under the leadership of Captain Atom—the team consisting of Major Force, Black Lightning, Power Girl, Starfire, Katana and Green Lantern, but this plan failed when Katana and Power Girl quickly sided with Superman and Batman and Major Force was apparently killed, Power Girl noting that Luthor had assumed in his arrogance that the heroes would obey him simply because he was President. When the Justice Society's forced attempt to stop them by sending Hawkman and Captain Marvel against them met with failure and resulted in Superman and Batman briefly infiltrating the White House, Luthor, in an enraged and desperate gambit after Superman's rapid defeats of his plans, used a variant combination of the "super-steroid" Venom (a chemical associated with the Batman villain Bane), liquid synthetic kryptonite, and an Apokoliptian battlesuit to fight Superman directly.
The madness that is a side effect of Venom takes hold, and during the ensuing fight with Superman and Batman, Luthor admits he had traded the creature Doomsday to Darkseid in return for weapons during the "Our Worlds at War" crisis; in doing so, he inadvertently provides a confession which is captured on video by Batman. Returning to the LexCorp building to regroup after Superman damaged his battlesuit, Luthor finds that the acting CEO, Talia Head, has sold the entire company to the Wayne Foundation, forcing Luthor to escape and go into hiding. Following Luthor's bankruptcy and total disgrace, Vice President Pete Ross briefly assumes his place as President. Luthor serves fewer than three years.
In 2009, the story of Luthor's rise and fall as U.S. President was adapted as a direct-to-video animated film entitled "".
Alexander Luthor, Jr. (the son of Earth-Three's version of Luthor) returned to the DC Universe along with other survivors from "Crisis on Infinite Earths" as part of a scheme to create a perfect Earth, under the pretense of restoring Earth-Two. To this end, he assumed Luthor's identity and created a new Secret Society of Super Villains. In response, the real Luthor took on the identity of Mockingbird and formed the third incarnation of the Secret Six to counter Alexander's organization.
Luthor confronts his impostor in "Infinite Crisis" No. 3, but is intercepted by Superboy-Prime (a teenage version of Superman from Earth-Prime), who is allied with Alexander. After discovering that his hybrid clone/"son" Conner Kent (Superboy) was injured by Prime, Luthor contacts Robin and gives him the means to help Superboy recover. Later Luthor himself goes to Titans Tower and slips Conner a crystal shard which shows the location of Alexander's Arctic Fortress. At the end of "Infinite Crisis" No. 7, Luthor oversees Alexander's execution at the hands of the Joker.
In the opening weeks of the 2006 – 2007 series "52", the Gotham City Police Department finds what appears to be Luthor's body in an alley. John Henry Irons examines the body at S.T.A.R. Labs and notes that the corpse was altered postmortem to make it resemble Lex Luthor. During a press conference, the genuine Luthor publicly states that the body is that of an impostor from another Earth, and the true culprit of the crimes with which Luthor is being charged. Although Alexander's body had a missing finger and a different appearance from Lex at the time of his death, "52" editor Stephen Wacker has confirmed that the body found in Gotham is indeed Alex, and that Luthor had it altered before the police discovered it.
Luthor immediately sets out to build a church, which he names the Luthoran Church; he becomes spokesman for a new procedure, created by the Everyman Project, that engineers ordinary citizens to develop superpowers. During the autopsy of Alexander Luthor Jr., he secretly exposes John Henry Irons to the chemicals involved in his creating his new army of superheroes, turning John into a literal man of steel. When approached by John's niece Natasha Irons, Luthor gladly allows her to be one of his first test subjects. Using Natasha and several other volunteers, Luthor forms his own team of superheroes which are introduced as the new Infinity Inc. In Week 21, Infinity Inc. is in the midst of a battle with Blockbuster (which Luthor has created as well), when he demonstrates that he can 'shut off' the powers of each of his agents; this results in the death of his speedster, Trajectory.
At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, Luthor sets in motion a calculated plot to discredit Supernova, a new hero who has taken over defending Metropolis in Superman's absence. Luthor triggers a mass-shutdown of the powers of everyone who has undertaken the Everyman program, except for the members of Infinity Inc. As multiple flight-powered Everymen plummet to their deaths, underground gas mains rupture from the impact, which adds civilians to the death toll. Millions of dollars worth of damage is caused. Luthor's plot ultimately fails when Supernova is able to minimize the disaster with a spectacular rescue.
While investigating Luthor to root out his motive, Natasha Irons discovers that Luthor has been testing himself to see if he is compatible with the artificial metagene treatment. John Henry Irons leads an assault on Luthor's building; despite the destruction of his armor during the fight, Irons confronts Luthor — only to find himself badly outclassed, as Luthor demonstrates nearly all of Superman's powers. Luthor considers conquering Earth and renaming it Lexor. However, Natasha uses her uncle's hammer to trigger an electromagnetic pulse which shuts down the synthetic metagene long enough for Steel to knock Lex unconscious. Lex is disgraced as a result, and later faces indictment when the members of the Everyman Project realize they have been used.
One year after the events of "Infinite Crisis", during the "One Year Later" storyline, Luthor is cleared of over 120 criminal counts ranging from malfeasance to first-degree murder relating to the New Year's Eve massacre from "52". However, his role in the massacre has permanently ruined his public image and thanks to the machinations of Doctor Sivana, he has lost most of his wealth and all of his control over his newly reformed LexCorp, which is now being run by Lana Lang. He blames Clark Kent for writing several articles unraveling his schemes and pledges vengeance on Metropolis after an angry mob jeers him on the courthouse steps. After amassing large quantities of kryptonite, including kidnapping the supervillains Metallo and the Kryptonite Man, Lex uses it to power a Kryptonian battleship controlled through a "sunstone" crystal. Superman manages to destroy the kryptonite-powered ship and recover the crystal, simultaneously confronting Lex with the fact that, despite his claims that Superman has prevented him from helping humanity, the only thing he accomplished with Superman being absent for a year was to find a large robot that he used to try to destroy Metropolis. Lex manages to escape custody yet again.
Lex later sends Bizarro after the newly arrived "Superboy", only for the creature to be defeated by Superman. Undaunted, Luthor gathers together a new Revenge Squad to fight against invading Kryptonians led by General Zod, leaving Superman alive to provide assistance simply because he believed that this 'invasion' was proof that he had been right about Superman all along and he wanted Superman to live with that knowledge.
In JLA, Luthor (alongside Joker and Cheetah III) gathers together a new "Injustice League" and, outfitted in a new version of his warsuit, sets out to destroy the Justice League with them. On a related note during this period, he was responsible for creating the third Shaggy Man and the third Blockbuster.
Luthor plays a large role in the "Countdown to Final Crisis" tie-in series "Salvation Run". Having been sent to the prison planet after his Injustice League was defeated, Lex quickly assumes control of the amassed villains, receiving competition only from Joker and Gorilla Grodd, who convince half of the villains to join them. He does fight the Joker until the battle was interrupted by an attack by Darkseid's Parademons. After the attack, Luthor manages to get the villains off the planet with a makeshift teleporter, secretly powered by Neutron, Heatmonger, Plasmus, Warp, and Thunder and Lightning. When called a "monster" by Thunder, Luthor claims it is the ones who sent them there who are the real monsters, and that he is the hero. He later sets the teleporter to self-destruct after he uses it, killing the attacking Parademons, and his living batteries.
In "Justice League of America" (vol. 2) No. 21, Luthor can be seen associating with Libra's Secret Society of Super Villains and placed in its Inner Circle. Lex Luthor wanted Libra to prove himself, so Libra sends Clayface to blow up the "Daily Planet" building. As Lex Luthor attempts to ambush Libra after learning that he is a prophet of Darkseid, Lex Luthor soon ends up surrounded by Justifiers. Libra tells Lex Luthor to make a final choice ... swear an oath to Darkseid or become a mindless slave. In "Final Crisis" No. 5, Lex Luthor is seen when Libra blames Calculator for cracking the computer codes that will help the resistance. Lex Luthor is silent on the matter, but has been picked to lead the rearguard action against the heroes at Blüdhaven. He assumes it is an honor, but he does not look very pleased. Libra later figures out Luthor had been the mole in the Society of Super Villains. Luthor, in league with Doctor Sivana, seemingly destroys Libra and overturns the Anti-Life Equation being broadcast into the Justifiers' helmets. He subsequently assists Superman in leading the assault against Darkseid's forces, noting that Superman can consider this a legendary first team-up between 'good' and 'bad'- with Luthor's side taking the credit for the win, and Superman accepting the deal due to the stakes. Luthor later assists Superman and his remaining allies in constructing the new Miracle Machine to reset the universe and recreate the universe without Darkseid.
Luthor ended up imprisoned for his crimes, but rather than going to jail General Sam Lane had him serve out his sentence working for the secretive Project 7734. While still forced to wear chains, Luthor was assigned the job of accessing the knowledge stored within the captured Brainiac, who had recently been defeated by Superman (as seen during the "Brainiac" storyline). Luthor successfully accessed Brainiac's brain and after Metallo and Reactron were taken to Kandor as prisoners of the Kryptonians who had now settled on Earth he used Brainiac to reactivate the Coluan's ship that was also being held in Kandor. Brainiac's robots attacked the Kryptonians, providing a distraction as Metallo and Reactron used their kryptonite hearts to kill their captors and murder Zor-El.
After his success with Brainiac, Luthor was given the seemingly dead body of Doomsday, who had been defeated by the Kryptonians, to study as it had "potential".
Luthor later manages to use Brainiac's connection to his ship to kill the soldiers assigned to watch him. Brainiac manages to free himself from Luthor's control, forcing him on board the ship, and the two make their escape. The two are later shown to have entered into an alliance, with Brainiac promising Luthor the Earth when he is done with it. While reading newspapers to catch up on what happened during his imprisonment, Luthor learns of the resurrection of Superboy. Lex quickly returns to Smallville, where it is revealed that his physically and mentally handicapped sister Lena Luthor is still alive, and living with her daughter Lori. In an effort to mockingly prove his abilities to Superboy, Lex agrees to cure his sister's illness. With Superboy's aid, Luthor manages to cure Lena, allowing her to walk and think logically again for a brief moment, before he then quickly reverses the process, leaving Lena completely catatonic, and informs Superboy that so long as Superman is alive, he will never reveal how he did it. Luthor escapes with Brainiac, leaving Superboy, Lori, and Krypto horrified at his cruelty. Because Luthor now sees Superboy as a failed experiment of using the "wrong alien DNA", he and Brainiac create another binary clone with their own genetics for another plan against the entire House of El.
As part of his participation in Project 7734, Luthor sends a robot double of himself with Brainiac on a mission to attack New Krypton. While there, the Luthor robot tampers with the body chemistry of the previously captured Reactron. Shortly thereafter, Reactron kills himself, initiating a chain reaction which ultimately destroys New Krypton and all but a handful of its 100,000 Kryptonian inhabitants. Supergirl's mother Alura (who had assumed leadership of the planet) is among the casualties. For his efforts, Luthor receives a presidential pardon for his past crimes.
During the "Blackest Night" storyline, when the public learned that everyone who has died are rising as undead Black Lanterns, Luthor isolates himself in his safehouse in fear that "all" the people he had murdered over the years would also reanimate and seek revenge on him. His fear is justified as his victims, including his deceased father, arrive, seeking to feast on his avarice-filled heart. However, Luthor escapes after receiving a power ring fueled by the orange light of avarice and becomes a deputy of the Orange Lanterns. Luthor arrives at Coast City and joins the battle against the Black Lantern Corps. Luthor engages battle with the Black Lantern versions of Superman and Superboy. However, Agent Orange Larfleeze wants Luthor's ring off, as the alien does not want to share his power with him, resulting in them battling each other for it despite all of the dangers around them. Luthor is able to use the essences of all of the people he has killed as his own Orange Lanterns, and seeks to add Superman to their numbers. Luthor is quickly overwhelmed by his greed, and sets out to steal the rings of his fellow inducted Lanterns, taking Scarecrow's yellow ring and attempting to steal Mera's red one, but is held back by the Atom (wielding the ring-staff of the Indigo tribe) and the Flash wearing a Blue Lantern Ring. When deputy Violet Lantern Wonder Woman uses her magical lasso to restrain Luthor, under its spell of truth, Luthor is forced to confess that he secretly wants to be Superman. When Nekron is defeated, Larfleeze takes the ring from Luthor, leaving him powerless, and allows Luthor to remain on Earth with the Green Lanterns (although Sinestro notes that this is the first time Larfleeze has given anyone anything).
In the aftermath of the crisis, Luthor, craving the power of the orange light, recovers and operates on several Black Lantern remains in an attempt to find one with a ring still on its finger. He is then visited by Larfleeze, who demands to know what is important to the people of Earth. Luthor responds with "power", which Larfleeze already possesses, and "land", which intrigues the alien.
After the conclusion of the "New Krypton" event, Luthor became the lead character in "Action Comics" and will remain so until issue No. 900. Written by Paul Cornell, the first story entitled "The Black Ring" explores Luthor's more aggressive lust for power in the wake of his exposure to a power ring in the "Blackest Night" event. After being infused with the Orange Light of Avarice, Luthor begins a universal quest to locate the energy of the Black Lantern Corps.
During the midst of the "Brightest Day" event, Deathstroke and his new team of are hired to assassinate Luthor while he is visiting Midway City with Nava Mendelssohn, his new personal assistant and bodyguard. When the Titans ambush Lex's convoy and begin killing his hired mercenaries, Nava takes him into the sewers, where she is shot and apparently killed by Deathstroke. It is then revealed that Luthor himself had paid the Titans to fake an attempt on his life, in hopes that it would draw out conspirators within LexCorp. Nava's injuries soon heal, and she reveals herself to be a shapeshifter named Facade, who had murdered and impersonated the real Nava to get close enough to Lex to kill him. After a massive battle, Deathstroke and Osiris are able to defeat Facade, and then turn him over to Lex. In the end, LexCorp scientists are shown performing experiments on the captured Facade, while Luthor assembles his staff and reveals that he knows that it was one of his employees who had hired the creature in the first place. Luthor warns them not to try such a tactic again, as he will turn them into his next morbid experiment if they do.
While searching for the energy of the Black Lantern-simultaneously sending various Doomsday 'clones' created from the original after the other members of the Superman family to distract them, and having been advised by a robotic duplicate of Lois Lane-Luthor encountered Brainiac in space while attempting to alter the last of the Black Lantern energy, acting upon an unspoken theory of his. Brainiac revealed that Loisbot was an unwilling pawn in his bid to hijack Luthor's quest. Luthor then replied that he had anticipated this for some time, and he then attacked Brainiac and snapped his neck, temporarily incapacitating him. Loisbot pleaded for Lex's forgiveness, and he accepted her apology. However, after he altered the four remaining black spheres, he opened a Phantom Zone portal which unleashed an extremely powerful, monstrously large being which prepared to kill all life in the universe, because the negative emotions of sentient creatures hurt it. Luthor promptly impaled Loisbot's head, allowing himself to be infected with Kryptonian technology which he used to engage the monster on a mental plane of existence. Grappling with the creature, Luthor's body and mental essence suddenly fused with it, learning that it evolved in the Phantom Zone and now seeks to escape from the grief and anger of the Zone prisoners. Using his new power, Luthor draws Superman to him, attempting to drive Superman mad by forcing him to experience the human emotions that he believes the alien merely fakes to blend in. However, Luthor is outraged when he learns not only about Clark Kent being Superman, but that his defining moment of tragedy is the loss of his human father. Luthor is unable to cope with the fact his greatest enemy was raised by humans, nor his having had a father he would actually mourn, compared to the anguish Luthor endured in his own relationship with his family. As Luthor becomes one with the creature, Superman and Mr. Mind who has been aiding Luthor's search realise that the creature allows Luthor to create a feeling of peace and bliss throughout the entire universe, at the cost of never allowing him to cause any harm to another being at the same time. Superman attempts to appeal to Luthor about the potential of doing something even he never accomplished, but Luthor is unable to let go of his hate for Superman, costing him control of the entity, as well as his memory of everything he learned or did while he was merged with it, and it departs for another part of the universe. Luthor was finally and truly beaten when he falls into one of the Phantom Zone portals created by the creature, thus disappearing apparently forever in this timeline, as shortly after, Barry Allen, the original Flash, shattered history in a time-travelling attempt to save his mother , and his reversal of this ended up creating a whole new timeline.
In 2011, DC Comics implemented The New 52, a relaunch of its titles and a reboot of its fictional continuity. Following this, Lex Luthor appears as a representative the government has recruited to investigate and bring down Superman. Based on background signage seen throughout the New 52 books (including "Justice League"), LexCorp also exists. In "Justice League" No. 2, Batman notes that he and Superman have at least one thing in common: both of them speak openly of their distaste for Luthor. In the New 52 "Action Comics" (a series set some time before the events of "Justice League" #1), Luthor is hired by General Sam Lane to capture Superman by setting a train accident as a trap for him. The younger Superman, who is weaker and inexperienced, barely stops the train and is left unconscious. Lex collects Superman and subjects him to a series of tests to ascertain his strengths and weaknesses. He tortures Superman until the latter manages to escape. Lex is later revealed to have obtained contact with the "Collector of Worlds" through unknown means and was told to say the word "Krypton" to Superman. He later appears when the Collector abducts New Troy as one of the residents in the area. He along with Lois and Jimmy go into Glen Glenmorgan's hotel where Lex calls the Collector and it is revealed that Lex had made a deal with him. It is later revealed that Lex Luthor was the secret caller named "Icarus" that was giving secret information on Glen Glenmorgan to Clark Kent.
Sometime later, after his connection with the Collector was exposed, Luthor was fired as a consultant to the U.S. military by General Lane himself. Luthor explained that they had no evidence, and that they needed his expertise as their consultant. Lane refuses to listen and has Luthor thrown off the base, but Luthor was confident that he will be asked back. After Superman's encounter with the K-Man, it was revealed that Lex Luthor had played a major role in the K-Man's creation, also (as revealed in flashback), that he had stolen kryptonite crystals from the government while being employed by them. Luthor then muses about the potential uses of kryptonite on Superman.
One year before the ongoing modern continuity, Luthor arranged an illegal smuggling of war machines in Qurac. Knowing that Superman would intervene, Luthor laces the weapons with kryptonite and nanite technology to acquire a sample of Superman's DNA to create a monster based on the genetic structure of Superman known as the Hybrid. As Superman seemingly defeats the monster with his ice breath, it is later found out that the Hybrid is attacking Metropolis – whilst also having infected civilians with a virus (that was carried by Superman when he in turn was infected by poison from his earlier tussle with the war machines), as Luthor had intended. The plan by Luthor was to show the people of Metropolis that Superman is indeed an alien menace, and only Luthor can save them from the Man of Steel. The final confrontation between Kal-El and Luthor, of course resulting in the defeat of Lex, was, chronologically, the first fight between two of DC's most famous characters. Luthor was arrested for the Hybrid crisis he orchestrated and now later appears in a one-man prison (designed specifically for him) created by the U.S. government.
During the "Trinity War" storyline, Pandora visits Lex Luthor in his jail cell as she tries to get him to open the box. Before Pandora can give it to Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman and her group arrives to retrieve the box. Seeing Wonder Woman's interest in the box, Lex Luthor attempts to grab it, but Wonder Woman gets to it first claiming "I have the box." After being taken over by the box, Wonder Woman quotes "And the box has me!"
Lex plays a big part as one of the protagonists of the "Forever Evil" storyline, having founded the New 52 incarnation of the Injustice League. The members consist of Black Adam, Sinestro (harboring the Parallax entity of fear), Captain Cold, Subject B-Zero (Bizarro), Deathstroke, Black Manta and Catwoman. After the Injustice League and Batman defeated the Crime Syndicate and Lex saves Superman's life from the kryptonite shard Atomica infected him with, Lex deduces that Bruce Wayne is Batman, because of his connection to Dick Grayson.
In January 2014, Geoff Johns announced that Lex Luthor and Captain Cold would be joining the Justice League. In the wake of the Crime Syndicate's invasion, public opinion of Lex Luthor was incredibly favorable, and he decided that he liked it. Another reason was he believed the entity that destroyed the Earth from the alternate universe which the Crime Syndicate came from was the larger threat and might eventually become a threat to their universe and wanted the Justice League to be prepared for that possibility beforehand. In an effort to continue being regarded as a hero, he tried to convince the Justice League to recruit him, but was initially unsuccessful. The Justice League eventually talked about how Luthor was going to keep on his crusade with or without the help of the Justice League. They let Luthor join the Justice League knowing he could find out information that could put all of them in danger, but Batman figured at least they could keep a close watch on Luthor and LexCorp, and much to the chagrin of Superman, Luthor secured a place in the Justice League, even building a new Watchtower for them and recruiting Shazam onto the team.
In the opening chapter of the "" storyline, when Doomsday was being caught, Luthor intervened, telling that the monster was becoming strong and saying that Doomsday wanted to get stronger using Superman, encouraging Superman to stay away from Earth.
After the death of Darkseid, Darkseid's Omega effect is contained in Lex Luthor, turning him into the God of Apokolips.
When Superman's identity is exposed as part of Vandal Savage's plot to drain his powers, Superman consults Luthor for help, but Luthor expresses disbelief at the idea that Superman could ever be someone like Clark Kent, going along with Superman's request for help just to find out the 'real' plan.
In DC's 2016 line-wide relaunch "DC Rebirth", following the death of the New 52 Superman, Luthor decides to assume Superman's symbol in a new suit of battle armor to protect Metropolis, but he is confronted by the Pre-"Flashpoint" Superman, who refuses to believe that Luthor's intentions are as noble. This results in a brief conflict between the two, Luthor claiming that Superman's 'unprovoked' attack proves that he is an impostor while Superman counters that Luthor's brutal response proves him right, but the fight is cut short when Doomsday appears. Luthor agrees to help Superman by focusing on evacuating civilians while Superman deals with Doomsday. After the crisis is over, Superman agrees to allow Luthor to continue using his symbol, as Superman concedes that he has no evidence that "this" Luthor has engaged in criminal activity. Luthor is later attacked by an alien warrior whose visions of the future show him who will commit various acts of death and violence, but Superman appeals to him to let Luthor free by arguing that the future is always changing and he will do his best to ensure that the dark future they foresaw for Luthor will never come to pass.
In the 2017–2018 "Watchmen" sequel "Doomsday Clock", Ozymandias goes to LexCorp to enlist Lex Luthor to help him locate Doctor Manhattan. Both of them are attacked by a seemingly-revived Comedian. After Ozymandias flees from the fight with Comedian, Lex Luthor undergoes surgery at Metropolis General Hospital while "his attacker remains in serious but stable conditions." When Lois goes to confront a recovering Lex Luthor about his role in this (with Superman listening in), he reveals not only is he not behind this conspiracy but he has also been looking into it himself, learning that the person who created these metahumans for the government is not only a metahuman themselves, but also a former member of the Justice League. When Superman gets in a coma after Firestorm's incident in Russia, Lex sneaks into Lois' office to give her the footage about the Justice Society of America, the heroes that "never were".
After the Source Wall broke from the events of "No Justice," Luthor formed a new Legion Of Doom where they spent almost a year of issues to get the new elements/forces. In the "Year of the Villain" special, Luthor committed suicide by self-destructing LexCorp HQ while still inside in order to gain initiation from Perpetua, the Mother of Foragers, and was resurrected by her as her acolyte/child, becoming Apex Lex, a martian/human hybrid, alongside a resurrected Anti-Monitor who was in his pre-"Flashpoint" form. Apex Lex would set out to offer gifts of power to almost all villains of the DC Universe.
In the Pre-"Crisis" continuity, Luthor is shown as having very few personal attachments. Shamed by his crimes, his parents (Jules and Arlene) disown him, move away, and change their name to the anagram "Thorul".
Luthor has a younger sister named Lena, an empath who grows up unaware of her familial connection with the noted supervillain. Lena, like Lex, also attended Regis High School. Protective of his sister, Lex Luthor takes measures to hide his fraternity, and is assisted towards this end by both Superman and Supergirl. Lena Thorul later marries FBI agent Jeff Colby (who had once arrested Lex), later giving birth to a son, Val Colby. Jeff Colby dies some time later. After Lena has brain surgery the decision is made to reveal the truth about Luthor to her. There is some reconciliation between them when Luthor discovers he was an unwitting party to a conspiracy against Lena, which was masterminded by his cellmate "Sam", who wanted revenge against Colby. He is deeply apologetic to Lena.
The Pre-Crisis Luthor also has a niece named Nasthalthia Luthor (apparently Luthor had an older sister who had run away) who is an occasional thorn in Supergirl's side.
Lex Luthor himself later marries Ardora of the planet Lexor and, in "Action Comics" No. 544 (June 1983), first learns of his infant son by Ardora, Lex Luthor, Jr.. A short time later, Lexor is destroyed and both Ardora and Lex, Jr. die as a direct result.
In the Post-"Crisis" continuity, Lena is the name of Lex's adopted sister when he was living in a foster home. She is accidentally killed by their foster father when she refuses to try to trick Lex out of his inheritance. Lex later names his baby daughter after her.
Following the events of the "Infinite Crisis", Luthor's history was again altered, re-introducing Lena as his sister. Unlike the Pre-"Crisis" version, Lena is well aware of her history with Lex, having grown up alongside him, with only an abusive father. Lex and Lena's mother is named Letitia and is presumed deceased. She has no empathic abilities, and is a paraplegic with a teenaged daughter, Lori, both of whom still live in Smallville. Unlike his Pre-"Crisis" version, Lex has little love for his sister, having abandoned her with an unnamed aunt after their father dies of a heart attack. Lex even goes so far as to cure Lena's illness, and then immediately undoes the process, leaving her completely catatonic, solely to make a mocking point to Superboy and Superman. Lena is currently under the care of the best doctors from Wayne Enterprises, hired by Red Robin.
In the post-"The Man of Steel" continuity, Luthor is childhood friends with Perry White and it is revealed that Luthor is the biological father of Perry's dead son Jerry White, conceived during a period when Perry was believed dead, although Luthor, Perry and Alice only learned the truth shortly before Jerry was killed by a gang war that Luthor had triggered due to the timing of events. Lex Luthor has been married eight times, though the first seven marriages occurred off-panel in Luthor's past. His eighth marriage to Contessa Erica Alexandra Del Portenza (a.k.a. the "Contessa") is based on mutual greed; the Contessa buys controlling interest in LexCorp after Luthor is indicted, compelling him to marry her in order to regain control of his company. The Contessa becomes pregnant and starts using the unborn child to dominate Lex into doing her bidding. Luthor's response is to imprison her while she is drugged during childbirth, keeping her in a permanently unconscious state. The Contessa later escapes to an island mansion, but upon being elected President, Luthor targets her home with a barrage of missiles and destroys it. Luthor's daughter Lena was the avatar of The Tech, the remnant cyberware of Metropolis after Brainiac 13's advancing the city to a futuristic state was undone.
James D. Hudnall's "" further expands on Luthor's origin. The story details how Luthor was sent to live with a foster family following the sabotage of his parents' car. His foster parents, Casey and Emily Griggs, conspire to embezzle his insurance, and coerce their daughter, Lena, into seducing Lex to learn the location of the money. Due to her own romantic feelings toward Lex, Lena refuses, and is beaten to death by her father. Lex is absent from the home at the time of the murder, having been talked into going to a football game by his schoolmate Perry White. Once he has established his preeminence in Metropolis, Luthor takes vengeance on Griggs, secretly hiring him to assassinate Frank Berkowitz, the city's popular four-term mayor, who refuses to knuckle under to Luthor's dominance, then personally killing him once the deed is done.
As an adult, Perry's unwitting 'role' in Lena's death motivates Luthor to begin an affair with Perry's wife, Alice, during a period when Perry is missing and assumed dead. Alice becomes pregnant shortly afterward, though the timing of the conception means an equal possibility of either Luthor or White being the father. The child, Jerry White, later learns of his true parentage during his late teens, shortly before being killed by a local street gang he is associated with. The loss of a potential heir weighs heavily on Luthor's mind, particularly when he is dying of cancer; while mulling over his fate, Luthor visits Jerry's gravesite.
Luthor has shown an unusual level of compassion for Conner Kent, a hybrid clone created from the DNA of Superman and Luthor himself. After Conner's death at the conclusion of the "Infinite Crisis", Luthor is shown visiting a memorial statue of Conner in Metropolis and placing flowers there. More than once Luthor addresses Conner as his son. Following Conner's resurrection, Luthor is shocked and decides to locate him. When Brainiac accuses him of showing paternal feelings for Conner though, Luthor denies it, saying that he only wants his property back, and has no fatherly feelings towards Superboy. Apparently, Luthor is no longer affectionate to the Boy of Steel after the event at his sister's house, and now seeing Superboy as a "failed experiment" due to using "a wrong alien DNA" to combine with his own. Luthor creates another binary clone with Brainiac using their genetics, which implies that it would become a threat to Superboy.
In the alternate future timeline of "Titans Tomorrow", in which Conner still exists but, along with his fellow Titans, has become an uncompromising and dictatorial successor to Superman, Luthor acts as a caring, fatherly figure to him.
During the "Blackest Night" storyline, Lex Luthor's father Lionel Luthor was featured where it was revealed that he died of an allergic reaction to his medicine during Clark Kent's days as Superboy. He is reanimated as a member of the Black Lantern Corps where he is amongst its members that try to attack Lex Luthor. After the events of "Blackest Night'", Luthor went on to build a gynoid version of Lois Lane using Brainiac technology. His primary purpose for creating her was to have a companion which voiced honest opinions about his plans, and to give him an extra voice of reason to counsel him on his obsessive quest for the Black Lantern energy. Luthor also had a pseudo-romantic relationship with the "Loisbot", and regularly slept with it.
Lex Luthor has the physical capabilities of a normal adult human with no metahuman abilities. However, for virtually his entire publication history, he has been depicted as one of the most intelligent humans in the DC Universe, and one of the most intelligent beings of any planet. He possesses an eidetic memory and has mastered seemingly every known form of science, including space travel, extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, energy generation, spectral analysis, and time travel. With the possible exception of the extraterrestrial entity known as Brainiac and, occasionally, the batman, Luthor does not view any other being as an intellectual peer.
His genius also extends to business (he is one of the world's wealthiest people) and politics (he was elected U.S. President, and he is the leader of the super villain groups he is involved with). Luthor has had some training in hand-to-hand combat, specifically, Karate.
Over the years, Luthor has made liberal use of kryptonite weapons capable of injuring Superman and other Kryptonians. Since the Bronze Age, he has also utilized various battlesuits in many stories. In current continuity, his suit grants him incredible superhuman strength and durability (enough to withstand a succession of nuclear blasts), and is equipped with rocket-boosters that enable him to fly for days on end. Additionally, it generates a powerful invisible energy shield that protects his entire suit from a majority of physical attacks. The suit is also armed with a collapsible kryptonite sword, axe and staff-cannon, along with dual kryptonite energy cannons. Consequently, Luthor has become extremely skilled in close-range combat.
Additionally, Luthor often wore a kryptonite ring on his right hand in Post-"Crisis" stories, but abandoned this tactic after prolonged exposure to its radiation resulted in the loss of his hand and poisoned his entire body, leading to terminal cancer and requiring him to transplant his brain into a cloned body to survive. During the "Blackest Night" crossover, he wore an orange power ring of avarice created by Ganthet, a former member of the Guardians of the Universe. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18595 |
Lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system). The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand "frets" (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shorten or lengthen the part of the string that is vibrating, thus producing higher or lower pitches (notes).
The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern "oud" descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. During the Baroque music era, the lute was used as one of the instruments which played the "basso continuo" accompaniment parts. It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. The lute player either improvises ("realizes") a chordal accompaniment based on the figured bass part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both music notation and tablature ("tab") are used for lute). As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound. The player of a lute is called a "lutenist", "lutanist" or "lutist", and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or violin family instruments) is referred to as a "luthier".
Curt Sachs defined the word "lute" in the terminology section of "The History of Musical Instruments" as "composed of a body, and of a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body". His definition focused on body and neck characteristics and not on the way the strings were sounded, so the fiddle counted as a "bowed lute". Sachs also distinguished between the "long-necked lute" and the short-necked variety. The short necked variety contained most of our modern instruments, "lutes, guitars, hurdy-gurdies and the entire family of viols and violins".
The long lutes were the more ancient lutes; the "Arabic tanbūr ... faithfully preserved the outer appearance of the ancient lutes of Babylonia and Egypt". He further categorized long lutes with a "pierced lute" and "long neck lute". The "pierced lute" had a neck made from a stick that pierced the body (as in the ancient Egyptian long-neck lutes, and the modern African gunbrī). The "long lute" had an attached neck, and included the sitar, tanbur and tar (dutār 2 strings, setār 3 strings, čārtār 4 strings, pančtār 5 strings).
Sachs' book dates from 1941, and the archaeological evidence available to him placed the early lutes at about 2000 BC. Discoveries since then have pushed the existence of the lute back to c. 3100 BC.
Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined. Dumbrill documented more than 3000 years of iconographic evidence for the lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book "The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East". According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. He points to a cylinder seal as evidence; dating from 3100 BC or earlier (now in the possession of the British Museum) the seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute". Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing the Mesopotamian lutes into a long variety and a short. His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, various types of necked chordophones that developed throughout the ancient world: Greek, Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom), Iranian (Elamite and others), Hittite, Roman, Bulgar, Turkic, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilician cultures. He names among the long lutes, the pandura and the tanbur
The line of short-necked lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria and Gandhara, into a short, almond-shaped lute. Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Gandharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "a strong Greek influences". The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families". He described the Gandhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings".
Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). Under the Sasanians, a short almond shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's "oud" or "ud". When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud or quitra along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them was Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789–857), a prominent musician who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833 AD. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba.
By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the "oud" remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music as well, undergoing a range of transformations.
Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain (Andalusia) by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians. There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo following the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo's royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1140. His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians. Frederick II made visits to the Lech valley and Bavaria between 1218 and 1237 with a "Moorish Sicilian retinue". By the 14th century, lutes had disseminated throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands. By 1500 the valley and Füssen had several lute-making families, and in the next two centuries the area hosted "famous names of 16th and 17th century lutemaking".
Although the major entry of the short lute was in western Europe, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called komuz to the Balkans.
Medieval lutes were 4- or 5-course instruments, plucked using a quill as a plectrum. There were several sizes, and by the end of the Renaissance, seven different sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from the era before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.
In the last few decades of the fifteenth century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingertips. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the sixteenth century, but continued to accompany singers as well.
In about the year 1500 many Iberian lutenists adopted vihuela de mano, a viol-shaped instrument tuned like the lute, but both instruments continued in coexistence. This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination (especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano.
By the end of the Renaissance the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 26–35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute, theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played "open", i.e., without pressing them against the fingerboard with the left hand.
Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, Ukraine.
The words "lute" and "oud" possibly derive from Arabic "al-ʿoud" (- literally means "the wood"). It may refer to the wooden plectrum traditionally used for playing the oud, to the thin strips of wood used for the back, or to the wooden soundboard that distinguished it from similar instruments with skin-faced bodies.
Many theories have been proposed for the origin of the Arabic name. A music scholar by the name of Eckhard Neubauer suggested that "oud" may be an Arabic borrowing from the Persian word "rōd" or "rūd", which meant string. Another researcher, archaeomusicologist Richard J. Dumbrill, suggests that "rud" came from the Sanskrit "rudrī" (रुद्री, meaning "string instrument") and transferred to Arabic and European languages by way of a Semitic language. However, another theory according to Semitic language scholars, is that the Arabic "ʿoud" is derived from Syriac "ʿoud-a", meaning "wooden stick" and "burning wood"—cognate to Biblical Hebrew "'ūḏ", referring to a stick used to stir logs in a fire. Henry George Farmer notes the similarity between " "and "al-ʿawda" ("the return" – of bliss).
Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (typically spruce). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings called the "rose". The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard.
The geometry of the lute soundboard is relatively complex, involving a system of barring that places braces perpendicular to the strings at specific lengths along the overall length of the belly, the ends of which are angled to abut the ribs on either side for structural reasons. Robert Lundberg, in his book "Historical Lute Construction", suggests ancient builders placed bars according to whole-number ratios of the scale length and belly length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard (the "belly scoop") is a deliberate adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenist's right hand more space between the strings and soundboard.
Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between . Some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in some cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair to help keep it clean. The belly joins directly to the rib, without a lining glued to the sides, and a cap and counter cap are glued to the inside and outside of the bottom end of the bowl to provide rigidity and increased gluing surface.
After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard. The half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be extremely precise to avoid compromising structural integrity.
The "back" or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood (maple, cherry, ebony, rosewood, gran, wood and/or other tonewoods) called "ribs", joined (with glue) edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength.
The "neck" is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood (usually ebony) to provide durability for the "fretboard" beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the lute's fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The "pegbox" for lutes before the Baroque era was angled back from the neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the "nut" which, traditionally, is not glued in place but is held in place by string pressure only. The "tuning pegs" are simple pegs of hardwood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes drilled through the pegbox.
As with other instruments that use friction pegs, the wood for the pegs is crucial. As the wood suffers dimensional changes through age and loss of humidity, it must retain a reasonably circular cross-section to function properly—as there are no gears or other mechanical aids for tuning the instrument. Often pegs were made from suitable fruitwoods such as European pearwood, or equally dimensionally stable analogues. Matheson, 1720, said, "If a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning."
The bridge, sometimes made of a fruitwood, is attached to the soundboard typically between a fifth and a seventh of the belly length. It does not have a separate saddle but has holes bored into it to which the strings attach directly. The bridge is made so that it tapers in height and length, with the small end holding the trebles and the higher and wider end carrying the basses. Bridges are often colored black with carbon black in a binder, often shellac and often have inscribed decoration. The scrolls or other decoration on the ends of lute bridges are integral to the bridge, and are not added afterwards as on some Renaissance guitars (cf Joachim Tielke's guitars).
The frets are made of loops of gut tied around the neck. They fray with use, and must be replaced from time to time. A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to the body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string, though these are considered anachronistic by some (though John Dowland and Thomas Robinson describe the practice of gluing wooden frets onto the soundboard). Given the choice between nylon and gut, many luthiers prefer to use gut, as it conforms more readily to the sharp angle at the edge of the fingerboard.
Strings were historically made of animal gut, usually from the small intestine of sheep (sometimes in combination with metal) and are still made of gut or a synthetic substitute, with metal windings on the lower-pitched strings. Modern manufacturers make both gut and nylon strings, and both are in common use. Gut is more authentic for playing period pieces, though unfortunately it is also more susceptible to irregularity and pitch instability due to changes in humidity. Nylon offers greater tuning stability, but is seen as anachronistic by purists, as its timbre differs from the sound of earlier gut strings. Such concerns are moot when more recent compositions for the lute are performed.
Of note are the "catlines" used as basses on historical instruments. Catlines are several gut strings wound together and soaked in heavy metal solutions to increase the string mass. Catlines can be quite large in diameter compared to wound nylon strings of the same pitch. They produce a bass that differs somewhat in timbre from nylon basses.
The lute's strings are arranged in "courses", of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the "chanterelle". In later Baroque lutes two upper courses are single. The courses are numbered sequentially, counting from the highest pitched, so that the "chanterelle" is the "first course", the next pair of strings is the "second course", etc. Thus an 8-course Renaissance lute usually has 15 strings, and a 13-course Baroque lute has 24.
The courses are tuned in unison for high and intermediate pitches, but for lower pitches one of the two strings is tuned an octave higher (the course where this split starts changed over the history of the lute). The two strings of a course are virtually always stopped and plucked together, as if a single string—but in rare cases, a piece requires that the two strings of a course be stopped or plucked separately. The tuning of a lute is a complicated issue, described in a section of its own below. The lute's design makes it extremely light for its size.
The lute enjoyed a revival with the awakening of interest in historical music around 1900 and throughout the century. That revival was further boosted by the early music movement in the twentieth century. Important pioneers in lute revival were Julian Bream, Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch and Diana Poulton. Lute performances are now not uncommon; there are many professional lutenists, especially in Europe where the most employment is found, and new compositions for the instrument are being produced by composers.
During the early days of the early music movement, many lutes were constructed by available luthiers, whose specialty was often classical guitars. Such lutes were heavily built with construction similar to classical guitars, with fan bracing, heavy tops, fixed frets, and lined sides, all of which are anachronistic to historical lutes. As lutherie scholarship increased, makers began constructing instruments based on historical models, which have proven lighter and more responsive instruments.
Lutes built at present are invariably replicas or near copies of those surviving historical instruments that are in museums or private collections. Many are custom-built, but there is a growing number of luthiers who build lutes for general sale, and there is a fairly strong, if small, second-hand market. Due to this fairly limited market, lutes are generally more expensive than mass-produced modern instruments: factory-made guitars and violins, for example, can be purchased more cheaply than low-end lutes, but at the highest level of modern instruments, guitars and violins tend to command higher prices than lutes.
Unlike in the past there are many types of lutes encountered today: 5-course medieval lutes, renaissance lutes of 6 to 10 courses in many pitches for solo and ensemble performance of Renaissance works, the archlute of Baroque works, 11-course lutes in d-minor tuning for 17th-century French, German and Czech music, 13/14-course d-minor tuned German Baroque Lutes for later High Baroque and Classical music, theorbo for basso continuo parts in Baroque ensembles, gallichons/mandoras, bandoras, orpharions and others.
Lutenistic practice has reached considerable heights in recent years, thanks to a growing number of world-class lutenists: Rolf Lislevand, Hopkinson Smith, Paul O'Dette, Christopher Wilke, Andreas Martin, Robert Barto, Eduardo Egüez, Edin Karamazov, Nigel North, Christopher Wilson, Luca Pianca, Yasunori Imamura, Anthony Bailes, Peter Croton, Xavier Diaz-Latorre. Singer-songwriter Sting has also played lute and archlute, in and out of his collaborations with Edin Karamazov, and Jan Akkerman released two albums of lute music in the 1970s while he was a guitarist in the Dutch rock band Focus. Lutenist/Composer Jozef van Wissem composed the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive.
Lutes of several regional types are also common in Greece: laouto, and outi.
Lutes were in widespread use in Europe at least since the 13th century, and documents mention numerous early performers and composers. However, the earliest surviving lute music dates from the late 15th century. Lute music flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries: numerous composers published collections of their music, and modern scholars have uncovered a vast number of manuscripts from the era—however, much of the music is still lost. In the second half of the 17th century lutes, vihuelas and similar instruments started losing popularity, and almost no music had been written for the instrument after 1750. The interest in lute music was revived only in the second half of the 20th century.
Improvisation (making up music on the spot) was, apparently, an important aspect of lute performance, so much of the repertoire was probably never written down. Furthermore, it was only around 1500 that lute players began to transition from plectrum to plucking. That change facilitated complex polyphony, which required that they develop notation. In the next hundred years, three schools of tablature notation gradually developed: Italian (also used in Spain), German, and French. Only the last survived into the late 17th century. The earliest known tablatures are for a six-stringed instrument, though evidence of earlier four- and five-stringed lutes exists. Tablature notation depends on the actual instrument the music is written for. To read it, a musician must know the instrument's tuning, number of strings, etc.
Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music are similar to keyboard music of the periods. Intabulations of vocal works were very common, as well as various dances, some of which disappeared during the 17th century, such as the piva and the saltarello. The advent of polyphony brought about "fantasias": complex, intricate pieces with much use of imitative counterpoint. The improvisatory element, present to some degree in most lute pieces, is particularly evident in the early ricercares (not imitative as their later namesakes, but completely free), as well as in numerous preludial forms: preludes, tastar de corde ("testing the strings"), etc. During the 17th century keyboard and lute music went hand in hand, and by 1700 lutenists were writing suites of dances quite akin to those of keyboard composers. The lute was also used throughout its history as an ensemble instrument—most frequently in songs for voice and lute, which were particularly popular in Italy (see frottola) and England.
The earliest surviving lute music is Italian, from a late 15th-century manuscript. The early 16th century saw Petrucci's publications of lute music by Francesco Spinacino ( 1507) and Joan Ambrosio Dalza ( 1508); together with the so-called Capirola Lutebook, these represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy. The leader of the next generation of Italian lutenists, Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543), is now acknowledged as one of the most famous lute composers in history. The bigger part of his output consists of pieces called fantasias or ricercares, in which he makes extensive use of imitation and sequence, expanding the scope of lute polyphony. In the early 17th century Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger ( 1580–1651) and Alessandro Piccinini (1566–1638) revolutionized the instrument's technique and Kapsberger, possibly, influenced the keyboard music of Frescobaldi.
French written lute music began, as far as we know, with Pierre Attaingnant's ( 1494 – 1551) prints, which comprised preludes, dances and intabulations. Particularly important was the Italian composer Albert de Rippe (1500–1551), who worked in France and composed polyphonic fantasias of considerable complexity. His work was published posthumously by his pupil, Guillaume de Morlaye (born 1510), who, however, did not pick up the complex polyphony of de Rippe. French lute music declined during the second part of the 16th century; however, various changes to the instrument (the increase of diapason strings, new tunings, etc.) prompted an important change in style that led, during the early Baroque, to the celebrated style brisé: broken, arpeggiated textures that influenced Johann Jakob Froberger's suites. The French Baroque school is exemplified by composers such as Ennemond Gaultier (1575–1651), Denis Gaultier (1597/1603–1672), François Dufaut (before 1604 – before 1672) and many others. The last stage of French lute music is exemplified by Robert de Visée ( 1655–1732/3), whose suites exploit the instrument's possibilities to the fullest.
The history of German written lute music started with Arnolt Schlick ( 1460–after 1521), who, in 1513, published a collection of pieces that included 14 voice and lute songs, and three solo lute pieces, alongside organ works. He was not the first important German lutenist, because contemporaries credited Conrad Paumann ( 1410–1473) with the invention of German lute tablature, though this claim remains unproven, and no lute works by Paumann survive. After Schlick, a string of composers developed German lute music: Hans Judenkünig ( 1445/50 – 1526), the Neusidler family (particularly Hans Neusidler ( 1508/09 – 1563)) and others. During the second half of the 16th century, German tablature and German repertoire were gradually replaced by Italian and French tablature and international repertoire, respectively, and the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) effectively stopped publications for half a century. German lute music was revived much later by composers such as Esaias Reusner ( 1670), however, a distinctly German style came only after 1700 in the works of Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750), one of the greatest lute composers, some of whose works were transcribed for keyboard by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who composed a few pieces for the lute himself (though it is unclear whether they were really intended for the lute, rather than another plucked string instrument or the lautenwerk).
Of other European countries, particularly important are England and Spain. English written lute music began only around 1540; however, the country produced numerous lutenists, of which John Dowland (1563–1626) is perhaps the most famous. His influence spread very far: variations on his themes were written by keyboard composers in Germany decades after his death. Dowland's predecessors and colleagues, such as Anthony Holborne ( 1545–1602) and Daniel Bacheler (1572–1619), were less known. Spanish composers wrote mostly for the vihuela; their main genres were polyphonic fantasias and "differencias" (variations). Luys Milan (c. 1500 – after 1560) and Luys de Narváez ( 1526–1549) were particularly important for their contributions to the development of lute polyphony in Spain.
Finally, perhaps the most influential European lute composer was the Hungarian Bálint Bakfark ( 1526/30–1576), whose contrapuntal fantasias were much more difficult and tighter than those of his Western European contemporaries.
Ottorino Respighi's famous orchestral suites called "Ancient Airs and Dances" are drawn from various books and articles on 16th- and 17th-century lute music transcribed by the musicologist Oscar Chilesotti, including eight pieces from a German manuscript "Da un Codice Lauten-Buch", now in a private library in northern Italy.
The revival of lute-playing in the 20th century has its roots in the pioneering work of Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940); whose research into early music and instruments started the movement for authenticity. The revival of the lute gave composers an opportunity to create new works for it.
One of the first such composers was Johann Nepomuk David in Germany. Composer Vladimir Vavilov was a pioneer of the lute revival in the USSR, he was also the author of numerous musical hoaxes. Sandor Kallos and Toyohiko Satoh applied modernist idiom to the lute, Elena Kats-Chernin, Jozef van Wissem and Alexandre Danilevsky minimalist and post-minimalist idiom, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk, Paulo Galvão, Robert MacKillop historicist idiom, and Ronn McFarlane New Age. This active movement by early music specialists has inspired composers in different fields; for example, in 1980, Akira Ifukube, a classical and film composer best known for the Godzilla's theme, wrote the Fantasia for Baroque Lute with the historical tablature notation, rather than the modern staff one.
Lutes were made in a large variety of sizes, with varying numbers of strings/courses, and with no permanent standard for tuning. However, the following seems to have been "generally" true of the Renaissance lute.
A 6-course Renaissance tenor lute would be tuned to the same intervals as a tenor viol, with intervals of a "perfect fourth" between all the courses except the third and fourth, which differed only by a "major third". The tenor lute was usually tuned nominally "in G" (there was no pitch standard before the 20th century), named after the pitch of the highest course, yielding the pattern from the lowest course to the highest. (Much renaissance lute music can be played on a guitar by tuning the guitar's third string down by a half tone.)
For lutes with more than six courses the extra courses would be added on the low end. Because of the large number of strings, lutes have very wide necks, and it is difficult to stop strings beyond the sixth course, so additional courses were usually tuned to pitches useful as bass notes rather than continuing the regular pattern of fourths, and these lower courses are most often played without stopping. Thus an 8-course tenor Renaissance lute would be tuned to , and a 10-course to .
However, none of these patterns were "de rigueur", and a modern lutenist occasionally retunes one or more courses between pieces. Manuscripts bear instructions for the player, e.g., "7e chœur en fa" = "seventh course in "fa"" (= F in the standard C scale).
The first part of the seventeenth century was a period of considerable diversity in the tuning of the lute, particularly in France. However, by around 1670 the scheme known today as the "Baroque" or "D minor" tuning became the norm, at least in France and in northern and central Europe. In this case the first six courses outline a d-minor triad, and an additional five to seven courses are tuned generally scalewise below them. Thus the 13-course lute played by composer Sylvius Leopold Weiss would have been tuned or with sharps or flats on the lower 7 courses appropriate to the key of the piece.
Modern lutenists tune to a variety of pitch standards, ranging from A = 392 to 470 Hz, depending on the type of instrument they are playing, the repertory, the pitch of other instruments in an ensemble and other performing expediencies. No attempt at a universal pitch standard existed during the period of the lute's historical popularity. The standards varied over time and from place to place.
European Lutes:
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Photos of historic instruments
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Little Boy
"Little Boy" was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II. It was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay" piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces and Captain Robert A. Lewis. It exploded with an energy of approximately and caused widespread death and destruction throughout the city. The Hiroshima bombing was the second man-made nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test.
Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, a reworking of their unsuccessful Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon, but it derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235, whereas Thin Man was based on fission of plutonium-239. Fission was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder of enriched uranium (the "bullet") onto a solid cylinder of the same material (the "target") by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. It contained of enriched uranium, although less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design.
After the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed. However, by mid-1946, the Hanford Site reactors began suffering badly from the Wigner effect, the dislocation of atoms in a solid caused by neutron radiation, and plutonium became scarce, so six Little Boy assemblies were produced at Sandia Base. The Navy Bureau of Ordnance built another 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the Lockheed P2V Neptune nuclear strike aircraft which could be launched from the Midway-class aircraft carriers. All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951.
Physicist Robert Serber named the first two atomic bomb designs during World War II based on their shapes: Thin Man and Fat Man. The "Thin Man" was a long, thin device and its name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies about "The Thin Man". The "Fat Man" was round and fat so it was named after Kasper Gutman, a rotund character in Hammett's 1930 novel "The Maltese Falcon", played by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 film version. Little Boy was named by others as an allusion to Thin Man, since it was based on its design.
Because uranium-235 was known to be fissionable, it was the first material pursued in the approach to bomb development. As the first design developed (as well as the first deployed for combat), it is sometimes known as the Mark I. The vast majority of the work came in the form of the isotope enrichment of the uranium necessary for the weapon, since uranium-235 makes up only 1 part in 140 of natural uranium. Enrichment was performed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the electromagnetic separation plant, known as Y-12, became fully operational in March 1944. The first shipments of highly enriched uranium were sent to the Los Alamos Laboratory in June 1944.
Most of the uranium necessary for the production of the bomb came from the Shinkolobwe mine and was made available thanks to the foresight of the CEO of the High Katanga Mining Union, Edgar Sengier, who had of uranium ore transported to a New York warehouse in 1940. At least part of the in addition to the uranium ore and uranium oxide captured by the Alsos Mission in 1944 and 1945 went to Oak Ridge for enrichment, as did of uranium oxide captured on the Japan-bound after Germany's surrender in May 1945.
Little Boy was a simplification of Thin Man, the previous gun-type fission weapon design. Thin Man, long, was designed to use plutonium, so it was also more than capable of using enriched uranium. The Thin Man design was abandoned after experiments by Emilio G. Segrè and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos on the newly reactor-produced plutonium from Oak Ridge and the Hanford site showed that it contained impurities in the form of the isotope plutonium-240. This has a far higher spontaneous fission rate and radioactivity than the cyclotron-produced plutonium on which the original measurements had been made, and its inclusion in reactor-bred plutonium (needed for bomb-making due to the quantities required) appeared unavoidable. This meant that the background fission rate of the plutonium was so high that it would be highly likely the plutonium would predetonate and blow itself apart in the initial forming of a critical mass.
In July 1944, almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion-type plutonium weapon. Overall responsibility for the uranium gun-type weapon was assigned to Captain William S. Parsons's Ordnance (O) Division. All the design, development, and technical work at Los Alamos was consolidated under Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group. In contrast to the plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon and the plutonium gun-type fission weapon, the uranium gun-type weapon was straightforward if not trivial to design. The concept was pursued so that in case of a failure to develop a plutonium bomb, it would still be possible to use the gun principle. The gun-type design henceforth had to work with enriched uranium only, and this allowed the Thin Man design to be greatly simplified. A high-velocity gun was no longer required, and a simpler weapon could be substituted. The simplified weapon was short enough to fit into a B-29 bomb bay.
The design specifications were completed in February 1945, and contracts were let to build the components. Three different plants were used so that no one would have a copy of the complete design. The gun and breech were made by the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C.; the target case and some other components by the Naval Ordnance Plant in Center Line, Michigan; and the tail fairing and mounting brackets by the Expert Tool and Die Company in Detroit, Michigan. The bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of May 1945. Manhattan District Engineer Kenneth Nichols expected on 1 May 1945 to have uranium-235 "for one weapon before August 1 and a second one sometime in December", assuming the second weapon would be a gun type; designing an implosion bomb for uranium-235 was considered, and this would increase the production rate. The uranium-235 projectile was completed on 15 June, and the target on 24 July. The target and bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the heavy cruiser , arriving on 26 July. The target inserts followed by air on 30 July.
Although all of its components had been tested, no full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon occurred before the Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon concept had been of an implosion-type device employing plutonium as its fissile material, and took place on 16 July 1945 at the Trinity nuclear test. There were several reasons for not testing a Little Boy type of device. Primarily, there was little uranium-235 as compared with the relatively large amount of plutonium which, it was expected, could be produced by the Hanford Site reactors. Additionally, the weapon design was simple enough that it was only deemed necessary to do laboratory tests with the gun-type assembly. Unlike the implosion design, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work.
Though Little Boy incorporated various safety mechanisms, an accidental detonation was nonetheless possible. For example, should the bomber carrying the device crash then the hollow "bullet" could be driven into the "target" cylinder, detonating the bomb or at least releasing massive amounts of radiation; tests showed that this would require a highly unlikely impact of 500 times the force of gravity. Another concern was that a crash and fire could trigger the explosives. If immersed in water, the uranium components were subject to a neutron moderator effect, which would not cause an explosion but would release radioactive contamination. For this reason, pilots were advised to crash on land rather than at sea.
The Little Boy was in length, in diameter and weighed approximately . The design used the gun method to explosively force a hollow sub-critical mass of enriched uranium and a solid target cylinder together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by shooting one piece of the uranium onto the other by means of four cylindrical silk bags of cordite powder. This was a widely used smokeless propellant consisting of a mixture of 65 percent nitrocellulose, 30 percent nitroglycerine, 3 percent petroleum jelly, and 3 percent carbamite that was extruded into tubular granules. This gave it a high surface area and a rapid burning area, and could attain pressures of up to . Cordite for the wartime Little Boy was sourced from Canada; propellant for post-war Little Boys was obtained from the Picatinny Arsenal. The bomb contained of enriched uranium. Most was enriched to 89% but some was only 50% uranium-235, for an average enrichment of 80%. Less than a kilogram of uranium underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only was transformed into several forms of energy, mostly kinetic energy, but also heat and radiation.
Inside the weapon, the uranium-235 material was divided into two parts, following the gun principle: the "projectile" and the "target". The projectile was a hollow cylinder with 60% of the total mass (). It consisted of a stack of nine uranium rings, each in diameter with a bore in the center, and a total length of , pressed together into the front end of a thin-walled projectile long. Filling in the remainder of the space behind these rings in the projectile was a tungsten carbide disc with a steel back. At ignition, the projectile slug was pushed along the long, smooth-bore gun barrel. The slug "insert" was a cylinder, in length with a axial hole. The slug comprised 40% of the total fissile mass (). The insert was a stack of six washer-like uranium discs somewhat thicker than the projectile rings that were slid over a rod. This rod then extended forward through the tungsten carbide tamper plug, impact-absorbing anvil, and nose plug backstop, eventually protruding out of the front of the bomb casing. This entire target assembly was secured at both ends with locknuts.
When the hollow-front projectile reached the target and slid over the target insert, the assembled super-critical mass of uranium would be completely surrounded by a tamper and neutron reflector of tungsten carbide and steel, both materials having a combined mass of . Neutron initiators at the base of the projectile were activated by the impact.
For the first fifty years after 1945, every published description and drawing of the Little Boy mechanism assumed that a small, solid projectile was fired into the center of a larger, stationary target. However, critical mass considerations dictated that in Little Boy the larger, hollow piece would be the projectile. The assembled fissile core had more than two critical masses of uranium-235. This required one of the two pieces to have more than one critical mass, with the larger piece avoiding criticality prior to assembly by means of shape and minimal contact with the neutron-reflecting tungsten carbide tamper.
A hole in the center of the larger piece dispersed the mass and increased the surface area, allowing more fission neutrons to escape, thus preventing a premature chain reaction. But, for this larger, hollow piece to have minimal contact with the tamper, it must be the projectile, since only the projectile's back end was in contact with the tamper prior to detonation. The rest of the tungsten carbide surrounded the sub-critical mass target cylinder (called the "insert" by the designers) with air space between it and the insert. This arrangement packs the maximum amount of fissile material into a gun-assembly design.
The fuzing system was designed to trigger at the most destructive altitude, which calculations suggested was . It employed a three-stage interlock system:
The Little Boy pre-assemblies were designated L-1, L-2, L-3, L-4, L-5, L-6, L-7, and L-11. L-1, L-2, L-5, and L-6 were expended in test drops. The first drop test was conducted with L-1 on 23 July 1945. It was dropped over the sea near Tinian in order to test the radar altimeter by the B-29 later known as "Big Stink", piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group. Two more drop tests over the sea were made on 24 and 25 July, using the L-2 and L-5 units in order to test all components. Tibbets was the pilot for both missions, but this time the bomber used was the one subsequently known as "Jabit". L-6 was used as a dress rehearsal on 29 July. The B-29 "Next Objective", piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, flew to Iwo Jima, where emergency procedures for loading the bomb onto a standby aircraft were practiced. This rehearsal was repeated on 31 July, but this time L-6 was reloaded onto a different B-29, "Enola Gay", piloted by Tibbets, and the bomb was test dropped near Tinian. L-11 was the assembly used for the Hiroshima bomb.
Parsons, the "Enola Gay"s weaponeer, was concerned about the possibility of an accidental detonation if the plane crashed on takeoff, so he decided not to load the four cordite powder bags into the gun breech until the aircraft was in flight. After takeoff, Parsons and his assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, made their way into the bomb bay along the narrow catwalk on the port side. Jeppson held a flashlight while Parsons disconnected the primer wires, removed the breech plug, inserted the powder bags, replaced the breech plug, and reconnected the wires. Before climbing to altitude on approach to the target, Jeppson switched the three safety plugs between the electrical connectors of the internal battery and the firing mechanism from green to red. The bomb was then fully armed. Jeppson monitored the bomb's circuits.
The bomb was dropped at approximately 08:15 (JST) 6 August 1945. After falling for 44.4 seconds, the time and barometric triggers started the firing mechanism. The detonation happened at an altitude of . It was less powerful than the Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki, but the damage and the number of victims at Hiroshima were much higher, as Hiroshima was on flat terrain, while the hypocenter of Nagasaki lay in a small valley. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result of the Hiroshima blast, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Of those deaths, 20,000 were members of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The exact measurement of the yield was problematic since the weapon had never been tested. President Harry S. Truman officially announced that the yield was . This was based on Parsons's visual assessment that the blast was greater than what he had seen at the Trinity nuclear test. Since that had been estimated at , speech writers rounded up to 20 kilotons. Further discussion was then suppressed, for fear of lessening the impact of the bomb on the Japanese. Data had been collected by Luis Alvarez, Harold Agnew, and Lawrence H. Johnston on the instrument plane, "The Great Artiste", but this was not used to calculate the yield at the time.
After hostilities ended, a survey team from the Manhattan Project that included William Penney, Robert Serber, and George T. Reynolds was sent to Hiroshima to evaluate the effects of the blast. From evaluating the effects on objects and structures, Penney concluded that the yield was 12 ± 1 kilotons. Later calculations based on charring pointed to a yield of 13 to 14 kilotons. In 1953, Frederick Reines calculated the yield as . This figure became the official yield.
In 1962, scientists at Los Alamos created a mockup of Little Boy known as "Project Ichiban" in order to answer some of the unanswered questions, but it failed to clear up all the issues. In 1982, Los Alamos created a replica Little Boy from the original drawings and specifications. This was then tested with enriched uranium but in a safe configuration that would not cause a nuclear explosion. A hydraulic lift was used to move the projectile, and experiments were run to assess neutron emission. Based on this and the data from "The Great Artiste", the yield was estimated at 16.6 ± 0.3 kilotons. After considering many estimation methods, a 1985 report concluded that the yield was ± 20%.
There has been debate between historians and military experts about the military necessity, and the influence on the war, of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See the
After being selected in April 1945, Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing to serve as a pristine target, where the effects of a nuclear bomb on an undamaged city could be observed. While damage could be studied later, the energy yield of the untested Little Boy design could be determined only at the moment of detonation, using instruments dropped by parachute from a plane flying in formation with the one that dropped the bomb. Radio-transmitted data from these instruments indicated a yield of about 15 kilotons.
Comparing this yield to the observed damage produced a rule of thumb called the 5 psi lethal area rule. Approximately 100% of people inside the area where the shock wave carries an overpressure of 5 psi or greater would be killed. At Hiroshima, that area was in diameter.
The damage came from three main effects: blast, fire, and radiation.
The blast from a nuclear bomb is the result of X-ray-heated air (the fireball) sending a shock wave or pressure wave in all directions, initially at a velocity greater than the speed of sound, analogous to thunder generated by lightning. Knowledge about urban blast destruction is based largely on studies of Little Boy at Hiroshima. Nagasaki buildings suffered similar damage at similar distances, but the Nagasaki bomb detonated from the city center over hilly terrain that was partially bare of buildings.
In Hiroshima almost everything within of the point directly under the explosion was completely destroyed, except for about 50 heavily reinforced, earthquake-resistant concrete buildings, only the shells of which remained standing. Most were completely gutted, with their windows, doors, sashes, and frames ripped out. The perimeter of severe blast damage approximately followed the contour at .
Later test explosions of nuclear weapons with houses and other test structures nearby confirmed the 5 psi overpressure threshold. Ordinary urban buildings experiencing it will be crushed, toppled, or gutted by the force of air pressure. The picture at right shows the effects of a nuclear-bomb-generated 5 psi pressure wave on a test structure in Nevada in 1953.
A major effect of this kind of structural damage was that it created fuel for fires that were started simultaneously throughout the severe destruction region.
The first effect of the explosion was blinding light, accompanied by radiant heat from the fireball. The Hiroshima fireball was in diameter, with a surface temperature of . Near ground zero, everything flammable burst into flame. One famous, anonymous Hiroshima victim, sitting on stone steps from the hypocenter, left only a shadow, having absorbed the fireball heat that permanently bleached the surrounding stone. Simultaneous fires were started throughout the blast-damaged area by fireball heat and by overturned stoves and furnaces, electrical shorts, etc. Twenty minutes after the detonation, these fires had merged into a firestorm, pulling in surface air from all directions to feed an inferno which consumed everything flammable.
The Hiroshima firestorm was roughly in diameter, corresponding closely to the severe blast damage zone. (See the USSBS map, right.) Blast-damaged buildings provided fuel for the fire. Structural lumber and furniture were splintered and scattered about. Debris-choked roads obstructed fire fighters. Broken gas pipes fueled the fire, and broken water pipes rendered hydrants useless. At Nagasaki, the fires failed to merge into a single firestorm, and the fire-damaged area was only one fourth as great as at Hiroshima, due in part to a southwest wind that pushed the fires away from the city.
As the map shows, the Hiroshima firestorm jumped natural firebreaks (river channels), as well as prepared firebreaks. The spread of fire stopped only when it reached the edge of the blast-damaged area, encountering less available fuel.
Accurate casualty figures are impossible to determine, because many victims were cremated by the firestorm, along with all record of their existence. The Manhattan Project report on Hiroshima estimated that 60% of immediate deaths were caused by fire, but with the caveat that "many persons near the center of explosion suffered fatal injuries from more than one of the bomb effects." In particular, many fire victims also received lethal doses of nuclear radiation.
Local fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.
However, a burst of intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fireball. Its lethal radius was , covering about half of the firestorm area. An estimated 30% of immediate fatalities were people who received lethal doses of this direct radiation, but died in the firestorm before their radiation injuries would have become apparent. Over 6,000 people survived the blast and fire, but died of radiation injuries. Among injured survivors, 30% had radiation injuries from which they recovered, but with a lifelong increase in cancer risk. To date, no radiation-related evidence of heritable diseases has been observed among the survivors' children.
Although Little Boy exploded with the energy equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT, the Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that the same blast and fire effect could have been caused by 2,100 tons of conventional bombs: "220 B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs." Since the target was spread across a two-dimensional plane, the vertical component of a single spherical nuclear explosion was largely wasted. A cluster bomb pattern of smaller explosions would have been a more energy-efficient match to the target.
When the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed. However, by mid-1946 the Hanford Site reactors were suffering badly from the Wigner effect. Faced with the prospect of no more plutonium for new cores and no more polonium for the initiators for the cores that had already been produced, the Director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, ordered that some Little Boys be prepared as an interim measure until a cure could be found. No Little Boy assemblies were available, and no comprehensive set of diagrams of the Little Boy could be found, although there were drawings of the various components, and stocks of spare parts.
At Sandia Base, three Army officers, Captains Albert Bethel, Richard Meyer, and Bobbie Griffin attempted to re-create the Little Boy. They were supervised by Harlow W. Russ, an expert on Little Boy who served with Project Alberta on Tinian, and was now leader of the Z-11 Group of the Los Alamos Laboratory's Z Division at Sandia. Gradually, they managed to locate the correct drawings and parts, and figured out how they went together. Eventually, they built six Little Boy assemblies. Although the casings, barrels, and components were tested, no enriched uranium was supplied for the bombs. By early 1947, the problem caused by the Wigner effect was on its way to solution, and the three officers were reassigned.
The Navy Bureau of Ordnance built 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the nuclear-capable Lockheed P2V Neptune aircraft carrier aircraft (which could be launched from but not land on the Midway-class aircraft carriers). Components were produced by the Naval Ordnance Plants in Pocatello, Idaho, and Louisville, Kentucky. Enough fissionable material was available by 1948 to build ten projectiles and targets, although there were only enough initiators for six. All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951.
The Smithsonian Institution displayed a Little Boy (complete, except for enriched uranium), until 1986. The Department of Energy took the weapon from the museum to remove its inner components, so the bombs could not be stolen and detonated with fissile material. The government returned the emptied casing to the Smithsonian in 1993. Three other disarmed bombs are on display in the United States; another is at the Imperial War Museum in London. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18597 |
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for "Creem" and "Rolling Stone" magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic".
Bangs was born in Escondido, California. He was the son of Norma Belle ("née" Clifton) and Conway Leslie Bangs, a truck driver. Both of his parents were from Texas: his father from Enloe and his mother from Pecos County. Norma Belle was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Conway died in a fire when his son was young. When Bangs was 11, he moved with his mother to El Cajon, also in San Diego County. His early interests and influences ranged from the Beats (particularly William S. Burroughs) and jazz musician John Coltrane and Miles Davis, to comic books and science fiction. He had a connection with "The San Diego Door", an underground newspaper of the late 1960s.
Bangs became a freelance writer in 1969, after reading an ad in "Rolling Stone" soliciting readers' reviews. His first piece was a negative review of the MC5 album "Kick Out the Jams", which he sent to "Rolling Stone" with a note requesting, if the magazine were to decline to publish the review, that he be given a reason for the decision; no reply was forthcoming, as the magazine did indeed publish the review.
His 1970 review of Black Sabbath's first album in "Rolling Stone" was scathing, rating them as imitators of the band Cream:
Bangs wrote about the death of Janis Joplin in 1970 from a drug overdose: "It's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as a given so quickly."
In 1973, Jann Wenner fired Bangs from "Rolling Stone" for "disrespecting musicians" after a particularly harsh review of the group Canned Heat.
Bangs began freelancing for Detroit-based "Creem" in 1970. In 1971, he wrote a feature for "Creem" on Alice Cooper, and soon afterward he moved to Detroit. Named "Creem"'s editor in 1971, Bangs fell in love with Detroit, calling it "rock's only hope", and remained there for five years.
During the early 1970s, Bangs and some other writers at "Creem" began using the term "punk rock" to designate the genre of 1960s garage bands and more contemporary acts, such as MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges. Their writings would provide some of the conceptual framework for the later punk and new wave movements that emerged in New York, London, and elsewhere later in the decade. They would be quick to pick up on these new movements at their inception and provide extensive coverage of the phenomenon. Bangs was enamored of the noise music of Lou Reed, and "Creem" gave significant exposure to artists such as Reed, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Captain Beefheart, Blondie, Brian Eno, and the New York Dolls years earlier than the mainstream press. Bangs wrote the essay/interview "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves" about Reed in 1975. "Creem" was also among the earliest publications to give sizable coverage to hard rock and metal artists such as Motörhead, Kiss, Judas Priest, and Van Halen.
After leaving "Creem" in 1976, he wrote for "The Village Voice", "Penthouse", "Playboy", "New Musical Express", and many other publications.
Writing in "Stereo Review", Bangs described the album "Funky Kingston" by Toots and the Maytals as "perfection, the most exciting and diversified set of reggae tunes by a single artist yet released".
Bangs died in New York City on April 30, 1982, at the age of 33, of an accidental overdose of dextropropoxyphene (an opioid analgesic), diazepam (a benzodiazepine), and NyQuil.
Bangs's criticism was filled with cultural references, not only to rock music but also to literature and philosophy. He was known for his radical and critical style of working, apparent in this quotation:
On one occasion, while the J. Geils Band were playing in concert, Bangs climbed onto the stage, typewriter in hand, and typed a supposed review of the event, in full view of the audience.
In 1979, writing for the Village Voice, Bangs wrote a poignant piece about the White supremacy from a Punk music scene perspective, called "The white noise supremacists".
Bangs was also a musician. In 1976, he and Peter Laughner recorded an acoustic improvisation in the "Creem" office. The recording included covers/parodies of songs like "Sister Ray" and "Pale Blue Eyes", both by the Velvet Underground.
In 1977, Bangs recorded, as a solo artist, a 7" vinyl single named "Let It Blurt/Live", mixed by John Cale and released in 1979.
In 1977, at the famous New York City nightclub, CBGB's, while Bangs was talking to guitarist Mickey Leigh, Joey Ramone's brother, the idea for a band named "Birdland" came to fruition. Although they both had their roots in jazz, the two wanted to create an old school rock & roll group. Leigh brought in his post-punk band, The Rattlers (David Merrill on bass; Matty Quick on drums), and cut "Birdland with Lester Bangs". The recording took place at the under renovation Electric Lady Studios. Bassist David Merrill, who was working on the construction of the studio, had the keys to the building and they snuck the band in on April Fool's Day, 1979 for an impromptu and late night recording session. The end result was a completely uncut and un-dubbed recording that displayed completely raw music. Birdland broke up within two months of this rare recording (in which the cassette tape from the session became the master, mixed by Ed Stasium and released by Leigh only in 1986).
In 1980 Lester Bangs traveled to Austin, Texas, and met a surf/punk rock group "The Delinquents". In early December of the same year, they recorded an album as "Lester Bangs and the Delinquents", entitled "Jook Savages on the Brazos", released the following year.
In 1990 the Mekons released the EP "F.U.N. 90" with Bangs' declamation in the song "One Horse Town". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18602 |
Lydia Kavina
Lydia Yevgenyevna Kavina (; born 8 September 1967) is a Russian-British theremin player.
The granddaughter of Léon Theremin's first cousin, Soviet anthropologist and primatologist Mikhail Nesturkh, Kavina was born in Moscow and began studying the instrument under the direction of Léon Theremin when she was nine years old. Five years later, she gave her first theremin concert, which marked the beginning of a musical career that has led to numerous concert, theatre, radio and television performances around the world.
Kavina has appeared as a solo performer at such prestigious venues as the "Bolshoi Zal" (Great Hall) of the Moscow Conservatory, Moscow International Art Centre with National Philarmonic of Russia under Vladimir Spivakov and Bellevue Palace in Berlin, the residence of the German President. She has also performed at leading festivals, including Caramoor with the Orchestra St. Luke's, New York's Lincoln Center Festival, Holland Music Festival, Martinu Festival, Electronic Music Festival in Burge and Moscow “Avantgarde”.
Kavina performs most of the classical theremin repertoire, including popular works for theremin by Bohuslav Martinů, Joseph Schillinger, and "Spellbound" by Miklos Rozsa, as well as "Equatorial" by Edgard Varèse and the lesser known "Testament" by Nicolas Obouchov.
In addition to giving concerts, Kavina is a composer of music for theremin and teaches the instrument in Western Europe, Russia and the United States. Carolina Eyck was one of her students. Together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, she played theremin for Howard Shore's soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film "Ed Wood", as well as for "eXistenZ" (also by Shore) and "The Machinist". Additionally, Kavina has recorded several compact discs and is the subject of an instructional video from the theremin manufacturer Moog Music. She was also featured in stage productions such as "Alice" and "The Black Rider" (both conceived and directed by Robert Wilson, with music by Tom Waits) at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and in collaboration with the Russian experimental surf band Messer Chups.
Lydia Kavina is an active promoter of new experimental music for the theremin. Her recent project "Nicht zu fassen" for theremin and accordion, together with Roman Yusipey, includes works by S.Gubaidulina, J.Cage, V.Poleva, as well as Kavina's compositions, it was performed in Germany and Ukraine. In collaboration with Barbara Buchholz and Kamerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Kavina performed a number of concerts of contemporary works for theremin in Germany in 2005–2007 as part of the "Touch! Don't Touch! – Music for Theremin" project.
The most notable project of her recent career is her theremin solo in "The Little Mermaid", a ballet by Lera Auerbach, choreographed by John Neumeier in Copenhagen New Opera Haus(2005), Hamburg State Opera (2007-2015) and The National Ballet of China in Beijing(2012). Kavina also played the solo in Danny Elfman's UK concert tour with BBC concert orchestra and London Concert orchestra (2013-2014).
Kavina has completed a number of her own compositions for theremin including a Concerto for Theremin and Symphony Orchestra, first performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra under the direction of Gil Rose.
Lydia Kavina is based in Oxfordshire, UK. Kavina holds a degree in composition from The Moscow Conservatory, where she also completed a postgraduate assistantship program.
Collaborations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18603 |
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) (, , also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organisation that was based in northeastern Sri Lanka. Its aim was to secure an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east in response to the state policies of successive Sri Lankan governments that were widely considered discriminative towards the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, as well as the oppressive actions—including anti-Tamil pogroms in 1956 and 1958—carried out by the majority Sinhalese.
Founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE was involved in armed clashes against the Sri Lankan government and armed forces. Oppression against Sri Lankan Tamils continued by Sinhalese mobs, with the 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom and 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library taking place. Following the week-long July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom carried out by Sinhalese mobs that came to be known as Black July, the LTTE's escalation of intermittent conflict into a full-scale nationalist insurgency began, which started the Sri Lankan Civil War. By this time, the LLTE was widely regarded as the most dominant Tamil militant group in Sri Lanka and among the most feared guerrila forces in the world, while Prabhakaran's status as a freedom guerrilla fighter led to comparisons to revolutionary Che Guevara by global media, though Prabhakaran's actions were also widely viewed as terroristic.
Initially starting out as a guerrilla force, the LTTE increasingly came to resemble that of a conventional fighting force with a well-developed military wing that included a navy, an airborne unit, an intelligence wing, and a specialised suicide attack unit. In particular, India's relationship with the LTTE was complex, as it went from initially supporting the organisation to engaging it in direct combat through the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), owing to changes in the former's foreign policy during the phase of the conflict. The LTTE gained global notoriety for using women and children in combat and carrying out a number of high-profile assassinations, including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993.
Over the course of the conflict, the LTTE frequently exchanged control of territory in the north-east with the Sri Lankan military, with the two sides engaging in intense military confrontations. It was involved in four unsuccessful rounds of peace talks with the Sri Lankan government and at its peak in 2000, the LTTE was in control of 76% of the landmass in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran headed the organisation from its inception until his death in 2009. Between 1983 and 2009, more than 80,000 were killed in the civil war, of which many were Sri Lankan Tamils. 800,000 Sri Lankan Tamils also left Sri Lanka for various destinations, including Europe, North America, and Asia. The LTTE has been designated as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries, including the European Union, Canada, the United States, and India.
Historical inter-ethnic imbalances between the Sinhalese and Tamil populations are alleged to have created the background for the origin of the LTTE. Post independent Sri Lankan governments attempted to rectify the disproportionate favouring and empowerment of Tamil minority by the colonial rulers, which led to ethnic discrimination, seeded hatred and division policies including the "Sinhala Only Act" and gave rise to separatist ideologies among many Tamil leaders. By the 1970s, initial non-violent political struggle for an independent mono-ethnic Tamil state was used as justification for a violent secessionist insurgency led by the LTTE.
In the early 1970s, United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike introduced the policy of standardisation to rectify the low numbers of Sinhalese being accepted into university in Sri Lanka. A student named Satiyaseelan formed "Tamil Manavar Peravai" (Tamil Students League) to counter this. This group comprised Tamil youth who advocated the rights of students to have fair enrolment. Inspired by the failed 1971 insurrection of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, it was the first Tamil insurgent group of its kind. It consisted of around 40 Tamil youth, including Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran (later, the leader of the Sivakumaran group), K. Pathmanaba (one of the founder members of EROS) and Velupillai Prabhakaran, an 18-year-old youth from single caste-oriented Valvettithurai (VVT). In 1972, Prabhakaran teamed up with Chetti Thanabalasingam, Jaffna to form the Tamil New Tigers (TNT), with Thanabalasingham as its leader. After he was killed, Prabhakaran took over. At the same time, Nadarajah Thangathurai and Selvarajah Yogachandran (better known by his "nom de guerre" Kuttimani) were also involved in discussions about an insurgency. They would later (in 1979) create a separate organisation named Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) to campaign for the establishment of an independent Tamil Eelam. These groups, along with another prominent figure of the armed struggle, Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran, were involved in several hit-and-run operations against pro-government Tamil politicians, Sri Lanka Police and civil administration during the early 1970s. These attacks included throwing bombs at the residence and the car of SLFP Jaffna Mayor, Alfred Duraiyappah, placing a bomb at a carnival held in the stadium of Jaffna city (now "Duraiyappah stadium") and Neervely bank robbery. The 1974 Tamil conference incident also sparked the anger of these militant groups. Both Sivakumaran and Prabhakaran attempted to assassinate Duraiyappah in revenge for the incident. Sivakumaran committed suicide on 5 June 1974, to evade capture by Police. On 27 July 1975, Prabhakaran assassinated Duraiyappah, who was branded as a "traitor" by TULF and the insurgents alike. Prabhakaran shot and killed the Mayor when he was visiting the Krishnan temple at Ponnalai.
The LTTE was founded on 5 May 1976 as the successor to the Tamil New Tigers. Uma Maheswaran became its leader, and Prabhakaran its military commander. A five-member committee was also appointed. It has been stated that Prabhakaran sought to "refashion the old TNT/new LTTE into an elite, ruthlessly efficient, and highly professional fighting force", by the terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna. Prabhakaran kept the numbers of the group small and maintained a high standard of training. The LTTE carried out low-key attacks against various government targets, including policemen and local politicians.
Tamil United Liberation Front leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, who was in 1977 elected as the Opposition leader of Sri Lanka Parliament, clandestinely supported the LTTE. Amirthalingam believed that if he could exercise control over the Tamil insurgent groups, it would enhance his political position and pressure the government to agree to grant political autonomy to Tamils. Thus, he provided letters of reference to the LTTE and to other Tamil insurgent groups to raise funds. Both Uma Maheswaran (a former surveyor) and Urmila Kandiah, first female member of the LTTE, were prominent members of the TULF youth wing. Maheswaran was the secretary of TULF Tamil Youth Forum, Colombo branch. Amirthalingam introduced Prabhakaran to N. S. Krishnan, who later became the first international representative of LTTE. It was Krishnan who introduced Prabhakaran to Anton Balasingham, who later became the chief political strategist and chief negotiator of LTTE, which split for the first time in 1979. Uma Maheswaran was found to be having a love affair with Urmila Kandiah, which was against the code of conduct of LTTE. Prabhakaran ordered him to leave the organisation. Uma Maheswaran left LTTE and formed People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) in 1980.
In 1980, Junius Richard Jayewardene's government agreed to devolve power by the means of District Development Councils upon the request of TULF. By this time, LTTE and other insurgent groups wanted a separate state. They had no faith in any sort of political solution. Thus the TULF and other Tamil political parties were steadily marginalised and insurgent groups emerged as the major force in the north. During this period of time several other insurgent groups came into the arena, such as EROS (1975), TELO (1979), PLOTE (1980), EPRLF (1980) and TELA (1982). LTTE ordered civilians to boycott the local government elections of 1983 in which TULF contested. Voter turnout became as low as 10%. Thereafter, Tamil political parties were largely unable to represent Tamil people as insurgent groups took over their position.
The LTTE carried out its first major attack on 23 July 1983, when they ambushed Sri Lanka Army patrol Four Four Bravo at Thirunelveli, Jaffna. Thirteen Sri Lankan servicemen were killed in the attack, leading to the Black July.
Some consider Black July to be a planned rampage against the Tamil community of Sri Lanka, in which the JVP movement and sections of the government were implicated.
Many outraged Tamil youths joined Tamil militant groups to fight the Sri Lankan government, in what is considered a major catalyst to the insurgency in Sri Lanka.
In reaction to various geo-political ("see Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War") and economic factors, from August 1983 to May 1987, India, through its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), provided arms, training and monetary support to six Sri Lankan Tamil insurgent groups including the LTTE. During that period, 32 camps were set up in India to train these 495 LTTE insurgents, including 90 women who were trained in 10 batches. The first batch of Tigers were trained in Establishment 22 based in Chakrata, Uttarakhand. The second batch, including LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman, trained in Himachal Pradesh. Prabakaran visited the first and the second batch of Tamil Tigers to see them training. Eight other batches of LTTE were trained in Tamil Nadu. Thenmozhi Rajaratnam "alias" Dhanu, who carried out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and Sivarasan—the key conspirator were among the militants trained by RAW, in Nainital, India.
In April 1984, the LTTE formally joined a common militant front, the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF), a union between LTTE, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF).
TELO usually held the Indian view of problems and pushed for India's view during peace talks with Sri Lanka and other groups. LTTE denounced the TELO view and claimed that India was only acting on its own interest. As a result, the LTTE broke from the ENLF in 1986. Soon fighting broke out between the TELO and the LTTE and clashes occurred over the next few months. As a result, almost the entire TELO leadership and at least 400 TELO militants were killed by the LTTE. The LTTE attacked training camps of the EPRLF a few months later, forcing it to withdraw from the Jaffna peninsula. Notices were issued to the effect that all remaining Tamil insurgents join the LTTE in Jaffna and in Madras, where the Tamil groups were headquartered. With the major groups including the TELO and EPRLF eliminated, the remaining 20 or so Tamil insurgent groups were then absorbed into the LTTE, making Jaffna an LTTE-dominated city.
Another practice that increased support by Tamil people was LTTE's members taking an oath of loyalty which stated LTTE's goal of establishing a state for the Sri Lankan Tamils. In 1987 LTTE established the Black Tigers, a unit responsible for conducting suicide attacks against political, economic, and military targets, and launched its first suicide attack against a Sri Lankan Army camp, killing 40 soldiers. LTTE members were prohibited from smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol in any form. LTTE members were required to avoid their family members and avoid communication with them. Initially, LTTE members were prohibited from having love affairs or sexual relationships as it could deter their prime motive, but this policy changed after Prabhakaran married Mathivathani Erambu in October 1984.
In July 1987, faced with growing anger among its own Tamils and a flood of refugees, India intervened directly in the conflict for the first time by initially airdropping food parcels into Jaffna. After negotiations, India and Sri Lanka entered into the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Though the conflict was between the Tamil and Sinhalese people, India and Sri Lanka signed the peace accord instead of India influencing both parties to sign a peace accord among themselves. The peace accord assigned a certain degree of regional autonomy in the Tamil areas, with Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) controlling the regional council and called for the Tamil militant groups to surrender. India was to send a peacekeeping force, named the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), part of the Indian Army, to Sri Lanka to enforce the disarmament and to watch over the regional council.
Although the Tamil militant organisations did not have a role in the Indo-Lanka agreement, most groups, including EPRLF, TELO, EROS, and PLOTE, accepted it. LTTE rejected the accord because they opposed EPRLF's Varadaraja Perumal as the chief ministerial candidate for the merged North Eastern Province. The LTTE named three alternate candidates for the position, which India rejected. The LTTE subsequently refused to hand over their weapons to the IPKF. After three months of tensions, LTTE declared war on IPKF on 7 October 1987.
Thus LTTE engaged in military conflict with the Indian Army, and launched its first attack on an Indian army rations truck on 8 October, killing five Indian para-commandos who were on board by strapping burning tires around their necks. The government of India stated that the IPKF should disarm the LTTE by force. The Indian Army launched assaults on the LTTE, including a month-long campaign, "Operation Pawan" to win control of the Jaffna Peninsula. The ruthlessness of this campaign, and the Indian army's subsequent anti-LTTE operations, made it extremely unpopular among many Tamils in Sri Lanka.
The Indian intervention was also unpopular among the Sinhalese majority. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa pledged to withdraw IPKF as soon as he is elected president during his presidential election campaign in 1988. After being elected, in April 1989, he started negotiations with LTTE. President Premadasa ordered the Sri Lanka Army to clandestinely hand over arms consignments to the LTTE to fight the IPKF and its proxy, the Tamil National Army (TNA). These consignments included RPGs, mortars, self-loading rifles, Type 81 assault rifle, T56 automatic rifles, pistols, hand grenades, ammunition, and communications sets. Moreover, millions of dollars were also passed on to the LTTE.
The last members of the IPKF, which was estimated to have had a strength of well over 100,000 at its peak, left the country in March 1990 upon the request of President Premadasa. Unstable peace initially held between the government and the LTTE, and peace talks progressed towards providing devolution for Tamils in the north and east of the country. A ceasefire held between LTTE and the government from June 1989 to June 1990, but broke down as LTTE massacred 600 police officers in the Eastern Province.
Fighting continued throughout the 1990s, and was marked by two key assassinations carried out by the LTTE: those of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, using suicide bombers on both occasions. The fighting briefly halted in 1994 following the election of Chandrika Kumaratunga as President of Sri Lanka and the onset of peace talks, but fighting resumed after LTTE sank two Sri Lanka Navy Fast Attack Craft in April 1995. In a series of military operations that followed, the Sri Lanka Armed Forces recaptured the Jaffna Peninsula. Further offensives followed over the next three years, and the military captured large areas in the north of the country from the LTTE, including areas in the Vanni region, the town of Kilinochchi, and many smaller towns. From 1998 onward, the LTTE regained control of these areas, which culminated in the capture in April 2000 of the strategically important Elephant Pass base complex, located at the entrance of the Jaffna Peninsula, after prolonged fighting against the Sri Lanka Army.
Mahattaya, a one-time deputy leader of LTTE, was accused of treason by the LTTE and killed in 1994. He is said to have collaborated with the Indian Research and Analysis Wing to remove Prabhakaran from the LTTE leadership.
In 2002, the LTTE dropped its demand for a separate state, instead demanding a form of regional autonomy. Following the landslide election defeat of Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickramasinghe coming to power in December 2001, the LTTE declared a unilateral ceasefire. The Sri Lankan Government agreed to the ceasefire, and in March 2002 the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed. As part of the agreement, Norway and other Nordic countries agreed to jointly monitor the ceasefire through the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.
Six rounds of peace talks between the Government of Sri Lanka and LTTE were held, but they were temporarily suspended after the LTTE pulled out of the talks in 2003 claiming "certain critical issues relating to the ongoing peace process". In 2003 the LTTE proposed an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA). This move was approved of by the international community but rejected by the Sri Lankan President. The LTTE boycotted the presidential election in December 2005. While LTTE claimed that the people under its control were free to vote, it is alleged that they used threats to prevent the population from voting. The United States condemned this.
The new government of Sri Lanka came into power in 2006 and demanded to abrogate the ceasefire agreement, stating that the ethnic conflict could only have a military solution, and that the only way to achieve this was by eliminating the LTTE. Further peace talks were scheduled in Oslo, Norway, on 8 and 9 June 2006, but cancelled when the LTTE refused to meet directly with the government delegation, stating its fighters were not being allowed safe passage to travel to the talks. Norwegian mediator Erik Solheim told journalists that the LTTE should take direct responsibility for the collapse of the talks. Rifts grew between the government and LTTE, and resulted in a number of ceasefire agreement violations by both sides during 2006. Suicide attacks, military skirmishes, and air raids took place during the latter part of 2006. Between February 2002 to May 2007, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission documented 3,830 ceasefire violations by the LTTE, with respect to 351 by the security forces. Military confrontation continued into 2007 and 2008. In January 2008 the government officially pulled out of the Cease Fire Agreement.
In the most significant show of dissent from within the organisation, a senior LTTE commander named Colonel Karuna ("nom de guerre" of Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan) broke away from the LTTE in March 2004 and formed the TamilEela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (later Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal), amid allegations that the northern commanders were overlooking the needs of the eastern Tamils. The LTTE leadership accused him of mishandling funds and questioned him about his recent personal behaviour. He tried to take control of the eastern province from the LTTE, which caused clashes between the LTTE and TMVP. The LTTE has suggested that TMVP was backed by the government, and the Nordic SLMM monitors corroborated this. It was later revealed that UNP Member of Parliament Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana had played an important role in the defection of Colonel Karuna from the LTTE to the Government.
Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected as the president of Sri Lanka in 2005. After a brief period of negotiations, LTTE pulled out of peace talks indefinitely. Sporadic violence had continued and on 25 April 2006, LTTE tried to assassinate Sri Lankan Army Commander Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka. Following the attack, the European Union proscribed the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. A new crisis leading to the first large-scale fighting since signing of the ceasefire occurred when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Oya (Mavil Aru) reservoir on 21 July 2006, and cut the water supply to 15,000 villages in government controlled areas. This dispute developed into a full-scale war by August 2006.
After the breakdown of the peace process in 2006, the Sri Lankan military launched a major offensive against the Tigers, defeating the LTTE militarily and bringing the entire country under its control. Human rights groups criticised the nature of the victory which included the internment of Tamil civilians in concentration camps with little or no access to outside agencies. Victory over the Tigers was declared by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 16 May 2009, and the LTTE admitted defeat on 17 May 2009. Prabhakaran was killed by government forces on 19 May 2009. Selvarasa Pathmanathan succeeded Prabhakaran as leader of the LTTE, but he was later arrested in Malaysia and handed over to the Sri Lankan government in August 2009.
Eelam War IV had commenced in the East. Mavil Aru came under the control of the Sri Lanka Army by 15 August 2006. Systematically, Sampoor, Vakarai, Kanjikudichchi Aru and Batticaloa also came under military control. The military then captured Thoppigala, the Tiger stronghold in Eastern Province on 11 July 2007. IPKF had failed to capture it from LTTE during its offensive in 1988.
Sporadic fighting had been happening in the North for months, but the intensity of the clashes increased after September 2007. Gradually, the defence lines of the LTTE began to fall. The advancing military confined the LTTE into rapidly diminishing areas in the North. Prabhakaran was seriously injured during air strikes carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force on a bunker complex in Jayanthinagar on 26 November 2007. Earlier, on 2 November 2007, S. P. Thamilselvan, who was the head of the rebels' political wing, was killed during another government air raid. On 2 January 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially abandoned the ceasefire agreement. By 2 August 2008, LTTE lost the Mannar District following the fall of Vellankulam town. Troops captured Pooneryn and Mankulam during the final months of 2008.
On 2 January 2009, the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, announced that the Sri Lankan troops had captured Kilinochchi, the city which the LTTE had used for over a decade as its de facto administrative capital. On the same day, President Rajapaksa called upon LTTE to surrender. It was stated that the loss of Kilinochchi had caused substantial damage to the LTTE's public image, and that the LTTE was likely to collapse under military pressure on multiple fronts. As of 8 January 2009, the LTTE abandoned its positions on the Jaffna peninsula to make a last stand in the jungles of Mullaitivu, their last main base. The Jaffna Peninsula was captured by the Sri Lankan Army by 14 January. On 25 January 2009, SLA troops "completely captured" Mullaitivu town, the last major LTTE stronghold.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared military victory over the Tamil Tigers on 16 May 2009, after 26 years of conflict. The rebels offered to lay down their weapons in return for a guarantee of safety. On 17 May 2009, LTTE's head of the Department of International Relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan conceded defeat, saying in an email statement, "this battle has reached its bitter end".
With the end of the hostilities, 11,664 LTTE members, including 595 child soldiers surrendered to the Sri Lankan military. Approximately 150 hardcore LTTE cadres and 1,000 mid-level cadres escaped to India. The government took action to rehabilitate the surrendered cadres under a National Action Plan for the Re-integration of Ex-combatants while allegations of torture, rape, and murder were reported by international human rights bodies. They were divided into three categories; hardcore, non-combatants, and those who were forcibly recruited (including child soldiers). Twenty-four rehabilitation centres were set up in Jaffna, Batticaloa, and Vavuniya. Among the apprehended cadres, there had been about 700 hardcore members. Some of these cadres were integrated into the State Intelligence Service to tackle the internal and external networks of LTTE. By August 2011, government had released more than 8,000 cadres, and 2,879 remained.
After the death of LTTE leader Prabhakaran and the most powerful members of the organisation, Selvarasa Pathmanathan (alias "KP") was its sole first generation leader left alive. He assumed duty as the new leader of LTTE on 21 July 2009. A statement was issued, allegedly from the Executive Committee of the LTTE, stating that Pathmanathan had been appointed leader of the LTTE. 15 days after the announcement, on 5 August 2009, a Sri Lankan military intelligence unit, with the collaboration of local authorities, captured Pathmanathan in the Tune Hotel, Downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence alleges that Perinpanayagam Sivaparan "alias" Nediyavan of the Tamil Eelam People's Alliance (TEPA) in Norway, Suren Surendiran of British Tamils Forum (BTF), Father S. J. Emmanuel of Global Tamil Forum (GTF), Visvanathan Rudrakumaran of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) and Sekarapillai Vinayagamoorthy "alias" Kathirgamathamby Arivazhagan "alias" Vinayagam, a former senior intelligence leader are trying to revive the organisation among the Tamil diaspora. Subsequently, in May 2011, Nediyavan, who advocates an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state, was arrested and released on bail in Norway, pending further investigation.
The LTTE was viewed as a disciplined and militarised group with a leader of significant military and organisational skills. Three major divisions of the LTTE were the military, intelligence and political wings.
The military wing consisted of at least 11 separate divisions including the conventional fighting forces, Charles Anthony Brigade and Jeyanthan Brigade; the suicide wing called the Black Tigers; naval wing Sea Tigers, air-wing Air Tigers, LTTE leader Prabhakaran's personal security divisions, Imran Pandian regiment and Ratha regiment; auxiliary military units such as Kittu artillery brigade, Kutti Sri mortar brigade, Ponnamman mining unit and hit-and-run squads like Pistol gang. Charles Anthony brigade was the first conventional fighting formation created by LTTE. Sea Tiger division was founded in 1984, under the leadership of Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan "alias" Soosai. LTTE acquired its first light aircraft in the late 1990s. Vaithilingam Sornalingam "alias" Shankar was instrumental in creating the Air Tigers. It carried out 9 air attacks since 2007, including a suicide air raid targeting Sri Lanka Air Force headquarters, Colombo in February 2009. LTTE is the only terrorist-proscribed organisation to acquire aircraft. LTTE intelligence wing consisted of Tiger Organisation Security Intelligence Service "aka" TOSIS, run by Pottu Amman, and a separate military intelligence division. It was forbidden for the LTTE members to consume tobacco and alcohol. Illicit sex was also prohibited. Each member carried a cyanide capsule with orders to use if captured.
Politically the LTTE was never serious about a political solution, it operated a systematic and powerful political wing, which functioned like a separate state in the LTTE controlled area. In 1989, it established a political party named People's Front of Liberation Tigers, under Gopalaswamy Mahendraraja "alias" Mahattaya. It was abandoned soon after. Later, S. P. Thamilselvan was appointed the head of the political wing. He was also a member of the LTTE delegation for Norwegian brokered peace talks. After the death of Thamilselvan in November 2007, Balasingham Nadesan was appointed as its leader. Major sections within the political wing include International peace secretariat, led by Pulidevan, LTTE Police, LTTE court, Bank of Tamil Eelam, Sports division and the "Voice of Tigers" Radio broadcasting station of LTTE.
LTTE used female cadres for military engagements. Its women's' wing consisted of Malathi and Sothiya Brigades.
The LTTE also controlled a powerful international wing called the "KP branch", controlled by Selvarasa Pathmanathan, "Castro branch", controlled by Veerakathy Manivannam "alias" Castro, and "Aiyannah group" led by Ponniah Anandaraja "alias" Aiyannah.
During its active years, the LTTE had established and administered a de facto state under its control, named Tamil Eelam with Kilinochchi as its administrative capital, and had managed a government in its territory, providing state functions such as courts, a police force, a human rights organisation, and a humanitarian assistance board, a health board, and an education board. It ran a bank (Bank of Tamil Eelam), a radio station (Voice of Tigers) and a television station (National Television of Tamil Eelam). In the LTTE-controlled areas, women reported lower levels of domestic violence because "the Tigers had a de facto justice system to deal with domestic violence."
In 2003, the LTTE issued a proposal to establish an Interim Self Governing Authority in the 8 districts of the North and East which it controlled. The ISGA was to be entrusted with powers such as the right to impose law, collect taxes and oversee the rehabilitation process until a favourable solution was reached after which elections would be held. The ISGA would consist of members representing the LTTE, GoSL and the Muslim community. According to the proposal, this LTTE administration intended to be a secular one with principal emphasis on prohibition of discrimination and protection of all communities.
Due to its military victories, policies, call for national self-determination and constructive Tamil nationalist platform, the LTTE was supported by major sections of the Tamil community. University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) claimed that "by combination of internal terror and narrow nationalist ideology the LTTE succeeded in atomizing the community. It took away not only the right to oppose but even the right to evaluate, as a community, the course they were taking. This gives a semblance of illusion that the whole society is behind the LTTE."
The LTTE was a self-styled national liberation organisation with the primary goal of establishing an independent Tamil state. Tamil nationalism was the primary basis of its ideology. The LTTE was influenced by Indian freedom fighters such as Subhas Chandra Bose. The organisation denied being a separatist movement and saw itself as fighting for self-determination and restoration of sovereignty in what it recognised as its homeland. Although most Tigers were Hindus, the LTTE was an avowedly secular organisation; religion did not play any significant part in its ideology. Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran criticised what he saw as the oppressive features of traditional Hindu Tamil society, such as the caste system and gender inequality. The LTTE presented itself as a revolutionary movement seeking widespread change within Tamil society, not just independence from the Sri Lankan state. Therefore, its ideology called for the removal of caste discrimination and support for women's liberation. Prabhakaran described his political philosophy as "revolutionary socialism", with the goal of creating an "egalitarian society". When asked about the LTTE's economic policy, Velupillai Pirabaharan said an "open market economy." But he pointed out that: "We can only think about a proper economic structure when the ethnic problem is resolved. ... What form and what structure this economic system is to be instituted in can only be worked when we have a permanent settlement or independent state."
LTTE had developed a large international network since the days of N. S. Krishnan, who served as its first international representative. In the late 1970s, TULF parliamentarian and opposition leader A. Amirthalingam provided letters of reference for fundraising, and V. N. Navaratnam, who was an executive committee member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), introduced many influential and wealthy Tamils living overseas to Tamil insurgent leaders. Navaratnam also introduced LTTE members to the members of Polisario Front, a national liberation movement in Morocco, at a meeting held in Oslo, Norway. In 1978, during the world tour of Amirthalingam (with London-based Eelam activist S. K. Vaikundavasan), he formed the World Tamil Coordinating Committee (WTCC), which was later found to be an LTTE front organisation. The global contacts of LTTE grew steadily since then. At the height of its power, LTTE had 42 offices worldwide. The international network of LTTE engages in propaganda, fundraising, arms procurement, and shipping.
There were three types of organisations that engage in propaganda and fund raising—Front, Cover, and Sympathetic. Prior to the ethnic riots of 1983, attempts to raise funds for a sustaining military campaign were not realised. It was the mass exodus of Tamil civilians to India and western countries following the Black July ethnic riots, which made this possible. As the armed conflict evolved and voluntary donations lessened, LTTE used force and threats to collect money. LTTE was worth US$200–300 million at its peak. The group's global network owned numerous business ventures in various countries. These include investment in real estate, shipping, grocery stores, gold and jewellery stores, gas stations, restaurants, production of films, mass media organisations (TV, radio, print), and industries. It was also in control of numerous charitable organisations including Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation, which was banned and had its funds frozen by the United States Treasury in 2007 for covertly financing terrorism.
Arms Procurement and shipping activities of LTTE were largely clandestine. Prior to 1983, it procured weapons mainly from Afghanistan via the Indo-Pakistani border. Explosives were purchased from commercial markets in India. From 1983 to 1987, LTTE acquired a substantial amount of weapons from RAW and from Lebanon, Cyprus, Singapore, and Malaysia-based arms dealers. LTTE received its first consignment of arms from Singapore in 1984 on board the MV "Cholan", the first ship owned by the organisation. Funds were received and cargo cleared at Chennai Port with the assistance of M. G. Ramachandran, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. In November 1994, the LTTE was able to purchase 60 tonnes of explosives (50 tonnes of TNT and 10 tonnes of RDX) from Rubezone Chemical plant in Ukraine, providing a forged Bangladeshi Ministry of Defense end-user certificate. Payments for the explosives were made from a Citibank account in Singapore held by Selvarasa Pathmanathan. Consignment was transported on board MV Sewne. The same explosives were used for the Central Bank bombing in 1996. Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia remained the most trusted outposts of LTTE, after India alienated it after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
Since late 1997, North Korea became the principal country to provide arms, ammunition, and explosives to the LTTE. The deal with North Korean government was carried out by Ponniah Anandaraja "alias" Aiyannah, a member of World Tamil Coordinating Committee of the United States and later, the accountant of LTTE. He worked at the North Korean embassy in Bangkok since late 1997. LTTE had nearly 20-second-hand ships, which were purchased in Japan, and registered in Panama and other Latin American countries. These ships mostly transported general cargo, including paddy, sugar, timber, glass, and fertiliser. But when an arms deal was finalised, they travelled to North Korea, loaded the cargo and brought it to the equator, where the ships were based. Then on board merchant tankers, weapons were transferred to the sea of Alampil, just outside the territorial waters in Sri Lanka's exclusive economic zone. After that, small teams of Sea Tigers brought the cargo ashore. The Sri Lanka Navy, during 2005–08 destroyed at least 11 of these cargo ships belonged to LTTE in the international waters.
LTTE's last shipment of weapons was in March 2009, towards the end of the war. Merchant vessel "Princess Iswari" went from Indonesia to North Korea under captain Kamalraj Kandasamy "alias" Vinod, loaded the weapons and came back to international waters beyond Sri Lanka. But due to the heavy naval blockades set up by Sri Lankan Navy, it could not deliver the arms consignment. Thus it dumped the weapons in the sea. The same ship, after changing its name to MV Ocean Lady, arrived in Vancouver with 76 migrants, in October 2009. In December 2009, Sri Lanka Navy apprehended a merchant vessel belonged to LTTE, "Princess Chrisanta" in Indonesia and brought it back to Sri Lanka.
The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (USSFRC) and Ethiopian based Jimma Times claimed that the Eritrean government had provided direct military assistance, including light aircraft to LTTE, during the 2002–03 period when the LTTE was negotiating with the Sri Lankan government via the Norwegian mediators. It was also alleged that Erik Solheim, the chief Norwegian facilitator, helped LTTE to establish this relationship. None of these claims have since been verified. These allegations and a suspicion from within the Sri Lankan armed forces, that LTTE had considerable connections and assets in Eritrea and that its leader Prabhakaran may try to flee to Eritrea in the final stages of war, prompted the Sri Lankan government to establish diplomatic relations with Eritrea in 2009. None of the allegations have since been verified.
32 countries currently list the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. As of October 2019, these include:
The first country to ban the LTTE was its brief one-time ally, India. The Indian change of policy came gradually, starting with the IPKF-LTTE conflict, and culminating with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. India opposes the new state Tamil Eelam that LTTE wants to establish, saying that it would lead to Tamil Nadu's separation from India, despite the leaders and common populace of Tamil Nadu considering themselves Indian. Sri Lanka itself lifted the ban on the LTTE before signing the ceasefire agreement in 2002. This was a prerequisite set by the LTTE for the signing of the agreement. The Indian Government extended the ban on LTTE considering their strong anti-India posture and threat to the security of Indian nationals.
The European Union banned LTTE as a terrorist organisation on 17 May 2006. In a statement, the European Parliament said that the LTTE did not represent all Tamils and called on it to "allow for political pluralism and alternate democratic voices in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka".
In October 2014, the European Court of Justice annulled the anti-terrorism sanctions and several other restrictions placed on the LTTE in 2006. The court noted that the basis of proscribing the LTTE had been based on "imputations derived from the press and the Internet" rather than on direct investigation of the group's actions, as required by law. Later, in March 2015, the EU reimposed the sanctions and restrictions.
In July 2017, the LTTE was removed from the terrorism blacklist of European Union's top court, stating that there was no evidence to show of LTTE carrying out attacks after its military defeat in 2009. However, despite the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling, the European Union stated the LTTE organisation remains listed as a terrorist organisation by the EU.
The LTTE leader Prabhakaran contested the terrorist designation of his organisation, asserting that the international community had been influenced by the "false propaganda" of the Sri Lankan state and said that there was no coherent definition of the concept of terrorism. He also maintained that the LTTE was a national liberation organisation fighting against "state terrorism" and "racist oppression". Following 9/11, in an effort to distance his organisation from the "real terrorists", the LTTE leader expressed sympathy to the Western powers engaged in a war against international terrorism and urged them to provide "a clear and comprehensive definition of the concept of terrorism that would distinguish between freedom struggles based on the right to self-determination and blind terrorist acts based on fanaticism." He also expressed concern over states with human rights abuses like Sri Lanka joining the alliance in the war against terrorism as "posing a threat to the legitimate political struggles of the oppressed humanity subjected to state terror."
Karen Parker, an attorney specialising in human rights and humanitarian law, argued that the LTTE was not a terrorist organisation but "an armed force in a war against the government of Sri Lanka." She characterised the war waged by the LTTE as "a war of national liberation in the exercise of the right of self-determination."
One of the main divisions of LTTE included the Black Tigers, an elite fighting wing of the movement, whose mission included carrying out suicide attacks against enemy targets. From ancient times, the Tamil civilisation saw war as an honourable sacrifice and fallen heroes were revered and worshiped in the form of a Hero stone. Heroic martyrdom was glorified in ancient Tamil literature. The Tamil kings and warriors followed an honour code similar to that of Japanese Samurais and committed suicide to save the honour. The Black Tigers wing of the LTTE is said to reflect some of these elements of Tamil martial traditions including the practice of the worship of fallen heroes (Maaveerar Naal) and martial martyrdom. All soldiers of LTTE carried a suicide pill (Cyanide Kuppi) around their necks to escape captivity and torture by enemy forces.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, LTTE was the first insurgent organisation to use concealed Explosive belts and vests. According to the information published by the LTTE, the Black Tigers carried out 378 suicide attacks between 5 July 1987, and 20 November 2008. Out of the deceased, 274 were male and 104 were female.
Many of these attacks have involved military objectives in the north and east of the country, although civilians have been targeted on numerous occasions, including during a high-profile attack on Colombo International Airport in 2001 that caused damage to several commercial airliners and military jets, killing 16 people. The LTTE was responsible for a 1998 attack on the Buddhist shrine and UNESCO world heritage site Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy that killed eight worshippers. The attack was symbolic in that the shrine, which houses a tooth of the Buddha, is the holiest Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka. Other Buddhist shrines have been attacked, notably the Sambuddhaloka Temple in Colombo, in which nine worshippers were killed.
Black Tiger wing had carried out attacks on various high-profile leaders both inside and outside Sri Lanka. It had successfully targeted three world leaders, the only insurgent group to do so. That includes the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India on 21 May 1991, the assassination of Ranasinghe Premadasa, the President of Sri Lanka on 1 May 1993, and the failed assassination attempt of Chandrika Kumaratunga, the Sri Lankan President on 18 December 1999, which resulted in the loss of her right eye.
The killed Black Tiger cadres were highly glorified and their families were given the "Maha Virar family" status. Those cadres were given a chance to have his/her last supper with the LTTE leader Prabhakaran, which was a rare honour one would get in the LTTE controlled area. This, in turn motivated LTTE cadres to join the Black Tiger wing.
On 28 November 2007, an LTTE suicide bomber named Sujatha Vagawanam detonated a bomb hidden inside her brassiere in an attempt to kill Sri Lankan minister Douglas Devananda. This was recorded in the security cameras inside Devananda's office. It is one of the few unsuspected detonations of an explosive by a suicide bomber recorded by a camera.
The LTTE has been condemned by various groups for assassinating political and military opponents. The victims include Tamil moderates who coordinated with the Sri Lanka Government and Tamil paramilitary groups assisting the Sri Lankan Army. The assassination of the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa is attributed to LTTE. The seventh Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber Thenmozhi Rajaratnam on 21 May 1991. On 24 October 1994, LTTE detonated a bomb during a political rally in Thotalanga-Grandpass, which killed most of the prominent politicians of the United National Party, including presidential candidate Gamini Dissanayake MP, Cabinet ministers Weerasinghe Mallimarachchi and G. M. Premachandra, Ossie Abeygunasekara MP and Gamini Wijesekara MP.
LTTE sympathisers justify some of the assassinations by arguing that the people attacked were combatants or persons closely associated with Sri Lankan military intelligence. Specifically in relation to the TELO, the LTTE has said that it had to perform preemptive self-defence because the TELO was in effect functioning as a proxy for India.
The United States Department of State states that its reason for banning LTTE as a proscribed terrorist group is based on allegations that LTTE does not respect human rights and that it does not adhere to the standards of conduct expected of a resistance movement or what might be called "freedom fighters". The FBI has described the LTTE as "amongst the most dangerous and deadly extremist outfits in the world". Other countries have also proscribed LTTE under the same rationale. Numerous countries and international organisations have accused the LTTE of attacking civilians and recruiting children. Despite the allegations of human rights abuses, LTTE has been noted for its lack of use of sexualised violence or rape as a tactic.
The LTTE has launched attacks on civilian targets several times. Notable attacks include the Aranthalawa massacre, Anuradhapura massacre, Kattankudy mosque massacre, the Kebithigollewa massacre, and the Dehiwala train bombing. Civilians have also been killed in attacks on economic targets, such as the Central Bank bombing. The LTTE leader Prabhakaran denied allegations of killing civilians, claiming to condemn such acts of violence; and claimed that LTTE had instead attacked armed Home Guards who were "death-squads let loose on Tamil civilians" and Sinhalese settlers who were "brought to the Tamil areas to forcibly occupy the land." The state-sponsored settlements of Sinhalese in the northern and eastern parts of the island which the LTTE considered to be the traditional homeland of Tamils became "the sites of some of the worst violence." According to the International Crisis Group, the Sri Lankan government implemented the military-led settlements of Sinhalese community in Tamil areas in order to create "a buffer to the expansion of LTTE control" and to "undermine Tamil nationalist claims on a contiguous north-eastern Tamil homeland." The continuous inflow of Sinhalese settlers in Tamil areas since the 1950s had become a source of inter-ethnic violence and had been one of the major grievances expressed by the LTTE. As armed Sinhalese villages were established in Tamil areas, many Tamil families were forcibly displaced by the army from their traditional villages and the LTTE retaliated by attacking the settlers. However, the LTTE has attacked long-existing Sinhalese residents within their claimed territories. Furthermore, Amnesty International has noted that in several massacres of Sinhalese, the victims had not been home guards or armed settlers.
The LTTE has been accused of recruiting and using child soldiers to fight against Sri Lankan government forces. The LTTE was accused of having up to 5,794 child soldiers in its ranks since 2001. Amid international pressure, the LTTE announced in July 2003 that it would stop conscripting child soldiers, but UNICEF and Human Rights Watch have accused it of reneging on its promises, and of conscripting Tamil children orphaned by the tsunami. On 18 June 2007, the LTTE released 135 children under 18 years of age. UNICEF, along with the United States, states that there has been a significant drop in LTTE recruitment of children, but claimed in 2007 that 506 child recruits remain under the LTTE. A report released by the LTTE's Child Protection Authority (CPA) in 2008 stated that less than 40 soldiers under age 18 remained in its forces. In 2009 a Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations said the Tamil Tigers "continue to recruit children to fight on the frontlines", and "use force to keep many civilians, including children, in harm's way". During the violent parts of the war, though some children were forcefully recruited, many voluntarily joined the LTTE after witnessing or experiencing abuses by Sri Lankan security forces, seeking to "protect their families or to avenge real or perceived abuses." However, during the ceasefire, the number of cases of forced recruitment far exceeded those of voluntary recruitment.
The LTTE argues that instances of child recruitment occurred mostly in the east, under the purview of former LTTE regional commander Colonel Karuna. After leaving the LTTE and forming the TMVP, it is alleged that Karuna continued to forcibly kidnap and induct child soldiers.
The LTTE is responsible for forcibly removing, or ethnic cleansing, of Sinhalese and Muslim inhabitants from areas under its control.
In October 1987, the LTTE took advantage of communal violence in the Eastern Province. LTTE gunmen led Tamil rioters and ordered Sinhalese to leave, threatening their lives. By 4 October, 5,000 Sinhalese were made homeless. Following the suicide of the Palaly massacres, LTTE massacres of Sinhalese civilians throughout the Eastern Province occurred. By the end of the week, about 200 Sinhalese were dead and 20,000 had fled the Eastern Province.
The eviction of Muslim residents happened in the north in 1990, and the east in 1992. The expulsion of Muslims had more to do with disagreements over ethnic identity and politics than with religion as the Sri Lankan Muslims did not support the LTTE or the creation of an independent Tamil state and they do not identify with the ethnic Tamils despite being a Tamil-speaking people. The LTTE also saw Muslims as a threat to 'national security' as they alleged their Muslim cadres had defected from their movement to join the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary forces who were allegedly responsible for attacks on Tamil civilians.
Initially young Muslims joined the Tamil militant groups in the early years of Tamil militancy. Muslim ironmongers in Mannar fashioned weapons for the LTTE. LTTE later undertook its anti-Muslim campaigns as it began to view Muslims as outsiders, rather than a part of the Tamil nation. Local Tamil leaders were disturbed by the LTTE's call for the eviction of Muslims in 1990. In 2005, the International Federation of Tamils claimed that the Sri Lankan military purposefully stoked tensions between Tamils and Muslims, in an attempt to undermine Tamil security. As Tamils turned to the LTTE for support, the Muslims were left with the Sri Lankan state as their sole defender, and so to the LTTE, the Muslims had legitimised the role of the state, and were thus viewed as Sri Lankans.
LTTE had executed prisoners of war on a number of occasions, in spite of the declaration in 1988, that it would abide by the Geneva Conventions. One such incident was the mass murder of 600 unarmed Sri Lankan Police officers in 1990, in Eastern Province, after they surrendered to the LTTE on the request of President Ranasinghe Premadasa. In 1993, LTTE killed 200 Sri Lanka Army soldiers, captured in the naval base at Pooneryn, during the Battle of Pooneryn. In 1996, LTTE executed 207 military officers and soldiers who had surrendered to the LTTE during Battle of Mullaitivu (1996).
There are allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the conflict in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; forced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and recruitment of child soldiers by both the Tamil Tigers, and the TMVP, a Sri Lankan Army paramilitary group.
A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers. The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18606 |
Laplace transform
In mathematics, the Laplace transform, named after its inventor Pierre-Simon Laplace (), is an integral transform that converts a function of a real variable formula_1 (often time) to a function of a complex variable formula_2 (complex frequency). The transform has many applications in science and engineering because it is a tool for solving differential equations. In particular, it transforms differential equations into algebraic equations and convolution into multiplication.
The Laplace transform is named after mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, who used a similar transform in his work on probability theory. Laplace wrote extensively about the use of generating functions in "Essai philosophique sur les probabilités" (1814) and the integral form of the Laplace transform evolved naturally as a result. Laplace's use of generating functions was similar to what is now known as the z-transform and he gave little attention to the continuous variable case which was discussed by Niels Henrik Abel. The theory was further developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries by Mathias Lerch, Oliver Heaviside, and Thomas Bromwich. The current widespread use of the transform (mainly in engineering) came about during and soon after World War II replacing the earlier Heaviside operational calculus. The advantages of the Laplace transform had been emphasized by Gustav Doetsch to whom the name Laplace Transform is apparently due.
From 1744, Leonhard Euler investigated integrals of the form
as solutions of differential equations but did not pursue the matter very far. Joseph Louis Lagrange was an admirer of Euler and, in his work on integrating probability density functions, investigated expressions of the form
which some modern historians have interpreted within modern Laplace transform theory.
These types of integrals seem first to have attracted Laplace's attention in 1782 where he was following in the spirit of Euler in using the integrals themselves as solutions of equations. However, in 1785, Laplace took the critical step forward when, rather than just looking for a solution in the form of an integral, he started to apply the transforms in the sense that was later to become popular. He used an integral of the form
akin to a Mellin transform, to transform the whole of a difference equation, in order to look for solutions of the transformed equation. He then went on to apply the Laplace transform in the same way and started to derive some of its properties, beginning to appreciate its potential power.
Laplace also recognised that Joseph Fourier's method of Fourier series for solving the diffusion equation could only apply to a limited region of space because those solutions were periodic. In 1809, Laplace applied his transform to find solutions that diffused indefinitely in space.
The Laplace transform of a function , defined for all real numbers , is the function , which is a unilateral transform defined by
where "s" is a complex number frequency parameter
An alternate notation for the Laplace transform is formula_7 instead of .
The meaning of the integral depends on types of functions of interest. A necessary condition for existence of the integral is that must be locally integrable on . For locally integrable functions that decay at infinity or are of exponential type, the integral can be understood to be a (proper) Lebesgue integral. However, for many applications it is necessary to regard it as a conditionally convergent improper integral at . Still more generally, the integral can be understood in a weak sense, and this is dealt with below.
One can define the Laplace transform of a finite Borel measure by the Lebesgue integral
An important special case is where is a probability measure, for example, the Dirac delta function. In operational calculus, the Laplace transform of a measure is often treated as though the measure came from a probability density function . In that case, to avoid potential confusion, one often writes
where the lower limit of is shorthand notation for
This limit emphasizes that any point mass located at is entirely captured by the Laplace transform. Although with the Lebesgue integral, it is not necessary to take such a limit, it does appear more naturally in connection with the Laplace–Stieltjes transform.
When one says "the Laplace transform" without qualification, the unilateral or one-sided transform is normally intended. The Laplace transform can be alternatively defined as the "bilateral Laplace transform" or two-sided Laplace transform by extending the limits of integration to be the entire real axis. If that is done the common unilateral transform simply becomes a special case of the bilateral transform where the definition of the function being transformed is multiplied by the Heaviside step function.
The bilateral Laplace transform is defined as follows:
, which is a bilateral transform defined by
An alternate notation for the bilateral Laplace transform is formula_11 instead of formula_12.
Two integrable functions have the same Laplace transform only if they differ on a set of Lebesgue measure zero. This means that, on the range of the transform, there is an inverse transform. In fact, besides integrable functions, the Laplace transform is a one-to-one mapping from one function space into another in many other function spaces as well, although there is usually no easy characterization of the range. Typical function spaces in which this is true include the spaces of bounded continuous functions, the space , or more generally tempered distributions on . The Laplace transform is also defined and injective for suitable spaces of tempered distributions.
In these cases, the image of the Laplace transform lives in a space of analytic functions in the region of convergence. The inverse Laplace transform is given by the following complex integral, which is known by various names (the Bromwich integral, the Fourier–Mellin integral, and Mellin's inverse formula):
where is a real number so that the contour path of integration is in the region of convergence of . In most applications the contour can be closed, allowing the use of the residue theorem. An alternative formula for the inverse Laplace transform is given by Post's inversion formula. The limit here is interpreted in the weak-* topology.
In practice, it is typically more convenient to decompose a Laplace transform into known transforms of functions obtained from a table, and construct the inverse by inspection.
In pure and applied probability, the Laplace transform is defined as an expected value. If is a random variable with probability density function , then the Laplace transform of is given by the expectation
By convention, this is referred to as the Laplace transform of the random variable itself. Replacing by gives the moment generating function of . The Laplace transform has applications throughout probability theory, including first passage times of stochastic processes such as Markov chains, and renewal theory.
Of particular use is the ability to recover the cumulative distribution function of a continuous random variable by means of the Laplace transform as follows
If is a locally integrable function (or more generally a Borel measure locally of bounded variation), then the Laplace transform of converges provided that the limit
exists.
The Laplace transform converges absolutely if the integral
exists (as a proper Lebesgue integral). The Laplace transform is usually understood as conditionally convergent, meaning that it converges in the former instead of the latter sense.
The set of values for which converges absolutely is either of the form or else , where is an extended real constant, . (This follows from the dominated convergence theorem.) The constant is known as the abscissa of absolute convergence, and depends on the growth behavior of . Analogously, the two-sided transform converges absolutely in a strip of the form , and possibly including the lines or . The subset of values of for which the Laplace transform converges absolutely is called the region of absolute convergence or the domain of absolute convergence. In the two-sided case, it is sometimes called the strip of absolute convergence. The Laplace transform is analytic in the region of absolute convergence: this is a consequence of Fubini's theorem and Morera's theorem.
Similarly, the set of values for which converges (conditionally or absolutely) is known as the region of conditional convergence, or simply the region of convergence (ROC). If the Laplace transform converges (conditionally) at , then it automatically converges for all with . Therefore, the region of convergence is a half-plane of the form , possibly including some points of the boundary line .
In the region of convergence , the Laplace transform of can be expressed by integrating by parts as the integral
That is, in the region of convergence can effectively be expressed as the absolutely convergent Laplace transform of some other function. In particular, it is analytic.
There are several Paley–Wiener theorems concerning the relationship between the decay properties of and the properties of the Laplace transform within the region of convergence.
In engineering applications, a function corresponding to a linear time-invariant (LTI) system is "stable" if every bounded input produces a bounded output. This is equivalent to the absolute convergence of the Laplace transform of the impulse response function in the region . As a result, LTI systems are stable provided the poles of the Laplace transform of the impulse response function have negative real part.
This ROC is used in knowing about the causality and stability of a system.
The Laplace transform has a number of properties that make it useful for analyzing linear dynamical systems. The most significant advantage is that differentiation becomes multiplication, and integration becomes division, by (similarly to logarithms changing multiplication of numbers to addition of their logarithms).
Because of this property, the Laplace variable is also known as "operator variable" in the domain: either "derivative operator" or (for "integration operator". The transform turns integral equations and differential equations to polynomial equations, which are much easier to solve. Once solved, use of the inverse Laplace transform reverts to the original domain.
Given the functions and , and their respective Laplace transforms and ,
the following table is a list of properties of unilateral Laplace transform:
The Laplace transform can be viewed as a continuous analogue of a power series. If is a discrete function of a positive integer , then the power series associated to is the series
where is a real variable (see Z transform). Replacing summation over with integration over , a continuous version of the power series becomes
where the discrete function is replaced by the continuous one .
Changing the base of the power from to gives
For this to converge for, say, all bounded functions , it is necessary to require that . Making the substitution gives just the Laplace transform:
In other words, the Laplace transform is a continuous analog of a power series in which the discrete parameter is replaced by the continuous parameter , and is replaced by .
The quantities
are the "moments" of the function . If the first moments of converge absolutely, then by repeated differentiation under the integral,
This is of special significance in probability theory, where the moments of a random variable are given by the expectation values formula_29. Then, the relation holds
It is often convenient to use the differentiation property of the Laplace transform to find the transform of a function's derivative. This can be derived from the basic expression for a Laplace transform as follows:
yielding
and in the bilateral case,
The general result
where formula_35 denotes the th derivative of , can then be established with an inductive argument.
A useful property of the Laplace transform is the following:
under suitable assumptions on the behaviour of formula_37 in a right neighbourhood of formula_38 and on the decay rate of formula_37 in a left neighbourhood of formula_40. The above formula is a variation of integration by parts, with the operators
formula_41 and formula_42 being replaced by formula_43 and formula_44. Let us prove the equivalent formulation:
By plugging in formula_46 the left-hand side turns into:
but assuming Fubini's theorem holds, by reversing the order of integration we get the wanted right-hand side.
The (unilateral) Laplace–Stieltjes transform of a function is defined by the Lebesgue–Stieltjes integral
The function is assumed to be of bounded variation. If is the antiderivative of :
then the Laplace–Stieltjes transform of and the Laplace transform of coincide. In general, the Laplace–Stieltjes transform is the Laplace transform of the Stieltjes measure associated to . So in practice, the only distinction between the two transforms is that the Laplace transform is thought of as operating on the density function of the measure, whereas the Laplace–Stieltjes transform is thought of as operating on its cumulative distribution function.
The Laplace transform is similar to the Fourier transform. While the Fourier transform of a function is a complex function of a "real" variable (frequency), the Laplace transform of a function is a complex function of a "complex" variable. The Laplace transform is usually restricted to transformation of functions of with . A consequence of this restriction is that the Laplace transform of a function is a holomorphic function of the variable . Unlike the Fourier transform, the Laplace transform of a distribution is generally a well-behaved function. Techniques of complex variables can also be used to directly study Laplace transforms. As a holomorphic function, the Laplace transform has a power series representation. This power series expresses a function as a linear superposition of moments of the function. This perspective has applications in probability theory. The continuous Fourier transform is equivalent to evaluating the bilateral Laplace transform with imaginary argument or when the condition explained below is fulfilled,
This definition of the Fourier transform requires a prefactor of on the reverse Fourier transform. This relationship between the Laplace and Fourier transforms is often used to determine the frequency spectrum of a signal or dynamical system.
The above relation is valid as stated if and only if the region of convergence (ROC) of contains the imaginary axis, .
For example, the function has a Laplace transform whose ROC is . As is a pole of , substituting in does not yield the Fourier transform of , which is proportional to the Dirac delta-function .
However, a relation of the form
holds under much weaker conditions. For instance, this holds for the above example provided that the limit is understood as a weak limit of measures (see vague topology). General conditions relating the limit of the Laplace transform of a function on the boundary to the Fourier transform take the form of Paley–Wiener theorems.
The Mellin transform and its inverse are related to the two-sided Laplace transform by a simple change of variables.
If in the Mellin transform
we set we get a two-sided Laplace transform.
The unilateral or one-sided Z-transform is simply the Laplace transform of an ideally sampled signal with the substitution of
where is the sampling period (in units of time e.g., seconds) and is the sampling rate (in samples per second or hertz).
Let
be a sampling impulse train (also called a Dirac comb) and
be the sampled representation of the continuous-time
The Laplace transform of the sampled signal is
This is the precise definition of the unilateral Z-transform of the discrete function
with the substitution of .
Comparing the last two equations, we find the relationship between the unilateral Z-transform and the Laplace transform of the sampled signal,
The similarity between the and Laplace transforms is expanded upon in the theory of time scale calculus.
The integral form of the Borel transform
is a special case of the Laplace transform for an entire function of exponential type, meaning that
for some constants and . The generalized Borel transform allows a different weighting function to be used, rather than the exponential function, to transform functions not of exponential type. Nachbin's theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the Borel transform to be well defined.
Since an ordinary Laplace transform can be written as a special case of a two-sided transform, and since the two-sided transform can be written as the sum of two one-sided transforms, the theory of the Laplace-, Fourier-, Mellin-, and Z-transforms are at bottom the same subject. However, a different point of view and different characteristic problems are associated with each of these four major integral transforms.
The following table provides Laplace transforms for many common functions of a single variable. For definitions and explanations, see the "Explanatory Notes" at the end of the table.
Because the Laplace transform is a linear operator,
Using this linearity, and various trigonometric, hyperbolic, and complex number (etc.) properties and/or identities, some Laplace transforms can be obtained from others more quickly than by using the definition directly.
The unilateral Laplace transform takes as input a function whose time domain is the non-negative reals, which is why all of the time domain functions in the table below are multiples of the Heaviside step function, .
The entries of the table that involve a time delay are required to be causal (meaning that ). A causal system is a system where the impulse response is zero for all time prior to . In general, the region of convergence for causal systems is not the same as that of anticausal systems.
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The Laplace transform is often used in circuit analysis, and simple conversions to the -domain of circuit elements can be made. Circuit elements can be transformed into impedances, very similar to phasor impedances.
Here is a summary of equivalents:
Note that the resistor is exactly the same in the time domain and the -domain. The sources are put in if there are initial conditions on the circuit elements. For example, if a capacitor has an initial voltage across it, or if the inductor has an initial current through it, the sources inserted in the -domain account for that.
The equivalents for current and voltage sources are simply derived from the transformations in the table above.
The Laplace transform is used frequently in engineering and physics; the output of a linear time-invariant system can be calculated by convoluting its unit impulse response with the input signal. Performing this calculation in Laplace space turns the convolution into a multiplication; the latter being easier to solve because of its algebraic form. For more information, see control theory. The Laplace transform is invertible on a large class of functions. Given a simple mathematical or functional description of an input or output to a system, the Laplace transform provides an alternative functional description that often simplifies the process of analyzing the behavior of the system, or in synthesizing a new system based on a set of specifications.
The Laplace transform can also be used to solve differential equations and is used extensively in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. The Laplace transform reduces a linear differential equation to an algebraic equation, which can then be solved by the formal rules of algebra. The original differential equation can then be solved by applying the inverse Laplace transform. English electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside first proposed a similar scheme, although without using the Laplace transform; and the resulting operational calculus is credited as the Heaviside calculus.
Let formula_85. Then (see the table above)
In the limit formula_87, one gets
provided that the interchange of limits can be justified. Even when the interchange cannot be justified the calculation can be suggestive. For example, with "a" ≠ 0 ≠ "b", proceeding formally one has
The validity of this identity can be proved by other means. It is an example of a Frullani integral.
Another example is Dirichlet integral.
In the theory of electrical circuits, the current flow in a capacitor is proportional to the capacitance and rate of change in the electrical potential (in SI units). Symbolically, this is expressed by the differential equation
where is the capacitance (in farads) of the capacitor, is the electric current (in amperes) through the capacitor as a function of time, and is the voltage (in volts) across the terminals of the capacitor, also as a function of time.
Taking the Laplace transform of this equation, we obtain
where
and
Solving for we have
The definition of the complex impedance (in ohms) is the ratio of the complex voltage divided by the complex current while holding the initial state at zero:
Using this definition and the previous equation, we find:
which is the correct expression for the complex impedance of a capacitor.
In addition, the Laplace transform has large applications in control theory.
Consider a linear time-invariant system with transfer function
The impulse response is simply the inverse Laplace transform of this transfer function:
To evaluate this inverse transform, we begin by expanding using the method of partial fraction expansion,
The unknown constants and are the residues located at the corresponding poles of the transfer function. Each residue represents the relative contribution of that singularity to the transfer function's overall shape.
By the residue theorem, the inverse Laplace transform depends only upon the poles and their residues. To find the residue , we multiply both sides of the equation by to get
Then by letting , the contribution from vanishes and all that is left is
Similarly, the residue is given by
Note that
and so the substitution of and into the expanded expression for gives
Finally, using the linearity property and the known transform for exponential decay (see "Item" #"3" in the "Table of Laplace Transforms", above), we can take the inverse Laplace transform of to obtain
which is the impulse response of the system.
The same result can be achieved using the convolution property as if the system is a series of filters with transfer functions of and . That is, the inverse of
is
Starting with the Laplace transform,
we find the inverse by first rearranging terms in the fraction:
We are now able to take the inverse Laplace transform of our terms:
This is just the sine of the sum of the arguments, yielding:
We can apply similar logic to find that
The wide and general applicability of the Laplace transform and its inverse is illustrated by an application in astronomy which provides some information on the "spatial distribution" of matter of an astronomical source of radio-frequency thermal radiation too distant to resolve as more than a point, given its flux density spectrum, rather than relating the "time" domain with the spectrum (frequency domain).
Assuming certain properties of the object, e.g. spherical shape and constant temperature, calculations based on carrying out an inverse Laplace transformation on the spectrum of the object can produce the only possible model of the distribution of matter in it (density as a function of distance from the center) consistent with the spectrum. When independent information on the structure of an object is available, the inverse Laplace transform method has been found to be in good agreement.
In statistical mechanics, the Laplace transform of the density of states formula_113 defines the partition function. That is, the partition function formula_114 is given by
and the inverse is given by | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18610 |
Liberal arts college
A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. Students in a liberal arts college generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional humanities subjects taught as liberal arts. Although it draws on European antecedents, the liberal arts college is strongly associated with American higher education, and most liberal arts colleges around the world draw explicitly on the American model.
According to "U.S. News & World Report", the top ten ranked Liberal Arts Colleges in America for 2019, by alphabetical order are: Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Claremont McKenna College, Davidson College, Middlebury College, Pomona College, Swarthmore College, Wellesley College, and Williams College.
There is no formal definition of liberal arts college, but one American authority defines them as schools that "emphasize undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in the liberal arts fields of study." Other researchers have adopted similar definitions.
Although many liberal arts colleges are exclusively undergraduate, some also offer graduate programs that lead to a master's degree or doctoral degree in subjects such as business administration, nursing, medicine, and law. Similarly, although the term "liberal arts college" most commonly refers to an independent institution, it may also sometimes refer to a university college within or affiliated with a larger university. Most liberal arts colleges outside the United States follow this model.
Liberal arts colleges are distinguished from other types of higher education chiefly by their generalist curricula and small size. These attributes have various secondary effects in terms of administration as well as student experience. For example, class size is usually much lower at liberal arts colleges than at universities, and faculty at liberal arts colleges typically focus on teaching more than research.
From a student perspective, a liberal arts college typically differs from other forms of higher education in the following areas: higher overall student satisfaction, a general feeling that professors take a personal interest in the student's education, and perception of encouragement to participate in discussion. Many students select liberal arts colleges with precisely this sense of personal connection in mind.
From an administrative standpoint, the small size of liberal arts colleges contributes to their cohesion and ability to survive through difficult times. Job satisfaction is also typically higher in liberal arts colleges, for both faculty and staff. The smaller size also makes it feasible for liberal arts colleges to adopt relatively experimental or divergent approaches, such as the Great Books curriculum at St. John's or Shimer, or the radically interdisciplinary curriculum of Marlboro.
In addition, most liberal arts colleges are primarily residential, which means students live and learn away from home, often for the first time.
The distinctiveness of these attributes is somewhat eroded by the tendency of universities to adopt aspects of the liberal arts college, and vice versa. For example, several American universities, including the University of California system, have experimented with a cluster colleges model in which small liberal-arts-college-like units within a larger university form a "honeycomb of residential colleges". In addition, some universities have maintained a sub-unit that preserves many aspects of the liberal arts college, such as Columbia College within Columbia University.
Liberal arts colleges themselves sometimes cluster to offer greater curricular breadth or share other resources (for instance Colgate University and Hamilton College in New York allow cross enrollment).
In academia, liberal arts generally refer to subjects or skills that aim to provide general knowledge and comprise the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences (rather than professional or technical skills). Most liberal arts colleges, however, also offer courses in subjects that are not traditionally considered part of the liberal arts, such as computer science.
Liberal arts colleges are found in all parts of the world. Notwithstanding the European origins of the concept of liberal arts education, today the term is largely associated with the United States, and most self-identified liberal arts colleges worldwide are built on the American model. The Global Liberal Arts Alliance, which incorporates institutions on five continents, refers to itself as "an international, multilateral partnership of American style liberal arts institutions."
In 2009, liberal arts colleges from around the world formed the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, an international consortium and "matching service" to help liberal arts colleges in different countries deal with their shared problems.
The liberal arts college model took root in the United States in the 19th century, as institutions spread that followed the model of early schools like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, although none of these early American schools are regarded as liberal arts colleges today. These colleges served as a means of spreading a basically European cultural model across the new country. The model proliferated in the 19th century; some 212 small liberal arts colleges were established between 1850 and 1899. As of 1987, there were about 540 liberal arts colleges in the United States.
The oldest liberal arts college in America is considered to be Washington College, the first college chartered after American independence. Other prominent examples in the United States include the so-called Little Ivy colleges in New England, the surviving predominantly female Seven Sisters colleges along the northeastern seaboard, the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, and the Ohio Five, but similar institutions are found all over the country. Most are private institutions, but a handful of public liberal arts schools exist (such as the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia and New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho).
Liberal arts colleges are also found in Canada, including Acadia University, Bishop's University, Mount Allison University, Nipissing University, St. Francis Xavier University, and St. Thomas University.
The leading organization is the National Institute of Educators of Liberal Arts and Artistic Education "Instituto Nacional Superior del Profesorado" located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 1983 to 2013 the institute was part of the IUNA National University Institute for the Arts, and since 2014, the Ruanova Institute of Performing Arts and Higher Education became part of the UNA Universidad Nacional de las Artes, (UNA) National University of the Arts The Ministry of Culture also released a DVD on the life and artistic work of various creators including the dancer María Ruanova.
With the exception of pioneering institutions such as Franklin University Switzerland, established as a Europe-based, US-style liberal arts college in 1969, Saint Louis University Madrid Campus, established in 1967, and Richmond, The American International University in London, established in 1972 only recently have efforts been made to import the American liberal arts college model to continental Europe.
In the Netherlands, universities have opened constituent liberal arts colleges under the terminology "" since the late 1990s. This trend was spearheaded by Dutch sociologist Hans Adriaansens, who was "frustrated with the large-scale climate of university education in the Netherlands". Dutch university colleges of this kind include Leiden University College The Hague, University College Utrecht, University College Maastricht, Amsterdam University College, University College Roosevelt, Erasmus University College, University College Groningen and University College Tilburg.
Other liberal arts colleges in continental Europe include Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts in Slovakia, Jacobs University Bremen, Bard College Berlin, the Leuphana University of Lüneburg with their Bachelor program Studium Individuale and the University College Freiburg in Germany. Bard College Berlin was founded in Berlin in 1999 as the European College of Liberal Arts, and in 2009 it introduced a 4-year Bachelor of Arts program in Value Studies taught in English and leading to an interdisciplinary degree in the humanities.
Although liberal arts colleges as such remain rare, liberal arts degree programs are beginning to establish themselves in Europe. For example, University College Dublin offers the degree, as does St. Marys University College Belfast, both institutions coincidentally on the island of Ireland. In 2010 the University of Winchester introduced its Modern Liberal Arts undergraduate program, the first of its kind in the UK. In 2012, University College London began its interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences BASc degree (which has kinship with the liberal arts model) with 80 students. King's College London launched the BA Liberal Arts, which has a slant towards arts, humanities and social sciences subjects. The New College of the Humanities also launched a new liberal education programme. The four-year bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Freiburg is the first of its kind in Germany. It started in October 2012 with 78 students. The first Liberal Arts degree program in Sweden was established at Gothenburg University in 2011, followed by a Liberal Arts Bachelor Programme at Uppsala University's Campus Gotland in the autumn of 2013. Liberal arts colleges in Italy include John Cabot University and The American University of Rome in Rome. The University College of North Staffordshire, founded in 1950 in the United Kingdom, was frequently referred to as the "Keele Experiment" because of its innovative curriculum and emphasis on a scholarly community resident together on campus. The college became Keele University in 1962 and continues to reflect many features of the liberal arts college model. It has been described as the closest example of a liberal arts college in the UK. This distinctiveness will be reinforced with the opening of the new Keele Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2016.
From September 2016 Chavagnes Studium, a Liberal Arts centre in France will be offering a 2-year intensive BA in the Liberal Arts with a distinctively Catholic perspective.
Lingnan University in Hong Kong was established as a liberal arts college in the early 20th century, although it subsequently became a full-fledged university. Ginling College in Nanjing similarly followed the model of an American liberal arts college from its founding in 1915 until forced to conform with the Nationalist educational system in the 1930s. In Zhuhai City, Hong Kong Baptist University and Beijing Normal University opened United International College, which adopted the liberal arts college education system.
International Christian University in Tokyo, which opened in 1953, defines itself as "Japan's first liberal arts college."
Yale-NUS College was started in 2011 as Singapore's first liberal arts college as a collaboration between Yale University in the United States and the National University of Singapore. It attracted controversy over concerns that Yale was compromising on its liberal values by opening a college in a country where there are strong curbs on freedom of speech and assembly, with Yale faculty members expressing their "concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore”. In response, many existing faculty and students have noted that there has been little repression of freedom of expression at the college and that it provides a great opportunity to promote the liberal arts in Asia.
Kalayaan College in the Philippines is among the best examples of a liberal arts college in the country. Located in the New Manila district of Quezon City, it was founded in 2000 by former educators from the University of the Philippines led by Dr. José Abueva, President of the University from 1987 to 1993. It offers the same kind of education provided by UP to qualified students who are unable to enter the country's premier state university because of its limited college quotas. The curriculum is patterned after the academic programs that are offered by the University of the Philippines and is composed of administrators and faculty members who are also members of the UP academic community.
Liberal arts colleges in South Asia include Ajeenkya D Y Patil University in Pune, India, Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, and FLAME University in Pune, Maharashtra, India, referred to as India's 'first college of Liberal Education'. The University is a member of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance has also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Also, Ahmedabad University, a private, non-profit university offers its students a liberal education which is focused on research and interdisciplinary learning"."
The liberal arts model has traditionally not been part of the educational landscape in the Middle East or North Africa. Baghdad College has offered a liberal arts curriculum since the early 20th century, but despite its name it has never offered more than a high school education. Effat University in Saudi Arabia, a women's institution, is a member of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance and The first liberal arts college in the Middle East is however generally considered to be Shalem College in Israel, established in 2013.
Three institutions in Africa are members of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance: Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, American University of Cairo in Egypt, and American University of Nigeria. The Egyptian and Nigerian schools are universities with a liberal arts component, but Al Akhawayn was founded on the model of an American liberal arts college.
Ashesi University is a liberal arts college located in Berekuso, Ghana, established in 2002. The school's president, Patrick Awuah, described the school's mission as "educating a new generation of leaders in Africa who think ethically and who are problem solvers and have the ability and the desire to confront problems on the continent."
Campion College is a Roman Catholic dedicated liberal arts college located in the western suburbs of Sydney. Founded in 2006, it is the first tertiary educational liberal arts college of its kind in Australia. Campion offers a Bachelor of Arts in the Liberal Arts as its sole undergraduate degree. The key disciplines studied are history, literature, philosophy and theology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18612 |
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.
Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to successfully use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: "relativization", "complementation" and "coordination".
There are two main guiding principles in first-language acquisition: speech perception always precedes speech production, and the gradually evolving system by which a child learns a language is built up one step at a time, beginning with the distinction between individual phonemes.
Linguists who are interested in child language acquisition have for many years questioned how language is acquired. Lidz et al. state "The question of how these structures are acquired, then, is more properly understood as the question of how a learner takes the surface forms in the input and converts them into abstract linguistic rules and representations."
Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whether that be spoken language or signed language as a result of prelingual deafness, though it can also refer to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), which refers to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages. This is distinguished from "second-language acquisition", which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. In addition to speech, reading and writing a language with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language literacy. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits.
Some early observation-based ideas about language acquisition were proposed by Plato, who felt that word-meaning mapping in some form was innate. Additionally, Sanskrit grammarians debated for over twelve centuries whether humans' ability to recognize the meaning of words was god-given (possibly innate) or passed down by previous generations and learned from already established conventions: a child learning the word for "cow" by listening to trusted speakers talking about cows.
Philosophers in ancient societies were interested in how humans acquired the ability to understand and produce language well before empirical methods for testing those theories were developed, but for the most part they seemed to regard language acquisition as a subset of man's ability to acquire knowledge and learn concepts.
Empiricists, like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, argued that knowledge (and, for Locke, language) emerge ultimately from abstracted sense impressions. These arguments lean towards the "nurture" side of the argument: that language is acquired through sensory experience, which led to Rudolf Carnap's Aufbau, an attempt to learn all knowledge from sense datum, using the notion of "remembered as similar" to bind them into clusters, which would eventually map into language.
Proponents of behaviorism argued that language may be learned through a form of operant conditioning. In B. F. Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" (1957), he suggested that the successful use of a sign, such as a word or lexical unit, given a certain stimulus, reinforces its "momentary" or contextual probability. Since operant conditioning is contingent on reinforcement by rewards, a child would learn that a specific combination of sounds stands for a specific thing through repeated successful associations made between the two. A "successful" use of a sign would be one in which the child is understood (for example, a child saying "up" when he or she wants to be picked up) and rewarded with the desired response from another person, thereby reinforcing the child's understanding of the meaning of that word and making it more likely that he or she will use that word in a similar situation in the future. Some empiricist theories of language acquisition include the statistical learning theory. Charles F. Hockett of language acquisition, relational frame theory, functionalist linguistics, social interactionist theory, and usage-based language acquisition.
Skinner's behaviorist idea was strongly attacked by Noam Chomsky in a review article in 1959, calling it "largely mythology" and a "serious delusion." Arguments against Skinner's idea of language acquisition through operant conditioning include the fact that children often ignore language corrections from adults. Instead, children typically follow a pattern of using an irregular form of a word correctly, making errors later on, and eventually returning to the proper use of the word. For example, a child may correctly learn the word "gave" (past tense of "give"), and later on use the word "gived". Eventually, the child will typically go back to using the correct word, "gave". Chomsky claimed the pattern is difficult to attribute to Skinner's idea of operant conditioning as the primary way that children acquire language. Chomsky argued that if language were solely acquired through behavioral conditioning, children would not likely learn the proper use of a word and suddenly use the word incorrectly. Chomsky believed that Skinner failed to account for the central role of syntactic knowledge in language competence. Chomsky also rejected the term "learning", which Skinner used to claim that children "learn" language through operant conditioning. Instead, Chomsky argued for a mathematical approach to language acquisition, based on a study of syntax.
The capacity to acquire and use language is a key aspect that distinguishes humans from other beings. Although it is difficult to pin down what aspects of language are uniquely human, there are a few design features that can be found in all known forms of human language, but that are missing from forms of animal communication. For example, many animals are able to communicate with each other by signaling to the things around them, but this kind of communication lacks the arbitrariness of human vernaculars (in that there is nothing about the sound of the word "dog" that would hint at its meaning). Other forms of animal communication may utilize arbitrary sounds, but are unable to combine those sounds in different ways to create completely novel messages that can then be automatically understood by another. Hockett called this design feature of human language "productivity". It is crucial to the understanding of human language acquisition that humans are not limited to a finite set of words, but, rather, must be able to understand and utilize a complex system that allows for an infinite number of possible messages. So, while many forms of animal communication exist, they differ from human language in that they have a limited range of vocabulary tokens, and the vocabulary items are not combined syntactically to create phrases.
A major debate in understanding language acquisition is how these capacities are picked up by infants from the linguistic input. Input in the linguistic context is defined as "All words, contexts, and other forms of language to which a learner is exposed, relative to acquired proficiency in first or second languages". Nativists such as Chomsky have focused on the hugely complex nature of human grammars, the finiteness and ambiguity of the input that children receive, and the relatively limited cognitive abilities of an infant. From these characteristics, they conclude that the process of language acquisition in infants must be tightly constrained and guided by the biologically given characteristics of the human brain. Otherwise, they argue, it is extremely difficult to explain how children, within the first five years of life, routinely master the complex, largely tacit grammatical rules of their native language. Additionally, the evidence of such rules in their native language is all indirect— adult speech to children cannot encompass all of what children know by the time they've acquired their native language.
Other scholars, however, have resisted the possibility that infants' routine success at acquiring the grammar of their native language requires anything more than the forms of learning seen with other cognitive skills, including such mundane motor skills as learning to ride a bike. In particular, there has been resistance to the possibility that human biology includes any form of specialization for language. This conflict is often referred to as the "nature and nurture" debate. Of course, most scholars acknowledge that certain aspects of language acquisition must result from the specific ways in which the human brain is "wired" (a "nature" component, which accounts for the failure of non-human species to acquire human languages) and that certain others are shaped by the particular language environment in which a person is raised (a "nurture" component, which accounts for the fact that humans raised in different societies acquire different languages). The as-yet unresolved question is the extent to which the specific cognitive capacities in the "nature" component are also used outside of language.
Emergentist theories, such as Brian MacWhinney's competition model, posit that language acquisition is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment. According to these theories, neither nature nor nurture alone is sufficient to trigger language learning; both of these influences must work together in order to allow children to acquire a language. The proponents of these theories argue that general cognitive processes subserve language acquisition and that the end result of these processes is language-specific phenomena, such as word learning and grammar acquisition. The findings of many empirical studies support the predictions of these theories, suggesting that language acquisition is a more complex process than many have proposed.
Although Chomsky's theory of a generative grammar has been enormously influential in the field of linguistics since the 1950s, many criticisms of the basic assumptions of generative theory have been put forth by cognitive-functional linguistics, who argue that language structure is created through language use. These linguists argue that the concept of a language acquisition device (LAD) is unsupported by evolutionary anthropology, which tends to show a gradual adaptation of the human brain and vocal cords to the use of language, rather than a sudden appearance of a complete set of binary parameters delineating the whole spectrum of possible grammars ever to have existed and ever to exist. On the other hand, cognitive-functional theorists use this anthropological data to show how human beings have evolved the capacity for grammar and syntax to meet our demand for linguistic symbols. (Binary parameters are common to digital computers, but may not be applicable to neurological systems such as the human brain.)
Further, the generative theory has several constructs (such as movement, empty categories, complex underlying structures, and strict binary branching) that cannot possibly be acquired from any amount of linguistic input. It is unclear that human language is actually "anything like" the generative conception of it. Since language, as imagined by nativists, is unlearnably complex, subscribers to this theory argue that it must, therefore, be innate. Nativists hypothesize that some features of syntactic categories exist even before a child is exposed to any experience - categories on which children map words of their language as they learn their native language. A different theory of language, however, may yield different conclusions. While all theories of language acquisition posit some degree of innateness, they vary in how much value they place on this innate capacity to acquire language. Empiricism places less value on the innate knowledge, arguing instead that the input, combined with both general and language-specific learning capacities, is sufficient for acquisition.
Since 1980, linguists studying children, such as Melissa Bowerman, and psychologists following Jean Piaget, like Elizabeth Bates and Jean Mandler, came to suspect that there may indeed be many learning processes involved in the acquisition process, and that ignoring the role of learning may have been a mistake.
In recent years, the debate surrounding the nativist position has centered on whether the inborn capabilities are language-specific or domain-general, such as those that enable the infant to visually make sense of the world in terms of objects and actions. The anti-nativist view has many strands, but a frequent theme is that language emerges from usage in social contexts, using learning mechanisms that are a part of an innate general cognitive learning apparatus. This position has been championed by David M. W. Powers, Elizabeth Bates, Catherine Snow, Anat Ninio, Brian MacWhinney, Michael Tomasello, Michael Ramscar, William O'Grady, and others. Philosophers, such as Fiona Cowie and Barbara Scholz with Geoffrey Pullum have also argued against certain nativist claims in support of empiricism.
The new field of cognitive linguistics has emerged as a specific counter to Chomsky's Generative Grammar and to Nativism.
Some language acquisition researchers, such as Elissa Newport, Richard Aslin, and Jenny Saffran, emphasize the possible roles of general learning mechanisms, especially statistical learning, in language acquisition. The development of connectionist models that when implemented are able to successfully learn words and syntactical conventions supports the predictions of statistical learning theories of language acquisition, as do empirical studies of children's detection of word boundaries. In a series of connectionist model simulations , Franklin Chang has demonstrated that such a domain general statistical learning mechanism could explain a wide range of language structure acquisition phenomena.
Statistical learning theory suggests that, when learning language, a learner would use the natural statistical properties of language to deduce its structure, including sound patterns, words, and the beginnings of grammar. That is, language learners are sensitive to how often syllable combinations or words occur in relation to other syllables. Infants between 21 and 23 months old are also able to use statistical learning to develop "lexical categories", such as an animal category, which infants might later map to newly learned words in the same category. These findings suggest that early experience listening to language is critical to vocabulary acquisition.
The statistical abilities are effective, but also limited by what qualifies as input, what is done with that input, and by the structure of the resulting output. One should also note that statistical learning (and more broadly, distributional learning) can be accepted as a component of language acquisition by researchers on either side of the "nature and nurture" debate. From the perspective of that debate, an important question is whether statistical learning can, by itself, serve as an alternative to nativist explanations for the grammatical constraints of human language.
The central idea of these theories is that language development occurs through the incremental acquisition of meaningful chunks of elementary constituents, which can be words, phonemes, or syllables. Recently, this approach has been highly successful in simulating several phenomena in the acquisition of syntactic categories and the acquisition of phonological knowledge.
Chunking theories of language acquisition constitute a group of theories related to statistical learning theories, in that they assume that the input from the environment plays an essential role; however, they postulate different learning mechanisms.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have developed a computer model analyzing early toddler conversations to predict the structure of later conversations. They showed that toddlers develop their own individual rules for speaking, with 'slots' into which they put certain kinds of words. A significant outcome of this research is that rules inferred from toddler speech were better predictors of subsequent speech than traditional grammars.
This approach has several features that make it unique: the models are implemented as computer programs, which enables clear-cut and quantitative predictions to be made; they learn from naturalistic input-- actual child-directed utterances; they produce actual utterances, which can be compared with children's utterances; and they have simulated phenomena in several languages, including English, Spanish, and German.
The relational frame theory (RFT) (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, 2001), provides a wholly selectionist/learning account of the origin and development of language competence and complexity. Based upon the principles of Skinnerian behaviorism, RFT posits that children acquire language purely through interacting with the environment. RFT theorists introduced the concept of functional contextualism in language learning, which emphasizes the importance of predicting and influencing psychological events, such as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, by focusing on manipulable variables in their own context. RFT distinguishes itself from Skinner's work by identifying and defining a particular type of operant conditioning known as derived relational responding, a learning process that, to date, appears to occur only in humans possessing a capacity for language. Empirical studies supporting the predictions of RFT suggest that children learn language through a system of inherent reinforcements, challenging the view that language acquisition is based upon innate, language-specific cognitive capacities.
Social interactionist theory is an explanation of language development emphasizing the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults. It is based largely on the socio-cultural theories of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, and was made prominent in the Western world by Jerome Bruner.
Unlike other approaches, it emphasizes the role of feedback and reinforcement in language acquisition. Specifically, it asserts that much of a child's linguistic growth stems from modeling of and interaction with parents and other adults, who very frequently provide instructive correction. It is thus somewhat similar to behaviorist accounts of language learning. It differs substantially, though, in that it posits the existence of a social-cognitive model and other mental structures within children (a sharp contrast to the "black box" approach of classical behaviorism).
Another key idea within the theory of social interactionism is that of the zone of proximal development. This is a theoretical construct denoting the set of tasks a child is capable of performing with guidance but not alone. As applied to language, it describes the set of linguistic tasks (for example, proper syntax, suitable vocabulary usage) that a child cannot carry out on its own at a given time, but can learn to carry out if assisted by an able adult.
As syntax began to be studied more closely in the early 20th century in relation to language learning, it became apparent to linguists, psychologists, and philosophers that knowing a language was not merely a matter of associating words with concepts, but that a critical aspect of language involves knowledge of how to put words together; sentences are usually needed in order to communicate successfully, not just isolated words. A child will use short expressions such as "Bye-bye Mummy" or "All-gone milk", which actually are combinations of individual nouns and an operator, before s/he begins to produce gradually more complex sentences. In the 1990s, within the principles and parameters framework, this hypothesis was extended into a maturation-based structure building model of child language regarding the acquisition of functional categories. In this model, children are seen as gradually building up more and more complex structures, with lexical categories (like noun and verb) being acquired before functional-syntactic categories (like determiner and complementiser). It is also often found that in acquiring a language, the most frequently used verbs are irregular verbs. In learning English, for example, young children first begin to learn the past tense of verbs individually. However, when they acquire a "rule", such as adding "-ed" to form the past tense, they begin to exhibit occasional overgeneralization errors (e.g. "runned", "hitted") alongside correct past tense forms. One influential proposal regarding the origin of this type of error suggests that the adult state of grammar stores each irregular verb form in memory and also includes a "block" on the use of the regular rule for forming that type of verb. In the developing child's mind, retrieval of that "block" may fail, causing the child to erroneously apply the regular rule instead of retrieving the irregular.
In Bare-Phrase structure (Minimalist Program), since theory-internal considerations define the specifier position of an internal-merge projection (phases vP and CP) as the only type of host which could serve as potential landing-sites for move-based elements displaced from lower down within the base-generated VP structure – e.g., A-movement such as passives (["The apple was eaten by [John (ate the apple)"]]), or raising ["Some work does seem to remain [(There) does seem to remain (some work)"]])—as a consequence, any strong version of a Structure building model of child language which calls for an exclusive "external-merge/argument structure stage" prior to an "internal-merge/scope-discourse related stage" would claim that young children's stage-1 utterances lack the ability to generate and host elements derived via movement operations. In terms of a Merge-based theory of language acquisition, complements and specifiers are simply notations for first-merge (= "complement-of" [head-complement]), and later second-merge (= "specifier-of" [specifier-head], with merge always forming to a head. First-merge establishes only a set {a, b} and is not an ordered pair—e.g., an {N, N}-compound of 'boat-house' would allow the ambiguous readings of either 'a kind of house' and/or 'a kind of boat'. It is only with second-merge that order is derived out of a set {a {a, b}} which yields the recursive properties of syntax—e.g., a 'house-boat' {house {house, boat}} now reads unambiguously only as a 'kind of boat'. It is this property of recursion that allows for projection and labeling of a phrase to take place; in this case, that the Noun 'boat' is the Head of the compound, and 'house' acting as a kind of specifier/modifier. External-merge (first-merge) establishes substantive 'base structure' inherent to the VP, yielding theta/argument structure, and may go beyond the lexical-category VP to involve the functional-category light verb vP. Internal-merge (second-merge) establishes more formal aspects related to edge-properties of scope and discourse-related material pegged to CP. In a Phase-based theory, this twin vP/CP distinction follows the "duality of semantics" discussed within the Minimalist Program, and is further developed into a dual distinction regarding a probe-goal relation. As a consequence, at the "external/first-merge-only" stage, young children would show an inability to interpret readings from a given ordered pair, since they would only have access to the mental parsing of a non-recursive set. (See Roeper for a full discussion of recursion in child language acquisition). In addition to word-order violations, other more ubiquitous results of a first-merge stage would show that children's initial utterances lack the recursive properties of inflectional morphology, yielding a strict Non-inflectional stage-1, consistent with an incremental Structure-building model of child language.
Generative grammar, associated especially with the work of Noam Chomsky, is currently one of the approaches to explaining children's acquisition of syntax. Its leading idea is that human biology imposes narrow constraints on the child's "hypothesis space" during language acquisition. In the principles and parameters framework, which has dominated generative syntax since Chomsky's (1980) "Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures", the acquisition of syntax resembles ordering from a menu: the human brain comes equipped with a limited set of choices from which the child selects the correct options by imitating the parents' speech while making use of the context.
An important argument which favors the generative approach, is the poverty of the stimulus argument. The child's input (a finite number of sentences encountered by the child, together with information about the context in which they were uttered) is, in principle, compatible with an infinite number of conceivable grammars. Moreover, rarely can children rely on corrective feedback from adults when they make a grammatical error; adults generally respond and provide feedback regardless of whether a child's utterance was grammatical or not, and children have no way of discerning if a feedback response was intended to be a correction. Additionally, when children do understand that they are being corrected, they don't always reproduce accurate restatements. Yet, barring situations of medical abnormality or extreme privation, all children in a given speech-community converge on very much the same grammar by the age of about five years. An especially dramatic example is provided by children who, for medical reasons, are unable to produce speech and, therefore, can never be corrected for a grammatical error but nonetheless, converge on the same grammar as their typically-developing peers, according to comprehension-based tests of grammar.
Considerations such as those have led Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Eric Lenneberg and others to argue that the types of grammar the child needs to consider must be narrowly constrained by human biology (the nativist position). These innate constraints are sometimes referred to as universal grammar, the human "language faculty", or the "language instinct".
Recent advances in functional neuroimaging technology have allowed for a better understanding of how language acquisition is manifested physically in the brain. Language acquisition almost always occurs in children during a period of rapid increase in brain volume. At this point in development, a child has many more neural connections than he or she will have as an adult, allowing for the child to be more able to learn new things than he or she would be as an adult.
Language acquisition has been studied from the perspective of developmental psychology and neuroscience, which looks at learning to use and understand language parallel to a child's brain development. It has been determined, through empirical research on developmentally normal children, as well as through some extreme cases of language deprivation, that there is a "sensitive period" of language acquisition in which human infants have the ability to learn any language. Several researchers have found that from birth until the age of six months, infants can discriminate the phonetic contrasts of all languages. Researchers believe that this gives infants the ability to acquire the language spoken around them. After this age, the child is able to perceive only the phonemes specific to the language being learned. The reduced phonemic sensitivity enables children to build phonemic categories and recognize stress patterns and sound combinations specific to the language they are acquiring. As Wilder Penfield noted, "Before the child begins to speak and to perceive, the uncommitted cortex is a blank slate on which nothing has been written. In the ensuing years much is written, and the writing is normally never erased. After the age of ten or twelve, the general functional connections have been established and fixed for the speech cortex." According to the sensitive or critical period models, the age at which a child acquires the ability to use language is a predictor of how well he or she is ultimately able to use language. However, there may be an age at which becoming a fluent and natural user of a language is no longer possible; Penfield and Roberts (1959) cap their sensitive period at nine years old. The human brain may be automatically wired to learn languages, but this ability does not last into adulthood in the same way that it exists during childhood. By around age 12, language acquisition has typically been solidified, and it becomes more difficult to learn a language in the same way a native speaker would. Just like children who speak, deaf children go through a critical period for learning language. Deaf children who acquire their first language later in life show lower performance in complex aspects of grammar. At that point, it is usually a second language that a person is trying to acquire and not a first.
Assuming that children are exposed to language during the critical period, acquiring language is almost never missed by cognitively normal children. Humans are so well-prepared to learn language that it becomes almost impossible not to. Researchers are unable to experimentally test the effects of the sensitive period of development on language acquisition, because it would be unethical to deprive children of language until this period is over. However, case studies on abused, language-deprived children show that they exhibit extreme limitations in language skills, even after instruction.
At a very young age, children can distinguish different sounds but cannot yet produce them. During infancy, children begin to babble. Deaf babies babble in the same patterns as hearing babies do, showing that babbling is not a result of babies simply imitating certain sounds, but is actually a natural part of the process of language development. Deaf babies do, however, often babble less than hearing babies, and they begin to babble later on in infancy-- at approximately 11 months as compared to approximately 6 months for hearing babies.
Prelinguistic language abilities that are crucial for language acquisition have been seen even earlier than infancy. There have been many different studies examining different modes of language acquisition prior to birth. The study of language acquisition in fetuses began in the late 1980s when several researchers independently discovered that very young infants could discriminate their native language from other languages. In "Mehler et al. (1988)", infants underwent discrimination tests, and it was shown that infants as young as 4 days old could discriminate utterances in their native language from those in an unfamiliar language, but could not discriminate between two languages when neither was native to them. These results suggest that there are mechanisms for fetal auditory learning, and other researchers have found further behavioral evidence to support this notion. Fetus auditory learning through environmental habituation has been seen in a variety of different modes, such as fetus learning of familiar melodies (Hepper, 1988), story fragments (DeCasper & Spence, 1986), recognition of mother's voice (Kisilevsky, 2003), and other studies showing evidence of fetal adaptation to native linguistic environments (Moon, Cooper & Fifer, 1993).
Prosody is the property of speech that conveys an emotional state of the utterance, as well as the intended form of speech, for example, question, statement or command. Some researchers in the field of developmental neuroscience argue that fetal auditory learning mechanisms result solely from discrimination of prosodic elements. Although this would hold merit in an evolutionary psychology perspective (i.e. recognition of mother's voice/familiar group language from emotionally valent stimuli), some theorists argue that there is more than prosodic recognition in elements of fetal learning. Newer evidence shows that fetuses not only react to the native language differently from non-native languages, but that fetuses react differently and can accurately discriminate between native and non-native vowel sounds (Moon, Lagercrantz, & Kuhl, 2013). Furthermore, a 2016 study showed that newborn infants encode the edges of multisyllabic sequences better than the internal components of the sequence (Ferry et al., 2016). Together, these results suggest that newborn infants have learned important properties of syntactic processing in utero, as demonstrated by infant knowledge of native language vowels and the sequencing of heard multisyllabic phrases. This ability to sequence specific vowels gives newborn infants some of the fundamental mechanisms needed in order to learn the complex organization of a language.
From a neuroscientific perspective, neural correlates have been found that demonstrate human fetal learning of speech-like auditory stimuli that most other studies have been analyzing (Partanen et al., 2013). In a study conducted by Partanen et al. (2013), researchers presented fetuses with certain word variants and observed that these fetuses exhibited higher brain activity in response to certain word variants as compared to controls. In this same study, "a significant correlation existed between the amount of prenatal exposure and brain activity, with greater activity being associated with a higher amount of prenatal speech exposure," pointing to the important learning mechanisms present before birth that are fine-tuned to features in speech (Partanen et al., 2013).
The capacity to acquire the ability to incorporate the pronunciation of new words depends upon many factors. First, the learner needs to be able to hear what they are attempting to pronounce. Also required is the capacity to engage in speech repetition. Children with reduced ability to repeat non-words (a marker of speech repetition abilities) show a slower rate of vocabulary expansion than children with normal ability. Several computational models of vocabulary acquisition have been proposed. Various studies have shown that the size of a child's vocabulary by the age of 24 months correlates with the child's future development and language skills. A lack of language richness by this age has detrimental and long-term effects on the child's cognitive development, which is why it is so important for parents to engage their infants in language. If a child knows fifty or fewer words by the age of 24 months, he or she is classified as a late-talker, and future language development, like vocabulary expansion and the organization of grammar, is likely to be slower and stunted.
Two more crucial elements of vocabulary acquisition are word segmentation and statistical learning (described above). Word segmentation, or the ability to break down words into syllables from fluent speech can be accomplished by eight-month-old infants. By the time infants are 17 months old, they are able to link meaning to segmented words.
Recent evidence also suggests that motor skills and experiences may influence vocabulary acquisition during infancy. Specifically, learning to sit independently between 3 and 5 months of age has been found to predict receptive vocabulary at both 10 and 14 months of age, and independent walking skills have been found to correlate with language skills at around 10 to 14 months of age. These findings show that language acquisition is an embodied process that is influenced by a child's overall motor abilities and development. Studies have also shown a correlation between socioeconomic status and vocabulary acquisition.
Children learn, on average, ten to fifteen new word meanings each day, but only one of these can be accounted for by direct instruction. The other nine to fourteen word meanings must have been acquired in some other way. It has been proposed that children acquire these meanings through processes modeled by latent semantic analysis; that is, when they encounter an unfamiliar word, children use contextual information to correctly guess its rough meaning. A child may expand the meaning and use of certain words that are already part of its mental lexicon in order to denominate anything that is somehow related but for which it does not know the specific word. For instance, a child may broaden the use of "mummy" and "dada" in order to indicate anything that belongs to its mother or father, or perhaps every person who resembles its own parents; another example might be to say "rain" while meaning "I don't want to go out".
There is also reason to believe that children use various heuristics to properly infer the meaning of words. Markman and others have proposed that children assume words to refer to objects with similar properties ("cow" and "pig" might both be "animals") rather than to objects that are thematically related ("cow" and "milk" are probably not both "animals"). Children also seem to adhere to the "whole object assumption" and think that a novel label refers to an entire entity rather than to one of its parts. This assumption along with other resources, such as grammar and morphological cues or lexical constraints, may help aid the child in acquiring word meaning, but conclusions based on such resources may sometimes conflict.
According to several linguists, neurocognitive research has confirmed many standards of language learning, such as: "learning engages the entire person (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains), the human brain seeks patterns in its searching for meaning, emotions affect all aspects of learning, retention and recall, past experience always affects new learning, the brain's working memory has a limited capacity, lecture usually results in the lowest degree of retention, rehearsal is essential for retention, practice [alone] does not make perfect, and each brain is unique" (Sousa, 2006, p. 274). In terms of genetics, the gene ROBO1 has been associated with phonological buffer integrity or length.
Although it is difficult to determine without invasive measures which exact parts of the brain become most active and important for language acquisition, fMRI and PET technology has allowed for some conclusions to be made about where language may be centered. Kuniyoshi Sakai has proposed, based on several neuroimaging studies, that there may be a "grammar center" in the brain, whereby language is primarily processed in the left lateral premotor cortex (located near the pre central sulcus and the inferior frontal sulcus). Additionally, these studies have suggested that first language and second language acquisition may be represented differently in the cortex.
In a study conducted by Newman et al., the relationship between cognitive neuroscience and language acquisition was compared through a standardized procedure involving native speakers of English and native Spanish speakers who all had a similar length of exposure to the English language (averaging about 26 years). It was concluded that the brain does in fact process languages differently, but rather than being related to proficiency levels, language processing relates more to the function of the brain itself.
During early infancy, language processing seems to occur over many areas in the brain. However, over time, it gradually becomes concentrated into two areas – Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Broca's area is in the left frontal cortex and is primarily involved in the production of the patterns in vocal and sign language. Wernicke's area is in the left temporal cortex and is primarily involved in language comprehension. The specialization of these language centers is so extensive that damage to them can result in aphasia.
Some algorithms for language acquisition are based on statistical machine translation. Language acquisition can be modeled as a machine learning process, which may be based on learning semantic parsers or grammar induction algorithms.
Prelingual deafness is defined as hearing loss that occurred at birth or before an individual has learned to speak. In the United States, 2 to 3 out of every 1000 children are born deaf or hard of hearing. Even though it might be presumed that deaf children acquire language in different ways since they are not receiving the same auditory input as hearing children, many research findings indicate that deaf children acquire language in the same way that hearing children do and when given the proper language input, understand and express language just as well as their hearing peers. Babies who learn sign language produce signs or gestures that are more regular and more frequent than hearing babies acquiring spoken language. Just as hearing babies babble, deaf babies acquiring sign language will babble with their hands, otherwise known as manual babbling. Therefore, as many studies have shown, language acquisition by deaf children parallel the language acquisition of a spoken language by hearing children because humans are biologically equipped for language regardless of the modality.
Deaf children's visual-manual language acquisition not only parallel spoken language acquisition but by the age of 30 months, most deaf children that were exposed to a visual language had a more advanced grasp with subject-pronoun copy rules than hearing children. Their vocabulary bank at the ages of 12–17 months exceed that of a hearing child's, though it does even out when they reach the two-word stage. The use of space for absent referents and the more complex handshapes in some signs prove to be difficult for children between 5 and 9 years of age because of motor development and the complexity of remembering the spatial use.
Other options besides sign language for kids with prelingual deafness include the use hearing aids to strengthen remaining sensory cells or cochlear implants to stimulate the hearing nerve directly. Cochlear Implants are hearing devices that are placed behind the ear and contain a receiver and electrodes which are placed under the skin and inside the cochlea. Despite these developments, there is still a risk that prelingually deaf children are may not develop good speech and speech reception skills. Although cochlear implants produce sounds, they are unlike typical hearing and deaf and hard of hearing people must undergo intensive therapy in order to learn how to interpret these sounds. They must also learn how to speak given the range of hearing they may or may not have. However, deaf children of deaf parents tend to do better with language, even though they are isolated from sound and speech because their language uses a different mode of communication that is accessible to them; the visual modality of language.
Although cochlear implants were initially approved for adults, now there is pressure to implant children early in order to maximize auditory skills for mainstream learning which in turn has created controversy around the topic. Due to recent advances in technology, cochlear implants allow some deaf people to acquire some sense of hearing. There are interior and exposed exterior components that are surgically implanted. Those who receive cochlear implants earlier on in life show more improvement on speech comprehension and language. Spoken language development does vary widely for those with cochlear implants though due to a number of different factors including: age at implantation, frequency, quality and type of speech training. Some evidence suggests that speech processing occurs at a more rapid pace in some prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants than those with traditional hearing aids. However, cochlear implants may not always work.
Research shows that people develop better language with a cochlear implant when they have a solid first language to rely on to understand the second language they would be learning. In the case of prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, a signed language, like American Sign Language would be an accessible language for them to learn to help support the use of the cochlear implant as they learn a spoken language as their L2. Without a solid, accessible first language, these children run the risk of language deprivation, especially in the case that a cochlear implant fails to work. They would have no access to sound, meaning no access to the spoken language they are supposed to be learning. If a signed language was not a strong language for them to use and neither was a spoken language, they now have no access to any language and run the risk of missing their critical period. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18614 |
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 bestselling religious novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: the pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological interpretation of the Biblical apocalypse. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation Force, an underground network of converts, against the NWO-esque organization "Global Community" and its leader, Nicolae Carpathia, who is also the Antichrist.
The series has been adapted into four films to date. The original series of three films are "" (2000), "" (2002), and "" (2005). A reboot starring Nicolas Cage, entitled simply "Left Behind", was released in 2014 through Cloud Ten Pictures. The series inspired an audio drama as well as the PC game "" (2006) and its several .
Based on a dispensationalist interpretation of prophecies in the Biblical books of Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel, "Left Behind" tells the story of the end times (set in the contemporary era), in which true believers in Christ have been "raptured" (taken instantly to heaven), leaving the world shattered and chaotic. As people scramble for answers, an obscure Romanian politician named Nicolae Jetty Carpathia rises to become secretary-general of the United Nations, promising to restore peace and stability to all nations. What most of the world does not realize is that Carpathia is actually the Antichrist foretold in the Bible. Coming to grips with the truth and becoming born-again Christians, airline pilot Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, their pastor Bruce Barnes, and young journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams begin their quest as the Tribulation Force to help save the lost and prepare for the coming Tribulation, in which God will rain down judgment on the world for seven years.
Multiple books in the series have been on the New York Times Bestseller List. Starting in 2000, Books 7 and 8 reached number one on the list followed by book 10, which debuted at number one.
One reason often cited for the books' popularity is the quick pacing and action, and reflects the public's overall concern and fascination with the Apocalypse as portrayed in the Biblical Book of Revelation. Michelle Goldberg has written that, "On one level, the attraction of the "Left Behind" books isn't that much different from that of, say, Tom Clancy or Stephen King. The plotting is brisk and the characterizations Manichean. People disappear and things blow up." The "New York Times" also compared the series to Clancy's works. However, those views are not universally shared. Other reviewers have called the series "almost laughably tedious" and "fatuous and boring."
Jerry Falwell said about the first book in the series: "In terms of its impact on Christianity, it's probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible."
Laurie Goodstein, writing in 1998 for "The New York Times", placed what she called the """Left Behind" phenomenon"" in the calendrical context of the approaching year 2000. Goodstein noted a 'proliferation' of similarly apocalyptic texts appearing at that time, by authors such as Jim Bakker and John Hagee. Goodstein cited the opinion of University of Wisconsin historian Paul Boyer, who described such authors as "cashing in on the public preoccupation with the year 2000".
LaHaye and Jenkins cite the influence of Russell Doughten, an Iowa-based filmmaker who directed the "Thief in the Night" series, a series of four low-budget but popular feature-length films in the 1970s and 80s about the Rapture and Second Coming, starting with 1972's "A Thief in the Night". Indeed, the title "Left Behind" echoes the refrain of "Thief" early Christian rock theme song by Larry Norman, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready," in which he sings, "There's no time to change your mind, the Son has come and you've been left behind."
While writing that the series fulfills the norms of mass-market fiction, as mentioned above, magazine writer Michelle Goldberg characterized the books as an attack on Judaism and liberal secularism, and suggested that the near-future "end times" in which the books are set seem to reflect the actual worldview of millions of Americans, including many prominent conservative leaders.
The books are written from a Protestant viewpoint. As a result, some believe the books are anti-Catholic, noting that many Catholics were not raptured, concluding that no religion is free of false converts and that the new pope establishes a false religion. While the fictional Pope, John XXIV, was raptured, he is described as having embraced some of the views of the "Father of Protestantism" Martin Luther and it is implied that he was raptured for this reason. His successor, Pope Peter II, becomes Pontifex Maximus of Enigma Babylon One World Faith, an amalgam of all remaining world faiths and religions. "Catholic Answers" describes the series as anti-Catholic.
The co-author of the book, Jerry B. Jenkins, as well as LaHaye, stated that their books are not anti-Catholic and that they have many faithful Catholic readers and friends. According to LaHaye, "the books don’t suggest any particular theology, but try to introduce people to a more personal relationship with Jesus."
David Carlson, a Professor of Religious Studies and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, wrote that the theology underpinning the "Left Behind" series promotes a "skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere—all in the name of Christ".
While many Protestants may agree with the literal interpretation of Revelation and other eschatological passages presented in the Left Behind series and view the Rapture as biblically sound, others do not. Some Protestant Christians who feel biblical evidence pointing to a Rapture before the second coming is lacking still value the evangelistic nature of the series, while others feel the books emphasize vice for entertainment purposes. However, the gospel message presented in the series by Jerry B. Jenkins is one that puts a strong emphasis on grace, which is popular among most Protestants (see e.g. Sola fide and Justification).
Along with some other rapture fiction novels, the "Left Behind" series demonstrates a specific understanding of the Gospel and the Christian life, one with which many have taken issue theologically. The books have not sold particularly well outside of the United States. Dispensationalism remains a minority view among theologians. For instance, amillennial and postmillennial Christians do not believe in the same timeline of the Second Coming as premillennialists, while preterist Christians do not interpret much of the Book of Revelation to predict future events at all. Brian McLaren of the Emergent Church compares the "Left Behind" series to "The Da Vinci Code", and states, "What the "Left Behind" novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think [Dan] Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends." John Dart, writing in "Christian Century", characterized the works as "beam me up theology."
Some practicing Christians, evangelical and otherwise, along with non-Christians have shown concern that the social perspectives promoted in the "Left Behind" series unduly sensationalize the death and destruction of masses of people. Harvey Cox, a professor of divinity at Harvard, says part of the appeal of the books lies in the "lip-licking anticipation of all the blood," and theologian Barbara Rossing, author of "The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation", said the books glorify violence. Additionally, Paul Nuechterlein accused the authors of re-sacralizing violence, adding that "we human beings are the ones who put our faith in superior firepower. But in the Left Behind novels the darkness of that human, satanic violence is once again attributed to God." "Time" said "the nuclear frights of, say, Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" wouldn't fill a chapter in the Left Behind series. (Large chunks of several U.S. cities have been bombed to smithereens by page 110 of Book 3.)"
"Note: The books are listed initially in story-line (chronological) order but then numbered in order of publication."
The series written for teens, called "", has the same plot as the adult series, but the main protagonists are teenagers. Several of the main books have also been turned into movies by the Canadian motion picture studio Cloud Ten Pictures; the film titles include: "" (2000), "" (2002), and "" (2005).
Two spin-off series have been written: a political series by Neesa Hart and a military series by Mel Odom.
A video game, "", was released for the PC on November 6, 2006. Its sequel, "Left Behind II: Tribulation Force", was released in 2009.
The success of the "Left Behind" books has led to the release of four motion pictures based on the series so far. All four have been produced by brothers Paul & Peter LaLonde, and have been released through Cloud Ten Pictures, an independent Canadian-based Christian film studio.
The first, "", was based on the first book of the series and was released in 2000. In a very unusual marketing scheme, the studio released the film on home video, and then theatrically. It fared poorly in theaters. The film starred former "Growing Pains" star Kirk Cameron as Buck Williams. Cameron, who praised the book series as "inspiring", became a practicing evangelist (and co-host with Ray Comfort on the TV show "The Way of the Master").
The sequel, "", based on the second book, "Tribulation Force", was released in 2002. The film debuted at #2 on Nielson's video scan reports, behind "Spider-Man", and was #1 in terms of overall sales for two days on Amazon.com.
The second sequel, "", was released first to churches on October 21, 2005 for church theatrical viewings and was released via home media on October 25. Much of the main cast from the previous two films, excluding Clarence Gilyard, reprised their respective roles for "World at War". Gilyard, who played Bruce Barnes, was unable to return due to a scheduling conflict with a play in New York. It is based very loosely on the final 50 pages of "Tribulation Force" and features Louis Gossett Jr. as the President of the United States, Gerald Fitzhugh. The third installment was the least identifiable with events in any of the books. Recognizable events were the marriages of Buck with Chloe Steele, and of Rayford Steele with Amanda White; the death of Bruce Barnes; and President Fitzhugh's heading an attack, resulting in World War III, with Great Britain and Egypt fighting against the Global Community. Major parts, however, were taken from subsequent books; these events include the poisoning of Barnes by GC forces, instead of Nicolae Carpathia himself, and an attempt by Fitzhugh to assassinate Carpathia. Buck's meeting with the President in the books takes a different form in the film.
The film series have been criticized for, among other things, low production values. A "Slate" reviewer commented that in 2004, Cloud Ten Pictures made a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to release all of its pictures under their banner and has been doing so ever since.
In 2010, Cloud Ten announced that a remake of the "Left Behind" series was in development, with production set to begin in late 2012 for an October 2014 release date. The reboot, starring Nicolas Cage as Steele and Chad Michael Murray as Buck Williams, was released to theaters October 3, 2014. It focused mainly on the very beginnings of the first book and added much to the plot. The remake focuses on the experiences of the passengers on the plane and partially on Chloe Steele as she comes to terms with her missing family. It earned overwhelmingly negative reviews and flopped at the box office.
A video game, "", (2006) and its three sequels, "Left Behind: Tribulation Forces", "Left Behind 3: Rise of the Antichrist" and "Left Behind 4: World at War", were developed by a publicly traded company, Left Behind Games. The games are real-time strategy games wherein the player controls a "Tribulation Forces" team and allows the player to "use the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world." The original game was released in the United States on November 14, 2006, and received mixed reviews. Distribution was initially planned to work through churches and megachurches.
Although the original game was accused of encouraging religious violence, not all reviewers of the game or critics of the "Left Behind" series shared that view. Representatives of the company have responded that the game's message is pacifist, because shooting nonbelievers instead of converting them costs the player "spirit points", which can be recovered by pausing to pray. The company also responded to these criticisms in an online newsletter, stating, "There is no violence, only conflict," and, "The most successful way to fight, is through the means of spiritual warfare; PRAYER and WORSHIP. Soldiers and military weaponry are available, but once anyone plays the game, they’ll see how difficult it is to succeed by using these less effective means of warfare."
"People Get Ready: A Musical Collection Inspired by The Left Behind Series" (1998) is "a musical collection inspired by the Left Behind series".
Williams professor Glenn Shuck has written the book "Marks of the Beast: The Left Behind Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity," published by NYU Press in 2005. He followed this with a collection of original essays co-edited with Jeffrey J. Kripal of Rice University on the Esalen Institute in California, published by Indiana University Press in 2005.
Robert M. Price has written the book "The Paperback Apocalypse" published by Prometheus Books in 2007 which reviewed the whole genre of apocalypse fiction.
In 2002, a series of graphic novels published by Tyndale House was launched that comprised the first two books in the series, "Left Behind" and "Tribulation Force". The original idea was to release sets of 3 to 5 novels (each about 45–50 pages) for each book in the original series. However, after the fifth and final novel for "Tribulation Force" was released, the graphic novel series was apparently discontinued, and the novels that were released are now (as of December 2006) out of print. A compilation of the graphic novels for the first book was later released as one novel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18615 |
Lausanne
Lausanne (, also , , ; ; ; ) is the capital city and biggest town of the canton of Vaud in Romandy, Switzerland. A municipality, it is situated on the shores of Lake Léman (). It faces the French town of , with the Jura Mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located northeast of Geneva.
The municipality Lausanne has a population of about 140,000, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland, with the entire agglomeration area having about 420,000 inhabitants (as of January 2019). The metropolitan area of Lausanne-Geneva (including Vevey-Montreux, Yverdon-les-Bains, and foreign parts) was over 1.2 million inhabitants in 2000.
Lausanne is a focus of international sport, hosting the International Olympic Committee (which has recognized the city as the "Olympic Capital" since 1994), the Court of Arbitration for Sport and some 55 international sport associations. It lies in a noted wine-growing region. The city has a 28-station metro system, making it the smallest city in the world to have a rapid transit system. Lausanne hosted the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
The Romans built a military camp, which they called , at the site of a Celtic settlement, near the lake where Vidy and Ouchy are situated; on the hill above was a fort called or (The "-y" suffix is common to many place names of Roman origin in the region (e.g.) Prilly, Pully, Lutry, etc.). By the 2nd century AD, it was known as and in 280 as . By 400, it was , and in 990 it was mentioned as .
After the fall of the Roman Empire, insecurity forced the residents of Lausanne to move to its current centre, a hilly site that was easier to defend. The city which emerged from the camp was ruled by the Dukes of Savoy and the Bishop of Lausanne. Then it came under Bern from 1536 to 1798, and a number of its cultural treasures, including the hanging tapestries in the Cathedral, were permanently removed. Lausanne has made repeated requests to recover them.
After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Lausanne became (along with Geneva) a place of refuge for French Huguenots. In 1729, a seminary was opened by Antoine Court and Benjamin Duplan. By 1750, 90 pastors had been sent back to France to work clandestinely; this number would rise to 400. Official persecution ended in 1787; a faculty of Protestant theology was established at Montauban in 1808, and the Lausanne seminary was finally closed on 18 April 1812. During the Napoleonic Wars, the city's status changed. In 1803, it became the capital of a newly formed Swiss canton, Vaud, under which it joined the Swiss Federation.
In 1964, the city played host to the Swiss National Exhibition, displaying its newly found confidence to play host to major international events.
From the 1950s to 1970s, a large number of Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese immigrated to Lausanne, settling mostly in the industrial district of Renens and transforming the local diet.
The city has served as a refuge for European artists. While under the care of a psychiatrist at Lausanne, T. S. Eliot composed most of his 1922 poem "The Waste Land" ("by the waters of Leman I sat down and wept"). Ernest Hemingway also visited from Paris with his wife during the 1920s, to holiday. In fact, many creative people – such as historian Edward Gibbon and Romantic era poets Shelley and Byron — have "sojourned, lived, and worked in Lausanne or nearby".
The city has been traditionally quiet, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of demonstrations took place that exposed tensions between young people and the police. In the early 1980s, the Lôzane Bouge protests demanded the city "open an autonomous centre, lower cinema ticket prices, liberalise cannabis and end the process of keeping records on homosexuals, all accompanied by leaflets, chants, and songs in the street". Protests occurred in 2003, against the G8 meetings.
The most important geographical feature of the area surrounding Lausanne is Lake Geneva ("Lac Léman" in French). Lausanne is built on the southern slope of the Swiss plateau, with a difference in elevation of about between the lakeshore at Ouchy and its northern edge bordering Le Mont-sur-Lausanne and Épalinges. Lausanne boasts a dramatic panorama over the lake and the Alps.
In addition to its generally southward-sloping layout, the centre of the city is the site of an ancient river, the Flon, which has been covered since the 19th century. The former river forms a gorge running through the middle of the city south of the old city centre, generally following the course of the present "Rue Centrale", with several bridges crossing the depression to connect the adjacent neighbourhoods. Due to the considerable differences in elevation, visitors should make a note as to which plane of elevation they are on and where they want to go, otherwise they will find themselves tens of metres below or above the street which they are trying to negotiate. The name "Flon" is also used for the metro station located in the gorge.
The municipality includes the villages of Vidy, Cour, Ouchy, Mornex, Chailly, La Sallaz, Vennes, Montblesson, Vers-chez-les-Blanc, Montheron and Chalet-à-Gobet () as well as the exclave of Vernand.
Lausanne is located at the limit between the extensive wine-growing regions of Lavaux (to the east) and la Côte (to the west).
Lausanne has an area, , of (depending on calculation method). Of this area, or 16.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 39.1% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 44.6% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.1% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.0% is unproductive land.
Of the built-up area, industrial buildings made up 1.6% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 21.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 12.5%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.4% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 7.5%. Out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 11.1% is used for growing crops and 4.2% is pastures. All the water in the municipality is in lakes.
The municipality was part of the old Lausanne District until it was dissolved on 31 August 2006, and it became the capital of the new district of Lausanne.
Lausanne has an average of 119.7 days of rain or snow per year and on average receives of precipitation. The wettest month is May during which time Lausanne receives an average of of rain. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 12.1 days. The driest month of the year is February with an average of of precipitation over 8.8 days.
The USDA Hardiness Zone for Lausanne-Pully is 8b with an average minimum temperature of −7.0 C over the past 20 years (1997–2016), but at the lake level, it can be considered 9a.
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is "Gules, chief argent".
The city is divided into 18 "quartiers", or districts, sometimes composed of several neighborhoods. They are: Centre (1), Maupas/Valency (2), Sébeillon/Malley (3), Montoie/Bourdonnette (4), Montriond/Cour (5), Sous-Gare/Ouchy (6), Montchoisi (7), Florimont/Chissiez (8), Mousquines/Bellevue (9), Vallon/Béthusy (10), Chailly/Rovéréaz (11), Sallaz/Vennes/Séchaud (12), Sauvabelin (13), Borde/Bellevaux (14), Vinet/Pontaise (15), Bossons/Blécherette (16), Beaulieu/Grey/Boisy (17), and Les Zones foraines (90)
The municipality ("la Municipalité") constitutes the executive government of the City of Lausanne and operates as a collegiate authority. It is composed of seven councilors (), each presiding over a directorate. One of the members act as mayor ("syndic"). In the mandate period 2016–2021 ("la législature") the Municipality is presided by "Monsieur le Syndic" Grégoire Junod. Directoral tasks, coordination measures and implementation of laws decreed by the Communal Council are carried by the Municipality. The regular election of the Municipality by any inhabitant valid to vote is held every five years. Any resident of Lausanne allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Municipality. Since 14 April 2003, due to the constitution by canton of Vaud not only Swiss citizen have the right to vote and elect and being elected on communal level, but also foreigners with a residence permit of at least 10 years in Switzerland and 3 years in the canton of Vaud. The current mandate period is from 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2021. The delegates are elected by means of a system of Majorz. The mayor is later on elected as such by a public election as well by a system of Majorz, while the heads of the other departments are assigned by the collegiate. The executive body holds its meetings in the Town Hall ("L'Hôtel de Ville"), in the old city on "Place de la Palud".
, Lausanne's Municipality is made up of three representatives of the PS (Social Democratic Party, of whom one is also the mayor), and two members of PES (Green Party), and one each of le Parti Ouvrier et Populaire Vaudois (POP) & "gauche en mouvement" (an alliance of the left parties POP ("Parti Suisse du Travail – Parti Ouvrier et Populaire") and solidaritéS and "indépendant.e.s"), and PLR (Les Libéraux-Radicaux (PLR)), giving the left parties a very strong six out of seven seats. The last election was held on 28 February/20 March 2016. The mayor was elected by two ballots on 17 April/8 May 2016.
Simon Affolter is Town Chancellor (chancelier municipal) since for the Municipality.
The Communal Council ("Conseil communal") holds legislative power. It is made up of 100 members, with elections held every five years. The Communal Council decrees regulations and by-laws that are executed by the Municipality and the administration. The sessions of the Communal Council are public. Unlike members of the Municipality, members of the Communal Council are not politicians by profession, and they are paid a fee based on their attendance. Any resident of Lausanne allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Communal Council. Since 14 April 2003, due to the constitution by canton of Vaud not only Swiss citizen have the right to vote and elect and being elected on communal level, but also foreigners with a residence permit of at least 10 years in Switzerland and 3 years in the canton of Vaud. The Parliament holds its meetings in the Town Hall ("Hôtel de Ville"), in the old city on "Place de la Palud".
The last election of the Communal Council was held on 28 February 2016 for the mandate period ("la législature") from 1 June 2016 to 31 May 2021. Currently the Communal Council consist of 33 members of the Social Democratic Party (PS), 21 Les Libéraux-Radicaux (PLR), 17 Green Party (PES), 12 Swiss People's Party (UDC), 11 "Ensemble à Gauche" (an alliance of the left parties POP ("Parti Suisse du Travail – Parti Ouvrier et Populaire") and solidaritéS and "indépendant.e.s"), and 6 "Le Centre" (an alliance of Christian Democratic People's Party (PDC) and Green Liberal Party (pvl)).
In the 2019 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the Green Party which received 27.3% (+11.4) of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the PS (26.7%, -4.2), PLR (15.1%, -3.6), the UDC (9.3%, -6), the POP/solidaritéS (9%, +1.9), the pvl (6.9%, +3.4). In the federal election a total of 26,070 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 39.7%.
In the 2015 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 30.8% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the PLR (18.7%), the Green Party (15.9%), and the UDC (15.4%). In the federal election, a total of 26,116 voters were cast, and the voter turnout was 41.0%.
Lausanne has a population () of . , 42% of the population were resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009) the population has changed at a rate of 9.9%. It has changed at a rate of 8.3% due to migration and at a rate of 2.6% due to births and deaths. The population of the greater Lausanne area ("grand Lausanne") is 402,900 (as of December 2014).
Of the population in the municipality, 58% or 80,828 have a Swiss citizenship, while 16,908 or 12.1% are from Lausanne and still lived there in December 2013. There were 27,653 or 19.8% who are from somewhere else in the same canton, while 36,276 or 26.0% have a Swiss citizenship in another canton. 58,9562 or 42.0% have a foreign citizenship.
In 2000, most of the population spoke French (98,424 or 78.8%), with German being second most common (5,365 or 4.3%) and Italian being third (4,976 or 4.0%). There were 62 people who speak Romansh.
In there were 840 live births to Swiss citizens and 623 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 862 deaths of Swiss citizens and 127 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 22 while the foreign population increased by 496. There were 9 Swiss men and 57 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland. At the same time, there were 2230 non-Swiss men and 1802 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was an increase of 883 and the non-Swiss population increased by 2221 people. This represents a population growth rate of 2.6%.
The age distribution, , in Lausanne is; 11,818 children or 9.4% of the population are between 0 and 9 years old and 12,128 teenagers or 9.7% are between 10 and 19. Of the adult population, 21,101 people or 16.8% of the population are between 20 and 29 years old. 22,158 people or 17.6% are between 30 and 39, 18,016 people or 14.4% are between 40 and 49, and 13,940 people or 11.1% are between 50 and 59. The senior population distribution is 11,041 people or 8.8% of the population are between 60 and 69 years old, 8,277 people or 6.6% are between 70 and 79, there are 5,896 people or 4.7% who are between 80 and 89, and there are 1,171 people or 0.9% who are 90 and older.
, there were 58,100 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 48,990 married individuals, 7,797 widows or widowers and 10,027 individuals who are divorced.
, there were 62,258 private households in the municipality, and an average of 1.9 persons per household. There were 31,205 households that consist of only one person and 2,184 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 63,833 households that answered this question, 48.9% were households made up of just one person and there were 306 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 13,131 married couples without children and 11,603 married couples with children. There were 3,883 single parents with a child or children. There were 2,130 households that were made up of unrelated people, and 1,575 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.
The historical population is given in the following chart:
From the Reformation in the 16th century, the city was mostly Protestant until the late 20th century, when it received substantial immigration, particularly from largely Catholic countries. Catholics now form a plurality of the city's population.
From the , 47,225 people (37.8% of the population) were Roman Catholic, while 33,993 (27.2%) belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 2,698 members of an Orthodox church (2.16%), there were 65 individuals (0.05%) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 4,437 individuals (3.55%) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 849 individuals (0.68%) who were Jewish, and 7,501 (6.00%) who were Muslim. There were 452 individuals who were Buddhist, 772 individuals who were Hindu and 343 individuals who belonged to another church. 21,080 (16.88%) belonged to no church, were agnostic or atheist, and 7,590 individuals (6.08%) did not answer the question.
In 2014 the crime rate, of crimes listed in the Swiss Criminal Code, in Lausanne was 167.3 per thousand residents. During the same period, the rate of drug crimes was 49.5 per thousand residents, and the rate of violations of immigration, visa and work permit laws was 21 per thousand residents.
Lausanne is served by an extensive network of local, national and international public transport. National and international passenger trains of the Swiss Federal Railways depart from Lausanne railway station, which is also the hub of the Réseau Express Vaudois commuter rail system, and a stop on the city's metro. The metro and local buses are operated by Transports publics de la région lausannoise (TL), with many routes run using trolleybuses. Additional commuter trains are run by the Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher railway (LEB) from Lausanne-Flon station. Ships across Lake Geneva are provided by the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman (CGN).
Lausanne became the first city in Switzerland to have a rubber-tyred metro system, with the m2 Line which opened in October 2008. The rolling stock is a shorter version of the one used on Paris Métro Line 14. Further expansion of the system is planned, as is the re-introduction of trams.
Lausanne is connected to the A1 motorway on its west side (Geneva – Zürich axis) and to the A9 on its north and east side (for transit with Italy and France); the interchange between these two motorways is on the north-west side of the city.
Lausanne Airport is located at Blécherette, and also houses a Boeing 737 Simulator. The city is also directly linked by train to the Geneva International Airport, four times an hour, in 42min.
, Lausanne had an unemployment rate of 8%. , there were 114 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 25 businesses involved in this sector. 6,348 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 698 businesses in this sector. 83,157 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 6,501 businesses in this sector.
There were 59,599 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 47.4% of the workforce. the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 75,041. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 93, of which 56 were in agriculture, 34 were in forestry or lumber production and 3 were in fishing or fisheries. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 6,057 of which 1,515 or (25.0%) were in manufacturing, 24 or (0.4%) were in mining and 3,721 (61.4%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 68,891. In the tertiary sector; 8,520 or 12.4% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 2,955 or 4.3% were in the movement and storage of goods, 4,345 or 6.3% were in a hotel or restaurant, 4,671 or 6.8% were in the information industry, 6,729 or 9.8% were the insurance or financial industry, 8,213 or 11.9% were technical professionals or scientists, 5,756 or 8.4% were in education and 14,312 or 20.8% were in health care.
, there were 55,789 workers who commuted into the municipality and 19,082 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 2.9 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. About 1.9% of the workforce coming into Lausanne are coming from outside Switzerland, while 0.1% of the locals commute out of Switzerland for work. Of the working population, 40.9% used public transportation to get to work, and 35.1% used a private car.
In Lausanne about 40,118 or (32.1%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 22,934 or (18.4%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a "Fachhochschule"). Of the 22,934 who completed tertiary schooling, 38.7% were Swiss men, 31.3% were Swiss women, 17.1% were non-Swiss men and 12.9% were non-Swiss women.
In the 2009/2010 school year there were a total of 12,244 students in the Lausanne school district. In the Vaud cantonal school system, two years of non-obligatory pre-school are provided by the political districts. During the school year, the political district provided pre-school care for a total of 2,648 children of which 1,947 children (73.5%) received subsidized pre-school care. The canton's primary school program requires students to attend for four years. There were 6,601 students in the municipal primary school program. The obligatory lower secondary school program lasts for six years and there were 5,244 students in those schools. There were also 399 students who were home schooled or attended another non-traditional school.
Lausanne is home to a number of museums including; the "Collection de l'art brut", the "Espace Arlaud", the "Fondation de l'Hermitage", the "Musée cantonal d'archéologie et d'histoire", the "Musée cantonal de géologie", the "Musée cantonal de zoologie", the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts, the Musée de l'Élysée and the "Musée historique de Lausanne". In 2009 the "Collection de l'art brut" was visited by 27,028 visitors (the average in previous years was 33,356). The "Espace Arlaud" was visited by 9,222 visitors (the average in previous years was 14,206). The "Fondation de l'Hermitage" was visited by 89,175 visitors (the average in previous years was 74,839). The "Musée cantonal d'archéologie et d'histoire" was visited by 14,841 visitors (the average in previous years was 15,775). The "Musée cantonal de zoologie" was visited by 30,794 visitors (the average in previous years was 30,392). The "Musée cantonal de géologie" was visited by 28,299 visitors (the average in previous years was 24,248). The Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts was visited by 26,456 visitors (the average in previous years was 26,384). The Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts was visited by 28,554 visitors (the average in previous years was 22,879). The Musée de l'Élysée was visited by 36,775 visitors (the average in previous years was 37,757). The "Musée historique de Lausanne" was visited by 23,116 visitors (the average in previous years was 22,851).
, there were 12,147 students in Lausanne who came from another municipality, while 2,258 residents attended schools outside the municipality.
Lausanne is home to eight large libraries or collections of libraries. These libraries include: Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne, the library of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), the libraries of the "Réseau EPFL", the "Bibliothèque municipale de Lausanne", the "Haute école de travail social et de la santé (EESP)", the "HECV Santé", the "Haute école de la santé La Source" and the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL). There was a combined total () of 3,496,260 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 1,650,534 items were loaned out.
Lausanne enjoys some world class education and research establishments (see also Lausanne campus), including private schools, attended by students from around the world.
International schools:
There are 46 buildings or sites that are listed as Swiss heritage site of national significance. Additionally, the entire old city of Lausanne and the Vernand-Dessus region are listed in the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites.
The "Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne", the Lausanne Opera and the "Ensemble vocal de Lausanne" provide a diverse and rich musical life. The latter has been under the direction of Michel Corboz for many years.
In January, the Prix de Lausanne, a famous dance competition, takes place at the Palais de Beaulieu (the biggest theatre in Switzerland) over a one-week period. The event attracts dancers and some of the big names in dance from all over the world.
The Swiss Film Archive is based in Lausanne and the city hosts film festivals such as the "Festival cinémas d'Afrique" and the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival. In addition to modern cinemas, the "Capitole" (in activity since 1929) is the biggest cinema in Switzerland (currently 867 seats).
The town hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1989. Each July, the "Festival de la cité" is held in the old part of town. Other music festivals include the Bach Festival, the "Festival et concours Bach de Lausanne", which follows the "Nuit de musées" (museums' night) in the fall season.
Lausanne is also the home of the Béjart Ballet.
Lausanne is also the site of many museums:
Lausanne is home to the IOC, with water sports available on the nearby lake and mountaineering in the nearby mountains. Cycling is also a common pastime, with the vineyards in the surrounding hills providing extensive views and challenging routes. There is an annual Track and field meeting ("Athletissima"), road running through the city (the 20 km (12 mi) of Lausanne), the Tour de Romandie road cycling race, Marathon of Lausanne and triathlon competition, among other sports events. The two most important sports are ice hockey and football. Lausanne will host the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics and the 2020 IIHF World Championship.
Lausanne hosts the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and many other international sport associations: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18623 |
Loyalty program
A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and rewards schemes, including in banking, entertainment, hospitality, retailing and travel.
A loyalty program typically involves the operator of a particular program setting up an account for a customer of a business associated with the scheme, and then issuing to the customer a loyalty card (variously called rewards card, points card, advantage card, club card, or some other name) which may be a plastic or paper card, visually similar to a credit card, that identifies the card holder as a participant in the program. Cards may have a barcode or magstripe to more easily allow for scanning, although some are chip cards or proximity cards.
By presenting a card, customers typically receive either a discount on the current purchase, or an allotment of points that they can use for future purchases. Hence, the card is the visible means of implementing a type of what economists call a two-part tariff. Application forms for cards usually entail agreements by the store concerning customer privacy, typically non-disclosure (by the store) of non-aggregate data about customers. The store uses aggregate data internally (and sometimes externally) as part of its marketing research. Over time the data can reveal, for example, a given customer's favorite brand of beer, or whether he or she is a vegetarian. Where a customer has provided sufficient identifying information, the loyalty card may also be used to access such information to expedite verification during receipt of cheques or dispensing medical prescription preparations, or for other membership privileges such as access to an airport lounge using a frequent-flyer card. In recent years, businesses now offer these loyalty cards in the form of a loyalty app, which means users are less likely to lose their card. Almost all major casino chains also have loyalty cards, which offer members tier credits, reward credits, comps, and other perks based on card members' "theo" from gambling, various demographic data, and spend patterns on various purchases at the casino, within the casino network, and with the casino's partners. Examples of such programs include Caesars Rewards (formerly called Total Rewards) and MGM Resorts International's Mlife.
Loyalty programs have been described as a form of centralized virtual currency, one with unidirectional cash flow, since reward points can be exchanged into a good or service but not into cash.
The Social Credit System is a loyalty program operated by the state and private businesses. Individuals with high social credit scores can get faster internet, use high speed trains, and take mainland flights.
Hong Kong offers many loyalty programs. They include Octopus Rewards, operated by Octopus Cards Limited, which allows Octopus card users to earn points in certain shops, including McDonald's fast food outlets and Wellcome supermarkets. The MTR Corporation also operates MTR Club for regular customers of its transport network.
In terms of shopping or purchasing groceries, different chain stores under common ownership often share the same loyalty program, such as A.S. Watson Group's "MoneyBack", which can be used at Parknshop, Watsons, and Fortress stores, as well as the corporation's retail partners. HKT's The Club also offers a similar loyalty program. Flag airline carrier Cathay Pacific operates Asia Miles, a loyalty and frequent-flyer program.
PAYBACK India is India's largest coalition loyalty program, with over 50 million members, over 50 partners and 3000 network partner outlets. German loyalty program operator Loyalty Partner took a controlling interest in i-mint in June 2010 and renamed the program PAYBACK India in July 2011. BPCL's PetroBonus fuel card program has 2 million members. Indian Oil's fleet card program XTRAPOWER and retail program XTRAREWARDS claim a combined customer base of 3 million.
The first Iranian loyalty program launched in 1996 by Iran Credit Card Group Zarrin Card. East Credit Card Group Kish launched its loyalty program in 2005.
Genting Highlands Resort has a loyalty card, WorldCard, that is primarily used to gain points in Genting Highlands' Resorts and Attractions. However, it can also be used at participating partner locations, including Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. It is valid in three countries: Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Loyalty program can also build in term of app version, which widely use in Starbucks app, TK Bakery App, Loudspeaker App, AppPay.
In the Philippines, several brands of establishments and stores offer membership cards that the card owner can use to earn points and redeem rewards.
The gigantic shopping mall chain, SM Supermalls offers the SM Advantage Card or SMAC that can be used as a loyalty card that earns points as you shop and its partner bank, BDO Unibank also offers BDO Rewards Card that functions the same as the SM Advantage Card. Retailers accepting the card include: The SM Store, SM Supermarket, SM Hypermarket, ACE Hardware and Watsons Pharmacy.
Another mall chain, Robinsons Malls has a program named Robinsons Rewards. It can also be used when shopping in Robinsons Department Stores, Robinsons Supermarkets, and Toys "R" Us branches in the Philippines.
Jollibee, the fast food giant and its subsidiaries (Chowking, Greenwich Pizza, and Red Ribbon launched the HappyPlus card, in which the cardholder can use the card to earn happy points and use the points to get a free food. It is also planned to be used in Mang Inasal, the most recent member of the Jollibee Foods Corporation.
The country's largest drug store, Mercury Drug also introduced the Suki Card in which the membership is free but the applicant will need to purchase at least PhP 1000 worth of single or cumulative purchases.
In Singapore, the three largest loyalty programs are Plus!, WorldCard, and SAFRA Card.
The two largest loyalty programs in Austria are Payback and mo. JÖ was fully launched in 2019.
Loyalty programs are very popular in Finland. 80% of people are in at least one loyalty program and over 50% are member of at least two programs. Two major coalitions with loyalty programs operating in multiple business sectors. These are S-Group with S-Etukortti (70% of population, 2014) and Kesko with K-Plussa (67%). These cards can be equipped with Visa or MasterCard Debit / Credit payment features. Both loyalty programs are being aggressively pushed to consumers. New major player in Finnish and Baltic markets is Pins (19%).
In Georgia the biggest loyalty card program is run by Universal Card Corporation since 2010. Universal scheme unifies more than 250 companies where customers collect bonus points on UNICARD while purchasing food, goods, garments/clothing, fuel, travel packages, tickets, pharmacy, GYM passes or other services. UNICARD holders can redeem their bonus points on any products presented within the particular partner's stores where redemption is available or into desirable gifts presented within UNICARD's online catalogue.
The largest loyalty program in Germany is Payback, which was launched in 2000. According to a study in August 2007 by GfK, 61% of German households have a Payback card. It listed the program as having a 42% share, with the Shell ClubSmart program as third most popular with 13%. In March 2008, the coalition program was launched by Arvato. As at March 2009 it had more than 4.5 million active cardholders. HappyDigits was disbanded at the latest of the year 2009/2010.
Two coalition loyalty programs in Hungary are SuperShop and Multipoint. SuperShop, established in April 2000, is backed by partners Spar, OBI, OMV, Photo hall, Burger King.
After the exit of Nectar from the market in 2015, Payback is the most popular coalition loyalty program with more than 10 million card holders and relevant anchor partners such as Carrefour, Esso, H3G (Tre), Mediaset Premium, BNL BNP Paribas and more than 60 online partners.
Supermarket chains Esselunga, Coop and Il Gigante also have well established loyalty programs.
Other stores such as Interio, a furniture retailer, are also joining the market with loyalty cards and store-based incentivised credit cards.
Loyalty programs are also widely spread in the consumer goods Industry, where companies use this powerful tool to establish long-lasting brand-consumer relationships. The very first example of a loyalty program in the food industry has been the 2008 Lavazza Carmencita digital collection followed by many other brands such as Barilla, Casa Modena-Giravolte and Tena Lady of the Multinational Sca Hygiene Products.
One of the largest loyalty programs in Latvia which is working as operator for many merchants is Pins.
Walmoo is a loyalty platform that was launched in 2013 that allows their users to create their own loyalty program.
The largest Norwegian loyalty program is . Trumf is a «brick and mortar» loyalty program owned by NorgesGruppen, a grocery wholesaling group in Norway. KickBack.no is one of the largest online loyalty program and cashback site in Norway. KickBack.no is owned by Schibsted Media Group.
In the Republic of Ireland loyalty cards have been in operation since 1993, when Superquinn introduced its SuperClub loyalty card scheme. This is regarded as having been the prototype for such schemes in Europe. However, loyalty cards did not expand until 1997, when Tesco Ireland introduced its Clubcard scheme, shortly after its purchase of Power Supermarkets. This was an expansion of the UK scheme—cards for this are identical to those used by Tesco in the UK and can be used in both countries. Dunnes Stores responded with the introduction of their own ValueClub scheme in June 1997. Today these are three main schemes operating in Ireland, although ValueClub has been withdrawn from Dunnes' Northern Ireland stores. SuperValu has introduced their own loyalty club called Real Rewards.
All five major petrol station chains in the country operated a scheme during the late 1990s—Esso had Tiger Miles (with Tesco ClubCard points offered as an alternative), Maxol had Points Plus, both of which operated on the principle of getting items from a gift catalogue, with Shell using Dunnes' scheme, Texaco using the SuperQuinn system, and Statoil operating a cash-back system, Premium Club. Due to increasing oil prices and tightening of margins, these schemes ended by the end of 2005. Tesco Ireland's petrol stations still, however, give Clubcard points.
Game, a major computer game and hardware retailer also operate a cashback card scheme, which was merged with Electronics Boutique's programme following the separation of their northern European stores into the hands of Game. The scheme returns one-fortieth of the spend, more than twice as generous as Tesco.
Rewards From Us To You is a hotel loyalty program for independent hotels in Belgium, Holland, Ireland & the United Kingdom. It was founded in November 2011 by parent hotel management company PREM Group, who is based in Dublin, Ireland. This program does not issue loyalty cards but does everything electronically through email. This company has over 33 participating hotels and serviced apartments. Guests earn points every time they stay with any hotel in the club. Guests can later redeem free night stays or gift cards. In addition to this all members receive exclusive perks for signing up and staying at the hotel.
MALINA is a Russian coalition program. MALINA was launched in 2006 by Loyalty Partners Vostok. MALINA is a loyalty card scheme comprising partner companies including BP, Rosinter Restaurants, Beeline, 36,6, and Raiffeisenbank.
Another Russian loyalty program is Mnogo.ru. This project is fully independent. Members of the club who own clubcards can gain points in exchange for daily purchases made both online and offline at partners' shops. A customer receives points while answering the quiz, playing games and getting special offers. Cumulative points can be exchanged for prizes from the company's partners.
Loyalty programs are popular in Switzerland, with the two main supermarket chains, Migros and Coop prominent. The M-Cumulus card can be used at the Migros supermarkets, Ex Libris, SportXX, and other retailers. The Coop Supercard earns points on purchases at Coop and a variety of other associated stores. Other stores such as Interio, a furniture retailer, are also joining the market with loyalty cards and store-based incentivised credit cards. The only coalition loyalty scheme in Switzerland is Bonus Card with a network of over 300 independent retail partners. In recent years, online loyalty programs have also started to target the Swiss. First to make an offering in Switzerland was German-based Webmiles. Claiming to be Switzerland's first online bonus program, Bonuspoints was launched in early 2008 and offers incentives for shopping at 70 different online stores.
Pegasus Airlines has a loyalty program called Pegasus Plus which gives rewards for every flight. Passengers can spend reward points as a discount without waiting to cover a full flight. Turkish Airlines has a loyalty program called Miles&Smiles.
The loyalty card market in the UK is one of the most significant in the world, with most major chains operating some form of reward system. Passcard has been claimed to be the first reward scheme or discount card, created around by Gary Wilson in 1981 and later known as Passkey. One of the first loyalty cards backed by a major chain is believed to be the Sainsbury's Homebase Spend and Save Card in 1982.
Of the "big four" supermarkets, Sainsbury's and Tesco and Morrisons operate loyalty cards for general supermarket shopping.Tesco's Clubcard scheme have been criticised for not offering value for money. When Clubcard or Nectar points are used for money off supermarket shopping, they roughly equate to a 0.5% discount, although offers can increase this discount by as much as four times for certain rewards. Some retailers with banking operations also award points for every pound spent on their credit cards, and bonus points for purchasing financial services. A report in "The Economist" suggested that the real benefit of loyalty cards to UK outlets is the massive marketing research database potential they offer. Since 2015 Morrisons operates a "More" reward scheme which replaces the "Morrisons Miles" fuel purchases reward scheme. Unusually, customers' personal details are not collected so purchases appear not to be tracked. Vouchers are delivered at point of sale.
After trials in 1994, Tesco launched its Clubcard program, the UK's first nationwide supermarket-only loyalty card scheme, in 1995 with dunnhumby. Sainsbury's launched its Reward Card in 1996. This was replaced by the Nectar card in 2002, which was launched in partnership with other major brands.
Boots UK began planning a loyalty card in November 1993, but building a CRM-focussed loyalty program. With an investment in excess of GB£30 million, the Boots Advantage Card, launched in 1997, is the largest smart card retail loyalty card scheme in the world, and the third-largest retail loyalty scheme in the UK in terms of cards issued. The Advantage scheme has 16.4 million cardholders using the card online and in store and at 3rd party retailers. The scheme gives a cardholder four points for every pound spent in a Boots store under normal shopping circumstances. Most stores have kiosks which can be used in conjunction with the cards for "exclusive offers" which are printed on vouchers and can be used at the till. These vouchers enable money off specific purchases, extra points for specific purchases, or money off or extra points when spending has reached an amount specified on the voucher, or other offers such as double points on either everything of specific products. For example, a customer may get a voucher which provides 250 extra points when they have spent £50 in one transaction. Points equal pence in store, and can be spent at any time and on anything in store, providing the card has enough points to cover the entire cost of the merchandise. The kiosk system was replaced with the Boots App in 2014, where customers can automatically load offers on to their Advantage Card straight from their smartphone.
Safeway's ABC Card was discontinued in 2000. Airlines, Hotels and other loyalty schemes also offer cards. Marks and Spencer and the John Lewis Partnership have credit cards which give vouchers in return for spending, and do issue separate loyalty cards such as the myJohnLewis card, myWaitrose card in the John Lewis Partnership and the Sparks Card in by Marks and Spencer. Game has a reward card scheme for which every pound spent a customer is rewarded 10 points; for every 1000 points that one collects, one gets £2.50 to redeem in the store, or online. Preorders earn a customer 20 points per pound. HMV has a reward card called purehmv which allows the customer to claim a variety of rewards, including in-store discounts.
The UK's largest retail bookmaker Ladbrokes launched the Odds ON! loyalty programme in late 2007, the first retail betting loyalty scheme in Europe. Customers earn points on each bet which can be redeemed for bonus jokers and free bets. Ladbrokes Poker operates a loyalty program for its online poker players where players are able to exchange their poker points for gift & prizes.
Maximiles is an online coalition program claiming 1.6 million members in the UK. Maximiles also operates online programs in France, Spain and Italy.
The opening of the first Best Buy store in the UK—at Thurrock, Essex, in 2010—was accompanied by the launch of a customer engagement program called My Best Buy. This was described as "a tiered, digital loyalty and customer engagement program that is designed to build a lifelong relationship with the customer by providing a personalized experience through which they can manage their digital and technology needs." However, this business ceased trading in 2012: the 11 stores were closed in January, and My Best Buy closed on 29 February.
The Ice Organisation launched MyIce.com in 2010, a scheme which rewards consumers for shopping in a more sustainable way. Ice's mission is to promote greener goods and services to mitigate climate change, and works with national and local retailers to encourage more local, sustainable consumerism.
The Co-operative Food, the brand adopted by many of the larger members of the UK co-operative movement does not operate a traditional loyalty card scheme. Instead, as consumer co-operatives, they operate a profit sharing scheme whereby an annual dividend is paid to all member-owners which is proportional to the total spend with the businesses during the previous year. Such dividend schemes have existed since the Rochdale Pioneers of the 1840s. Paper record-keeping transformed in the 1960s into a trading stamp scheme managed by the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), which was gradually withdrawn as margins declined. The loyalty card concept was used by some co-operatives to restore dividend payments at the turn of the 21st century, notably by the CWS's "Dividend" card, which was replaced by The Co-operative Membership card program. The current members' dividend scheme is provided using the national co-operative brand and allows members of The Co-operative Group and many of the larger regional co-operative societies to earn their 'share of the profits' based upon their spend at many of the outlets which use The Co-operative brand rather than just at their own co-operative society (e.g. The Co-operative Group or the Midcounties Co-operative).
Formerly operated by British Airways, Airmiles was the most popular flight-related loyalty program in the UK, with 2.2. million members in 2011. Members could collect Airmiles each time they flew with British Airways or affiliated airlines, both within the International Airlines Group and the Oneworld Alliance; points could then be redeemed for flights, and was popular with both commercial and business customers. Airmiles-based programs frequently allow members to also collect points by spending on affiliated cards, such as British Airways Premium Plus credit card. A re-brand of the program in 2011 from Airmiles to Avios caused controversy as members were now required to pay taxes and fees on flights they used for redemption. The scheme became more flexible and included redemption opportunities such as car hire and days out, broadening the ways in which members can spend their points.
The oldest loyalty program in Canada is Canadian Tire money, in which the Canadian Tire company gives out coupons which look like currency. Air Miles is Canada's largest loyalty program and can be earned at more than 100 different sponsors with multiple redemption options. PC Optimum is the loyalty program used by Loblaw Companies-owned entities, including Shopper's Drug Mart, with the points redeemable against any purchase in $10 increments. More Rewards was founded in 1992 operates mostly in the Western Canadian provinces with close relations to its grocery partnerships with the Overwaitea Food Group and its small coalition of other retailers. Aeroplan began in 1984 as Air Canada's frequent flier program, but has since expanded to other partners. Department store chains Hudson's Bay and La Maison Simons both operate loyalty programs, in addition to the drug store chain London Drugs. Other notable programs include Scene by the movie theatre chain Cineplex Entertainment and Plum Rewards by the bookseller Indigo.
Almost every gas station chain in Canada offers some sort of loyalty program itself or in partnership. For example, Air Miles at Shell gas stations, PC Optimum at Esso and Mobil, Petro Points + More Rewards at Petro-Canada, and Triangle Rewards at Canadian Tire gas stations.
In the US, several major retail chains, movie theatre networks, supermarket and fish market chains, and the three major pharmacy chains require the cards in order for customers to receive the advertised loyalty price. They include (each through both its own name and its related regional chains) AMC Theatres, Best Buy, Circle K, County Market, CVS/pharmacy, Giant-Carlisle and its sister chains Giant Eagle and Giant-Landover, Hallmark, Hy-Vee, IKEA, Ingles, JCPenney, Kohl's, Kroger, Menards, Office Max, Price Chopper, Regal Entertainment Group, Rite Aid, Safeway, Sears (also used by Kmart), ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Target, Tops, Toys "R" Us (also used by Babies "R" Us), Walgreens, Wegmans, and Winn-Dixie.
Many retailers allow accumulation of fuel discounts. Some have tie-ins with airline frequent-flyer programs, and some agree to donate a percentage of sales to a designated charity. Most notably, Walmart does not have a loyalty card plan, although anyone who purchases a gift card can generally get a 3-cent discount per gallon of gas at the fuel stations located on Walmart premises, in the 23 states with those Walmart fuel stations.
The practice is common among book and music retailers, from large chains to independent retailers. In some instances, the customer purchases the card and receives a percentage discount on all purchases for a period of time (often one year), while in other instances, a customer receives a one-time percentage discount upon reaching a specified purchase level. For example, a bookseller's loyalty card program might provide a customer with a 10% off coupon once the customer has spent US$200 at the bookseller. Best Buy and Sears offer loyalty programs that offer points redeemable for dollar-amount discounts after accumulating a set number of points along with other discounts from time to time.
Independent hardware stores, such as Ace Hardware and True Value, added customer loyalty programs in order to compete more effectively against larger chains as well as gather customer data. Customers with an association with a particular brand feel benefits for being part of the program. Ace's program also offers customers a way at the time of purchase to get items at a price which would normally require completing a mail-in rebate. In addition, office supply retailers Staples and Office Depot started issuing club cards in 2005: they offer rewards in the form of credits towards future purchases on items purchased in the store or online (which items and how much credit changes periodically).
Almost all major hotel chains (Best Western, Choice Hotels, Holiday Inn, Marriott, Super 8 Motels, etc.) have cards that allow guests to earn either points (redeemable for discounts, future stays, or other prizes) and/or airline miles Hilton's HHonors program allowed guests to earn both points and miles (referenced as double-dipping) on the same stay, the only program to date that did so but which ended 1 April 2018]. All major U.S. airlines also offer rewards credit cards. Other travel related reward programs include SeaMiles, with points that can be redeemed for cruises.
Some American retailers have not implemented club cards, including grocery stores ALDI, Publix, and Whole Foods. Between 2007 and 2013 (before their purchase of Safeway), Acme Markets, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw's (all owned by Albertsons LLC) eliminated their loyalty cards in favor of discounts for all shoppers. Few states regulate club cards. As an example, supermarkets in California are subject to the Supermarket Club Card Disclosure Act of 1999.
Prominent online loyalty programs include Belly, FatWallet, Fivestars, Memolink, MonaBar, Mypoints, Perka, and Swagbucks. Some online loyalty programs focus on "other-directed" consumers including iGive.com, Schoolpop, The BSP Rewards Network, and Upromise.
Cardmobili, Foursquare, and Shopkick focus on using smartphones such as the Android and iPhone. Since March 2011, Foursquare has partnered with American Express to provide Foursquare points when using an American Express card, and since 21 November 2011, Shopkick has partnered with Visa to provide Shopkick points when using a Visa card at locations such as Best Buy, Old Navy, or Toys "R" Us.
Many loyalty programs operate in Australia, ranging from retail chains, individual stores, hotels, car hire businesses, credit card schemes, besides others. The largest loyalty program is flybuys, established in 1994 and owned by Coles. It has more than 10 million cardholders in over 5.5 million Australian households. A consumer study of Australian loyalty programs in 2013 showed flybuys as easily the most popular program in Australia. Rival retailer Woolworths launched its Everyday Rewards fuel discount card nationally in 2009 and by August 2010 had 5.1 million cardholders, with 2.7 million linked to the Qantas Frequent Flyer program.
Among other Australian retailers, the largest programs are Myer's MYER one program, the Priceline Club Card, Amcal Club, Millers Retail Club, and the BB Retail Capital Pulse Rewards program. Pulse has more than a million members.
All major Australian banks offer credit cards with reward programs. Many are linked directly to airline rewards programs such as the Qantas Frequent Flyer program or Virgin Australia's Velocity Frequent Flyer program. Alternatively, some banks and credit card companies have their own programs, with points being either redeemable or transferable to various airline rewards programs.
The largest loyalty program in New Zealand is Flybuys. Other programs include the New Zealand Automobile Association AA Smartfuel programme and Countdown supermarket's Onecard. Kachingo was a short-lived "card free" programme.
There has been a move away from traditional magnetic card, stamp, or punchcard based schemes to online and mobile online loyalty programs. While these schemes vary, the common element is a push toward eradication of a traditional card, in favour of an electronic equivalent. The choice of medium is often a QR code. Some prominent examples are Austrian based mobile-pocket established in 2009, the US-based Punchd (discontinued from June 2013,), which became part of Google in 2011. and an Australian-based loyalty card application called Stamp Me which incorporates iBeacon technology. Others, like Loopy Loyalty (HK), Loyalli (UK), Perka (US), and Whisqr Loyalty (CA), have offered similar programs. Passbook by Apple is the first attempt to standardize the format of mobile loyalty cards.
With the introduction of host card emulation (HCE) and near field communication (NFC) technology for mobile applications, traditional contactless smart cards for prepaid and loyalty programs are emulated in a smartphone. Google Wallet adopted these technologies for mobile off-line payment application.
The major advantage of off-line over the on-line system is that the user's smartphone does not have to be online, and the transaction is fast. In addition, multiple emulated cards can be stored in a smartphone to support multi-merchant loyalty programs. Consequently, the user does not need to carry many physical cards anymore.
In three cities, some independent coffee shops have set up experimental 'disloyalty card' programs, which reward customers for visiting a variety of coffee shops.
Some companies complain that loyalty programs discount goods to people who are buying their goods anyway, and the expense of participating in these programs rarely generates a good return on the investment. Some other critics regard discounted prices and rewards as bribes to manipulate customer loyalty and purchasing decisions,
or in the case of infrequent spenders, a means of subsidizing them.
A 2015 study found that most supermarket loyalty cards in the United States do not offer any real value to their customers. In fact, commercial use of customers' personal data collected as part of loyalty programs has the potential for abuse; it is highly likely that consumer purchases are tracked and used for marketing research to increase the efficiency of marketing and advertising, which is one of the purposes of the loyalty card. For some customers, participating in a loyalty program (even with a fake or anonymous card) funds activities that violate privacy. Consumers have also expressed concern about the integration of RFID technology into loyalty-card systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18624 |
Ludwig Von Drake
Professor Ludwig Von Drake is one of Walt Disney's cartoon and comic book characters. He was first introduced on September 24, 1961, as the presenter (and singer of "The Spectrum Song") in the cartoon "An Adventure in Color", part of the first episode of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" on NBC. Said to be an uncle of Donald Duck, he is described as a scientist, lecturer, psychologist, and world traveler. The character displayed his "expert" knowledge on a variety of subjects in eighteen episodes of the classic anthology series, as well as on a number of Disneyland Records.
Paul Frees was the original voice of Ludwig Von Drake. After Frees retired from the role, the character was briefly voiced by Walker Edmiston. Since 1987, he has been voiced by Corey Burton.
Ludwig Von Drake comes from Vienna, Austria and has a fascination with knowledge. Since his youth he has been trying to obtain as many diplomas, in any science, as possible. When he is consulted by other family members, it is a running gag that he almost invariably turns out to have a university degree relevant for whatever information they are seeking. He is often shown as having little social competence, however, and is often portrayed as being very forgetful, sometimes even somewhat senile. In the comics Ludwig usually visits with Donald Duck and Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. On occasion, Daisy Duck would coax (or even trick) the professor into giving lectures and tours for her ladies' club. Sometimes Ludwig and Gyro Gearloose have competed as to who is the greater inventor. He can play the piano and acoustic guitar, as shown in a few television specials and more.
In the "Wonderful World of Color" episode "Kids is Kids", Ludwig states that he is a bachelor. In the "Wonderful World of Color" episode "The Hunting Instinct", Walt Disney states Ludwig is Donald Duck's father's brother. According to Walt Disney, Donald decided to adopt his maternal surname, Duck, when he got into show business, and that's the reason why he isn't popularly known as Donald Von Drake, nevertheless, in comic stories Carl Barks established Donald's paternal surname as Duck, his father being son of Grandma Duck, and his maternal one as McDuck, since he's son of Scrooge McDuck's younger sister, Hortense McDuck.
In the comic strips by the famous duo of comic artists Bob Karp and Al Taliaferro, Donald and his nephews usually call him 'Uncle Ludwig', but in the comic stories he is generally called 'Ludwig' or 'Professor' by them. Daisy Duck refers to Ludwig as sort of an uncle of Donald in the first Sunday strip where his name is mentioned. In the story "Duckburg, U.S.A.", published in "Ludwig Von Drake" #1 (November 1961), Professor Ludwig Von Drake arrives in Duckburg by train, and it is shown that Donald Duck had never seen this Austrian relative before, not even in a picture. Grandma Duck, Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Daisy Duck, Gladstone Gander, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Gus Goose, and Gyro Gearloose also appear in this same story waiting to know Ludwig at the train station, and Grandma enthusiastically exclaims, "Professor Ludwig Von Drake! Such a nice-sounding name!". According to an explanation created by Don Rosa's personal family tree, he would have to be married to Donald Duck's aunt, Matilda McDuck, making him Scrooge's brother-in-law. Nevertheless, Ludwig exclaims in the Christmas story "The Cuckoo Clock Caper" that he and Scrooge are "joined in good fellowship". Besides, he was shown as a member of the "Absentminded Dating Club", being the suitor of another member of this same club in some old comic strips, a duck woman called Alice. Therefore, Ludwig's marital status is officially unmarried.
In some old comic stories where Ludwig visits Grandma on her farm, it's clear that they have a close relationship, as shown in the story "Message From Space", where Grandma exclaims, "You need rest, dear boy!", after thinking he had a kind of nervous breakdown. In "Pigeon Panic" Ludwig exclaims, "Ho! You know you can depend on me!", after Grandma warned him to be careful with her smartest homer. There is an enlightening sequence of two panels in the story "The Rural Eggs-pert", where Ludwig is resting in an old chair of Grandma's house when an antique buyer asks Grandma to sell him "this fine old specimen" (the chair) and she answers, "Well, it's been in the family for years, but I could do without it!", making Ludwig astonished, since he thinks she's referring to him as if he was a livestock. He wouldn't have reacted this way if he wasn't her relative. In the last panel of the story "Barn Dance Doctor", Grandma refers to Ludwig as her "cityfied cousin". Since it was stipulated by Don Rosa that her father was a "Coot" and her mother was a "Gadwall", it's not clear if Ludwig Von Drake is related to Elvira Coot through her father or her mother. Elvira could have an Austrian ascendancy to explain her kinship to Ludwig.
In the story "The Family Tree Spree", Donald scares of seeing Ludwig's specs on the floor and thinks about them as "Uncle Ludwig's specs". In the end of this same story, it's revealed that Ludwig also appears in Donald's paternal family tree, wherein he and Donald both have an ancestor called Colombust Duck. Since Humperdink Duck (aka Grandpa Duck), Grandma Duck's deceased husband, was probably almost contemporary with Ludwig Von Drake, it's possible to consider they were half-brothers, Donald being thus Ludwig's grandnephew. Ludwig reveals to Daisy and her friends in "Blown Up Genius" that he came from a long line of glass blowers. In "Winning Ways", Daisy and her friends try to prepare Ludwig's favorite dish, called "Wiener Schnitzel a la Weltschmerz", whose recipe belonged to Ludwig's great grandmother. Ludwig is really excited about it because he has not eaten that dish since he left Austria and came to Duckburg to know his relatives of Donald's paternal family. In "The Big Payoff", it's revealed that he spent many months living in Donald's house since his arrival in Duckburg. Ludwig wins a TV chess challenge in this comic story, making Donald exclaim, "Yippee! He did it! Now he can pay all he's owed us (he and his nephews) for these many months!". According to the story "The Jewels of Skull Rock", Ludwig spent six months in Donald's house.
Those eleven stories mentioned above were drawn by Tony Strobl, who was the cartoonist responsible for introducing Professor Ludwig into American Disney comic books. Actually, Ludwig's first comic book appearance was in a not previously mentioned story by Strobl, "The Scene Stealer", first published in October, 1961. The events showed in this one presumably happened after the ones showed in "Duckburg, U.S.A.", which was published two months later.
Professor Ludwig Von Drake was introduced as a new character alongside Walt Disney himself in the very first episode of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" after the series was moved to NBC in the fall of 1961. He was designed, and frequently animated, by Milt Kahl and Ward Kimball, two of Disney's Nine Old Men of animators.
Wonderful World of Color appearances (1960s)
Among his many interests is psychology, and he has tried to make a psychological study of his nephew Donald Duck. Ludwig was best fleshed out in this anthology cartoon, where Donald's psychology was examined, as we got to see some of his worst temper tantrums. Ludwig however was well understood by the end of the cartoon. His Austrian German ancestry betrayed itself in his language - for example "as we say in the psychiatry" is a very typical Germanism. In comics translated into German he sometimes speaks with an Austrian accent, like "ein bisserl" instead of "ein bisschen". He also enjoys several off color jokes, for instance "What you have here is a depressed Duck! And there is nothing worse than depressed duck...unless you like depressed duck...but the taste is sometimes..." making a pun off of the dish of pressed duck.
Von Drake has appeared on several Disney animated cartoon series: "DuckTales", "Raw Toonage", "Bonkers", "Mickey Mouse Works", "Quack Pack", "Disney's House of Mouse", "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", "Mickey Mouse", "Mickey and the Roadster Racers", DuckTales (2017 TV series) and in numerous television specials. In all of these, Von Drake wears a pink shirt, black tie, red vest, and a lab coat.
In "House of Mouse", Von Drake appears as a recurring character. In "Ask Von Drake", Mickey tries to prove that Ludwig Von Drake doesn't know everything. At the end, Mickey convinces him that during the headcount of all the Disney characters, he forgot himself. Also, in "House of Genius", Ludwig creates robot duplicates of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Pluto. At the end, when Ludwig brings in a robot duplicate of himself, Mickey tells the robot to send the real Ludwig packing.
Ludwig appears as a recurring character in the "DuckTales" reboot as the head of S.H.U.S.H .
In the Disney's Sing-Along Songs series of videos, he has hosted or co-hosted these six volumes:
In 1961 Disneyland Records released the LP "Professor Ludwig Von Drake". The LP had two songs from the character's debut in the "An Adventure in Color" episode ("The Green with Envy Blues" and "The Spectrum Song"), as well as new songs and comedy bits.
The track list for the "Ludwig Von Drake" LP:
As of February 2010, the digitally remastered LP can be downloaded exclusively at the iTunes Store.
The Disney studio encouraged the writers of Duck comics to introduce this new character in print, and already in September 1961, Von Drake started appearing in Al Taliaferro and Bob Karp's featured daily strips. However, aside from a solitary cameo appearance in a one-page story in "Uncle Scrooge" #54 (December 1964), the character was not used by leading Disney duck artist Carl Barks.
In 1961, Dell Comics launched a comic book series starring Von Drake and illustrated by Tony Strobl, but it only lasted for four issues before being discontinued. The character made subsequent appearances in other comic titles such as "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories" and in the "Donald Duck" newspaper strip.
Ludwig also appeared in a 1962 sequence of the annual "Disney Christmas Story" comic strip. In "Sleeping Beauty's Christmas Story", the professor helps Princess Aurora break Maleficent's spell.
Professor Ludwig has often been used by Italian cartoonists, including in some of the long sagas inspired by famous books that they usually produce with the Duck Family, such as "La storia di Marco Polo detta Il Milione" (free translation "The Million - A Story of Marco Polo") and "Paperino in: Il mondo perduto" (free translation "Donald in: The Lost World"). As a result, he has achieved a quite significant popularity in Italy (he's known there as Pico De' Paperis) where he appears as a scholar with multiple degrees in different subject (even the more improbable ones) rather than a scientist.
In an episode of "Goof Troop", it was revealed that Goofy has an uncle named Ludwig Von Goof. Von Goof is also a scientist, whose appearance is almost identical to Von Drake, except for the fact that Ludwig Von Drake is a duck and Ludwig Von Goof is a dog. His appearance is also similar to that of his brother in-law, Scrooge McDuck. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18625 |
Los Altos, California
Los Altos () is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in northern Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Los Altos means "the heights" in Spanish. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census.
Most of the city's growth occurred between 1950 and 1980. Originally an agricultural town with many summer cottages and apricot orchards, Los Altos is now a town in Silicon Valley. Los Altos has commercial zones, strictly limited to the downtown area, as well as small shopping and office parks lining Foothill Expressway and El Camino Real.
The area was originally called Banks and Braes.
Paul Shoup, an executive of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and his colleagues formed the Altos Land Company in 1906 and started the development of Los Altos. The company acquired 140 acres of land from Sarah Winchester. Shoup wanted to link Palo Alto and Los Gatos by making Los Altos a commuter town. It continued a train-a-day operation to and from San Francisco.
In 1908, Southern Pacific Railroad began running steam train service through Los Altos (April 19, 1908) with five trains per day. Two freight cars served as train depot. Also, the first commercial building, Eschenbruecher's Hardware, was built in downtown. In 1913, the craftsman-style Los Altos train station was built at 288 First Street.
By 1949, many residents were dissatisfied with the zoning policy of Santa Clara county. Also, there was a constant threat of being annexed by neighboring Palo Alto and Mountain View, so they decided to incorporate. Los Altos became the eleventh city in Santa Clara county on December 1, 1952.
Train service stopped its operation in January 1964, and the train track became Foothill Expressway. Los Altos may have a legitimate claim to having the first scientifically designed sound baffle in the year 1970. Santa Clara County undertook a seminal study to calculate the effects of alternate soundwall designs along Foothill Expressway. The resulting wall brought about the predicted reduction of seven to ten decibels in noise pollution levels experienced by adjacent homes.
In 1976, Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first 50 Apple I computers in Jobs's garage in Los Altos.
In 2004, landlord Judy Fusco rented her Los Altos home, later known as 'Casa Facebook', to Mark Zuckerberg where he and a few other associates scaled Facebook from 200,000 members to 2.5 million.
Los Altos is bordered by Los Altos Hills to the west, Palo Alto to the north and west, Mountain View to the north and east, Sunnyvale to the east, and Cupertino to the southeast.
Los Altos is crossed by three creeks that flow north to San Francisco Bay, Adobe Creek on its western boundary, Stevens Creek on its eastern boundary and Permanente Creek in the middle. Hale Creek is tributary to Permanente Creek, and Permanente Creek is now largely diverted to Stevens Creek by a diversion channel. All three creeks originate on the flanks of Black Mountain.
The 2010 United States Census reported that Los Altos had a population of 28,976. The population density was (28976/6.487) round 1 people per square mile (((1/2.59)*(28976/6.487)) round 1/km2). The racial makeup of Los Altos was 20,459 (70.6%) White, 148 (0.5%) African American, 48 (0.2%) Native American, 6,815 (23.5%) Asian, 59 (0.2%) Pacific Islander, 195 (0.7%) from other races, and 1,252 (4.3%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1,132 persons (3.9%).
The Census reported that 28,749 people (99.2% of the population) lived in households, 34 (0.1%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 193 (0.7%) were institutionalized.
There were 10,745 households, out of which 4,067 (37.9%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 7,476 (69.6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 599 (5.6%) had a female householder with no husband present, 228 (2.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 199 (1.9%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 55 (0.5%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 2,086 households (19.4%) were made up of individuals and 1,228 (11.4%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.68. There were 8,303 families (77.3% of all households); the average family size was 3.08.
The population was spread out with 7,560 people (26.1%) under the age of 18, 1,006 people (3.5%) aged 18 to 24, 5,273 people (18.2%) aged 25 to 44, 9,353 people (32.3%) aged 45 to 64, and 5,784 people (20.0%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 46.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.9 males.
There were 11,204 housing units at an average density of (11204/6.487) round 1 per square mile (((1/2.59)*(11204/6.487)) round 1/km2), of which 9,002 (83.8%) were owner-occupied, and 1,743 (16.2%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.7%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.0%. 24,669 people (85.1% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 4,080 people (14.1%) lived in rental housing units.
The median household income of Los Altos for 2013–2017 was $208,309. The average home listing price in 2014 was $1.96 million. In 2017, "Forbes" ranked Los Altos (94022 and 94024) as the 3rd and 48th most expensive ZIP codes in the United States with median home prices of $7,755,000 and $3,431,615, respectively. In 2018, data from the American Community Survey revealed that Los Altos was the fifth wealthiest city in the United States.
As of the census of 2000, there were 27,693 people, 10,462 households, and 8,024 families residing in the city. The population density was (27693/6.487) round 1 people per square mile (((1/2.59)*(27693/6.487)) round 1/km2). There were 10,727 housing units at an average density of (10727/6.487) round 1 per square mile (((1/2.59)*(10727/6.487)) round 1/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 80.35% White, 15.42% Asian, 0.47% African American, 0.17% Native American, 0.16% Pacific Islander, 0.66% from other races, and 2.44% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race constituted 3.76% of the population.
Of 10,462 households, 33.6% had minor children living with them, 69.4% were married couples living together, 5.4% had a female head with no husband present, and 23.3% were non-families. 18.7% were singles including 9.8% 65 or older. The average household size was 2.61 and the average family size was 2.98.
The median age was 44 years, much higher than the 35.3 national figure. 23.7% were under 18, 3.5% from 18 to 24, 24.5% from 25 to 44, 29.1% from 45 to 64, and 19.3% were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females, there were 93.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.0 males.
Approximately 2,900 people would have considered themselves a resident of Los Altos.
Los Altos strives to maintain a semi-rural atmosphere. Los Altos has few sidewalks except in commercial zones and along arterial roads. Minimum lot size for most residential housing is one-quarter of an acre. Most roads have broad dirt shoulders and little or no street lighting. The civic center sits in the middle of an orchard, a remnant of those that once covered the area. The downtown is a triangle with arterials and collector streets on all sides that enable most through traffic to bypass Main Street.
Many Los Altos homes fetch $2 million and higher, putting the city (along with neighboring Los Altos Hills, with which it shares ZIP codes) at numbers 24 and 28 on Forbes' "Most Expensive ZIP Codes in America" list in 2007. In 2015, "Forbes" placed Los Altos (ZIP codes 94022 and 94024) as the 11th and 57th most expensive ZIP codes in the United States, behind such cities as Atherton, California and Sagaponack, New York. For the 94022 ZIP code, which includes parts of Los Altos Hills, California the median home price is $4.9 million with an average of 120 days on the market. For the 94024 ZIP code, the median home price is $2.8 million with an average of 36 days on the market.
Since the mid-1990s, downtown Los Altos has experienced mild economic difficulties due to competition from nearby shopping centers and chain stores, as well as its lack of a hotel or movie theater. Revitalizing downtown is a major issue in city politics.
According to the City's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:
In the California State Legislature, Los Altos is in , and in .
In the United States House of Representatives, Los Altos is in .
Primary and middle school students attend schools in the Los Altos School District, the Cupertino Union School District, or Bullis Charter School (K–8). The Los Altos School District has one of the highest average API scores in California and includes seven elementary schools in the Los Altos–Mountain View area.
Local residents generally attend high school in one of two public school districts: Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, or Fremont Union High School District.
All of the public schools are highly regarded, and many graduates of Los Altos area high schools continue their education at well-known universities.
Los Altos is also served by highly regarded private and religious schools. St. Nicholas School, St. Simon School, Miramonte Elementary School, (JrK–8th) Canterbury Christian School (K–6th), the Lower and Middle Campuses (K–6th) of Pinewood School, The School for Independent Learners, and the lower school campus of the Waldorf School of the Peninsula are located within city limits. Others nearby include St. Francis High School (Mountain View), Mountain View Academy, and The King's Academy (Sunnyvale). Other schools farther away with students from Los Altos include Mitty High School, Menlo School, Woodside Priory School, Castilleja School, The Harker School, and Bellarmine College Preparatory.
Santa Clara County Library operates the Los Altos Library and the Woodland Branch Library in Los Altos.
Adobe Creek flows through Redwood Grove, a nature preserve off University Avenue in Los Altos purchased by the city in 1974. In October 2009 Los Altos contracted with Acterra to remove non-native plants and revitalize the redwood, oak woodland, riparian and grassland ecosystems by installing native plants, improving soil conditions, and creating habitat for wildlife such as bird houses and native bee boxes. The coast redwoods ("Sequoia sempervirens") were transplanted by the Halsey family from a location on Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains and replaced the native willows. The historic Halsey House, built in the late 1920s by Theodore and Emma Halsey, is a good example of Spanish Revival architecture. The city designated Halsey House a local landmark in 1981 and until recently it housed the Florence Fava collection of Coastanoan or Ohlone Indian artifacts from a nearby archeological excavation in Los Altos Hills (now moved to the Los Altos History House). On June 16, 2010 the Los Altos City Council finalized the purchase of of creekside property from Delbert and Marlene Beumer, who wanted to provide a safe pathway connecting Shoup Park and Redwood Grove.
Steelhead trout ("Oncorhynchus mykiss") occurred historically in Adobe Creek. However, tidal gates at the mouth of Adobe Creek as well as culverts at the El Camino Real and Interstate 280 overpasses probably preclude the passage of migrating salmonids, even though the reaches upstream from Hidden Villa have been judged excellent trout habitat.
Los Altos has a variety of youth-oriented sports organizations, programs, and after-school activities. Some examples:
The "Los Altos Town Crier", a weekly, is the primary newspaper for the town, "serving the Hometown of Silicon Valley since 1947." The "San Jose Mercury News" is the primary daily newspaper serving the town, delivering a Peninsula Section to Los Altans and locations north in lieu of the Local section delivered to those in San Jose and other communities closer to San Jose.
Los Altos is near the San Andreas Fault and subject to earthquakes.
the main local effort was to help rebuild nearby Santa Cruz, which was nearly destroyed.
Located in one of Santa Clara Valley's few remaining apricot orchards, the Los Altos History Museum explores the rich history of local people and how the use of the land over time has transformed the agricultural paradise once known as the "Valley of Heart's Delight" into the technology hub that is today's Silicon Valley.
Opened in spring of 2001 adjacent to the Los Altos Library, the Los Altos History Museum occupies an building – built entirely with private donations; ownership went to the town in 2002. The Museum features a changing exhibits gallery as well as the permanent exhibit, "Crown of the Peninsula".
With the mission to "collect, preserve and interpret the history of the Los Altos area," the Museum includes interactive exhibits and hands-on activities to encourage children and adults to learn about the community. Other programs include third and fourth grade tours and curricula for local school children, oral history collections, a traveling Ohlone kit, and much more.
There's more history just across the lushly landscaped courtyard in the landmark J. Gilbert Smith House. Built in 1905 and refurbished, the home nestles under majestic heritage oaks and replicates a 1930s farmhouse. Visitors are welcome to enjoy the gardens and picnic tables even when the House and Museum are closed.
Los Altos had four sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International:
The program was run by the non-profit Los Altos Sister Cities, Inc., founded in 1988. That organization later decided to cease its participation and is now dissolved. Los Altos no longer participates in the sister cities program. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18627 |
Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome
Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) is a rare autoimmune disorder characterized by muscle weakness of the limbs.
Around 60% of those with LEMS have an underlying malignancy, most commonly small-cell lung cancer; it is therefore regarded as a paraneoplastic syndrome (a condition that arises as a result of cancer elsewhere in the body). It is the result of antibodies against presynaptic voltage-gated calcium channels, and likely other nerve terminal proteins, in the neuromuscular junction (the connection between nerves and the muscle that they supply). The diagnosis is usually confirmed with electromyography and blood tests; these also distinguish it from myasthenia gravis, a related autoimmune neuromuscular disease.
If the disease is associated with cancer, direct treatment of the cancer often relieves the symptoms of LEMS. Other treatments often used are steroids, azathioprine, which suppress the immune system, intravenous immunoglobulin, which outcompetes autoreactive antibody for Fc receptors, and pyridostigmine and 3,4-diaminopyridine, which enhance the neuromuscular transmission. Occasionally, plasma exchange is required to remove the antibodies.
The condition affects about 3.4 per million people. LEMS usually occurs in people over 40 years of age, but may occur at any age.
The weakness from LEMS typically involves the muscles of the proximal arms and legs (the muscles closer to the trunk). In contrast to myasthenia gravis, the weakness affects the legs more than the arms. This leads to difficulties climbing stairs and rising from a sitting position. Weakness is often relieved temporarily after exertion or physical exercise. High temperatures can worsen the symptoms. Weakness of the bulbar muscles (muscles of the mouth and throat) is occasionally encountered. Weakness of the eye muscles is uncommon. Some may have double vision, drooping of the eyelids and difficulty swallowing, but generally only together with leg weakness; this too distinguishes LEMS from myasthenia gravis, in which eye signs are much more common. In the advanced stages of the disease, weakness of the respiratory muscles may occur. Some may also experience problems with coordination (ataxia).
Three-quarters of people with LEMS also have disruption of the autonomic nervous system. This may be experienced as a dry mouth, constipation, blurred vision, impaired sweating, and orthostatic hypotension (falls in blood pressure on standing, potentially leading to blackouts). Some report a metallic taste in the mouth.
On neurological examination, the weakness demonstrated with normal testing of power is often less severe than would be expected on the basis of the symptoms. Strength improves further with repeated testing, e.g. improvement of power on repeated hand grip (a phenomenon known as "Lambert's sign"). At rest, reflexes are typically reduced; with muscle use, reflex strength increases. This is a characteristic feature of LEMS. The pupillary light reflex may be sluggish.
In LEMS associated with lung cancer, most have no suggestive symptoms of cancer at the time, such as cough, coughing blood, and unintentional weight loss. LEMS associated with lung cancer may be more severe.
LEMS is often associated with lung cancer (50–70%), specifically small-cell carcinoma, making LEMS a paraneoplastic syndrome. Of the people with small-cell lung cancer, 1–3% have LEMS. In most of these cases, LEMS is the first symptom of the lung cancer, and it is otherwise asymptomatic.
LEMS may also be associated with autoimmune diseases, such as hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid gland) or diabetes mellitus type 1. Myasthenia gravis, too, may happen in the presence of tumors (thymoma, a tumor of the thymus in the chest); people with MG without a tumor and people with LEMS without a tumor have similar genetic variations that seem to predispose them to these diseases. HLA-DR3-B8 (an HLA subtype), in particular, seems to predispose to LEMS.
In normal neuromuscular function, a nerve impulse is carried down the axon (the long projection of a nerve cell) from the spinal cord. At the nerve ending in the neuromuscular junction, where the impulse is transferred to the muscle cell, the nerve impulse leads to the opening of voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCC), the influx of calcium ions into the nerve terminal, and the calcium-dependent triggering of synaptic vesicle fusion with plasma membrane. These synaptic vesicles contain acetylcholine, which is released into the synaptic cleft and stimulates the acetylcholine receptors on the muscle. The muscle then contracts.
In LEMS, antibodies against VGCC, particularly the P/Q-type VGCC, decrease the amount of calcium that can enter the nerve ending, hence less acetylcholine can be released from the neuromuscular junction. Apart from skeletal muscle, the autonomic nervous system also requires acetylcholine neurotransmission; this explains the occurrence of autonomic symptoms in LEMS. P/Q voltage-gated calcium channels are also found in the cerebellum, explaining why some experience problems with coordination. The antibodies bind particularly to the part of the receptor known as the "domain III S5–S6 linker peptide". Antibodies may also bind other VGCCs. Some have antibodies that bind synaptotagmin, the protein sensor for calcium-regulated vesicle fusion. Many people with LEMS, both with and without VGCC antibodies, have detectable antibodies against the M1 subtype of the acetylcholine receptor; their presence may participate in a lack of compensation for the weak calcium influx.
Apart from the decreased calcium influx, a disruption of active zone vesicle release sites also occurs, which may also be antibody-dependent, since people with LEMS have antibodies to components of these active zones (including voltage-dependent calcium channels). Together, these abnormalities lead to the decrease in muscle contractility. Repeated stimuli over a period of about 10 seconds eventually lead to sufficient delivery of calcium, and an increase in muscle contraction to normal levels, which can be demonstrated using an electrodiagnostic medicine study called needle electromyography by increasing amplitude of repeated compound muscle action potentials.
The antibodies found in LEMS associated with lung cancer also bind to calcium channels in the cancer cells, and it is presumed that the antibodies originally develop as a reaction to these cells. It has been suggested that the immune reaction to the cancer cells suppresses their growth and improves the prognosis from the cancer.
The diagnosis is usually made with nerve conduction study (NCS) and electromyography (EMG), which is one of the standard tests in the investigation of otherwise unexplained muscle weakness. EMG involves the insertion of small needles into the muscles. NCS involves administering small electrical impulses to the nerves, on the surface of the skin, and measuring the electrical response of the muscle in question. NCS investigation in LEMS primarily involves evaluation of compound motor action potentials (CMAPs) of effected muscles and sometimes EMG single-fiber examination can be used.
CMAPs show small amplitudes but normal latency and conduction velocities. If repeated impulses are administered (2 per second or 2 Hz), it is normal for CMAP amplitudes to become smaller as the acetylcholine in the motor end plate is depleted. In LEMS, this decrease is larger than observed normally. Eventually, stored acetylcholine is made available, and the amplitudes increase again. In LEMS, this remains insufficient to reach a level sufficient for transmission of an impulse from nerve to muscle; all can be attributed to insufficient calcium in the nerve terminal. A similar pattern is witnessed in myasthenia gravis. In LEMS, in response to exercising the muscle, the CMAP amplitude increases greatly (over 200%, often much more). This also occurs on the administration of a rapid burst of electrical stimuli (20 impulses per second for 10 seconds). This is attributed to the influx of calcium in response to these stimuli. On single-fiber examination, features may include increased jitter (seen in other diseases of neuromuscular transmission) and blocking.
Blood tests may be performed to exclude other causes of muscle disease (elevated creatine kinase may indicate a myositis, and abnormal thyroid function tests may indicate thyrotoxic myopathy). Antibodies against voltage-gated calcium channels can be identified in 85% of people with EMG-confirmed LEMS. Once LEMS is diagnosed, investigations such as a CT scan of the chest are usually performed to identify any possible underlying lung tumors. Around 50–60% of these are discovered immediately after the diagnosis of LEMS. The remainder is diagnosed later, but usually within two years and typically within four years. As a result, scans are typically repeated every six months for the first two years after diagnosis. While CT of the lungs is usually adequate, a positron emission tomography scan of the body may also be performed to search for an occult tumour, particularly of the lung.
If LEMS is caused by an underlying cancer, treatment of the cancer usually leads to resolution of the symptoms. Treatment usually consists of chemotherapy, with radiation therapy in those with limited disease.
Some evidence supports the use of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG). Immune suppression tends to be less effective than in other autoimmune diseases. Prednisolone (a glucocorticoid or steroid) suppresses the immune response, and the steroid-sparing agent azathioprine may replace it once therapeutic effect has been achieved. IVIG may be used with a degree of effectiveness. Plasma exchange (or plasmapheresis), the removal of plasma proteins such as antibodies and replacement with normal plasma, may provide improvement in acute severe weakness. Again, plasma exchange is less effective than in other related conditions such as myasthenia gravis, and additional immunosuppressive medication is often needed.
Three other treatment modalities also aim at improving LEMS symptoms, namely pyridostigmine, 3,4-diaminopyridine (amifampridine), and guanidine. They work to improve neuromuscular transmission.
Tentative evidence supports 3,4-diaminopyridine] at least for a few weeks. The 3,4-diaminopyridine base or the water-soluble 3,4-diaminopyridine phosphate may be used. Both 3,4-diaminopyridine formulations delay the repolarization of nerve terminals after a discharge, thereby allowing more calcium to accumulate in the nerve terminal.
Pyridostigmine decreases the degradation of acetylcholine after release into the synaptic cleft, and thereby improves muscle contraction. An older agent, guanidine, causes many side effects and is not recommended. 4-Aminopyridine (dalfampridine), an agent related to 3,4-aminopyridine, causes more side effects than 3,4-DAP and is also not recommended.
Anderson and colleagues from St Thomas' Hospital, London, were the first to mention a case with possible clinical findings of LEMS in 1953, but Lambert, Eaton, and Rooke at the Mayo Clinic were the first physicians to substantially describe the clinical and electrophysiological findings of the disease in 1956. In 1972, the clustering of LEMS with other autoimmune diseases led to the hypothesis that it was caused by autoimmunity. Studies in the 1980s confirmed the autoimmune nature, and research in the 1990s demonstrated the link with antibodies against P/Q-type voltage-gated calcium channels. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18628 |
Liqueur
A liqueur (; ; ) is an alcoholic drink composed of distilled spirits and additional flavorings such as sugar, fruits, herbs, and spices. Often served with or after dessert, they are typically heavily sweetened and un-aged beyond a resting period during production, when necessary, for their flavors to mingle.
Liqueurs are historical descendants of herbal medicines. They were made in Italy as early as the 13th century, often prepared by monks (for example, Chartreuse). Today they are produced the world over, commonly served neat, over ice, with coffee, in cocktails, and used in cooking.
In some areas of the United States and Canada liqueurs are also referred to as cordials or schnapps, though the terms refer to different beverages elsewhere.
The French word "liqueur" is derived from the Latin "liquifacere", which means "to dissolve".
In some parts of the United States and Canada, liqueurs may be referred to as cordials, or schnapps. This can cause confusion as in the United Kingdom a cordial would refer to a non-alcoholic concentrated fruit syrup, typically diluted to taste and consumed as a non-carbonated soft drink. Schnapps, on the other hand, can refer to any distilled beverage in Germany and aquavit in Scandinavian countries.
In the United States and Canada, where spirits are often called "liquor" (), there is often confusion discerning between liqueurs and liquors, due to the many different types of flavored spirits that are available today (e.g., flavored vodka). Liqueurs generally contain a lower alcohol content (15–30% ABV) than spirits and it has sweetener mixed, while some can have an ABV as high as 55%.
Under the Food and Drug Regulations (C.R.C., c. 870), liqueurs are produced from mixing alcohol with plant materials. These materials include juices or extracts from fruits, flowers, leaves or other plant materials. The extracts are obtained by soaking, filtering or softening the plant substances. A sweetening agent should be added in an amount that is at least 2.5 percent of the finished liqueur. The alcohol percentage shall be at least 23%. It may also contain natural or artificial flavouring and color.
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau regulates liqueurs similarly to Canada, requiring that alcohol be mixed with plant products and sweeteners be added to at least 2.5% by weight.
Some liqueurs are prepared by infusing certain woods, fruits, or flowers in either water or alcohol and adding sugar or other items. Others are distilled from aromatic or flavoring agents.
Anise and Rakı liqueurs have the property of turning from transparent to cloudy when added to water: the oil of anise remains in solution in the presence of a high concentration of alcohol, but crystallizes when the alcohol concentration is reduced; this is known as the ouzo effect.
Liqueurs are sometimes mixed into cocktails to provide flavor.
Layered drinks are made by floating different-colored liqueurs in separate layers. Each liqueur is poured slowly into a glass over the back of a spoon or down a glass rod, so that the liquids of different densities remain unmixed, creating a striped effect. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18629 |
Lilith
Lilith (; "Lîlîṯ") is a figure in Jewish mythology, developed earliest in the Babylonian Talmud (3rd to 5th century AD). From AD 700–1000 onwards Lilith appears as Adam's first wife, created at the same time (Rosh Hashanah) and from the same clay as Adam—compare . The figure of Lilith may relate in part to a historically earlier class of female demons ("lilītu") in ancient Mesopotamian religion, found in cuneiform texts of Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, and Babylonia.
Lilith continues to serve as source material in modern western culture, literature, occultism, fantasy, and horror.
In some Jewish folklore, such as the satirical "Alphabet of Sirach" (c. AD 700–1000), Lilith appears as Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time (Rosh Hashanah) and from the same clay as Adam — compare (this contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam's ribs: ). The legend of Lilith developed extensively during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadah, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism. For example, in the 13th-century writings of Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she had coupled with the archangel Samael.
Interpretations of Lilith found in later Jewish materials are plentiful, but little information has survived relating to the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian view of this class of demons. While researchers almost universally agree that a connection exists, recent scholarship has disputed the relevance of two sources previously used to connect the Jewish "lilith" to an Akkadian "lilītu" — the Gilgamesh appendix and the Arslan Tash amulets. (see below for discussion of these two problematic sources) "Other scholars, such as Lowell K. Handy, agree that Lilith derives from Mesopotamian demons but argue against finding evidence of the Hebrew Lilith in many of the epigraphical and artifactual sources frequently cited as such (e.g., the Sumerian Gilgamesh fragment, the Sumerian incantation from Arshlan-Tash)."
In Hebrew-language texts, the term "lilith" or "lilit" (translated as "night-creatures", "night-monster", "night-hag", or "screech-owl") first occurs in a list of animals in , either in singular or plural form according to variations in the earliest manuscripts. Commentators and interpreters often envision the figure of Lilith as a dangerous demon of the night, who is sexually wanton, and who steals babies in the darkness. In the Dead Sea Scrolls "4Q510-511", the term first occurs in a list of monsters. Jewish magical inscriptions on bowls and amulets from the 6th century AD onwards identify Lilith as a female demon and provide the first visual depictions of her.
In the Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, the terms "lili" and "līlītu" mean spirits. Some uses of "līlītu" are listed in The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD, 1956, L.190), in Wolfram von Soden's "Akkadisches Handwörterbuch" (AHw, p. 553), and "Reallexikon der Assyriologie" (RLA, p. 47).
The Sumerian female demons "lili" have no etymological relation to Akkadian "lilu", "evening".
Archibald Sayce (1882) considered that Hebrew "lilit" (or "lilith") and the earlier Akkadian "līlītu" are from proto-Semitic. Charles Fossey (1902) has this literally translating to "female night being/demon", although cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia exist where "Līlīt" and "Līlītu" refers to disease-bearing wind spirits.
Samuel Noah Kramer (1932, published 1938) translated "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke" as "Lilith" in "Tablet XII" of the Epic of Gilgamesh dated c. 600 BC. "Tablet XII" is not part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but is a later Assyrian Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh". The "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke" is associated with a serpent and a zu bird. In "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld", a huluppu tree grows in Inanna's garden in Uruk, whose wood she plans to use to build a new throne. After ten years of growth, she comes to harvest it and finds a serpent living at its base, a Zu bird raising young in its crown, and that a "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke" made a house in its trunk. Gilgamesh is said to have killed the snake, and then the zu bird flew away to the mountains with its young, while the "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke" fearfully destroys its house and runs for the forest. Identification of "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke" as "Lilith" is stated in "Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible" (1999). According to a new source from late antiquity, Lilith appears in a Mandaic magic story where she is considered to represent the branches of a tree with other demonic figures that form other parts of the tree, though this may also include multiple "Liliths".
Suggested translations for the Tablet XII spirit in the tree include "ki-sikil" as "sacred place", "lil" as "spirit", and "lil-la-ke" as "water spirit". but also simply "owl", given that the "lil" is building a home in the trunk of the tree.
A connection between the Gilgamesh "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke" and the Jewish Lilith was rejected by Dietrich Opitz (1932) and rejected on textual grounds by Sergio Ribichini (1978).
Kramer's translation of the Gilgamesh fragment was used by Henri Frankfort (1937) and Emil Kraeling (1937) to support identification of a woman with wings and bird-feet in the Burney Relief as related to Lilith. Frankfort and Kraeling incorrectly identified the figure in the relief with Lilith, based on a misreading of an outdated translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Modern research has identified the figure as one of the main goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheons, most probably Inanna or Ereshkigal.
The Arslan Tash amulets are limestone plaques discovered in 1933 at Arslan Tash, the authenticity of which is disputed. William F. Albright, Theodor H. Gaster, and others, accepted the amulets as a pre-Jewish source which shows that the name Lilith already existed in the 7th century BC but Torczyner (1947) identified the amulets as a later Jewish source.
The word "lilit" (or "lilith") only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, while the other seven terms in the list appear more than once and thus are better documented. The reading of scholars and translators is often guided by a decision about the complete list of eight creatures as a whole. Quoting from Isaiah 34 (NAB):
In the Masoretic Text:
In the Dead Sea Scrolls, among the 19 fragments of Isaiah found at Qumran, the Great Isaiah Scroll (1Q1Isa) in 34:14 renders the creature as plural "liliyyot" (or "liliyyoth").
Eberhard Schrader (1875) and Moritz Abraham Levy (1885) suggest that Lilith was a goddess of the night, known also by the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Schrader's and Levy's view is therefore partly dependent on a later dating of Deutero-Isaiah to the 6th century BC, and the presence of Jews in Babylon which would coincide with the possible references to the "" in Babylonian demonology. However, this view is challenged by some modern research such as by Judit M. Blair (2009) who considers that the context indicates unclean animals.
The Septuagint translates both the reference to lilith and the word for jackals or "wild beasts of the island" within the same verse into Greek as "onokentauros", apparently assuming them as referring to the same creatures and gratuitously omitting "wildcats/wild beasts of the desert" (so, instead of the wildcats or desert beasts meeting with the jackals or island beasts, the goat or "satyr" crying "to his fellow" and lilith or "screech-owl" resting "there", it is the goat or "satyr", translated as "daimonia" "demons", and the jackals or island beasts ""onocentaurs"" meeting with each other and crying "one to the other" and the latter resting there in the translation).
The early 5th-century Vulgate translated the same word as "lamia".
The translation is, "And demons shall meet with monsters, and one hairy one shall cry out to another; there the lamia has lain down and found rest for herself".
Wycliffe's Bible (1395) preserves the Latin rendering "lamia":
The Bishops' Bible of Matthew Parker (1568) from the Latin:
Douay–Rheims Bible (1582/1610) also preserves the Latin rendering "lamia":
The Geneva Bible of William Madison Whittington (1587) from the Hebrew:
Then the King James Version (1611):
The "screech owl" translation of the King James Version is, together with the "owl" (', probably a water bird) in 34:11 and the "great owl" (', properly a snake) of 34:15, an attempt to render the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult-to-translate Hebrew words.
Later translations include:
Major sources in Jewish tradition regarding Lilith in chronological order include:
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain one indisputable reference to Lilith in "Songs of the Sage" (4Q510–511) fragment 1:
And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendour so as to frighten and to te[rrify] all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers] ... and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray from a spirit of understanding and to make their heart and their ... desolate during the present dominion of wickedness and predetermined time of humiliations for the sons of lig[ht], by the guilt of the ages of [those] smitten by iniquity – not for eternal destruction, [bu]t for an era of humiliation for transgression.
As with the Massoretic text of Isaiah 34:14, and therefore unlike the plural "liliyyot" (or "liliyyoth") in the Isaiah scroll 34:14, "lilit" in 4Q510 is singular, this liturgical text both cautions against the presence of supernatural malevolence and assumes familiarity with Lilith; distinct from the biblical text, however, this passage does not function under any socio-political agenda, but instead serves in the same capacity as An Exorcism (4Q560) and Songs to Disperse Demons (11Q11). The text is thus, to a community "deeply involved in the realm of demonology", an exorcism hymn.
Joseph M. Baumgarten (1991) identified the unnamed woman of "The Seductress" (4Q184) as related to female demon. However, John J. Collins regards this identification as "intriguing" but that it is "safe to say" that (4Q184) is based on the strange woman of Proverbs 2, 5, 7, 9:
Lilith does not occur in the Mishnah. There are five references to Lilith in the Babylonian Talmud in Gemara on three separate Tractates of the Mishnah:
The above statement by Hanina may be related to the belief that nocturnal emissions engendered the birth of demons:
The Midrash Rabbah collection contains two references to Lilith. The first one is present in Genesis Rabbah 22:7 and 18:4: according to Rabbi Hiyya God proceeded to create a second Eve for Adam, after Lilith had to return to dust. However, to be exact the said passages do not employ the Hebrew word "lilith" itself and instead speak of "the first Eve" (Heb. "Chavvah ha-Rishonah", analogically to the phrase "Adam ha-Rishon", i.e. the first Adam). Although in the medieval Hebrew literature and folklore, especially that reflected on the protective amulets of various kinds, "Chavvah ha-Rishonah" was identified with Lilith, one should remain careful in transposing this equation to the Late Antiquity.
The second mention of Lilith, this time explicit, is present in Numbers Rabbah 16:25. The midrash develops the story of Moses' plea after God expresses anger at the bad report of the spies. Moses responds to a threat by God that He will destroy the Israelite people. Moses pleads before God, that God should not be like Lilith who kills her own children. Moses said:[God,] do not do it [i.e. destroy the Israelite people], that the nations of the world may not regard you as a cruel Being and say: 'The Generation of the Flood came and He destroyed them, the Generation of the Separation came and He destroyed them, the Sodomites and the Egyptians came and He destroyed them, and these also, whom he called My son, My firstborn (Ex. IV, 22), He is now destroying! As that Lilith who, when she finds nothing else, turns upon her own children, so Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land... He hath slain them' (Num. XIV, 16)!
An individual Lilith, along with Bagdana "king of the lilits", is one of the demons to feature prominently in protective spells in the eighty surviving Jewish occult incantation bowls from Sassanid Empire Babylon (4th–6th century AD) with influence from Iranian culture.[47] These bowls were buried upside down below the structure of the house or on the land of the house, in order to trap the demon or demoness. Almost every house was found to have such protective bowls against demons and demonesses.
The centre of the inside of the bowl depicts Lilith, or the male form, Lilit. Surrounding the image is writing in spiral form; the writing often begins at the centre and works its way to the edge. The writing is most commonly scripture or references to the Talmud. The incantation bowls which have been analysed, are inscribed in the following languages, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Syriac, Mandaic, Middle Persian, and Arabic. Some bowls are written in a false script which has no meaning.
The correctly worded incantation bowl was capable of warding off Lilith or Lilit from the household. Lilith had the power to transform into a woman's physical features, seduce her husband, and conceive a child. However, Lilith would become hateful towards the children born of the husband and wife and would seek to kill them. Similarly, Lilit would transform into the physical features of the husband, seduce the wife, she would give birth to a child. It would become evident that the child was not fathered by the husband, and the child would be looked down on. Lilit would seek revenge on the family by killing the children born to the husband and wife.
Key features of the depiction of Lilith or Lilit include the following. The figure is often depicted with arms and legs chained, indicating the control of the family over the demon(ess). The demon(ess) is depicted in a frontal position with the whole face showing. The eyes are very large, as well as the hands (if depicted). The demon(ess) is entirely static.
One bowl contains the following inscription commissioned from a Jewish occultist to protect a woman called Rashnoi and her husband from Lilith:
The pseudepigraphical 8th–10th centuries "Alphabet of Ben Sira" is considered to be the oldest form of the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife. Whether this particular tradition is older is not known. Scholars tend to date the Alphabet between the 8th and 10th centuries AD. The work has been characterised as satirical.
In the text an amulet is inscribed with the names of three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof) and placed around the neck of newborn boys in order to protect them from the lilin until their circumcision. The amulets used against Lilith that were thought to derive from this tradition are, in fact, dated as being much older. The concept of Eve having a predecessor is not exclusive to the Alphabet, and is not a new concept, as it can be found in Genesis Rabbah. However, the idea that Lilith was the predecessor may be exclusive to the Alphabet.
The idea in the text that Adam had a wife prior to Eve may have developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its dual creation accounts; while Genesis 2:22 describes God's creation of Eve from Adam's rib, an earlier passage, 1:27, already indicates that a woman had been made: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." The Alphabet text places Lilith's creation after God's words in Genesis 2:18 that "it is not good for man to be alone"; in this text God forms Lilith out of the clay from which he made Adam but she and Adam bicker. Lilith claims that since she and Adam were created in the same way they were equal and she refuses to submit to him:
After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, "It is not good for man to be alone." He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, "I will not lie below," and he said, "I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one." Lilith responded, "We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth." But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: "Sovereign of the universe!" he said, "the woman you gave me has run away." At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her back.
Said the Holy One to Adam, "If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day." The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, "We shall drown you in the sea."
"Leave me!' she said. "I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days."
When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: "Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant." She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels' names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.
The background and purpose of "The Alphabet of Ben-Sira" is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire, although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany. In turn, other scholars argue that the target of the "Alphabet's" satire is very difficult to establish exactly because of the variety of the figures and values ridiculed therein: criticism is actually directed against Adam, who turns out to be weak and ineffective in his relations with his wife. Apparently, the first man is not the only male figure who is mocked: even God cannot subjugate Lilith and needs to ask his messengers, who only manage to go as far as negotiating the conditions of the agreement.
"The Alphabet of Ben-Sira" is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century "Lexicon Talmudicum" of German scholar Johannes Buxtorf.
In this folk tradition that arose in the early Middle Ages Lilith, a dominant female demon, became identified with Asmodeus, King of Demons, as his queen. Asmodeus was already well known by this time because of the legends about him in the Talmud. Thus, the merging of Lilith and Asmodeus was inevitable. The second myth of Lilith grew to include legends about another world and by some accounts this other world existed side by side with this one, "Yenne Velt" is Yiddish for this described "Other World". In this case Asmodeus and Lilith were believed to procreate demonic offspring endlessly and spread chaos at every turn.
Two primary characteristics are seen in these legends about Lilith: Lilith as the incarnation of lust, causing men to be led astray, and Lilith as a child-killing witch, who strangles helpless neonates. These two aspects of the Lilith legend seemed to have evolved separately; there is hardly a tale where she encompasses both roles. But the aspect of the witch-like role that Lilith plays broadens her archetype of the destructive side of witchcraft. Such stories are commonly found among Jewish folklore.
Although the image of Lilith of the "Alphabet of Ben Sira" is unprecedented, some elements in her portrayal can be traced back to the talmudic and midrashic traditions that arose around Eve:
Kabbalistic mysticism attempted to establish a more exact relationship between Lilith and God. With her major characteristics having been well developed by the end of the Talmudic period, after six centuries had elapsed between the Aramaic incantation texts that mention Lilith and the early Spanish Kabbalistic writings in the 13th century, she reappears, and her life history becomes known in greater mythological detail. Her creation is described in many alternative versions.
One mentions her creation as being before Adam's, on the fifth day, because the "living creatures" with whose swarms God filled the waters included Lilith. A similar version, related to the earlier Talmudic passages, recounts how Lilith was fashioned with the same substance as Adam was, shortly before. A third alternative version states that God originally created Adam and Lilith in a manner that the female creature was contained in the male. Lilith's soul was lodged in the depths of the Great Abyss. When God called her, she joined Adam. After Adam's body was created, a thousand souls from the Left (evil) side attempted to attach themselves to him. However, God drove them off. Adam was left lying as a body without a soul. Then a cloud descended and God commanded the earth to produce a living soul. This God breathed into Adam, who began to spring to life and his female was attached to his side. God separated the female from Adam's side. The female side was Lilith, whereupon she flew to the Cities of the Sea and attacked humankind.
Yet another version claims that Lilith emerged as a divine entity that was born spontaneously, either out of the Great Supernal Abyss or out of the power of an aspect of God (the Gevurah of Din). This aspect of God was negative and punitive, as well as one of his ten attributes (Sefirot), at its lowest manifestation has an affinity with the realm of evil and it is out of this that Lilith merged with Samael.
An alternative story links Lilith with the creation of luminaries. The "first light", which is the light of Mercy (one of the Sefirot), appeared on the first day of creation when God said "Let there be light". This light became hidden and the Holiness became surrounded by a husk of evil. "A husk (klippa) was created around the brain" and this husk spread and brought out another husk, which was Lilith.
The first medieval source to depict Adam and Lilith in full was the Midrash A.B.K.I.R. (c. 10th century), which was followed by the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings. Adam is said to be perfect until he recognises either his sin or Cain's fratricide that is the cause of bringing death into the world. He then separates from holy Eve, sleeps alone, and fasts for 130 years. During this time "Pizna", either an alternate name for Lilith or a daughter of hers, desires his beauty and seduces him against his will. She gives birth to multitudes of djinns and demons, the first of them being named Agrimas. However, they are defeated by Methuselah, who slays thousands of them with a holy sword and forces Agrimas to give him the names of the rest, after which he casts them away to the sea and the mountains.
The mystical writing of two brothers Jacob and Isaac Hacohen, "Treatise on the Left Emanation", which predates the Zohar by a few decades, states that Samael and Lilith are in the shape of an androgynous being, double-faced, born out of the emanation of the Throne of Glory and corresponding in the spiritual realm to Adam and Eve, who were likewise born as a hermaphrodite. The two twin androgynous couples resembled each other and both "were like the image of Above"; that is, that they are reproduced in a visible form of an androgynous deity.
19. In answer to your question concerning Lilith, I shall explain to you the essence of the matter. Concerning this point there is a received tradition from the ancient Sages who made use of the Secret Knowledge of the Lesser Palaces, which is the manipulation of demons and a ladder by which one ascends to the prophetic levels. In this tradition it is made clear that Samael and Lilith were born as one, similar to the form of Adam and Eve who were also born as one, reflecting what is above. This is the account of Lilith which was received by the Sages in the Secret Knowledge of the Palaces.
Another version that was also current among Kabbalistic circles in the Middle Ages establishes Lilith as the first of Samael's four wives: Lilith, Naamah, Eisheth, and Agrat bat Mahlat. Each of them are mothers of demons and have their own hosts and unclean spirits in no number. The marriage of archangel Samael and Lilith was arranged by "Blind Dragon", who is the counterpart of "the dragon that is in the sea". Blind Dragon acts as an intermediary between Lilith and Samael:
Blind Dragon rides Lilith the Sinful -- may she be extirpated quickly in our days, Amen! -- And this Blind Dragon brings about the union between Samael and Lilith. And just as "the Dragon that is in the sea" (Isa. 27:1) has no eyes, likewise Blind Dragon that is above, in the likeness of a spiritual form, is without eyes, that is to say, without colors... (Patai 81:458) Samael is called the Slant Serpent, and Lilith is called the Tortuous Serpent.
The marriage of Samael and Lilith is known as the "Angel Satan" or the "Other God", but it was not allowed to last. To prevent Lilith and Samael's demonic children "Lilin" from filling the world, God castrated Samael. In many 17th century Kabbalistic books, this seems to be a reinterpretation of an old Talmudic myth where God castrated the male Leviathan and slew the female Leviathan in order to prevent them from mating and thereby destroying the Earth with their offspring. With Lilith being unable to fornicate with Samael anymore, she sought to couple with men who experience nocturnal emissions. A 15th or 16th century Kabbalah text states that God has "cooled" the female Leviathan, meaning that he has made Lilith infertile and she is a mere fornication.
The "Treatise on the Left Emanation" also says that there are two Liliths, the lesser being married to the great demon Asmodeus.
The Matron Lilith is the mate of Samael. Both of them were born at the same hour in the image of Adam and Eve, intertwined in each other. Asmodeus the great king of the demons has as a mate the Lesser (younger) Lilith, daughter of the king whose name is Qafsefoni. The name of his mate is Mehetabel daughter of Matred, and their daughter is Lilith.
Another passage charges Lilith as being a tempting serpent of Eve.
And the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry, incited and seduced Eve through the husks of Light which in itself is holiness. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough said for him who understands. And all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity – this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her. Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and Lilin. (Patai81:455f)
References to Lilith in the Zohar include the following:
She roams at night, and goes all about the world and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. In every place where a man sleeps alone in a house, she visits him and grabs him and attaches herself to him and has her desire from him, and bears from him. And she also afflicts him with sickness, and he knows it not, and all this takes place when the moon is on the wane.
This passage may be related to the mention of Lilith in Talmud Shabbath 151b (see above), and also to Talmud Eruvin 18b where nocturnal emissions are connected with the begettal of demons.
According to Rapahel Patai, older sources state clearly that after Lilith's Red Sea sojourn (mentioned also in Louis Ginzberg's "Legends of the Jews"), she returned to Adam and begat children from him by forcing herself upon him. Before doing so, she attaches herself to Cain and bears him numerous spirits and demons. In the Zohar, however, Lilith is said to have succeeded in begetting offspring from Adam even during their short-lived sexual experience. Lilith leaves Adam in Eden, as she is not a suitable helpmate for him. Gershom Scholem proposes that the author of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de Leon, was aware of both the folk tradition of Lilith and another conflicting version, possibly older.
The Zohar adds further that two female spirits instead of one, Lilith and Naamah, desired Adam and seduced him. The issue of these unions were demons and spirits called "the plagues of humankind", and the usual added explanation was that it was through Adam's own sin that Lilith overcame him against his will.
A copy of Jean de Pauly's translation of the Zohar in the Ritman Library contains an inserted late 17th century printed Hebrew sheet for use in magical amulets where the prophet Elijah confronts Lilith.
The sheet contains two texts within borders, which are amulets, one for a male ('lazakhar'), the other one for a female ('lanekevah'). The invocations mention Adam, Eve and Lilith, 'Chavah Rishonah' (the first Eve, who is identical with Lilith), also devils or angels: Sanoy, Sansinoy, Smangeluf, Shmari'el (the guardian) and Hasdi'el (the merciful). A few lines in Yiddish are followed by the dialogue between the prophet Elijah and Lilith when he met her with her host of demons to kill the mother and take her new-born child ('to drink her blood, suck her bones and eat her flesh'). She tells Elijah that she will lose her power if someone uses her secret names, which she reveals at the end: "lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu, ayalu, matrota ..."
In other amulets, probably informed by "The Alphabet of Ben-Sira", she is Adam's first wife. (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19)
Charles Richardson's dictionary portion of the "Encyclopædia Metropolitana" appends to his etymological discussion of "lullaby" "a [manuscript] note written in a copy of Skinner" [i.e. Stephen Skinner's 1671 "Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ"], which asserts that the word "lullaby" originates from "Lillu abi abi", a Hebrew incantation meaning "Lilith begone" recited by Jewish mothers over an infant's cradle. Richardson did not endorse the theory and modern lexicographers consider it a false etymology.
In the Latin Vulgate Book of Isaiah 34:14, Lilith is translated "lamia".
According to Augustine Calmet, Lilith has connections with early views on vampires and sorcery:
According to Siegmund Hurwitz the Talmudic Lilith is connected with the Greek Lamia, who, according to Hurwitz, likewise governed a class of child stealing lamia-demons. Lamia bore the title "child killer" and was feared for her malevolence, like Lilith. She has different conflicting origins and is described as having a human upper body from the waist up and a serpentine body from the waist down. One source states simply that she is a daughter of the goddess Hecate, another, that Lamia was subsequently cursed by the goddess Hera to have stillborn children because of her association with Zeus; alternatively, Hera slew all of Lamia's children (except Scylla) in anger that Lamia slept with her husband, Zeus. The grief caused Lamia to turn into a monster that took revenge on mothers by stealing their children and devouring them. Lamia had a vicious sexual appetite that matched her cannibalistic appetite for children. She was notorious for being a vampiric spirit and loved sucking men's blood. Her gift was the "mark of a Sibyl", a gift of second sight. Zeus was said to have given her the gift of sight. However, she was "cursed" to never be able to shut her eyes so that she would forever obsess over her dead children. Taking pity on Lamia, Zeus gave her the ability to remove and replace her eyes from their sockets.
Lilith is not found in the Quran or Hadith. The Sufi occult writer Ahmad al-Buni (d. 1225), in his "Sun of the Great Knowledge" (), mentions a demon called "the mother of children" (), a term also used "in one place".
Lilith's earliest appearance in the literature of the Romantic period (1789–1832) was in Goethe's 1808 work "".
After Mephistopheles offers this warning to Faust, he then, quite ironically, encourages Faust to dance with "the Pretty Witch". Lilith and Faust engage in a short dialogue, where Lilith recounts the days spent in Eden.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which developed around 1848, were greatly influenced by Goethe's work on the theme of Lilith. In 1863, Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the Brotherhood began painting what would later be his first rendition of "Lady Lilith", a painting he expected to be his "best picture hitherto". Symbols appearing in the painting allude to the "femme fatale" reputation of the Romantic Lilith: poppies (death and cold) and white roses (sterile passion). Accompanying his "Lady Lilith" painting from 1866, Rossetti wrote a sonnet entitled "Lilith", which was first published in Swinburne's pamphlet-review (1868), "Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition".
The poem and the picture appeared together alongside Rossetti's painting "Sibylla Palmifera" and the sonnet "Soul's Beauty". In 1881, the "Lilith" sonnet was renamed ""Body's Beauty"" in order to contrast it and "Soul's Beauty". The two were placed sequentially in "The House of Life" collection (sonnets number 77 and 78).
Rossetti wrote in 1870:
This is in accordance with Jewish folk tradition, which associates Lilith both with long hair (a symbol of dangerous feminine seductive power in Jewish culture), and with possessing women by entering them through mirrors.
The Victorian poet Robert Browning re-envisioned Lilith in his poem "Adam, Lilith, and Eve". First published in 1883, the poem uses the traditional myths surrounding the triad of Adam, Eve, and Lilith. Browning depicts Lilith and Eve as being friendly and complicitous with each other, as they sit together on either side of Adam. Under the threat of death, Eve admits that she never loved Adam, while Lilith confesses that she always loved him:
Browning focused on Lilith's emotional attributes, rather than that of her ancient demon predecessors.
Scottish author George MacDonald also wrote a fantasy novel entitled "Lilith", first published in 1895. MacDonald employed the character of Lilith in service to a spiritual drama about sin and redemption, in which Lilith finds a hard-won salvation. Many of the traditional characteristics of Lilith mythology are present in the author's depiction: Long dark hair, pale skin, a hatred and fear of children and babies, and an obsession with gazing at herself in a mirror. MacDonald's Lilith also has vampiric qualities: she bites people and sucks their blood for sustenance.
Australian poet and scholar Christopher John Brennan (1870–1932), included a section titled "Lilith" in his major work "Poems: 1913" (Sydney : G. B. Philip and Son, 1914). The "Lilith" section contains thirteen poems exploring the Lilith myth and is central to the meaning of the collection as a whole.
C. L. Moore's 1940 story "Fruit of Knowledge" is written from Lilith's point of view. It is a re-telling of the Fall of Man as a love triangle between Lilith, Adam and Eve – with Eve's eating the forbidden fruit being in this version the result of misguided manipulations by the jealous Lilith, who had hoped to get her rival discredited and destroyed by God and thus regain Adam's love.
British poet John Siddique's 2011 collection "Full Blood" has a suite of 11 poems called "The Tree of Life", which features Lilith as the divine feminine aspect of God. A number of the poems feature Lilith directly, including the piece "Unwritten" which deals with the spiritual problem of the feminine being removed by the scribes from "The Bible."
Lilith is also mentioned in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", by C.S.Lewis. The character Mr. Beaver ascribes the ancestry of the main antagonist, Jadis the White Witch, to Lilith.
The depiction of Lilith in Romanticism continues to be popular among Wiccans and in other modern Occultism. A few magical orders dedicated to the undercurrent of Lilith, featuring initiations specifically related to the arcana of the "first mother", exist. Two organisations that use initiations and magic associated with Lilith are the Ordo Antichristianus Illuminati and the Order of Phosphorus. Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's "De Arte Magica." Lilith was also one of the middle names of Crowley's first child, Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley (1904–1906), and Lilith is sometimes identified with Babalon in Thelemic writings. Many early occult writers that contributed to modern day Wicca expressed special reverence for Lilith. Charles Leland associated Aradia with Lilith: Aradia, says Leland, is Herodias, who was regarded in stregheria folklore as being associated with Diana as chief of the witches. Leland further notes that Herodias is a name that comes from west Asia, where it denoted an early form of Lilith.
Gerald Gardner asserted that there was continuous historical worship of Lilith to present day, and that her name is sometimes given to the goddess being personified in the coven by the priestess. This idea was further attested by Doreen Valiente, who cited her as a presiding goddess of the Craft: "the personification of erotic dreams, the suppressed desire for delights". In some contemporary concepts, "Lilith" is viewed as the embodiment of the Goddess, a designation that is thought to be shared with what these faiths believe to be her counterparts: Inanna, Ishtar, Asherah, Anath and Isis. According to one view, Lilith was originally a Sumerian, Babylonian, or Hebrew mother goddess of childbirth, children, women, and sexuality.
Raymond Buckland holds that Lilith is a dark moon goddess on par with the Hindu Kali.
Many modern theistic Satanists consider Lilith as a goddess. She is considered a goddess of independence by those Satanists and is often worshipped by women, but women are not the only people who worship her. Lilith is popular among theistic Satanists because of her association with Satan. Some Satanists believe that she is the wife of Satan and thus think of her as a mother figure. Others base their reverence towards her based on her history as a succubus and praise her as a sex goddess. A different approach to a Satanic Lilith holds that she was once a fertility and agricultural goddess.
The western mystery tradition associates Lilith with the Qliphoth of kabbalah. Samael Aun Weor in The "Pistis Sophia Unveiled" writes that homosexuals are the "henchmen of Lilith". Likewise, women who undergo wilful abortion, and those who support this practice are "seen in the sphere of Lilith". Dion Fortune writes, "The Virgin Mary is reflected in Lilith", and that Lilith is the source of "lustful dreams". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18630 |
Lorentz force
In physics (specifically in electromagnetism) the Lorentz force (or electromagnetic force) is the combination of electric and magnetic force on a point charge due to electromagnetic fields. A particle of charge "q" moving with a velocity v in an electric field E and a magnetic field B experiences a force of
(in SI units). Variations on this basic formula describe the magnetic force on a current-carrying wire (sometimes called Laplace force), the electromotive force in a wire loop moving through a magnetic field (an aspect of Faraday's law of induction), and the force on a charged particle which might be traveling near the speed of light (relativistic form of the Lorentz force).
Historians suggest that the law is implicit in a paper by James Clerk Maxwell, published in 1865. Hendrik Lorentz arrived in a complete derivation in 1895, identifying the contribution of the electric force a few years after Oliver Heaviside correctly identified the contribution of the magnetic force.
The force F acting on a particle of electric charge "q" with instantaneous velocity v, due to an external electric field E and magnetic field B, is given by (in SI units):
where × is the vector cross product (all boldface quantities are vectors). In terms of cartesian components, we have:
In general, the electric and magnetic fields are functions of the position and time. Therefore, explicitly, the Lorentz force can be written as:
in which r is the position vector of the charged particle, "t" is time, and the overdot is a time derivative.
A positively charged particle will be accelerated in the "same" linear orientation as the E field, but will curve perpendicularly to both the instantaneous velocity vector v and the B field according to the right-hand rule (in detail, if the fingers of the right hand are extended to point in the direction of v and are then curled to point in the direction of B, then the extended thumb will point in the direction of F).
The term "q"E is called the electric force, while the term "q"(v × B) is called the magnetic force. According to some definitions, the term "Lorentz force" refers specifically to the formula for the magnetic force, with the "total" electromagnetic force (including the electric force) given some other (nonstandard) name. This article will "not" follow this nomenclature: In what follows, the term "Lorentz force" will refer to the expression for the total force.
The magnetic force component of the Lorentz force manifests itself as the force that acts on a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field. In that context, it is also called the Laplace force.
The Lorentz force is a force exerted by the electromagnetic field on the charged particle, that is, it is the rate at which linear momentum is transferred from the electromagnetic field to the particle. Associated with it is the power which is the rate at which energy is transferred from the electromagnetic field to the particle. That power is
Notice that the magnetic field does not contribute to the power because the magnetic force is always perpendicular to the velocity of the particle.
For a continuous charge distribution in motion, the Lorentz force equation becomes:
where formula_8 is the force on a small piece of the charge distribution with charge formula_9. If both sides of this equation are divided by the volume of this small piece of the charge distribution formula_10, the result is:
where formula_12 is the "force density" (force per unit volume) and formula_13 is the charge density (charge per unit volume). Next, the current density corresponding to the motion of the charge continuum is
so the continuous analogue to the equation is
The total force is the volume integral over the charge distribution:
By eliminating formula_13 and formula_17, using Maxwell's equations, and manipulating using the theorems of vector calculus, this form of the equation can be used to derive the Maxwell stress tensor formula_18, in turn this can be combined with the Poynting vector formula_19 to obtain the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor T used in general relativity.
In terms of formula_18 and formula_19, another way to write the Lorentz force (per unit volume) is
where formula_23 is the speed of light and ∇· denotes the divergence of a tensor field. Rather than the amount of charge and its velocity in electric and magnetic fields, this equation relates the energy flux (flow of "energy" per unit time per unit distance) in the fields to the force exerted on a charge distribution. See Covariant formulation of classical electromagnetism for more details.
The density of power associated with the Lorentz force in a material medium is
If we separate the total charge and total current into their free and bound parts, we get that the density of the Lorentz force is
where: formula_26 is the density of free charge; formula_27 is the polarization density; formula_28 is the density of free current; and formula_29 is the magnetization density. In this way, the Lorentz force can explain the torque applied to a permanent magnet by the magnetic field. The density of the associated power is
The above-mentioned formulae use SI units which are the most common among experimentalists, technicians, and engineers. In cgs-Gaussian units, which are somewhat more common among theoretical physicists as well as condensed matter experimentalists, one has instead
where "c" is the speed of light.
Although this equation looks slightly different, it is completely equivalent, since
one has the following relations:
where ε0 is the vacuum permittivity and μ0 the vacuum permeability. In practice, the subscripts "cgs" and "SI" are always omitted, and the unit system has to be assessed from context.
Early attempts to quantitatively describe the electromagnetic force were made in the mid-18th century. It was proposed that the force on magnetic poles, by Johann Tobias Mayer and others in 1760, and electrically charged objects, by Henry Cavendish in 1762, obeyed an inverse-square law. However, in both cases the experimental proof was neither complete nor conclusive. It was not until 1784 when Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, using a torsion balance, was able to definitively show through experiment that this was true. Soon after the discovery in 1820 by H. C. Ørsted that a magnetic needle is acted on by a voltaic current, André-Marie Ampère that same year was able to devise through experimentation the formula for the angular dependence of the force between two current elements. In all these descriptions, the force was always described in terms of the properties of the matter involved and the distances between two masses or charges rather than in terms of electric and magnetic fields.
The modern concept of electric and magnetic fields first arose in the theories of Michael Faraday, particularly his idea of lines of force, later to be given full mathematical description by Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell. From a modern perspective it is possible to identify in Maxwell's 1865 formulation of his field equations a form of the Lorentz force equation in relation to electric currents, however, in the time of Maxwell it was not evident how his equations related to the forces on moving charged objects. J. J. Thomson was the first to attempt to derive from Maxwell's field equations the electromagnetic forces on a moving charged object in terms of the object's properties and external fields. Interested in determining the electromagnetic behavior of the charged particles in cathode rays, Thomson published a paper in 1881 wherein he gave the force on the particles due to an external magnetic field as
Thomson derived the correct basic form of the formula, but, because of some miscalculations and an incomplete description of the displacement current, included an incorrect scale-factor of a half in front of the formula. Oliver Heaviside invented the modern vector notation and applied it to Maxwell's field equations; he also (in 1885 and 1889) had fixed the mistakes of Thomson's derivation and arrived at the correct form of the magnetic force on a moving charged object. Finally, in 1895, Hendrik Lorentz derived the modern form of the formula for the electromagnetic force which includes the contributions to the total force from both the electric and the magnetic fields. Lorentz began by abandoning the Maxwellian descriptions of the ether and conduction. Instead, Lorentz made a distinction between matter and the luminiferous aether and sought to apply the Maxwell equations at a microscopic scale. Using Heaviside's version of the Maxwell equations for a stationary ether and applying Lagrangian mechanics (see below), Lorentz arrived at the correct and complete form of the force law that now bears his name.
In many cases of practical interest, the motion in a magnetic field of an electrically charged particle (such as an electron or ion in a plasma) can be treated as the superposition of a relatively fast circular motion around a point called the guiding center and a relatively slow drift of this point. The drift speeds may differ for various species depending on their charge states, masses, or temperatures, possibly resulting in electric currents or chemical separation.
While the modern Maxwell's equations describe how electrically charged particles and currents or moving charged particles give rise to electric and magnetic fields, the Lorentz force law completes that picture by describing the force acting on a moving point charge "q" in the presence of electromagnetic fields. The Lorentz force law describes the effect of E and B upon a point charge, but such electromagnetic forces are not the entire picture. Charged particles are possibly coupled to other forces, notably gravity and nuclear forces. Thus, Maxwell's equations do not stand separate from other physical laws, but are coupled to them via the charge and current densities. The response of a point charge to the Lorentz law is one aspect; the generation of E and B by currents and charges is another.
In real materials the Lorentz force is inadequate to describe the collective behavior of charged particles, both in principle and as a matter of computation. The charged particles in a material medium not only respond to the E and B fields but also generate these fields. Complex transport equations must be solved to determine the time and spatial response of charges, for example, the Boltzmann equation or the Fokker–Planck equation or the Navier–Stokes equations. For example, see magnetohydrodynamics, fluid dynamics, electrohydrodynamics, superconductivity, stellar evolution. An entire physical apparatus for dealing with these matters has developed. See for example, Green–Kubo relations and Green's function (many-body theory).
In many textbook treatments of classical electromagnetism, the Lorentz force Law is used as the "definition" of the electric and magnetic fields E and B. To be specific, the Lorentz force is understood to be the following empirical statement:
This is valid, even for particles approaching the speed of light (that is, magnitude of v = |v| ≈ "c"). So the two vector fields E and B are thereby defined throughout space and time, and these are called the "electric field" and "magnetic field". The fields are defined everywhere in space and time with respect to what force a test charge would receive regardless of whether a charge is present to experience the force.
As a definition of E and B, the Lorentz force is only a definition in principle because a real particle (as opposed to the hypothetical "test charge" of infinitesimally-small mass and charge) would generate its own finite E and B fields, which would alter the electromagnetic force that it experiences. In addition, if the charge experiences acceleration, as if forced into a curved trajectory by some external agency, it emits radiation that causes braking of its motion. See for example Bremsstrahlung and synchrotron light. These effects occur through both a direct effect (called the radiation reaction force) and indirectly (by affecting the motion of nearby charges and currents). Moreover, net force must include gravity, electroweak, and any other forces aside from electromagnetic force.
When a wire carrying an electric current is placed in a magnetic field, each of the moving charges, which comprise the current, experiences the Lorentz force, and together they can create a macroscopic force on the wire (sometimes called the Laplace force). By combining the Lorentz force law above with the definition of electric current, the following equation results, in the case of a straight, stationary wire:
where ℓ is a vector whose magnitude is the length of wire, and whose direction is along the wire, aligned with the direction of conventional current charge flow "I".
If the wire is not straight but curved, the force on it can be computed by applying this formula to each infinitesimal segment of wire "d"ℓ, then adding up all these forces by integration. Formally, the net force on a stationary, rigid wire carrying a steady current "I" is
This is the net force. In addition, there will usually be torque, plus other effects if the wire is not perfectly rigid.
One application of this is Ampère's force law, which describes how two current-carrying wires can attract or repel each other, since each experiences a Lorentz force from the other's magnetic field. For more information, see the article: Ampère's force law.
The magnetic force () component of the Lorentz force is responsible for "motional" electromotive force (or "motional EMF"), the phenomenon underlying many electrical generators. When a conductor is moved through a magnetic field, the magnetic field exerts opposite forces on electrons and nuclei in the wire, and this creates the EMF. The term "motional EMF" is applied to this phenomenon, since the EMF is due to the "motion" of the wire.
In other electrical generators, the magnets move, while the conductors do not. In this case, the EMF is due to the electric force ("q"E) term in the Lorentz Force equation. The electric field in question is created by the changing magnetic field, resulting in an "induced" EMF, as described by the Maxwell–Faraday equation (one of the four modern Maxwell's equations).
Both of these EMFs, despite their apparently distinct origins, are described by the same equation, namely, the EMF is the rate of change of magnetic flux through the wire. (This is Faraday's law of induction, see below.) Einstein's special theory of relativity was partially motivated by the desire to better understand this link between the two effects. In fact, the electric and magnetic fields are different facets of the same electromagnetic field, and in moving from one inertial frame to another, the solenoidal vector field portion of the "E"-field can change in whole or in part to a "B"-field or "vice versa".
Given a loop of wire in a magnetic field, Faraday's law of induction states the induced electromotive force (EMF) in the wire is:
where
is the magnetic flux through the loop, B is the magnetic field, Σ("t") is a surface bounded by the closed contour ∂Σ("t"), at time "t", dA is an infinitesimal vector area element of Σ("t") (magnitude is the area of an infinitesimal patch of surface, direction is orthogonal to that surface patch).
The "sign" of the EMF is determined by Lenz's law. Note that this is valid for not only a "stationary" wirebut also for a "moving" wire.
From Faraday's law of induction (that is valid for a moving wire, for instance in a motor) and the Maxwell Equations, the Lorentz Force can be deduced. The reverse is also true, the Lorentz force and the Maxwell Equations can be used to derive the Faraday Law.
Let Σ("t") be the moving wire, moving together without rotation and with constant velocity v and Σ("t") be the internal surface of the wire. The EMF around the closed path ∂Σ("t") is given by:
where
is the electric field and dℓ is an infinitesimal vector element of the contour ∂Σ("t").
NB: Both dℓ and dA have a sign ambiguity; to get the correct sign, the right-hand rule is used, as explained in the article Kelvin–Stokes theorem.
The above result can be compared with the version of Faraday's law of induction that appears in the modern Maxwell's equations, called here the "Maxwell–Faraday equation":
The Maxwell–Faraday equation also can be written in an "integral form" using the Kelvin–Stokes theorem.
So we have, the Maxwell Faraday equation:
The two are equivalent if the wire is not moving. Using the Leibniz integral rule and that "div" B = 0, results in,
and using the Maxwell Faraday equation,
since this is valid for any wire position it implies that,
Faraday's law of induction holds whether the loop of wire is rigid and stationary, or in motion or in process of deformation, and it holds whether the magnetic field is constant in time or changing. However, there are cases where Faraday's law is either inadequate or difficult to use, and application of the underlying Lorentz force law is necessary. See inapplicability of Faraday's law.
If the magnetic field is fixed in time and the conducting loop moves through the field, the magnetic flux Φ"B" linking the loop can change in several ways. For example, if the B-field varies with position, and the loop moves to a location with different B-field, Φ"B" will change. Alternatively, if the loop changes orientation with respect to the B-field, the differential element will change because of the different angle between B and dA, also changing Φ"B". As a third example, if a portion of the circuit is swept through a uniform, time-independent B-field, and another portion of the circuit is held stationary, the flux linking the entire closed circuit can change due to the shift in relative position of the circuit's component parts with time (surface ∂Σ("t") time-dependent). In all three cases, Faraday's law of induction then predicts the EMF generated by the change in Φ"B".
Note that the Maxwell Faraday's equation implies that the Electric Field E is non conservative when the Magnetic Field B varies in time, and is not expressible as the gradient of a scalar field, and not subject to the gradient theorem since its rotational is not zero.
The E and B fields can be replaced by the magnetic vector potential A and (scalar) electrostatic potential "ϕ" by
where ∇ is the gradient, ∇⋅ is the divergence, ∇× is the curl.
The force becomes
Using an identity for the triple product this can be rewritten as,
formula_49
(Notice that the coordinates and the velocity components should be treated as independent variables, so the del operator acts only on formula_50, not on formula_51; thus, there is no need of using Feynman's subscript notation in the equation above). Using the chain rule, the total derivative of formula_50 is:
so that the above expression becomes:
With v = ẋ, we can put the equation into the convenient Euler–Lagrange form
(\phi-\dot{\mathbf{x}}\cdot\mathbf{A})+ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}\nabla_{\dot{\mathbf{x}}}(\phi-\dot{\mathbf{x}}\cdot\mathbf{A})\right]
where
formula_55
and
formula_56.
The Lagrangian for a charged particle of mass "m" and charge "q" in an electromagnetic field equivalently describes the dynamics of the particle in terms of its "energy", rather than the force exerted on it. The classical expression is given by:
where A and "ϕ" are the potential fields as above. The quantity formula_58 can be thought as a velocity-dependent potential function. Using Lagrange's equations, the equation for the Lorentz force given above can be obtained again.
The potential energy depends on the velocity of the particle, so the force is velocity dependent, so it is not conservative.
The relativistic Lagrangian is
The action is the relativistic arclength of the path of the particle in space time, minus the potential energy contribution, plus an extra contribution which quantum mechanically is an extra phase a charged particle gets when it is moving along a vector potential.
Using the metric signature , the Lorentz force for a charge "q" can be written in covariant form:
where "pα" is the four-momentum, defined as
"τ" the proper time of the particle, "Fαβ" the contravariant electromagnetic tensor
and "U" is the covariant 4-velocity of the particle, defined as:
in which
is the Lorentz factor.
The fields are transformed to a frame moving with constant relative velocity by:
where Λ"μα" is the Lorentz transformation tensor.
The component ("x"-component) of the force is
Substituting the components of the covariant electromagnetic tensor "F" yields
Using the components of covariant four-velocity yields
The calculation for , 3 (force components in the "y" and "z" directions) yields similar results, so collecting the 3 equations into one:
and since differentials in coordinate time "dt" and proper time "dτ" are related by the Lorentz factor,
so we arrive at
This is precisely the Lorentz force law, however, it is important to note that p is the relativistic expression,
The electric and magnetic fields are dependent on the velocity of an observer, so the relativistic form of the Lorentz force law can best be exhibited starting from a coordinate-independent expression for the electromagnetic and magnetic fields formula_72, and an arbitrary time-direction, formula_73. This can be settled through Space-Time Algebra (or the geometric algebra of space-time), a type of Clifford's Algebra defined on a pseudo-Euclidean space, as
and
formula_76 is a space-time bivector (an oriented plane segment, just like a vector is an oriented line segment), which has six degrees of freedom corresponding to boosts (rotations in space-time planes) and rotations (rotations in space-space planes). The dot product with the vector formula_73 pulls a vector (in the space algebra) from the translational part, while the wedge-product creates a trivector (in the space algebra) who is dual to a vector which is the usual magnetic field vector.
The relativistic velocity is given by the (time-like) changes in a time-position vector formula_78, where
(which shows our choice for the metric) and the velocity is
The proper (invariant is an inadequate term because no transformation has been defined) form of the Lorentz force law is simply
Note that the order is important because between a bivector and a vector the dot product is anti-symmetric. Upon a space time split like one can obtain the velocity, and fields as above yielding the usual expression.
In the general theory of relativity the equation of motion for a particle with mass formula_81 and charge formula_82, moving in a space with metric tensor formula_83 and electromagnetic field formula_84, is given as
where formula_86 (formula_87 is taken along the trajectory), formula_88, and formula_89.
The equation can also be written as
where formula_91 is the Christoffel symbol (of the torsion-free metric connection in general relativity), or as
where formula_93 is the covariant differential in general relativity (metric, torsion-free).
The Lorentz force occurs in many devices, including:
In its manifestation as the Laplace force on an electric current in a conductor, this force occurs in many devices including:
The numbered references refer in part to the list immediately below. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18631 |
Lemma (mathematics)
In mathematics, informal logic and argument mapping, a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) is a generally minor, proven proposition which is used as a stepping stone to a larger result. For that reason, it is also known as a "helping theorem" or an "auxiliary theorem". In many cases, a lemma derives its importance from the theorem it aims to prove, however, a lemma can also turn out to be more important than originally thought. The word "lemma" derives from the Ancient Greek λῆμμα ("anything which is received", such as a gift, profit, or a bribe).
There is no formal distinction between a lemma and a theorem, only one of intention (see Theorem terminology). However, a lemma can be considered a minor result whose sole purpose is to help prove a theorem – a step in the direction of proof – or a short theorem appearing at an intermediate stage in a proof.
A good stepping stone can lead to many others. Some powerful results in mathematics are known as lemmas. These include, among others:
While these results originally seemed too simple or too technical to warrant independent interest, they have eventually turned out to be central to the theories in which they occur. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18634 |
List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type
This list of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type contains all CPUs used by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh computers. It is grouped by processor family, processor model, and then chronologically by Macintosh models.
The Motorola 68000 was the first Apple Macintosh processor. It had 32-bit CPU registers, a 24-bit address bus, and a 16-bit data path; Motorola referred to it as a "16–/32-bit microprocessor."
The Motorola 68020 was the first 32-bit Mac processor, first used on the Macintosh II. The 68020 had many improvements over the 68000, including an instruction cache, and was the first Mac processor to support a memory management unit, the Motorola 68851.
The Macintosh LC configured the 68020 to use a 16-bit system bus with ASICs that limited RAM to 10 MB (as opposed to the 32-bit limit of 4 GB).
The Motorola 68030 was the first Mac processor with an integrated memory management unit, allowing for virtual memory. Another improvement over the 68020 was the addition of a data cache.
The Motorola 68040 had improved per-clock performance compared to the 68030, as well as larger instruction and data caches, and was the first Mac processor with an integrated floating-point unit.
The MC68LC040 version was less expensive because it omitted the floating-point unit.
The PowerPC 601 was the first Mac processor to support the 32-bit PowerPC instruction set architecture.
The PowerPC 604e was the first Mac processor available in a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) configuration.
The PowerPC 7400 was the first Mac processor to include an AltiVec vector processing unit.
The PowerPC 7455 was the first Mac processor over 1 GHz.
The PowerPC 970 was the first 64-bit Mac processor.
The PowerPC 970MP was the first dual-core Mac processor and the first to be found in a quad-core configuration. It was also the first Mac processor with partitioning and virtualization capabilities.
Yonah was the first Mac processor to support the IA-32 instruction set architecture, in addition to the MMX, SSE, SSE2, and SSE3 extension instruction sets.
The Core Solo was a Core Duo with one of the two cores disabled.
Woodcrest added support for the SSSE3 instruction set.
Merom was the first Mac processor to support the x86-64 instruction set, as well as the first 64-bit processor to appear in a Mac notebook.
Clovertown was the first quad-core Mac processor and the first to be found in an 8-core configuration.
Penryn added support for a subset for SSE4 (SSE4.1).
Bloomfield and Gainestown introduced a number of notable features for the first time in any Mac processors:
Arrandale introduced Intel HD Graphics, an on-die integrated GPU.
Sandy Bridge added support for Intel Quick Sync Video, a dedicated on-die video encoding and decoding core. It was also the first quad-core processor to appear in a Mac notebook.
The Crystal Well variant used in some MacBook Pros contains an on-package L4 cache shared between the CPU and integrated graphics.
Coffee Lake was the first 6-core processor to appear in a Mac notebook. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18640 |
Lemmy
Ian Fraser Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015), better known as Lemmy, was an English singer, songwriter, and musician. He is best remembered as the founder, lead singer, bassist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Motörhead.
Lemmy's music was one of the foundations of the heavy metal genre. He was known for his appearance, which included his signature friendly mutton chops, his military-influenced fashion sense, and his gravelly rasp of a voice that was once declared "one of the most recognisable voices in rock". He was also noted for his unique way of singing, which was once described as "looking up towards a towering microphone tilted down into his weather-beaten face". He was also known for his bass playing style and using his Rickenbacker bass to create an "overpowered, distorted rhythmic rumble", while another notable aspect of his bass sound was that he often played power chords using heavily overdriven tube stacks by Marshall.
Lemmy was born in Stoke-on-Trent and grew up between there, the nearby towns of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Madeley, and later the Welsh village of Benllech. He was influenced by rock and roll and the early works of The Beatles, which led to him playing in several rock groups in the 1960s such as The Rockin' Vickers. He worked as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and The Nice before joining the space rock band Hawkwind in 1971, singing lead vocals on their hit "Silver Machine". In 1975, he was fired from Hawkwind after an arrest for drug possession; that same year, he became the founder, lead singer, bassist, and songwriter of Motörhead. The band's success peaked around 1980 and 1981, including the hit single "Ace of Spades" and the chart-topping live album "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith".
Lemmy continued to record and tour regularly with Motörhead until his death on 28 December 2015 in Los Angeles, where he had lived since 1990. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer two days before his death. Alongside his music career, he had minor roles and cameos in film and television. He was well known for his hard-living lifestyle, which included chain-smoking and the daily consumption of high amounts of alcohol and amphetamines.
Lemmy was born on 24 December 1945 in the Burslem area of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. When he was three months old, his father, an ex-Royal Air Force chaplain and concert pianist, separated from his mother. He moved with his mother and grandmother to nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme, then to Madeley. When Lemmy was 10, his mother married former rugby player George L. Willis, who already had two older children from a previous marriage, Patricia and Tony, whom Lemmy disliked. They later moved to a farm in the Welsh village of Benllech, Anglesey, with Lemmy commenting that "funnily enough, being the only English kid among 700 Welsh ones didn't make for the happiest time, but it was interesting from an anthropological point of view". He attended Sir Thomas Jones' School in Amlwch, where he was nicknamed "Lemmy". It was later suggested by some that the name originated from the phrase "lemmy [lend me] a quid 'til Friday" because of his alleged habit of borrowing money from people to play slot machines, although Lemmy himself said that he did not know the origin of the name. He soon started to show an interest in rock and roll, girls, and horses.
At school, Lemmy noticed a pupil who had brought a guitar to school and had been "surrounded by chicks". His mother had a guitar, which he then took to school, and was himself surrounded by girls even though he could not play. By the time he left school, he had moved with his family to Conwy. He went on to work several odd jobs, including one at the local Hotpoint electric appliance factory, while also playing guitar for local bands such as the Sundowners and spending time at a horse-riding school. He saw the Beatles perform at the Cavern Club in Liverpool when he was 16, and then learned to play along on guitar to their first album "Please Please Me". He also admired the sarcastic attitude of the group, particularly that of John Lennon, and later said of the group, "Brian Epstein cleaned them up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. They were from Liverpool [...] a hard, sea-farin' town, all these dockers and sailors around all the time who would beat the piss out of you if you so much as winked at them. [...] The Rolling Stones were the mummy's boys—they were all college students from the outskirts of London. [...] The Stones made great records, but they were always shit on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear."
In Stockport, Lemmy joined local bands the Rainmakers and then the Motown Sect who played northern clubs for three years. In 1965, he joined The Rockin' Vickers who signed a deal with CBS, released three singles and toured Europe, reportedly being the first British band to visit the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Rockin' Vickers moved to Manchester, where they shared a flat together.
Leaving the Rockin' Vickers, Lemmy moved to London in 1967. He shared a flat with Noel Redding, bassist of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and with Neville Chesters, their road manager. He got a job as a roadie for the band. In 1968, he joined the psychedelic rock band Sam Gopal under the name Ian Willis and recorded the album "Escalator" which was released in 1969. After meeting Simon King at a shopping centre in Chelsea in 1969, he joined the band Opal Butterfly; but the group soon disbanded, having failed to raise enough interest with their singles.
In August 1971, Lemmy joined the space rock band Hawkwind, who were based in Ladbroke Grove, London, as a bassist and vocalist. He had no previous experience as a bass guitarist, and was cajoled into joining immediately before a benefit gig in Notting Hill by bandmate Michael "Dik Mik" Davies, to have two members who enjoyed amphetamines. Lemmy states that he originally auditioned for Hawkwind as a guitarist, but on the morning of the Notting Hill gig, they decided not to get another guitarist. By chance, the bass player didn't show up and left his equipment in the van. He often said, "Their bass player was pretty much saying 'please steal my gig!' So I stole his gig." Lemmy quickly developed a distinctive style that was strongly shaped by his early experience as a rhythm guitarist, often using double stops and chords rather than the single note lines preferred by most bassists. His bass work was a distinctive part of the Hawkwind sound during his tenure, perhaps best documented on the double live album "Space Ritual". He also provided the lead vocals on several songs, including the band's biggest UK chart single, "Silver Machine", which reached #3 in 1972.
In May 1975, during a North American tour, Lemmy was arrested at the Canadian border in Windsor, Ontario, on drug possession charges. The border police mistook the amphetamine he was carrying for cocaine and he spent five days in jail before being released without charge. The band were forced to cancel some shows and, tired of what they saw as his erratic behaviour, decided to fire him.
He once said of Hawkwind: ""I did like being in Hawkwind, and I believe I'd still be playing with them today if I hadn't been kicked out. It was fun onstage, not so much offstage. They didn't want to mesh with me. Musically, I loved the drummer, the guitar player. It was a great band.”
After Hawkwind, Lemmy formed a new band called "Bastard" with guitarist Larry Wallis (former member of the Pink Fairies, Steve Took's Shagrat and UFO) and drummer Lucas Fox. Lemmy and Took were friends, and Took was the stepfather to Lemmy's son Paul. When his manager informed him that a band by the name of "Bastard" would never get a slot on "Top of the Pops", Lemmy changed the band's name to "Motörhead" – the title of the last song he had written for Hawkwind.
Soon after, both Wallis and Fox were replaced with guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor and with this line-up, the band began to achieve success. Lemmy's guttural vocals were unique in rock at that time, and were copied during the time when punk rock became popular{cite}. The band's sound appealed to Lemmy's original fans and, eventually, to fans of punk. Lemmy asserted that he generally felt more kinship with punks than with metalheads; he even played with the Damned for a handful of gigs when they had no regular bassist. The band's success peaked in 1980 and 1981 with several UK chart hits, including the single "Ace of Spades", which remained a crowd favourite throughout the band's career, and the UK #1 live album "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith". Motörhead became one of the most influential bands in the heavy metal genre. Their – and Lemmy's – final live performance was in Berlin, Germany on 11 December 2015.
At the age of 17, Lemmy met a holidaying girl named Cathy. He followed her to Stockport, where she gave birth to his son Sean, who was put up for adoption. In the 2010 documentary film "Lemmy", he mentioned having a son whose mother had only recently reconnected with him and "hadn't got the heart to tell him who his father was". Later, during his time with The Rockin' Vickers, he slept with a woman in Manchester named Tracy; she had a son, Paul Inder, whom Lemmy met six years later. As an adult, Inder became a guitarist and occasionally joined Lemmy onstage.
Lemmy lived in Los Angeles from 1990 until his death in 2015, his last residence being a two-room apartment two blocks away from his favourite hangout, the Rainbow Bar and Grill.
In the 2005 Channel 4 documentary "Motörhead: Live Fast, Die Old", it was claimed that Lemmy had slept with over 2,000 women. He later quipped, "I said more than 1,000; the magazine made 2,000 of it." "Maxim" had Lemmy at No. 8 on its top ten "Living Sex Legends" list, as they claimed that he had slept with around 1,200 women. He is featured in the book "Sex Tips from Rock Stars" by Paul Miles.
Dave Grohl, on his Probot website, describes musicians with whom he has worked. In his entry for Lemmy, he wrote:
Lemmy was well known for his alcohol abuse. The documentary "Motörhead: Live Fast Die Old" stated that he drank a bottle of Jack Daniel's every day and had done so since he was 30 years old. In 2013, he stopped drinking Jack Daniel's for health reasons. During his time with Hawkwind, he developed an appetite for amphetamines and LSD, particularly the former. Before joining Hawkwind, he recalled Dik Mik, a former Hawkwind sound technician, visiting his home in the middle of the night and taking amphetamines with him. They became interested in how long "you could make the human body jump about without stopping", which they did for a few months until Mik ran out of money and wanted to return to Hawkwind, taking Lemmy with him.
In November 2005, he was invited to the National Assembly for Wales as a guest speaker by Conservative member William Graham. He was asked to express his views on the detrimental effects of drugs and called for the legalization of heroin. He stated that legalization would eradicate the drug dealer from society and generate money from its taxation (similar to drug laws in Portugal), however hard this would be to accept.
Lemmy collected German military regalia; he had an Iron Cross encrusted on his bass, which led to accusations of Nazi sympathies. He stated that he collected the memorabilia because he liked the way it looked, and considered himself an anarchist or libertarian. Lemmy said he was against religion, government, and established authority. In 2011, he identified as agnostic, saying, "I can find out when I die. I can wait. I'm not in a hurry." Jeff Hanneman, the founder of the thrash metal band Slayer, befriended Lemmy due to their shared fondness for collecting Nazi memorabilia. According to Keith Emerson's autobiography, Lemmy gave him two of his Hitler Youth knives during his time as a roadie for the Nice. Emerson used these knives many times as keyholders when playing the Hammond organ during concerts with the Nice and Emerson, Lake & Palmer before destroying them. Lemmy defended his collection by saying that if his then-girlfriend (who was black) had no problem with it, nobody else should.
In December 2000, Lemmy's tour was cancelled when he was hospitalised in Italy with the flu, exhaustion, and a lung infection. He was hospitalised with extreme dehydration and exhaustion in Germany in July 2005. As he grew older, he used less alcohol and drugs as he suffered from diabetes and hypertension. In June 2013, it was reported that he had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator fitted. His tour was cancelled in July 2013 due to a severe haematoma. He referred to his continuing drug use as "dogged insolence in the face of mounting opposition to the contrary". Towards the end of his life, he had to use a walking stick. He had started smoking at the age of 11. In August 2015, he said he had cut down his smoking habit from two packs a day to one pack a week. He was hospitalised with a lung infection in September 2015, after having breathing problems when performing onstage.
On 28 December 2015, four days after his 70th birthday, Lemmy died at his Los Angeles apartment from prostate cancer, cardiac arrhythmia, and congestive heart failure. Motörhead announced his death on their official Facebook page later that day. According to the band, his cancer had only been diagnosed two days prior to his death.
Lemmy's manager, Todd Singerman, later revealed:
Lemmy's doctor had given him two to six months to live. Mikael Maglieri, owner of his nearby hangout of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, subsequently had a video game machine that Lemmy was fond of playing taken from the establishment and put in Lemmy's apartment so he could continue playing it from his bedside. Although his manager had planned to keep the news private until his eventual death, Lemmy strongly encouraged him to make the diagnosis public in early 2016, but he died before a press release could be drafted.
Lemmy's memorial service took place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, on 9 January 2016. The service was streamed live over YouTube with more than 230,000 people logging on to watch, while others gathered at the Rainbow. His body was cremated following the funeral. His remains were placed in a 3D-printed mantelpiece shaped like his trademark cavalry hat and emblazoned with the slogan "born to lose, lived to win". The piece was on display during his funeral and was later interred at Forest Lawn.
In various media, additional tributes appeared from fellow rock stars such as Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Metallica, Scott Ian of Anthrax, and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi.
Reviewing his career after his death, "The Daily Telegraph" said:
In 2005, the UK magazine "Classic Rock" presented Lemmy with its first "Living Legend" award. In a 2013 interview with the magazine, Lemmy said he had never expected to make it to 30, but he spoke very pointedly about the future, indicating neither he nor the band was obsessing about the end:
In February 2016, the Hollywood Vampires performed at the Grammy Award ceremony as a tribute to Lemmy. On 11 June, Download Festival paid tribute to Lemmy by renaming the main stage the "Lemmy Stage", and in the slot where Motorhead were due to play, there was a video tribute to Lemmy in which they played his music and his peers talked about him. On 17 November, Metallica released a tribute song titled "Murder One", named after Lemmy's frequently used amp. The song, from their album "Hardwired... to Self-Destruct", depicts Lemmy's rise to fame. On 18 January 2017, Lemmy was inducted into the Hall of Heavy Metal History for being the creator of thrash metal. In 2017, the extinct crocodile relative "Lemmysuchus" was named after Lemmy. On 14 November 2016, asteroid 243002 was officially named 243002 Lemmy, complementing asteroid 250840 Motorhead, named after the band in 2014.
In 2018, Hawkwind recorded a new acoustic version of Lemmy's "The Watcher" (originally recorded on "Doremi Fasol Latido", 1972) on the album "The Road to Utopia" with production, arrangement and additional orchestrations by Mike Batt and a guest appearance from Eric Clapton.
Lemmy worked with several musicians, apart from his Motörhead bandmates, over the course of his career. He wrote the song "R.A.M.O.N.E.S" for the Ramones, which he played in his live sets as a tribute to the band. He also produced a Ramones E.P and an album for Warfare entitled "Metal Anarchy" in which Wurzel guested on guitar, He was brought in as a songwriter for Ozzy Osbourne's 1991 "No More Tears" album, providing lyrics for the tracks "Hellraiser," (which Motörhead later recorded themselves and released as a single), "Desire," "I Don't Want to Change the World" and the single "Mama I'm Coming Home". Lemmy noted in several magazine and television interviews that he made more money from the royalties of that one song that he had in his entire time with Motörhead. After being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2000, for which he was hospitalized briefly, Lemmy again appeared with Motörhead at WrestleMania X-Seven playing WWE wrestler Triple H to the ring. Lemmy published his autobiography, "White Line Fever", in November 2002. In 2005, Motörhead won their first Grammy in the Best Metal Performance category with their cover of Metallica's "Whiplash". In the same year he began recording an unreleased solo album titled "Lemmy & Friends", which was intended to include a collaboration with Janet Jackson.
In 2014, he established his own recording label, Motorhead Music, to promote and develop new talent. Acts he signed to the label and helped develop include Barb Wire Dolls, Budderside, Others, and Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons.
Lemmy made appearances in film and television, including 1990 science fiction film "Hardware" and the 1987 comedy "Eat the Rich", for which Motörhead also recorded the soundtracks including the title song. He appeared as himself in the 1986 "The Comic Strip Presents..." episode More Bad News, along with fellow heavy metal musicians Ozzy Osbourne, the Scorpions and Def Leppard. In 1984, Motörhead were the musical guests on the TV show "The Young Ones", in the episode "Bambi". He appears in the 1994 comedy "Airheads" (in which he is credited as "Lemmy von Motörhead"). Lemmy has a cameo in Ron Jeremy's 1994 pornographic film "John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut" as the discoverer of Bobbitt's severed penis. The appendage is thrown from the window of a moving car and lands at Lemmy's feet who exclaims: "Looks like a dick! Fucking hell! Ah well, it's not mine at least." The film's soundtrack also features the Motörhead song "Under the Knife".
He has also appeared in several movies from Troma Entertainment, including the narrator in 1996's "Tromeo and Juliet" and as himself in both "Terror Firmer" and "". His last role was portraying the President of the United States in "Return to Nuke 'Em High". He has a cameo role in the film "Down and Out with the Dolls" (Kurt Voss, 2001). He appears as a lodger who lives in a closet. He appeared on "Down and Dirty with Jim Norton" as the series DJ, and also wrote the theme music. He appeared in a 2001 advertisement for Kit Kat, playing violin as part of a string quartet in a genteel tearoom. In 2015, Lemmy appeared as a central figure in the Björn Tagemose-directed silent film "Gutterdämmerung" opposite Grace Jones, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Tom Araya of Slayer and Eagles of Death Metal's Jesse Hughes.
The 2010 rockumentary film "Lemmy" was directed and produced by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski. It consists of a combination of 16 mm film and HD video footage, produced over three years. It features interviews with friends, peers, and admirers such as Dave Grohl, Slash, Ozzy Osbourne, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo of Metallica, David Ellefson of Megadeth, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Alice Cooper, Peter Hook of Joy Division/New Order, Dee Snider, Nikki Sixx, Mick Jones of the Clash, Ice-T, Kat Von D, Henry Rollins, Lars Frederiksen of Rancid, Jim Heath of The Reverend Horton Heat, Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats, Mike Inez, Joan Jett, pro skateboarder Geoff Rowley, pro wrestler Triple H, "Fast" Eddie Clarke, Jarvis Cocker, Marky Ramone, former Hawkwind bandmates Dave Brock and Stacia, and Steve Vai.
He was the main character in the 16-bit video game "Motörhead", released for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST in 1992. Lemmy provided his voice as the Arms Dealer in the 2006 game "". Lemmy also appeared as an unlockable character in the 2009 game "". He also provided his voice for the 2009 video game "Brütal Legend", voicing the Kill Master, a character designed and based on his surname and likeness. Lemmy was also the inspiration for the Mario game character Lemmy Koopa, who made his first appearance in "Super Mario Bros. 3". In the "Victor Vran" "Downloadable content" "Motorhead Through The Ages", there is a new "Lemmy's Outfit" armour. The other Motörhead bandmates' armour is also available. As an easter egg, a holographic woman in the final level of 2020's "DOOM Eternal" proclaims, "Lemmy is God!".
Lemmy positioned his microphone in an uncommonly high position, angled so that he appeared to be looking up at the sky rather than at the audience. He said that it was for "personal comfort, that's all. It's also one way of avoiding seeing the audience. In the days when we only had ten people and a dog, it was a way of avoiding seeing that we only "had" ten people and a dog."
Lemmy's first electric guitar was a used Hofner Club 50. After Upon joining the Motown Sect in 1962 he used EKO 40V guitar, Harmony Meteor, Gibson 330, Fender Jazzmaster with a Telecaster neck. He traded each guitar sequentially right up until Hawkwind (1972).
Once a member of Hawkwind, Lemmy used current bassist Dave Anderson's Rickenbacker. Anderson failed to show up to a charity event and Kilmister took his place. Following the departure of Anderson, Kilmister bought a Hopf Studio bass off Hawkwind synth player Del Detmar.
Subsequently, Kilmister would return to Rickenbacker basses and used a Rickenbacker 4000. This guitar was heavily modified with stickers, hardware and tone control knobs.
For the majority of his career, he used Rickenbacker basses. In September 1996, his Rickenbacker bass was featured in the "Bang Your Head" exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, US. Rickenbacker has introduced a signature 4004LK "Lemmy Kilmister" bass.
When asked what the appeal is Lemmy said "The shape. I'm all for the image—always. If you get one that looks good, you can always mess with the pickups if it sounds bad." He had many Rickenbackers over the years including, not limited to:
In Motorhead Lemmy used a bass stack made by Marshall Amplification, with two JMP Super Bass amplifier heads each driving a cabinet. In total there would be two 4x15-inch speakers two 4x12-inch speakers. Lemmy had a habit of naming his amplifier heads over the years. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18642 |
Lactose
Lactose is a disaccharide. It is a sugar composed of galactose and glucose subunits and has the molecular formula C12H22O11. Lactose makes up around 2–8% of milk (by weight). The name comes from ' (gen. '), the Latin word for milk, plus the suffix "-ose" used to name sugars. The compound is a white, water-soluble, non-hygroscopic solid with a mildly sweet taste. It is used in the food industry.
Lactose is a disaccharide derived from the condensation of galactose and glucose, which form a β-1→4 glycosidic linkage. Its systematic name is β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-glucose. The glucose can be in either the α-pyranose form or the β-pyranose form, whereas the galactose can only have the β-pyranose form: hence α-lactose and β-lactose refer to the anomeric form of the glucopyranose ring alone.
Detection reactions for lactose are the Woehlk- and Fearon's test. Both can be easily used in school experiments to visualise the different lactose content of different dairy products such as whole milk, lactose free milk, yoghurt, buttermilk, coffee creamer, sour creme, kefir etc.
Lactose is hydrolysed to glucose and galactose, isomerised in alkaline solution to lactulose, and catalytically hydrogenated to the corresponding polyhydric alcohol, lactitol. Lactulose is a commercial product, used for treatment of constipation.
Lactose composes about 2–8% of milk by weight. Several million tons are produced annually as a by-product of the dairy industry.
Whey or milk plasma is the liquid remaining after milk is curdled and strained, for example in the production of cheese. Whey is made up of 6.5% solids, of which 4.8% is lactose, which is purified by crystallisation.
Industrially, lactose is produced from whey permeate – that is whey filtrated for all major proteins. The protein fraction is used in infant nutrition and sports nutrition while the permeate can be evaporated to 60–65% solids and crystallized while cooling. Lactose can also be isolated by dilution of whey with ethanol.
Dairy products such as yogurt and cheese contain very little lactose, as the bacteria used to make them consume lactose during the manufacturing process.
Infant mammals nurse on their mothers to drink milk, which is rich in lactose. The intestinal villi secrete the enzyme lactase (β-D-galactosidase) to digest it. This enzyme cleaves the lactose molecule into its two subunits, the simple sugars glucose and galactose, which can be absorbed. Since lactose occurs mostly in milk, in most mammals, the production of lactase gradually decreases with maturity due to a lack of continuing consumption.
Many people with ancestry in Europe, West Asia, South Asia, the Sahel belt in West Africa, East Africa and a few other parts of Central Africa maintain lactase production into adulthood. In many of these areas, milk from mammals such as cattle, goats, and sheep is used as a large source of food. Hence, it was in these regions that genes for lifelong lactase production first evolved. The genes of adult lactose tolerance have evolved independently in various ethnic groups. By descent, more than 70% of western Europeans can drink milk as adults, compared with less than 30% of people from areas of Africa, eastern and south-eastern Asia and Oceania. In people who are lactose intolerant, lactose is not broken down and provides food for gas-producing gut flora, which can lead to diarrhea, bloating, flatulence, and other gastrointestinal symptoms.
The sweetness of lactose is 0.2 to 0.4, relative to 1.0 for sucrose. For comparison, the sweetness of glucose is 0.6 to 0.7, of fructose is 1.3, of galactose is 0.5 to 0.7, of maltose is 0.4 to 0.5, of sorbose is 0.4, and of xylose is 0.6 to 0.7.
When lactose is completely digested in the small intestine, its caloric value is 4 kcal/g, or the same as that of other carbohydrates. However, lactose is not always fully digested in the small intestine. Depending on ingested dose, combination with meals (either solid or liquid), and lactase activity in the intestines, the caloric value of lactose ranges from 2 to 4 kcal/g. Unidigested lactose acts as dietary fiber. It also has positive effects on absorption of minerals, such as calcium and magnesium.
The glycemic index of lactose is 46 to 65. For comparison, the glycemic index of glucose is 100 to 138, of sucrose is 68 to 92, of maltose is 105, and of fructose is 19 to 27.
Lactose has relatively low cariogenicity among sugars. This is because it is not a substrate for dental plaque formation and it is not rapidly fermented by oral bacteria. The buffering capacity of milk also reduces the cariogenicity of lactose.
Its mild flavor and easy handling properties have led to its use as a carrier and stabiliser of aromas and pharmaceutical products. Lactose is not added directly to many foods, because its solubility is less than that of other sugars commonly used in food. Infant formula is a notable exception, where the addition of lactose is necessary to match the composition of human milk.
Lactose is not fermented by most yeast during brewing, which may be used to advantage. For example, lactose may be used to sweeten stout beer; the resulting beer is usually called a milk stout or a cream stout.
Yeast belonging to the genus "Kluyveromyces" have a unique industrial application as they are capable of fermenting lactose for ethanol production. Surplus lactose from the whey by-product of dairy operations is a potential source of alternative energy.
Another significant lactose use is in the pharmaceutical industry. Lactose is added to tablet and capsule drug products as an ingredient because of its physical and functional properties, "i.e.", compressibility and cost effective use. For similar reasons it can be used to cut (dilute) illicit drugs.
The first crude isolation of lactose, by Italian physician Fabrizio Bartoletti (1576–1630), was published in 1633. In 1700, the Venetian pharmacist Lodovico Testi (1640–1707) published a booklet of testimonials to the power of milk sugar ("saccharum lactis") to relieve, among other ailments, the symptoms of arthritis. In 1715, Testi's procedure for making milk sugar was published by Antonio Vallisneri. Lactose was identified as a sugar in 1780 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18643 |
Median lethal dose
In toxicology, the median lethal dose, LD50 (abbreviation for "lethal dose, 50%"), LC50 (lethal concentration, 50%) or LCt50 is a measure of the lethal dose of a toxin, radiation, or pathogen. The value of LD50 for a substance is the dose required to kill half the members of a tested population after a specified test duration. LD50 figures are frequently used as a general indicator of a substance's acute toxicity. A lower LD50 is indicative of increased toxicity.
The test was created by J.W. Trevan in 1927. The term semilethal dose is occasionally used in the same sense, in particular with translations of foreign language text, but can also refer to a sublethal dose. LD50 is usually determined by tests on animals such as laboratory mice. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved alternative methods to LD50 for testing the cosmetic drug Botox without animal tests.
The LD50 is usually expressed as the mass of substance administered per unit mass of test subject, typically as milligrams of substance per kilogram of body mass, sometimes also stated as nanograms (suitable for botulinum), micrograms, or grams (suitable for paracetamol) per kilogram. Stating it this way allows the relative toxicity of different substances to be compared, and normalizes for the variation in the size of the animals exposed (although toxicity does not always scale simply with body mass). For substances in the environment, such as poisonous vapors or substances in water that are toxic to fish, the concentration in the environment (per cubic metre or per litre) is used, giving a value of LC50. But in this case, the exposure time is important (see below).
The choice of 50% lethality as a benchmark avoids the potential for ambiguity of making measurements in the extremes and reduces the amount of testing required. However, this also means that LD50 is not the lethal dose for all subjects; some may be killed by much less, while others survive doses far higher than the LD50. Measures such as "LD1" and "LD99" (dosage required to kill 1% or 99%, respectively, of the test population) are occasionally used for specific purposes.
Lethal dosage often varies depending on the method of administration; for instance, many substances are less toxic when administered orally than when intravenously administered. For this reason, LD50 figures are often qualified with the mode of administration, e.g., "LD50 i.v."
The related quantities LD50/30 or LD50/60 are used to refer to a dose that without treatment will be lethal to 50% of the population within (respectively) 30 or 60 days. These measures are used more commonly within Radiation Health Physics, as survival beyond 60 days usually results in recovery.
A comparable measurement is LCt50, which relates to lethal dosage from exposure, where C is concentration and t is time. It is often expressed in terms of mg-min/m3. ICt50 is the dose that will cause incapacitation rather than death. These measures are commonly used to indicate the comparative efficacy of chemical warfare agents, and dosages are typically qualified by rates of breathing (e.g., resting = 10 l/min) for inhalation, or degree of clothing for skin penetration. The concept of Ct was first proposed by Fritz Haber and is sometimes referred to as Haber's Law, which assumes that exposure to 1 minute of 100 mg/m3 is equivalent to 10 minutes of 10 mg/m3 (1 × 100 = 100, as does 10 × 10 = 100).
Some chemicals, such as hydrogen cyanide, are rapidly detoxified by the human body, and do not follow Haber's Law. So, in these cases, the lethal concentration may be given simply as LC50 and qualified by a duration of exposure (e.g., 10 minutes). The Material Safety Data Sheets for toxic substances frequently use this form of the term even if the substance does follow Haber's Law.
For disease-causing organisms, there is also a measure known as the median infective dose and dosage. The median infective dose (ID50) is the number of organisms received by a person or test animal qualified by the route of administration (e.g., 1,200 org/man per oral). Because of the difficulties in counting actual organisms in a dose, infective doses may be expressed in terms of biological assay, such as the number of LD50's to some test animal. In biological warfare infective dosage is the number of infective doses per cubic metre of air times the number of minutes of exposure (e.g., ICt50 is 100 medium doses - min/m3).
As a measure of toxicity, LD50 is somewhat unreliable and results may vary greatly between testing facilities due to factors such as the genetic characteristics of the sample population, animal species tested, environmental factors and mode of administration.
There can be wide variability between species as well; what is relatively safe for rats may very well be extremely toxic for humans ("cf." paracetamol toxicity), and vice versa. For example, chocolate, comparatively harmless to humans, is known to be toxic to many animals. When used to test venom from venomous creatures, such as snakes, LD50 results may be misleading due to the physiological differences between mice, rats, and humans. Many venomous snakes are specialized predators on mice, and their venom may be adapted specifically to incapacitate mice; and mongooses may be exceptionally resistant. While most mammals have a very similar physiology, LD50 results may or may not have equal bearing upon every mammal species, such as humans, etc.
Note: Comparing substances (especially drugs) to each other by LD50 can be misleading in many cases due (in part) to differences in effective dose (ED50). Therefore, it is more useful to compare such substances by therapeutic index, which is simply the ratio of LD50 to ED50.
The following examples are listed in reference to LD50 values, in descending order, and accompanied by LC50 values, {bracketed}, when appropriate.
The LD 50 values have a very wide range. The botulinum toxin as the most toxic substance known has an LD 50 value of 1 ng / kg, while the most non-toxic substance water has an LD 50 value of more than 90 g / kg. That's a difference of about 1 in 100 billion or 11 orders of magnitude. As with all measured values that differ by many orders of magnitude, a logarithmic view is advisable. Well-known examples are the indication of the earthquake strength using the Richter scale, the pH value, as a measure for the acidic or basic character of an aqueous solution or the volume in Db .
In this case, the negative decimal logarithm of the LD 50 values, which is standardized in kg per kg body weight, is considered.
The dimensionless value found can be entered in a toxin scale. Water as the most important substance has the catchy value 1 in the toxin scale obtained in this way.
Animal-rights and animal-welfare groups, such as Animal Rights International, have campaigned against LD50 testing on animals. Several countries, including the UK, have taken steps to ban the oral LD50, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) abolished the requirement for the oral test in 2001 (see Test Guideline 401, "Trends in Pharmacological Sciences" Vol 22, February 22, 2001). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18644 |
Lactase
Lactase is an enzyme produced by many organisms. It is located in the brush border of the small intestine of humans and other mammals. Lactase is essential to the complete digestion of whole milk; it breaks down lactose, a sugar which gives milk its sweetness. Lacking lactase, a person consuming dairy products may experience the symptoms of lactose intolerance. Lactase can be purchased as a food supplement, and is added to milk to produce "lactose-free" milk products.
Lactase (also known as lactase-phlorizin hydrolase, or LPH), a part of the β-galactosidase family of enzymes, is a glycoside hydrolase involved in the hydrolysis of the disaccharide lactose into constituent galactose and glucose monomers. Lactase is present predominantly along the brush border membrane of the differentiated enterocytes lining the villi of the small intestine. In humans, lactase is encoded by the LCT gene.
Lactase is an enzyme that some people are unable to produce in their small intestine. Without it they cannot break down the natural lactose in milk, leaving them with diarrhea, gas and bloating when drinking regular milk. Technology to produce lactose-free milk, ice cream and yogurt was developed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service in 1985. This technology is used to add lactase to milk, thereby hydrolyzing the lactose naturally found in milk, leaving it slightly sweet but digestible by everyone. Without lactase, lactose intolerant people pass the lactose undigested to the colon where bacteria break it down, creating carbon dioxide and that leads to bloating and flatulence.
Lactase supplements are sometimes used to treat lactose intolerance.
Lactase produced commercially can be extracted both from yeasts such as "Kluyveromyces fragilis" and "Kluyveromyces lactis" and from molds, such as "Aspergillus niger" and "Aspergillus oryzae". Its primary commercial use, in supplements such as Lacteeze and Lactaid, is to break down lactose in milk to make it suitable for people with lactose intolerance, However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not formally evaluated the effectiveness of these products.
Lactase is also used to screen for blue white colonies in the multiple cloning sites of various plasmid vectors in "Escherichia coli" or other bacteria.
The optimum temperature for human lactase is about 37 °C and the optimum pH is 6.
In metabolism, the β-glycosidic bond in D-lactose is hydrolyzed to form D-galactose and D-glucose, which can be absorbed through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream. The overall reaction that lactase catalyzes is C12H22O11 + H2O → C6H12O6 + C6H12O6 + heat.
The catalytic mechanism of D-lactose hydrolysis retains the substrate anomeric configuration in the products. While the details of the mechanism are uncertain, the stereochemical retention is achieved off a double displacement reaction. Studies of "E. coli" lactase have proposed that hydrolysis is initiated when a glutamate nucleophile on the enzyme attacks from the axial side of the galactosyl carbon in the β-glycosidic bond. The removal of the D-glucose leaving group may be facilitated by Mg-dependent acid catalysis. The enzyme is liberated from the α-galactosyl moiety upon equatorial nucleophilic attack by water, which produces D-galactose.
Substrate modification studies have demonstrated that the 3′-OH and 2′-OH moieties on the galactopyranose ring are essential for enzymatic recognition and hydrolysis. The 3′-hydroxy group is involved in initial binding to the substrate while the 2′- group is not necessary for recognition but needed in subsequent steps. This is demonstrated by the fact that a 2-deoxy analog is an effective competitive inhibitor (Ki = 10mM). Elimination of specific hydroxyl groups on the glucopyranose moiety does not completely eliminate catalysis.
Lactase also catalyzes the conversion of phlorizin to phloretin and glucose.
Preprolactase, the primary translation product, has a single polypeptide primary structure consisting of 1927 amino acids. It can be divided into five domains: (i) a 19-amino-acid cleaved signal sequence; (ii) a large prosequence domain that is not present in mature lactase; (iii) the mature lactase segment; (iv) a membrane-spanning hydrophobic anchor; and (v) a short hydrophilic carboxyl terminus. The signal sequence is cleaved in the endoplasmic reticulum, and the resulting 215-kDa pro-LPH is sent to the Golgi apparatus, where it is heavily glycosylated and proteolytically processed to its mature form. The prodomain has been shown to act as an intramolecular chaperone in the ER, preventing trypsin cleavage and allowing LPH to adopt the necessary 3-D structure to be transported to the Golgi apparatus.
Mature human lactase consists of a single 160-kDa polypeptide chain that localizes to the brush border membrane of intestinal epithelial cells. It is oriented with the N-terminus outside the cell and the C-terminus in the cytosol. LPH contains two catalytic glutamic acid sites. In the human enzyme, the lactase activity has been connected to Glu-1749, while Glu-1273 is the site of phlorizin hydrolase function.
Lactase is encoded by a single genetic locus on chromosome 2. It is expressed exclusively by mammalian small intestine enterocytes and in very low levels in the colon during fetal development. Humans are born with high levels of lactase expression. In most of the world’s population, lactase transcription is down-regulated after weaning, resulting in diminished lactase expression in the small intestine, which causes the common symptoms of adult-type hypolactasia, or lactose intolerance.
Some population segments exhibit lactase persistence resulting from a mutation that is postulated to have occurred 5,000–10,000 years ago, coinciding with the rise of cattle domestication. This mutation has allowed almost half of the world’s population to metabolize lactose without symptoms. Studies have linked the occurrence of lactase persistence to two different single-nucleotide polymorphisms about 14 and 22 kilobases upstream of the 5’-end of the LPH gene. Both mutations, C→T at position -13910 and G→ A at position -22018, have been independently linked to lactase persistence.
The lactase promoter is 150 base pairs long and is located just upstream of the site of transcription initiation. The sequence is highly conserved in mammals, suggesting that critical cis-transcriptional regulators are located nearby. Cdx-2, HNF-1α, and GATA have been identified as transcription factors. Studies of hypolactasia onset have demonstrated that despite polymorphisms, little difference exists in lactase expression in infants, showing that the mutations become increasingly relevant during development. Developmentally regulated DNA-binding proteins may down-regulate transcription or destabilize mRNA transcripts, causing decreased LPH expression after weaning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18645 |
Linkin Park
Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. The band's current lineup comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, DJ/keyboardist Joe Hahn and drummer Rob Bourdon, all of whom are founding members. Vocalists Mark Wakefield and Chester Bennington and bassist Kyle Christner are former members of the band. Categorized as alternative rock, Linkin Park earlier music spanned a fusion of heavy metal and hip hop, while they later transitioned into more electronica and pop influenced music.
Formed in 1996, Linkin Park rose to international fame with their debut studio album, "Hybrid Theory" (2000), which became certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album came at the peak of the nu metal scene, and due in part to heavy MTV airplay, the album dominated the "Billboard" charts with its singles “One Step Closer”, “Crawling” and “In the End” all charting highly on the Mainstream Rock chart; the latter crossed over to the pop chart. Their second album, "Meteora" (2003), continued the band's success. The band explored experimental sounds on their third album, "Minutes to Midnight" (2007).
By the end of the decade, Linkin Park was among the most successful rock acts of the 2000s. The band continued to explore a wider variation of musical types on their fourth album, "A Thousand Suns" (2010), layering their music with more electronic sounds. The band's fifth album, "Living Things" (2012), combined musical elements from all of their previous records. Their sixth album, "The Hunting Party" (2014), returned to a heavier rock sound, and their seventh album, "One More Light" (2017), was their first pop-oriented record. Linkin Park went on a hiatus when longtime lead vocalist Bennington died by suicide in July 2017. In April 2020, bassist Dave Farrell revealed the band is working on new music.
Linkin Park is among the best-selling bands of the 21st century and the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 100 million records worldwide. They have won two Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, two "Billboard" Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, 10 MTV Europe Music Awards and three World Music Awards. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. "Billboard" ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade list. In 2012, the band was voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as "The Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now" by "Kerrang!".
Linkin Park was founded by three high school friends: Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson. The three attended Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. After graduating from high school, the three began to take their musical interests more seriously, recruiting Joe Hahn, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, and Mark Wakefield to perform in their band, then called Xero. Though limited in resources, the band began recording and producing songs within Shinoda's makeshift bedroom studio in 1996, resulting in a four-track demo tape, entitled "Xero". However, tensions and frustration within the band grew after they failed to land a record deal. The lack of success and stalemate in progress prompted Wakefield, at that time the band's vocalist, to leave the band in search of other projects. Farrell also left to tour with Tasty Snax, a Christian punk and ska band.
After spending a considerable time searching for Wakefield's replacement, Xero recruited Arizona vocalist Chester Bennington, who was recommended by Jeff Blue, the vice president of Zomba Music in March 1999. Bennington, formerly of a post-grunge band Grey Daze, became a standout among applicants because of the dynamic in his singing style. The band then agreed on changing their name from Xero to Hybrid Theory; the newborn vocal chemistry between Shinoda and Bennington helped revive the band, inciting them to work on new material. In 1999 the band released a self-titled extended play, which they circulated across internet chat-rooms and forums with the help of an online 'street team'.
The band still struggled to sign a record deal. They turned to Jeff Blue for additional help after facing numerous rejections from several major record labels. After failing to catch Warner Bros. Records on three previous reviews, Blue, who was now the vice president of Warner Bros. Records, helped the band sign a deal with the company. However, the label advised the band to change their name to avoid confusion with Hybrid. The band changed their name to Linkin Park, a play on and homage to Santa Monica's Lincoln Park, now called Christine Emerson Reed Park. They initially wanted to use the name "Lincoln Park", however they changed it to "Linkin" to acquire the internet domain "linkinpark.com".
Bennington and Shinoda both reported that Warner Bros. Records was skeptical of Linkin Park's initial recordings. The label's A&R was not pleased with the band's hip-hop and rock-style approach. An A&R representative suggested that Bennington should demote or fire Shinoda and exclusively focus on making a rock record. Bennington supported Shinoda and refused to compromise Linkin Park's vision for the album. Farrell returned in 2000, and the band released their breakthrough album, "Hybrid Theory", that same year.
Linkin Park released "Hybrid Theory" on October 24, 2000. The album, which represented half a decade's worth of the band's work, was edited by Don Gilmore. "Hybrid Theory" was a massive commercial success; it sold more than 4.8 million copies during its debut year, earning it the status of best-selling album of 2001, while singles such as "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" established themselves as staples among alternative rock radio play lists during the year. Additionally, other singles from the album were featured in films such as "Dracula 2000", "Little Nicky", and "Valentine". "Hybrid Theory" won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song "Crawling" and was nominated for two other Grammy Awards: Best New Artist and Best Rock Album. MTV awarded the band their Best Rock Video and Best Direction awards for "In the End". Through the winning of the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, "Hybrid Theory"s overall success had catapulted the band into mainstream success.
During this time, Linkin Park received many invitations to perform on many high-profile tours and concerts including Ozzfest, Family Values Tour, and KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas. The band worked with Jessica Sklar to found their official fan club and street team, "Linkin Park Underground", in November 2001. Linkin Park also formed their own tour, Projekt Revolution, which featured other notable artists such as Cypress Hill, Adema, and Snoop Dogg. Within a year's stretch, Linkin Park had performed at over 320 concerts. The experiences and performances of the precocious band were documented in their first DVD, "Frat Party at the Pankake Festival", which debuted in November 2001. Now reunited with former bassist Phoenix, the band began work on a remix album, dubbed "Reanimation", which would include works from "Hybrid Theory" and non-album tracks. "Reanimation" debuted on July 30, 2002, featuring the likes of Black Thought, Jonathan Davis, Aaron Lewis, and many others. "Reanimation" claimed the second spot on the "Billboard" 200, and sold nearly 270,000 copies during its debut week. "Hybrid Theory" is also in the RIAA's "Top 100 Albums".
Following the success of "Hybrid Theory" and "Reanimation", Linkin Park spent a significant amount of time touring around the United States. The band members began to work on new material amidst their saturated schedule, spending a sliver of their free time in their tour bus' studio. The band officially announced the production of a new studio album in December 2002, revealing their new work was inspired by the rocky region of Meteora in Greece, where numerous monasteries have been built on top of the rocks. "Meteora" features a mixture of the band's nu metal and rap metal style with newer innovative effects, including the induction of a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute made of bamboo) and other instruments. Linkin Park's second album debuted on March 25, 2003 and instantly earned worldwide recognition, going to No. 1 in the US and UK, and No. 2 in Australia.
"Meteora" sold more than 800,000 copies during its first week, and it ranked as the best selling album on the Billboard charts at the time. The album's singles, including "Somewhere I Belong", "Breaking the Habit", "Faint", and "Numb", received significant radio attention. By October 2003, "Meteora" sold nearly three million copies. The album's success allowed Linkin Park to form another Projekt Revolution, which featured other bands and artists including Mudvayne, Blindside, and Xzibit. Additionally, Metallica invited Linkin Park to play at the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003, which included well-known acts such as Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Deftones. The band released an album and DVD, titled "Live in Texas", which featured some audio and video tracks from the band's performances in Texas during the tour. In early 2004, Linkin Park started a world tour titled the "Meteora World Tour". Supporting bands on the tour included Hoobastank, P.O.D., Story of the Year and Pia.
"Meteora" earned the band multiple awards and honors. The band won the MTV awards for Best Rock Video for "Somewhere I Belong" and the Viewer's Choice Award for "Breaking the Habit". Linkin Park also received significant recognition during the 2004 Radio Music Awards, winning the Artist of the Year and Song of the Year ("Numb") awards. Although "Meteora" was not nearly as successful as "Hybrid Theory", it was the third best selling album in the United States during 2003. The band spent the first few months of 2004 touring around the world, first with the third Projekt Revolution tour, and later several European concerts. At the same time, the band's relationship with Warner Bros. Records was deteriorating rapidly on account of several trust and financial issues. After months of feuding, the band finally negotiated a deal in December 2005.
Following "Meteora"'s success, the band worked on many side projects. Bennington appeared on DJ Lethal's "State of the Art" and other work with Dead by Sunrise, while Shinoda did work with Depeche Mode. In 2004, the band began to work with Jay-Z to produce another remix album, titled "Collision Course". The album, which featured intermixed lyrics and background tracks from both artists' previous albums, debuted in November 2004. Shinoda also formed Fort Minor as a side project. With the aid of Jay-Z, Fort Minor released their debut album, "The Rising Tied", to critical acclaim.
Linkin Park also participated in numerous charitable events, most notably raised money to benefit victims of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and later Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The band donated $75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March 2004. They also helped relief efforts for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami victims by staging several charity concerts and setting up an additional fund called Music for Relief. Most notably, however, the band participated at Live 8, a series of charitable benefit concerts set up to raise global awareness. Alongside Jay-Z, the band performed on Live 8's stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a global audience. The band would later be reunited with Jay-Z at the Grammy Award Ceremony 2006, during which they performed "Numb/Encore", en route to winning a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. They were joined on stage by Paul McCartney who added verses from the song "Yesterday". They would later go on to play at the 2006 Summer Sonic music festival, which was hosted by Metallica in Japan.
Linkin Park returned to the recording studios in 2006 to work on new material. To produce the album, the band chose producer Rick Rubin. Despite initially stating the album would debut sometime in 2006, the album was delayed until 2007. The band had recorded thirty to fifty songs in August 2006, when Shinoda stated the album was halfway completed. Bennington later added that the new album would stray away from their previous nu metal sound. Warner Bros. Records officially announced that the band's third studio album, titled "Minutes to Midnight", would be released on May 15, 2007 in the United States. After spending fourteen months working on the album, the band members opted to further refine their album by removing five of the original seventeen tracks. The album's title, a reference to the Doomsday Clock, foreshadowed the band's new lyrical themes. "Minutes to Midnight" sold over 625,000 copies in its first week, making it one of the most successful debut week albums in recent years. The album also took the top spot on the Billboard Charts.
The album's first single, "What I've Done", was released on April 2, and premiered on MTV and Fuse within the same week. The single was acclaimed by listeners, becoming the top-ranked song on the Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. The song is also used in soundtrack for the 2007 action film, "Transformers". Mike Shinoda was also featured on the Styles of Beyond song "Second to None", which was also included in the film. Later in the year, the band won the "Favorite Alternative Artist" in the American Music Awards. The band also saw success with the rest of the album's singles, "Bleed It Out", "Shadow of the Day", "Given Up", and "Leave Out All the Rest", which were released throughout 2007 and early 2008. The band also collaborated with Busta Rhymes on his single "We Made It", which was released on April 29.
Linkin Park embarked on a large world tour titled "Minutes to Midnight World Tour". The band promoted the album's release by forming their fourth Projekt Revolution tour in the United States which included many musical acts like My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, Placebo, and many others. They also played numerous shows in Europe, Asia, and Australia which included a performance at Live Earth Japan on July 7, 2007. and headlining Download Festival in Donington Park, England and Edgefest in Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The band completed touring on their fourth Projekt Revolution tour before taking up an Arena tour around the United Kingdom, visiting Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, before finishing on a double night at the O2 arena in London. Bennington stated that Linkin Park plans to release a follow-up album to "Minutes to Midnight". However, he stated the band will first embark on a United States tour to gather inspiration for the album. Linkin Park embarked on another Projekt Revolution tour in 2008. This was the first time a Projekt Revolution tour was held in Europe with three shows in Germany and one in the United Kingdom. A Projekt Revolution tour was also held in the United States which featured Chris Cornell, The Bravery, Ashes Divide, Street Drum Corps and many others. Linkin Park finished the tour with a final show in Texas. Mike Shinoda announced a live CD/DVD titled "", which is a live video recording from the Projekt Revolution gig at the Milton Keynes Bowl on June 29, 2008, which was officially released on November 24, 2008.
In May 2009, Linkin Park announced they were working on a fourth studio album, which was planned to be released in 2010. Shinoda told IGN that the new album would be 'genre-busting,' while building off of elements in "Minutes to Midnight". He also mentioned that the album would be more experimental and "hopefully more cutting-edge". Bennington also addressed the media to confirm that Rick Rubin would return to produce the new album. The band later revealed the album would be called "A Thousand Suns". While working on the new album, Linkin Park worked with successful film composer Hans Zimmer to produce the score for "". The band released a single for the movie, titled "New Divide". Joe Hahn created a music video for the song, which featured clips from the film. On June 22, Linkin Park played a short set in Westwood Village after the premier of the movie. After completing work for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen", the band returned to the studio to finalize their album.
On April 26, the band released an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, a game called "8-Bit Rebellion!" It featured the band as playable characters, and a new song called "Blackbirds" which was unlockable by beating the game. The song was also later released as an iTunes bonus track on "A Thousand Suns".
"A Thousand Suns" was released on September 14. The album's first single, "The Catalyst", was released on August 2. The band promoted their new album by launching a concert tour, which started in Los Angeles on September 7. Linkin Park also relied on MySpace to promote their album, releasing two additional songs, "Waiting for the End" and "Blackout" on September 8. Furthermore, a documentary about the album's production, titled "Meeting of A Thousand Suns", was available for streaming on the band's MySpace page. On August 31, 2010, it was announced that the band would perform the single live for the first time at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010. The venue of the debut live performance of the single was Griffith Observatory, an iconic location used in Hollywood movies. "Waiting for the End" was released as the second single of "A Thousand Suns".
Linkin Park reached No.8 in "Billboard" Social 50, a chart of the most active artists on the world's leading social networking sites. In other "Billboard" Year-End charts, the band reached No.92 in the "Top Artists" chart, as well as "A Thousand Suns" reaching No.53 in the Year-End chart of the "Billboard" Top 200 albums and No.7 in the 2010 Year-End Rock Albums, and "The Catalyst" reaching No.40 in the Year-End Rock Songs chart.
The band was nominated for six Billboard Awards in 2011 for Top Duo or Group, Best Rock Album for "A Thousand Suns", Top Rock Artist, Top Alternative Artist, Top Alternative Song for "Waiting for the End" and Top Alternative Album for "A Thousand Suns", but did not win any award. The band charted in numerous "Billboard" Year-End charts in 2011. The band was No.39 in the Top Artists Chart, No.84 in the "Billboard" 200 Artists chart, No.11 in the Social 50 Chart, No.6 in the Top Rock Artists Chart, No.9 in the Rock Songs Artists Chart, No.16 in the Rock Albums Chart, No.4 in the Hard Rock Albums Chart, and No.7 in the Alternative Songs Chart.
In July 2011, Bennington told "Rolling Stone" that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time ... we like the direction that we're going in". Later, on March 28, 2012, Shinoda confirmed that the band is filming a music video for "Burn It Down". Joe Hahn directed the video. Shinoda spoke to "Co.Create" about the album's art, saying that it will "blow them [the fans] away ... the average person is not going to be able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So there's going to be that".
On April 15, 2012, Shinoda announced that "Living Things" would be the title of Linkin Park's fifth album. Shinoda stated that they chose the title "Living Things" because the album is more about people, personal interactions, and it is far more personal than their previous albums. The band promoted the album on the 2012 edition of the Honda Civic Tour, with co-headliners Incubus. The band performed "Burn It Down" at 2012 Billboard Music Awards. On May 24, the band released the music video for "Burn It Down" and debuted "Lies Greed Misery", another song from "Living Things", on BBC Radio 1. "Powerless", the twelfth and closing track of the album, was featured in the closing credits of the film "".
"Living Things" sold over 223,000 copies during its debut week, ranking No. 1 on the US Albums Charts. Linkin Park's single, "Castle of Glass", was nominated for 'Best Song in a Game' at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards. The band also performed at the award ceremony on December 7, but lost the award to "Cities" by Beck. Linkin Park also played at the Soundwave music festival in Australia, where they shared the stage with Metallica, Paramore, Slayer and Sum 41.
On August 10, 2013, the band collaborated with American musician Steve Aoki to record the song "A Light That Never Comes" for Linkin Park's online puzzle-action game "LP Recharge" (short for "Linkin Park Recharge"), which was launched on Facebook and the official "LP Recharge" website on September 12, 2013. On the day of the game's release, Linkin Park made a post on their Facebook explaining that the song used to promote the game would be included on a new remix album, entitled "Recharged", which was released on October 29, 2013 on CD, vinyl, and digital download. Similar to "Reanimation", the album features remixes of ten of the songs from "Living Things", with contributions from other artists, such as Ryu of Styles of Beyond, Pusha T, Datsik, KillSonik, Bun B, Money Mark, and Rick Rubin. The band also worked on the soundtrack for the film "Mall", which was directed by Joe Hahn.
In an interview with Fuse, Shinoda confirmed that Linkin Park had begun recording their sixth studio album in May 2013. The band released the first single from their upcoming album, titled, "Guilty All the Same" on March 6, 2014 through Shazam. The single was later released on the following day by Warner Bros. Records and debut at No. 28 on the US Billboard Rock Airplay charts before peaking at No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock charts in the following weeks. Shortly after the single's release, the band revealed their sixth album would be titled "The Hunting Party". The album was produced by Shinoda and Delson, who wanted to explore musical elements from "Hybrid Theory" and the band's earlier material. Shinoda commented the album is a "90s style of rock record". He elaborated, "It's a rock record. It's loud and it's rock, but not in the sense of what you've heard before, which is more like '90s hardcore-punk-thrash.' The album includes musical contributions from rapper Rakim, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Daron Malakian of System of a Down. "The Hunting Party" was released on June 13, 2014, in most countries, and later released in the United States on June 17.
Linkin Park performed at Download Festival on June 14, 2014, where they played their debut album, "Hybrid Theory", in its entirety. Linkin Park headlined Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2014, along with Metallica, Kings of Leon, and Iron Maiden. They also headlined with Iron Maiden again at the Greenfield Festival in July. On June 22, Linkin Park made an unscheduled headline appearance at the Vans Warped Tour, where they played with members of Issues, The Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, Yellowcard, Breathe Carolina, Finch, and Machine Gun Kelly. In January 2015, the band embarked on a tour to promote the release of "The Hunting Party", consisting of 17 concerts across the United States and Canada. The tour was canceled after only three concerts when Bennington injured his ankle. On May 9, Linkin Park performed at the first edition of Rock in Rio USA, in direct support for Metallica.
On November 9, 2014, MTV Europe named Linkin Park the "Best Rock" act of 2014 at their annual music awards ceremony. The band won the 'Best Rock Band' and 'Best Live Act' titles of 2014 on Loudwire's Music Awards. "Revolver" ranked "The Hunting Party" as the fourth best album of 2014. In an interview with AltWire on May 4, Shinoda reflected on "The Hunting Party" and commented on Linkin Park's future, stating; "I'm really happy with the reaction from "The Hunting Party", and I think we're ready to move somewhere new on the next album, which will be coming [in 2016]".
Linkin Park collaborated with Steve Aoki on the song "Darker Than Blood" for Aoki's album "Neon Future II", which was released in May 2015. The first preview of the song came during Aoki's performance on February 28, 2015 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. The song was debuted on Twitch on April 13 and released on April 14.
Linkin Park performed at the closing ceremony of BlizzCon 2015, Blizzard's video game convention.
Linkin Park began working on new material for a seventh studio album in November 2015. Chester Bennington commented on the album's direction by stating, "We've got a lot of great material that I hope challenges our fanbase as well as inspires them as much as it has us." In February 2017, Linkin Park released promotional videos on their social network accounts, which featured Shinoda and Bennington preparing new material for the album. Mike Shinoda stated the band was following a new process when producing the album. Brad Delson elaborated: "We've made so many records and we clearly know how to make a record and we definitely didn't take the easy way out this time."
The first single from the new album was revealed to be titled "Heavy" and features pop singer Kiiara, the first time the band has featured a female vocalist on an original song for a studio album. The lyrics for the song were co-written by Linkin Park with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. The single was released for download on February 16. As they have done in the past, Linkin Park had cryptic messages online in relation to the new album. The album cover was revealed through digital puzzles across social media; the cover features six kids playing in the ocean. The band's seventh album, "One More Light", was released on May 19, 2017.
Bennington died on July 20, 2017; his death was ruled a suicide by hanging. Shinoda confirmed Bennington's death on Twitter, writing, "Shocked and heartbroken, but it's true. An official statement will come out as soon as we have one". The band had released a music video for their single "Talking to Myself" earlier that day. One day after Bennington's death, the band canceled the North American leg of their One More Light World Tour. On the morning of July 24, Linkin Park released an official statement on their website as a tribute to Bennington. On July 28, Shinoda announced that donations made to the band's Music for Relief charity would be redirected to the One More Light Fund, which had been set up in Bennington's memory. On August 4, when the band was initially scheduled to play on "Good Morning America", Chris Cornell's twelve-year-old daughter Toni (who was also Bennington's goddaughter) appeared with OneRepublic to perform "Hallelujah" as a tribute to Bennington and her father. Bennington had previously performed the song at the funeral for Cornell, who had also died from a suicide by hanging two months earlier.
On August 22, Linkin Park announced plans to host a tribute concert in Los Angeles to honor Bennington. The band thanked fans for their support, stating, "The five of us are so grateful for all of your support as we heal and build the future of Linkin Park". The band later confirmed that the concert, titled , would take place on October 27 at the Hollywood Bowl. The event included Linkin Park's first performance following Bennington's death. The event featured multiple guests performing Linkin Park songs along with the band. The event was over three hours long and was streamed live via YouTube.
In November 2017, the band announced that a live album compiled from their final tour with Bennington, titled "One More Light Live", would be released on December 15. On November 19, Linkin Park received an American Music Award for Favorite Alternative Artist and dedicated the award to Bennington.
During an Instagram live chat on December 17, 2017, Shinoda was asked whether Linkin Park would perform with a hologram version of Bennington in the future. He replied, "Can we not do a holographic Chester? I can't even wrap my head around the idea of a holographic Chester. I've actually heard other people outside the band suggest that, and there's absolutely no way. I cannot fuck with that."
On January 28, 2018, Shinoda replied to a tweet from a fan inquiring about his future with Linkin Park, writing "I have every intention on continuing with LP, and the guys feel the same. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it'll take time." On March 29, however, Shinoda stated that he is uncertain of Linkin Park's future when being interviewed by "Vulture". On April 17, Linkin Park was nominated for three awards at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards, but did not win any of them. The band was presented with The George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at UCLA on May 18.
On February 18, 2019, Shinoda said in an interview that the band is open to the idea of continuing though what form that takes has yet to be decided. Shinoda stated "I know the other guys, they love to be onstage, they love to be in a studio, and so to not do that would be like, I don’t know, almost like unhealthy.” When asked about the band's future minus Bennington, Shinoda stated, “It’s not my goal to look for a new singer. If it does happen, it has to happen naturally. If we find someone that is a great person and good stylistic fit, I could see trying to do some stuff with somebody. I would never want to feel like we are replacing Chester.” Between Chester's death and 2020, the band remained on an "indefinite hiatus".
On April 28, 2020, bassist Dave Farrell revealed the band is working on new music.
On January 19, 2010, Linkin Park released a new song titled "Not Alone" as part of a compilation from Music for Relief called "Download to Donate for Haiti" in support of the Haiti Earthquake crisis. On February 10, 2010, Linkin Park released the official music video for the song on their homepage. The single itself was released on October 21, 2011.
On January 11, 2011, an updated version of "Download to Donate for Haiti" was launched, called "Download to Donate for Haiti V2.0", with more songs to download. For the updated compilation, the band released Keaton Hashimoto's remix of "The Catalyst" from the "Linkin Park featuring YOU" contest.
Shinoda designed two T-shirts, in which the proceeds would go to Music for Relief to help the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disasters. Music for Relief released "Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan", another compilation of songs, in which the proceeds would go to Save the Children. The band released the song titled as "Issho Ni", meaning "we're in this together", on March 22, 2011 via "".
In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Linkin Park played at Club Nokia during the "Music for Relief: Concert for the Philippines" in Los Angeles, and raised donations for victims. The show was broadcast on AXS TV on February 15. Other artists during the show included The Offspring, Bad Religion, Heart, and The Filharmonic.
Linkin Park combines elements of rock music, hip hop and electronica, and have been categorized as alternative rock, nu metal, alternative metal, rap rock, electronic rock, hard rock, hip hop, rap metal, pop, industrial rock, and pop rock. Despite being considered nu metal, the band never considered themselves as such.
Both "Hybrid Theory" and "Meteora" combine the alternative metal, nu metal, rap rock, rap metal, and alternative rock sound with influences and elements from hip hop, and electronica, utilizing programming and synthesizers. William Ruhlmann from AllMusic regarded it as "a Johnny-come-lately to an already overdone musical style," whereas "Rolling Stone" described their song "Breaking the Habit" as "risky, beautiful art".
In "Minutes to Midnight" the band experimented with their established sound and drew influences from a wider and more varied range of genres and styles, a process "Los Angeles Times" compares to a stage in U2's work. Only two songs on the album's tracklist feature rap vocals and the majority of the album can be considered alternative rock.
The vocal interplay between Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda plays as a major part within Linkin Park's music, with Bennington being the lead vocalist and Shinoda as the rapping vocalist. On Linkin Park's third album, "Minutes to Midnight", Shinoda sings lead vocals on "In Between", "Hands Held High", and on the B-side "No Roads Left". On numerous songs from band's fourth album, "A Thousand Suns", such as the album's singles ("The Catalyst", "Burning in the Skies", "Iridescent"), both Shinoda and Bennington sing. The album has been regarded as a turning point in the band's musical career, having a stronger emphasis on electronica. James Montgomery, of MTV, compared the record to Radiohead's "Kid A", while Jordy Kasko of "Review, Rinse, Repeat" likened the album to both "Kid A" and Pink Floyd's landmark album "The Dark Side of the Moon". Shinoda stated that he and the other band members were deeply influenced by Chuck D and Public Enemy. He elaborated: "Public Enemy were very three-dimensional with their records because although they seemed political, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on in there too. It made me think how three-dimensional I wanted our record to be without imitating them of course, and show where we were at creatively". One of the record's political elements is its samples of notable speeches by American political figures. "A Thousand Suns" was described as trip hop, electronic rock, ambient, alternative rock, industrial rock, experimental rock, rap rock, and progressive rock.
Their fifth album, "Living Things", is also an electronic-heavy album, but includes other influences, resulting in a harder sound by comparison. The band returned to a heavier sound compared to their last three albums on "The Hunting Party", which was described as an alternative metal, nu metal, hard rock, rap rock, and rap metal album. Their seventh album, "One More Light," was described as pop, pop rock and electropop.
Linkin Park's influences include Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Machines of Loving Grace, Metallica, Refused, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Descendents, Misfits, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, N.W.A, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Boogie Down Productions, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine, and the Beatles.
Linkin Park has sold 100 million records worldwide. The group's first studio album "Hybrid Theory" is one of the best-selling albums in the US (11 million copies shipped) and worldwide (30 million copies sold). "Billboard" estimates that Linkin Park earned US$5 million between May 2011 and May 2012, making them the 40th-highest-paid musical artist. 11 of the band's singles have reached the number one position on "Billboard" Alternative Songs chart, the second-most for any artist.
In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. "Billboard" ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade chart. The band was recently voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as the "Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now" by "Kerrang!". In 2015, "Kerrang!" gave "In the End" and "Final Masquerade" the top two positions on "Kerrang!"s Rock 100 list.
Linkin Park became the first rock band to achieve more than one billion YouTube hits.
Linkin Park also became the fifteenth most liked page on Facebook, tenth most liked artist, and most liked group followed by the Black Eyed Peas. Linkin Park's "Numb" is the third and "In the End" is the sixth "timeless song" on Spotify. The two songs making Linkin Park the only artist to have two timeless songs in top ten.
"Hybrid Theory" by the group is listed in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die", It was also ranked at #11 on "Billboard" "Hot 200 Albums of the Decade". In addition the album was included in "Best of 2001" by "Record Collector", "The top 150 Albums of the Generation" by "Rock Sound" and "50 Best Rock Albums of the 2000s" by "Kerrang!". The album "Meteora" was included in "Top 200 Albums of the Decade" by "Billboard" at No. 36. The album sold 20 million copies worldwide. The collaborated EP "Collision Course" with "Jay-Z", became the second ever EP to top the "Billboard" 200, going on to sell over 300,000 copies in its first week after Alice in Chains' "Jar of Flies" in 1994. The album "Minutes to Midnight" in the United States, the album had the biggest first week sales of 2007 at the time, with 625,000 albums sold. In Canada, the album sold over 50,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart. Worldwide, the album shipped over 3.3 million copies in its first four weeks of release.
"The New York Times" Jon Caramanica commented Linkin Park "brought the collision of hard rock and hip-hop to its commercial and aesthetic peak" at the beginning of the 2000s. Several rock and non-rock artists have cited Linkin Park as an influence, including Proyecto Eskhata, Of Mice & Men, One Ok Rock, Bishop Nehru, Misono, From Ashes to New, Bring Me the Horizon, Coldrain, Red, Girl on Fire, Manafest, Silentó, 3OH!3, The Prom Kings, AJ Tracey, Kiiara, The Chainsmokers, Kevin Rudolf, Blackbear, Amber Liu, Tokio Hotel, Stormzy and Imagine Dragons.
Current members
Former members
Timeline
Linkin Park was known as Xero from 1996–1999 and Hybrid Theory in 1999.
Headlining
Co-headlining
Works cited | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18646 |
Flipper (cricket)
The flipper is the name of a particular bowling delivery used in cricket, generally by a leg spin bowler. In essence it is a back spin ball. Squeezed out of the front of the hand with the thumb and first and second fingers, it keeps deceptively low after pitching and can accordingly be very difficult to play. The flipper is comparable to a riseball in fast-pitch softball.
By putting backspin on the ball the Magnus effect results in air travelling over the top of the ball quickly and cleanly whilst air travelling under the ball is turbulent. The lift produced means that the ball drops slower and travels further than a normal delivery. The slower descent also results in the ball bouncing lower.
The flipper is bowled on the opposite side to a slider, much in the same way that the top-spinner is bowled. On release, the bowler 'pinches' or clicks the thumb and forefinger, causing the ball to come out underneath the hand. There must be sufficient tension in the wrist and fingers to impart a good helping of backspin or underspin. In doing so the flipper will float on towards the batsman and land on a fuller length than he anticipated, often leaving him caught on the back foot when he wrongly assumes it to be a pullable or a cuttable ball. The back spin or underspin will cause the ball to hurry on at great pace with very little bounce, though this may be harder to achieve on softer wickets. A series of normal leg spinners or topspinners, with their dropping looping flight, will have the batsman used to the ball pitching on a shorter length. The batsman may wrongly assume that the flipper will drop and loop like a normal overspinning delivery, resulting in the ball pitching under the bat and going on to either hit the stumps or result in leg before wicket.
Much of the effectiveness of the flipper is attributable to the "pop", that is, the extra pace and change in trajectory that is imparted to the ball when it is squeezed out of the bowler's hand.
Occasionally, the term 'flipper' has been used to describe other types of deliveries. The Australian leg spinner Bob Holland employed a back spinning ball that he simply pushed backwards with the heel of his palm. Sometimes this form of front-hand flipper is called a "zooter". It is easier to bowl but not as effective as the amount of backspin is much less.
It was reputedly invented by the Australian leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett. Grimmett became so enamoured with the delivery that at times he bowled it almost as frequently as his stock leg break. The great Don Bradman once remarked to Grimmett that he must have forgotten how to bowl a leg break, as he bowled so many flippers. Bradman was bowled shortly thereafter at a memorial match by Grimmett who produced a perfectly pitched stock ball that turned just enough to remove Bradman's off bail. "There y'are Don, I told you I could bowl a leg break" was Grimmett's alleged response.
The flipper was the signature delivery of Anil Kumble of India and the Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne in his earlier years, until injury and later shoulder surgery restricted his ability to bowl flippers accurately. Like the googly, it may become more difficult to bowl as a bowler ages due to the flexibility and suppleness it demands from the bowler's wrist.
It is difficult to disguise the flipper entirely when bowling, as the hand action is distinctly different from a leg break. When Clarrie Grimmett first began bowling the delivery, batsmen would listen for the telltale clicking sound of his fingers; to compensate, Grimmett would often click the fingers of his non-bowling hand when "not" bowling the flipper to confuse the batsman.
Abdul Qadir (cricketer) of Pakistan achieved great success with the flipper making it one of his signature deliveries, along with him Shane Warne was also arguably the leading exponent of the flipper in more recent times. Anil Kumble of India used the flipper well to his advantage. Brad Hogg of Australia has also used the flipper with great success in Limited Overs Cricket | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18650 |
Lake Nicaragua
Lake Nicaragua or Cocibolca or Granada (, , or ) is a freshwater lake in Nicaragua. Of tectonic origin and with an area of , it is the largest lake in Central America, the 19th largest lake in the world (by area) and the tenth largest in the Americas, slightly smaller than Lake Titicaca. With an elevation of above sea level, the lake reaches a depth of . It is intermittently joined by the Tipitapa River to Lake Managua.
The lake drains to the Caribbean Sea via the San Juan River, historically making the lakeside city of Granada an Atlantic port, although Granada (as well as the entire lake) is closer to the Pacific Ocean geographically. The Pacific is near enough to be seen from the mountains of Ometepe (an island in the lake). The lake has a history of Caribbean pirates who assaulted Granada on three occasions. Before construction of the Panama Canal, a stagecoach line owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt's Accessory Transit Company connected the lake with the Pacific across the low hills of the narrow Isthmus of Rivas. Plans were made to take advantage of this route to build an interoceanic canal, the Nicaragua Canal, but the Panama Canal was built instead. In order to quell competition with the Panama Canal, the U.S. secured all rights to a canal along this route in the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916. However, since this treaty was mutually rescinded by the United States and Nicaragua in 1970, the idea of another canal in Nicaragua still periodically resurfaced, such as the Ecocanal proposal. In 2014, the government of Nicaragua offered a 50-year concession to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. (HKND) to build a canal across Nicaragua at a cost of US$40 billion, with construction beginning in December 2014 and completing in 2019. Protests against the ecological and social effects of the canal as well as questions about financing have led to doubts about the project.
Lake Nicaragua, despite being a freshwater lake, has sawfish, tarpon, and sharks. Initially, scientists thought the sharks in the lake belonged to an endemic species, the Lake Nicaragua shark ("Carcharhinus nicaraguensis"). In 1961, following comparisons of specimens, it was synonymized with the widespread bull shark ("C. leucas"), a species also known for entering freshwater elsewhere around the world. It had been presumed that the sharks were trapped within the lake, but this was found to be incorrect in the late 1960s, when it was discovered that they were able to jump along the rapids of the San Juan River (which connects Lake Nicaragua and the Caribbean Sea), almost like salmon. As evidence of these movements, bull sharks tagged inside the lake have later been caught in the open ocean (and vice versa), with some taking as little as 7–11 days to complete the journey. Numerous other species of fish live in the lake, including at least 16 cichlids that are endemic to the general region (none are strictly endemic to this lake, although "Amphilophus labiatus" is native only to the Nicaragua and Managua lakes). A non-native cichlid, a tilapia, is used widely in aquaculture within the lake. Owing to the large amount of waste they produce, and the risk of introducing diseases to which the native fish species have no resistance, they are potentially a serious threat to the lake's ecosystem.
Nicaraguans call the Lake or (literally "Sweet Sea"; in Spanish, "freshwater" is ). It is the nation's largest source of freshwater. The lake has sizeable waves driven by the easterly winds blowing west to the Pacific Ocean. The lake holds Ometepe and Zapatera, which are both volcanic islands, as well as the archipelago of the Solentiname Islands. The lake has a reputation for periodically powerful, unnavigable storms.
In the past 37 years, considerable concern has been expressed about the ecological condition of Lake Nicaragua. In 1981 the Nicaraguan Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MARENA) conducted an environmental assessment study and found that half of the water sources sampled were seriously polluted by sewage. It was found that 32 tons (70,000 pounds) of raw sewage were being released into Lake Nicaragua daily. Industry located along the lake's shore had been dumping effluent for an extended period of time. Pennwalt Chemical Corporation was found to be the worst polluter. Nicaragua's economic situation has hampered the building of treatment facilities nationwide (see: Water supply and sanitation in Nicaragua).
The country's worst drought in 32 years (as of August 2014) is taking its toll on the lake; the Nicaraguan government has recommended citizens grow and eat iguanas over chickens to reduce water consumption. Also, plans for the Nicaragua canal through the lake could lead to saltwater and other contamination during construction and operation of the canal. According to the plans and geography, the lake is 32 meters above sea level. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18653 |
Labour law
Labour law (also known as labor law or employment law) mediates the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer and union. Individual labour law concerns employees' rights at work also through the contract for work. are social norms (in some cases also technical standards) for the minimum socially acceptable conditions under which employees or contractors are allowed to work. Government agencies (such as the former US Employment Standards Administration) enforce labour law (legislature, regulatory, or judicial).
Labour law arose in parallel with the Industrial Revolution as the relationship between worker and employer changed from small-scale production studios to large-scale factories. Workers sought better conditions and the right to join a labour union, while employers sought a more predictable, flexible and less costly workforce. The state of labour law at any one time is therefore both the product of and a component of struggles between various social forces.
As England was the first country to industrialize, it was also the first to face the often appalling consequences of the industrial revolution in a less regulated economic framework. Over the course of the late 18th and early to the mid-19th century the foundation for modern labour law was slowly laid, as some of the more egregious aspects of working conditions were steadily ameliorated through legislation. This was largely achieved through the concerted pressure from social reformers, notably Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, and others.
A serious outbreak of fever in 1784 in cotton mills near Manchester drew widespread public opinion against the use of children in dangerous conditions. A local inquiry, presided over by Dr Thomas Percival, was instituted by the justices of the peace for Lancashire, and the resulting report recommended the limitation of children's working hours. In 1802, the first major piece of labour legislation was passed − the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act. This was the first, albeit modest, step towards the protection of labour. The act limited working hours to twelve a day and abolished night work. It required the provision of a basic level of education for all apprentices, as well as adequate sleeping accommodation and clothing.
The rapid industrialisation of manufacturing at the turn of the 19th century led to a rapid increase in child employment, and public opinion was steadily made aware of the terrible conditions these children were forced to endure. The Factory Act of 1819 was the outcome of the efforts of the industrialist Robert Owen and prohibited child labour under nine years of age and limited the working day to twelve. A great milestone in labour law was reached with the Factory Act of 1833, which limited the employment of children under eighteen years of age, prohibited all night work and, crucially, provided for inspectors to enforce the law. Pivotal in the campaigning for and the securing of this legislation were Michael Sadler and the Earl of Shaftesbury. This act was an important step forward, in that it mandated skilled inspection of workplaces and rigorous enforcement of the law by an independent governmental body.
A lengthy campaign to limit the working day to ten hours was led by Shaftesbury, and included support from the Anglican Church. Many committees were formed in support of the cause and some previously established groups lent their support as well. The campaign finally led to the passage of the Factory Act of 1847, which restricted the working hours of women and children in British factories to effectively 10 hours per day.
These early efforts were principally aimed at limiting child labour. From the mid-19th century, attention was first paid to the plight of working conditions for the workforce in general. In 1850, systematic reporting of fatal accidents was made compulsory, and basic safeguards for health, life and limb in the mines were put in place from 1855. Further regulations, relating to ventilation, fencing of disused shafts, signalling standards, and proper gauges and valves for steam-boilers and related machinery were also set down.
A series of further Acts, in 1860 and 1872 extended the legal provisions and strengthened safety provisions. The steady development of the coal industry, an increasing association among miners, and increased scientific knowledge paved the way for the Coal Mines Act of 1872, which extended the legislation to similar industries. The same Act included the first comprehensive code of regulation to govern legal safeguards for health, life and limb. The presence of more certified and competent management and increased levels of inspection were also provided for.
By the end of the century, a comprehensive set of regulations was in place in England that affected all industries. A similar system (with certain national differences) was implemented in other industrializing countries in the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The basic feature of labour law in almost every country is that the rights and obligations of the worker and the employer are mediated through a contract of employment between the two. This has been the case since the collapse of feudalism. Many contract terms and conditions are covered by legislation or common law. In the US for example, the majority of state laws allow for employment to be "at-will", meaning the employer can terminate an employee from a position for any reason so long as the reason is not explicitly prohibited, and, conversely, an employee may quit at any time, for any reason (or for no reason), and is not required to give notice.
A major issue for any business is to understand the relationship between the worker and the master. There are two types of workers, independent contractors and employees. They are differentiated based on the level of control the master has on them. If a worker is provided tools and resources, closely supervised, paid regularly, etc., then he or she is considered an employee of the company. Employees must act in the best interest of the employer.
One example of employment terms in many countries is the duty to provide written particulars of employment with the "essentialia negotii" (Latin for "essential terms") to an employee. This aims to allow the employee to know concretely what to expect and what is expected. It covers items including compensation, holiday and illness rights, notice in the event of dismissal and job description.
The contract is subject to various legal provisions. An employer may not legally offer a contract that pays the worker less than a minimum wage. An employee may not agree to a contract that allows an employer to dismiss them for illegal reasons.
Intellectual property is the vital asset of the business, employees add value to the company by creating Intellectual Property. As per Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Intellectual Property is personal property. Intellectual property is used as competitive advantage by big companies to protect themselves from rivalry. Given the conditions, if the worker is in the agent-principal relationship, he is the employee of the company, and if the employee's invention is in the scope of employment i.e. if the employee creates a new product or process to increase the productivity and create organizations' wealth by utilizing the resources of the company, then the Intellectual property solely belongs to the company. New business products or processes are protected under Patents. However, there are many typical opinions on Palatable inventions one such argument is Software inventions. However, there are many arguments and opinions on patenting software inventions: under the case "Diamond v. Diehr" the United States supreme court decided that Diehr is patent- eligible because they improved the existing technological process, not because they were implemented on a computer.
Many jurisdictions define the minimum amount that a worker can be paid per hour. Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Vietnam, Germany (in 2015) and others have laws of this kind. The minimum wage is set usually higher than the lowest wage as determined by the forces of supply and demand in a free market and therefore acts as a price floor. Each country sets its own minimum wage laws and regulations, and while a majority of industrialized countries has a minimum wage, many developing countries do not.
Minimum wages are regulated and stipulated in some countries that lack explicit laws. In Sweden minimum wages are negotiated between the labour market parties (unions and employer organizations) through collective agreements that also cover non-union workers at workplaces with collective agreements. At workplaces without collective agreements there exist no minimum wages. Non-organized employers can sign substitute agreements directly with trade unions but far from all do. The Swedish case illustrates that in countries without statutory regulation will part of the labour market do not have regulated minimum wages, as self-regulation only applies to workplaces and employees covered by collective agreements (in Sweden about 90 per cent of employees).
National minimum wage laws were first introduced in the United States in 1938, Brazil in 1940 India in 1948, France in 1950 and in the United Kingdom in 1998. In the European Union, 18 out of 28 member states have national minimum wages as of 2011.
The living wage is higher than the minimum wage and is designed that a full-time worker would be able to support themselves and a small family at that wage.
The maximum number of hours worked per day or other time intervals are set by law in many countries. Such laws also control whether workers who work longer hours must be paid additional compensation.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the workday varied between 11 and 14 hours. With the growth of industrialism and the introduction of machinery, longer hours became far more common, reaching as high as 16 hours per day.
The eight-hour movement led to the first law on the length of a working day, passed in 1833 in England. It limited miners to 12 hours and children to 8 hours. The 10-hour day was established in 1848, and shorter hours with the same pay were gradually accepted thereafter. The 1802 Factory Act was the first labour law in the UK.
Germany was the next European country to pass labour laws; Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's main goal was to undermine the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1878, Bismarck instituted a variety of anti-socialist measures, but despite this, socialists continued gaining seats in the Reichstag. To appease the working class, he enacted a variety of paternalistic social reforms, which became the first type of social security. In 1883 the Health Insurance Act was passed, which entitled workers to health insurance; the worker paid two-thirds and the employer one-third of the premiums. Accident insurance was provided in 1884, while old-age pensions and disability insurance followed in 1889. Other laws restricted the employment of women and children. These efforts, however, were not entirely successful; the working class largely remained unreconciled with Bismarck's conservative government.
In France, the first labour law was voted in 1841. It limited under-age miners' hours. In the Third Republic labour law was first effectively enforced, in particular after Waldeck-Rousseau 1884 law legalising trade unions. With the Matignon Accords, the Popular Front (1936–38) enacted the laws mandating 12 days each year of paid vacations for workers and the law limiting the standard workweek to 40 hours.
Other labour laws involve safety concerning workers. The earliest English factory law was passed in 1802 and dealt with the safety and health of child textile workers.
Such laws prohibited discrimination against employees as morally unacceptable and illegal, in particular racial discrimination or gender discrimination.
Convention no. 158 of the International Labour Organization states that an employee "can't be fired without any legitimate motive" and "before offering him the possibility to defend himself". Thus, on April 28, 2006, after the unofficial repeal of the French First Employment Contract, the Longjumeau (Essonne) "conseil des prud'hommes" (labour law court) judged the New Employment Contract contrary to international law and therefore "illegitimate" and "without any juridical value". The court considered that the two-years period of "fire at will" (without any legal motive) was "unreasonable", and contrary to convention.
Child labour was not seen as a problem throughout most of history, only disputed with the beginning of universal schooling and the concepts of labourers' and children's rights. Use of child labour was commonplace, often in factories. In England and Scotland in 1788, about two-thirds of persons working in water-powered textile factories were children. Child labour can be factory work, mining or quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, operating a small business (such as selling food), or doing odd jobs. Children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work). Other children do jobs such as assembling boxes or polishing shoes. However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labour in the twenty-first century occurs in the informal sector, "selling on the street, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses — far from the reach of official inspectors and from media scrutiny."
Collective labour law concerns the relationship between employer, employee and trade unions. Trade unions (also "labour unions" in the US) are organizations which generally aim to promote the interests of their members. This law regulates the wages, benefits, and duties of the employees, and the dispute management between the company and the trade union. Such matters are often described in a collective labour agreement (CLA).
Trade unions are organized groups of workers who engage in collective bargaining with employers. Some countries require unions and/or employers to follow particular procedures in pursuit of their goals. For example, some countries require that unions poll the membership to approve a strike or to approve using members' dues for political projects. Laws may govern the circumstances and procedures under which unions are formed. They may guarantee the right to join a union (banning employer discrimination), or remain silent in this respect. Some legal codes allow unions to obligate their members, such as the requirement to comply with a majority decision in a strike vote. Some restrict this, such as "right to work" legislation in parts of the United States.
In the different organization in the different countries trade union discuses with the employee on behalf of employer. At that time trade union discussed or talk with the manpower of the organization. At that time trade union perform his roles like a bridge between the employee and employer.
A legally binding right for workers as a group to participate in workplace management is acknowledged in some form in most developed countries. In a majority of EU member states (for example, Germany, Sweden, and France) the workforce has a right to elect directors on the board of large corporations. This is usually called "codetermination" and currently most countries allow for the election of one-third of the board, though the workforce can have the right to elect anywhere from a single director, to just under a half in Germany.
However, German company law uses a split board system, in which a "supervisory board" appoints an "executive board". Under the Mitbestimmunggesetz 1976, shareholders and employees elect the supervisory board in equal numbers, but the head of the supervisory board with a casting vote is a shareholder representative. The first statutes to introduce board-level codetermination were in Britain, however, most of these measures, except in universities, were removed in 1948 and 1979. The oldest surviving statute is found in the United States, in the Massachusetts Laws on manufacturing corporations, introduced in 1919, however, this was always voluntary.
In the United Kingdom, similar proposals were drawn up, and a command paper produced named the Bullock Report (Industrial Democracy) was released in 1977 by the James Callaghan Labour Party government. Unions would have directly elected half of the board. An "independent" element would also be added. However, the proposal was not enacted. The European Commission offered proposals for worker participation in the "fifth company law directive", which was also not implemented.
In Sweden, participation is regulated through the "Law on board representation". The law covers all private companies with 25 or more employees. In these companies, workers (usually through unions) have a right to appoint two board members and two substitutes. If the company has more than 1,000 employees, this rises to three members and three substitutes. It is common practice to allocate them among the major union coalitions.
Workplace statutes in many countries require that employers consult their workers on various issues.
Strike action is the worker tactic most associated with industrial disputes. In most countries, strikes are legal under a circumscribed set of conditions. Among them may be that:
A boycott is a refusal to buy, sell, or otherwise trade with an individual or business. Other tactics include go-slow, sabotage, work-to-rule, sit-in or en-masse not reporting to work. Some labour law explicitly bans such activity, none explicitly allows it.
Picketing is often used by workers during strikes. They may congregate near the business they are striking against to make their presence felt, increase worker participation and dissuade (or prevent) strike breakers from entering the workplace. In many countries, this activity is restricted by law, by more general law restricting demonstrations, or by injunctions on particular pickets. For example, labour law may restrict secondary picketing (picketing a business connected with the company not directly with the dispute, such as a supplier), or flying pickets (mobile strikers who travel to join a picket). Laws may prohibit obstructing others from conducting lawful business; outlaw obstructive pickets allow court orders to restrict picketing locations or behaving in particular ways (shouting abuse, for example).
The labour movement has long been concerned that economic globalization would weaken worker bargaining power, as their employers could hire workers abroad to avoid domestic labour standards. Karl Marx said:
The International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization have been a primary focus among international bodies for regulating labour markets. Conflicts arise when people work in more than one country. EU law has a growing body of workplace rules.
Following World War One, the Treaty of Versailles contained the first constitution of a new International Labour Organization (ILO) founded on the principle that "labour is not a commodity", and for the reason that "peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice". ILO's primary role has been to coordinate international labour law by issuing Conventions. ILO members can voluntarily adopt and ratify the Conventions. For instance, the first Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 required a maximum of a 48-hour week, and has been ratified by 52 out of 185 member states. The UK ultimately refused to ratify the Convention, as did many current EU members, although the Working Time Directive adopts its principles, subject to individual opt-out. ILO's constitution comes from the 1944 Declaration of Philadelphia and under the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work classified eight conventions as core.
These require freedom to join a union, bargain collectively and take action (Conventions No. 87 and 98), abolition of forced labour (29 and 105), abolition of labour by children before the end of compulsory school (138 and 182), and no discrimination at work (No. 100 and 111). Member compliance with the core Conventions is obligatory, even if the country has not ratified the Convention in question. To ensure compliance, the ILO is limited to gathering evidence and reporting on member states' progress, relying on publicity to create pressure to reform. Global reports on core standards are produced yearly, while individual reports on countries who have ratified other Conventions are compiled on a bi-annual or less frequent basis.
Because the ILO's enforcement mechanisms are weak, incorporating labour standards in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) operation has been proposed. WTO oversees, primarily, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade treaty aimed at reducing customs, tariffs and other barriers to import and export of goods, services and capital between its 157 member countries. Unlike for the ILO, contravening WTO rules as recognized by the dispute settlement procedures opens a country to retaliation through trade sanctions. This could include reinstatement of targeted tariffs against the offender.
Proponents have called for a "social clause" to be inserted into the GATT agreements, for example, by amending Article XX, which provides an exception that allows imposition of sanctions for breaches of human rights. An explicit reference to core labour standards could allow comparable action where a WTO member state breaches ILO standards. Opponents argue that such an approach could undermine labour rights, because industries, and therefore workforces could be harmed with no guarantee of reform. Furthermore, it was argued in the 1996 Singapore Ministerial Declaration 1996 that "the comparative advantage of countries, particularly low-age developing countries, must in no way be put into question." Some countries want to take advantage of low wages and fewer rules as a comparative advantage to boost their economies. Another contested point is whether business moves production from high wage to low wage countries, given potential differences in worker productivity. Since GATT, most trade agreements have been bilateral. Some of these protect core labour standards. Moreover, in domestic tariff regulations, some countries give preference to countries that respect core labour rights, for example under the EC Tariff Preference Regulation, articles 7 and 8.
Conflicts of laws (or private international law) issues arise where workers work in multiple jurisdictions. If a US worker performs part of her job in Brazil, China and Denmark (a "peripatetic" worker) an employer may seek to characterize the employment contract as governed by the law of the country where labour rights are least favourable to the worker, or seek to argue that the most favourable system of labour rights does not apply. For example, in a UK labour law case, "Ravat v Halliburton Manufacturing and Services Ltd" Ravat was from the UK but was employed in Libya by a German company that was part of Halliburton. He was dismissed by a supervisor based in Egypt. He was told he would be hired under UK law terms and conditions, and this was arranged by a staffing department in Aberdeen. Under the UK Employment Rights Act 1996 he would have a right to claim unfair dismissal, but the Act left open the question of the statute's territorial scope. The UK Supreme Court held that the principle would be that an expatriate worker, would be subject to UK rules if the worker could show a "close connection" to the UK, which was found in Rabat's case.
This fits within the general framework in the EU. Under EU Rome I Regulation article 8, workers have employment rights of the country where they habitually work. They may have a claim in another country if they can establish a close connection to it. The Regulation emphasises that the rules should be applied with the purpose of protecting the worker.
It is also necessary that a court has jurisdiction to hear a claim. Under the Brussels I Regulation article 19, this requires the worker habitually works in the place where the claim is brought or is engaged there.
The European Union has extensive labour laws that officially exclude (according to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) matters around direct wage regulation (e.g. setting a minimum wage), the fairness of dismissals and collective bargaining. A series of Directives regulate almost all other issues, for instance the Working Time Directive guarantees 28 days of paid holiday, the Equality Framework Directive prohibits all forms of discrimination and the Collective Redundancies Directive requires that proper notice is given and consultation takes place on decisions about economic dismissals.
However, the European Court of Justice has recently extended the Treaties provisions via case law. Trade unions have sought to organize across borders in the same way that multinational corporations have organized production globally. Unions have sought to take collective action and strikes internationally. However, this coordination was challenged in the European Union in two controversial decisions. In "Laval Ltd v Swedish Builders Union" a group of Latvian workers were sent to a construction site in Sweden. The local union took industrial action to make Laval Ltd sign up to the local collective bargaining agreement. Under the Posted Workers Directive, article 3 lays down minimum standards for foreign workers so that workers receive at least the minimum rights that they would have in their home country in case their place of work has lower minimum rights. Article 3(7) says that this "shall not prevent application of terms and conditions of employment which are more favourable to workers". Most people thought this meant that more favourable conditions could be given than the minimum (e.g., in Latvian law) by the host state's legislation or a collective agreement. However the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that only the local state could raise standards beyond its minimum for foreign workers. Any attempt by the host state, or a collective agreement (unless the collective agreement is declared universal under article 3(8)) would infringe the business' freedom under TFEU article 56. This decision was implicitly reversed by the European Union legislature in the Rome I Regulation, which makes clear in recital 34 that the host state may allow more favourable standards. However, in "The Rosella", the ECJ held that a blockade by the International Transport Workers Federation against a business that was using an Estonian flag of convenience (i.e., saying it was operating under Estonian law to avoid labour standards of Finland) infringed the business' right of free establishment under TFEU article 49. The ECJ said that it recognized the workers' "right to strike" in accordance with ILO Convention 87, but said that its use must be proportionately to the right of the business' establishment.
The Fair Work Act of 2009 provides the regulations governing Australian workplaces and employers. Australia has a minimum wage and workplace conditions overseen by the Fair Work Commission.
In Canadian law, "labour law" refers to matters connected with unionized workplaces, while "employment law" deals with non-unionized employees.
In 2017, Premier Brad Wall announced that Saskatchewan's government is to cut 3.5 per cent from its workers and officers' wages in 2018. This salary cut includes MLA ministers and the Premier's office staff along with all people employed by the government. Unpaid days off will also be implemented as well as limiting overtime to assist the wage cut.
In the People's Republic of China the basic labour laws are the "Labour Law of People's Republic of China" (promulgated on 5 July 1994) and the "Labour Contract Law of the People's Republic of China" (adopted at the 28th Session of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress on June 29, 2007, effective from January 1, 2008). The administrative regulations enacted by the State Council, the ministerial rules and the judicial explanations of the Supreme People's Court stipulate detailed rules concerning various aspects of employment. The government-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions is the sole legal labour union. Strikes are formally legal, but in practice are discouraged.
In France, the first labour laws were Waldeck Rousseau's laws passed in 1884. Between 1936 and 1938 the Popular Front enacted a law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid vacation for workers, and a law limited the work week to 40 hours, excluding overtime. The negotiated on May 25 and 26th in the middle of the May 1968 crisis, reduced the working week to 44 hours and created trade union sections in each enterprise. The minimum wage was increased by 25%. In 2000, Lionel Jospin's government enacted the 35-hour workweek, reduced from 39 hours. Five years later, conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin enacted the New Employment Contract (CNE). Addressing the demands of employers asking for more flexibility in French labour laws, the CNE sparked criticism from trade unions and opponents claiming it favoured contingent work. In 2006, he then attempted to pass the First Employment Contract (CPE) through a vote by emergency procedure, but that was met by students and unions' protests. President Jacques Chirac finally had no choice but to repeal it.
Over fifty national and many more state-level laws govern work in India. So for instance, a permanent worker can be terminated only for proven misconduct or habitual absence. In the Uttam Nakate case, the Bombay High Court held that dismissing an employee for repeated sleeping on the factory floor was illegal – the decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of India two decades later. In 2008, the World Bank criticized the complexity, lack of modernization and flexibility in Indian regulations.In the Constitution of India from 1950, articles 14–16, 19(1)(c), 23–24, 38, and 41-43A directly concern labour rights. Article 14 states everyone should be equal before the law, article 15 specifically says the state should not discriminate against citizens, and article 16 extends a right of "equality of opportunity" for employment or appointment under the state. Article 19(1)(c) gives everyone a specific right "to form associations or unions". Article 23 prohibits all trafficking and forced labour, while article 24 prohibits child labour under 14 years old in a factory, mine or "any other hazardous employment".
Articles 38–39, and 41-43A, however, like all rights listed in Part IV of the Constitution are not enforceable by courts, rather than creating an aspirational "duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws".[3] The original justification for leaving such principles unenforceable by the courts was that democratically accountable institutions ought to be left with discretion, given the demands they could create on the state for funding from general taxation, although such views have since become controversial. Article 38(1) says that in general the state should "strive to promote the welfare of the people" with a "social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of national life. In article 38(2) it goes on to say the state should "minimise the inequalities in income" and based on all other statuses. Article 41 creates a "right to work", which the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 attempts to put into practice. Article 42 requires the state to "make provision for securing just and human conditions of work and for maternity relief". Article 43 says workers should have the right to a living wage and "conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life". Article 43A, inserted by the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India in 1976,[4] creates a constitutional right to codetermination by requiring the state to legislate to "secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings".
Iran has not ratified the two basic Conventions of the International Labour Organization on freedom of association and collective bargaining and one abolishing child labour.
Mexican labour law reflects the historic interrelation between the state and the Confederation of Mexican Workers. The confederation is officially aligned with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI). While the law promises workers the right to strike and to organize, in practice it is difficult or impossible for independent unions to organize.
In Sweden many workplace issues such as working hours, minimum wage and right to overtime compensation are regulated through collective bargaining agreements in accordance with the Swedish model of "self-regulation", i.e. regulation by the labour market parties themselves in contrast to "state regulation" (labour laws). A notable exception is the Employment Protection act which regulates employment contracts and extensive employees' rights to employment under certain conditions.
The labour law of Switzerland covers all standards governing the employment of some kind. The regulation of the employment by private employers is largely harmonized at the federal level, while public-sector employment still prevails a variety of cantonal laws. In particular, the civil standardization is distributed to a variety of laws. Of greater importance, particularly the new Federal Constitution of 1999, the Code of Obligations , the Labour Code as well as in the public sector, the Federal Personnel Act.
The Factory Acts (first one in 1802, then 1833) and the 1823 Master and Servant Act were the first laws regulating labour relations in the United Kingdom. Most employment law before 1960 was based upon the Law of Contract. Since then there has been a significant expansion primarily due to the "equality movement" and the European Union. Laws are either Acts of Parliament called Statutes, Statutory Regulations (made by a Secretary of State under an Act of Parliament) or Case Law (developed by various courts).
The first significant expansion was the Equal Pay Act of 1970. This act was introduced to bring about pay equality for women in the workplace. Since 1997, changes in UK employment law include enhanced maternity and paternity rights, the introduction of a National Minimum Wage and the Working Time Regulations, which covers working time, rest breaks and the right to paid annual leave. Discrimination law has been tightened, with protection from discrimination now available on the grounds of age, religion or belief and sexual orientation as well as gender, race and disability.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the maximum standard work week to 44 hours. In 1950 this was reduced to 40 hours. A green card entitles immigrants to work, without requirement a separate work permit. Despite the 40-hour standard maximum work week, some lines of work require more than 40 hours. For example, farm workers may work over 72 hours a week, followed by at least 24 hours off. Exceptions to the break period exist for certain harvesting employees, such as those involved in harvesting grapes, tree fruits and cotton.
Professionals, clerical (administrative assistants), technical, and mechanical employees cannot be terminated for refusing to work more than 72 hours in a work week.
These ceilings, combined with a competitive job market, often motivate American workers to work more hours. American workers on average take the fewest days off of any developed country.
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution limit the power of the federal and state governments to discriminate. The private sector is not directly constrained by the Constitution, but several laws, particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964, limit the private sector discrimination against certain groups. The Fifth Amendment has an explicit requirement that the Federal Government not deprive individuals of "life, liberty, or property", without due process of law and an implicit guarantee that each person receive equal protection of the law. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly prohibits states from violating an individual's rights of due process and equal protection. Equal protection limits the State and Federal governments' power to discriminate in their employment practices by treating employees, former employees, or job applicants unequally because of membership in a group, like a race, religion or sex. Due process protection requires that employees have a fair procedural process before they are terminated if the termination is related to a "liberty", like the right to free speech, or a property interest.
The National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935 as part of the New Deal legislation, guarantees workers the right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 prohibits employment discrimination based on age with respect to employees 40 years of age or older.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is the principal federal statute with regard to employment discrimination, prohibiting unlawful employment discrimination by public and private employers, labour organizations, training programmes and employment agencies based on race or colour, religion, sex and national origin. Retaliation is also prohibited by Title VII against any person for opposing any practice forbidden by statute, or for making a charge, testifying, assisting, or participating in a proceeding under the statute. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 expanded the damages available to Title VII cases and granted Title VII plaintiffs the right to jury trial.
The beginnings of halakhic labour law are in the Bible, in which two commandments refer to this subject: The law against delayed wages (Lev. 19:13; Deut. 24:14–15) and the worker's right to eat the employer's crops (Deut. 23:25–26). The Talmudic law—in which labour law is called "laws of worker hiring"—elaborates on many more aspects of employment relations, mainly in Tractate Baba Metzi'a. In some issues the Talamud, following the Tosefta, refers the parties to the customary law: "All is as the custom of the region [postulates]".
Modern halakhic labour law developed very slowly. Rabbi Israel Meir Hacohen (the Hafetz Hayim) interprets the worker's right for timely payment in a tendency that clearly favours the employee over the employer, but does not refer to new questions of employment relations. Only in the 1920s we find the first halakhic authority to tackle the questions of trade unions (that could easily be anchored in Talmudic law) and the right of strike (which is quite problematic in terms of Talmudic law). Rabbis A.I Kook and B.M.H. Uziel tend to corporatist settling of labour conflicts, while Rabbi Moshe Feinstein clearly adopts the liberal democratic collective bargaining model. Since the 1940s the halakhic literature on labour law was enriched by books and articles that referred to growing range of questions and basically adopted the liberal democratic approach. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18657 |
Louis Riel
Louis David Riel (; ; 22 October 1844 – 16 November 1885) was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political leader of the Métis people of the Canadian Prairies. He led two rebellions against the government of Canada and its first post-Confederation prime minister, John A. Macdonald. Riel sought to preserve Métis rights and culture as their homelands in the Northwest came progressively under the Canadian sphere of influence. Over the decades, he has been made a folk hero by Francophones, Catholic nationalists, native rights activists, and the New Left student movement. Arguably, Riel has received more scholarly attention than any other figure in Canadian history.
The first resistance led by Riel became known as the Red River Rebellion of 1869–1870. The provisional government established by Riel ultimately negotiated the terms under which the modern province of Manitoba entered the Canadian Confederation. Riel ordered the execution of Thomas Scott, and fled to the United States to escape prosecution. Despite this, he is frequently referred to as the "Father of Manitoba". While a fugitive, he was elected three times to the House of Commons of Canada, although he never assumed his seat. During these years, he was frustrated by having to remain in exile despite his growing belief that he was a divinely chosen leader and prophet, a belief which would later resurface and influence his actions. Because of this new religious conviction, Catholic leaders who had supported him before increasingly repudiated him. He married in 1881 while in exile in Montana in the United States; he fathered three children.
In 1884 Riel was called upon by the Métis leaders in Saskatchewan to articulate their grievances to the Canadian government. Instead he organized a military resistance that escalated into a military confrontation, the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Ottawa used the new rail lines to send in thousands of combat soldiers. It ended in his arrest and conviction for high treason. Despite protests and popular appeals, Prime Minister Macdonald rejected calls for clemency, and Riel was executed by hanging. Riel was seen as a heroic victim by French Canadians; his execution had a lasting negative impact on Canada, polarizing the new nation along ethno-religious lines. Although only a few hundred people were directly affected by the Rebellion in Saskatchewan, the long-term result was that the Prairie provinces would be controlled by the Anglophones, not the Francophones. An even more important long-term impact was the bitter alienation Francophones across Canada felt, and anger against the repression by their countrymen.
Riel's historical reputation has long been polarized between portrayals as a dangerous half-insane religious fanatic and rebel against the Canadian nation, or by contrast a heroic rebel who fought to protect his Francophone people from the unfair encroachments of an Anglophone national government. He is increasingly celebrated as a proponent of multiculturalism, although that downplays his primary commitment to Métis nationalism and political independence.
The Red River Settlement was a community in Rupert's Land nominally administered by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and largely inhabited by First Nations tribes and the Métis, an ethnic group of mixed Cree, Ojibwa, Saulteaux, French-Canadian, Scottish, and English descent. Louis Riel was born there in 1844, near modern Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Louis Riel, Sr. and Julie Lagimodière.
Riel was the eldest of eleven children in a locally well-respected family. His father, who was of Franco-Ojibwa Métis descent, had gained prominence in this community by organizing a group that supported Guillaume Sayer, a Métis imprisoned for challenging the HBC's historical trade monopoly. Sayer's eventual release due to agitations by Louis Sr.'s group effectively ended the monopoly, and the name Riel was therefore well known in the Red River area. His mother was the daughter of Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière and Marie-Anne Gaboury, one of the earliest white families to settle in the Red River Settlement in 1812. The Riels were noted for their devout Catholicism and strong family ties.
Riel was first educated by Roman Catholic priests at St. Boniface. At age 13 he came to the attention of Alexandre Taché, the Suffragan Bishop of St. Boniface, who was eagerly promoting the priesthood for talented young Métis. In 1858 Taché arranged for Riel to attend the Petit Séminaire of the Collège de Montréal, under the direction of the Sulpician order. Descriptions of him at the time indicate that he was a fine scholar of languages, science, and philosophy, but exhibited a frequent and unpredictable moodiness.
Following news of his father's premature death in 1864, Riel lost interest in the priesthood and withdrew from the college in March 1865. For a time, he continued his studies as a day student in the convent of the Grey Nuns, but was soon asked to leave, following breaches of discipline. He remained in Montreal for over a year, living at the home of his aunt, Lucie Riel. Impoverished by the death of his father, Riel took employment as a law clerk in the Montreal office of Rodolphe Laflamme. During this time he was involved in a failed romance with a young woman named Marie–Julie Guernon. This progressed to the point of Riel having signed a contract of marriage, but his fiancée's family opposed her involvement with a Métis, and the engagement was soon broken. Compounding this disappointment, Riel found legal work unpleasant and, by early 1866, he had resolved to leave Canada East. Some of his friends said later that he worked odd jobs in Chicago, Illinois, while staying with poet Louis-Honoré Fréchette, and wrote poems himself in the manner of Lamartine, and that he was briefly employed as a clerk in Saint Paul, Minnesota, before returning to the Red River settlement on 26 July 1868.
The majority population of the Red River had historically been Métis and First Nation people. Upon his return, Riel found that religious, nationalistic, and racial tensions were exacerbated by an influx of Anglophone Protestant settlers from Ontario. The political situation was also uncertain, as ongoing negotiations for the transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada had not addressed the political terms of transfer. Finally, despite warnings to the Macdonald government from Bishop Taché and the HBC governor William Mactavish that any such activity would precipitate unrest, the Canadian minister of public works, William McDougall, ordered a survey of the area. The arrival on 20 August 1869 of a survey party headed by Colonel John Stoughton Dennis increased anxiety among the Métis. The Métis did not possess title to their land, which was in any case laid out according to the seigneurial system rather than in English-style square lots.
In late August, Riel denounced the survey in a speech, and on 11 October 1869, the survey's work was disrupted by a group of Métis that included Riel. This group organized itself as the "Métis National Committee" on 16 October, with Riel as secretary and John Bruce as president. When summoned by the HBC-controlled Council of Assiniboia to explain his actions, Riel declared that any attempt by Canada to assume authority would be contested unless Ottawa had first negotiated terms with the Métis. Nevertheless, the non-bilingual McDougall was appointed the lieutenant governor-designate, and attempted to enter the settlement on 2 November. McDougall's party was turned back near the Canada–US border, and on the same day, Métis led by Riel seized Fort Garry.
On 6 November, Riel invited Anglophones to attend a convention alongside Métis representatives to discuss a course of action, and on 1 December he proposed to this convention a list of rights to be demanded as a condition of union. Much of the settlement came to accept the Métis point of view, but a passionately pro-Canadian minority began organizing in opposition. Loosely constituted as the Canadian Party, this group was led by John Christian Schultz, Charles Mair, Colonel John Stoughton Dennis, and a more reticent Major Charles Boulton. McDougall attempted to assert his authority by authorizing Dennis to raise a contingent of armed men, but the Anglophone settlers largely ignored this call to arms. Schultz, however, attracted approximately fifty recruits and fortified his house and store. Riel ordered Schultz's home surrounded, and the outnumbered Canadians soon surrendered and were imprisoned in Upper Fort Garry.
Hearing of the unrest, Ottawa sent three emissaries to the Red River, including HBC representative Donald Alexander Smith. While they were en route, the Métis National Committee declared a provisional government on 8 December, with Riel becoming its president on 27 December. Meetings between Riel and the Ottawa delegation took place on 5 and 6 January 1870, but when these proved fruitless, Smith chose to present his case in a public forum. Smith assured large audiences of the Government's goodwill in meetings on 19 and 20 January, leading Riel to propose the formation of a new convention split evenly between French and English settlers to consider Smith's instructions. On 7 February, a new list of rights was presented to the Ottawa delegation, and Smith and Riel agreed to send representatives to Ottawa to engage in direct negotiations on that basis. The socialist provisional government established by Louis Riel published its own newspaper titled "New Nation" and established the Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia to pass laws. The Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia was the first elected government at the Red River Settlement and functioned from 9 March to 24 June 1870. The assembly had 28 elected representatives, including a president, Louis Riel, an executive council (government cabinet), adjutant general (chief of military staff), chief justice and clerk.
Despite the apparent progress on the political front, the Canadian party continued to plot against the provisional government. However, they suffered a setback on 17 February, when forty-eight men, including Boulton and Thomas Scott, were arrested near Fort Garry.
Boulton was tried by a tribunal headed by Ambroise-Dydime Lépine and sentenced to death for his interference with the provisional government. He was pardoned, but Scott interpreted this as weakness by the Métis, whom he regarded with open contempt. After Scott repeatedly quarreled with his guards, they insisted that he be tried for insubordination. At his court martial he was found guilty and was sentenced to death. Riel was repeatedly entreated to commute the sentence, but Riel responded, "I have done three good things since I have commenced: I have spared Boulton's life at your instance, I pardoned Gaddy, and now I shall shoot Scott."
Scott was executed by firing squad on 4 March. Riel's motivations have been the cause of much speculation, but his own justification was that he felt it necessary to demonstrate to the Canadians that the Métis must be taken seriously. Protestant Canada did take notice, swore revenge, and set up a "Canada First" movement to mobilize their anger.
The delegates representing the provisional government departed for Ottawa in March. Although they initially met with legal difficulties arising from the execution of Scott, they soon entered into direct talks with Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. An agreement enshrining the demands in the list of rights was quickly reached, and this formed the basis for the Manitoba Act of 12 May 1870, which formally admitted Manitoba into the Canadian confederation. However, the negotiators could not secure a general amnesty for the provisional government.
As a means of exercising Canadian authority in the settlement and dissuading American expansionists, a Canadian military expedition under Colonel Garnet Wolseley was dispatched to the Red River. Although the government described it as an ""errand of peace"", Riel learned that Canadian militia elements in the expedition meant to lynch him, and he fled as the expedition approached the Red River. The arrival of the expedition on 20 August marked the effective end of the Red River Rebellion.
It was not until 2 September 1870 that the new lieutenant-governor Adams George Archibald arrived and set about the establishment of civil government. Without an amnesty, and with the Canadian militia beating and intimidating his sympathisers, Riel fled to the safety of the St. Joseph's mission across the Canada–US border in the Dakota Territory. However the results of the first provincial election in December 1870 were promising for Riel, as many of his supporters came to power. Nevertheless, stress and financial troubles precipitated a serious illness—perhaps a harbinger of his future mental afflictions—that prevented his return to Manitoba until May 1871. The settlement now faced a possible threat, from cross-border Fenian raids coordinated by his former associate William Bernard O'Donoghue. Archibald proclaimed a general call to arms on 4 October. Companies of armed horsemen were raised, including one led by Riel. When Archibald reviewed the troops in St. Boniface, he made the significant gesture of publicly shaking Riel's hand, signaling that a rapprochement had been affected. This was not to be—when this news reached Ontario, Mair and members of the Canada First movement whipped up anti-Riel (and anti-Archibald) sentiment. With Federal elections coming in 1872, Macdonald could ill afford further rift in Quebec–Ontario relations and so he did not offer an amnesty. Instead he quietly arranged for Taché to offer Riel a bribe of $1,000 to remain in voluntary exile. This was supplemented by an additional £600 from Smith for the care of Riel's family.
Nevertheless, by late June Riel was back in Manitoba and was soon persuaded to run as a member of parliament for the electoral district of Provencher. However, following the early September defeat of George-Étienne Cartier in his home riding in Quebec, Riel stood aside so that Cartier—on record as being in favour of amnesty for Riel—might secure a seat in Provencher. Cartier won by acclamation, but Riel's hopes for a swift resolution to the amnesty question were dashed following Cartier's death on 20 May 1873. In the ensuing by-election in October 1873, Riel ran unopposed as an Independent, although he had again fled, a warrant having been issued for his arrest in September. Lépine was not so lucky; he was captured and faced trial.
Riel made his way to Montreal and, fearing arrest or assassination, vacillated as to whether he should attempt to take up his seat in the House of Commons—Edward Blake, the Premier of Ontario, had announced a bounty of $5,000 for his arrest. Famously, Riel was the only Member of Parliament who was not present for the great Pacific Scandal debate of 1873 that led to the resignation of the Macdonald government in November. Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie became the interim prime minister, and a general election was held in January 1874. Although the Liberals under Mackenzie formed the new government, Riel easily retained his seat. Formally, Riel had to sign a register book at least once upon being elected, and he did so under disguise in late January. He was nevertheless stricken from the rolls following a motion supported by Schultz, who had become the member for the electoral district of Lisgar.
Undeterred, Riel prevailed again in the resulting by-election, and although again expelled, his symbolic point had been made and public opinion in Quebec was strongly tipped in his favour.
During this period, Riel had been staying with priests of the Oblate order in Plattsburgh, New York, who introduced him to Father Fabien Martin "dit" Barnabé in the nearby village of Keeseville. It was here that he received news of Lépine's fate: following his trial for the murder of Scott, which had begun on 13 October 1874, Lépine was found guilty and sentenced to death. This sparked outrage in the sympathetic Quebec press, and calls for amnesty for both Lépine and Riel were renewed. This presented a severe political difficulty for Mackenzie, who was hopelessly caught between the demands of Quebec and Ontario. However, a solution was forthcoming when, acting on his own initiative, the Governor General Lord Dufferin commuted Lépine's sentence in January 1875. This opened the door for Mackenzie to secure from parliament an amnesty for Riel, on the condition that he remain in exile for five years.
During his time of exile, he was primarily concerned with religious rather than political matters. Spurred on by a sympathetic Roman Catholic priest in Quebec, he was increasingly influenced by his belief that he was a divinely chosen leader of the Métis. Modern biographers have speculated that he may have suffered from the psychological condition megalomania. His mental state deteriorated, and following a violent outburst he was taken to Montreal, where he was under the care of his uncle, John Lee, for a few months. But after Riel disrupted a religious service, Lee arranged to have him committed in an asylum in Longue Pointe on 6 March 1876 under the assumed name "Louis R. David". Fearing discovery, his doctors soon transferred him to the Beauport Asylum near Quebec City under the name "Louis Larochelle". While he suffered from sporadic irrational outbursts, he continued his religious writing, composing theological tracts with an admixture of Christian and Judaic ideas. He consequently began calling himself Louis "David" Riel, prophet of the new world, and he would pray (standing) for hours, having servants help him to hold his arms in the shape of a cross.
Nevertheless, he slowly recovered, and was released from the asylum on 23 January 1878 with an admonition to lead a quiet life. He returned for a time to Keeseville, where he became involved in a passionate romance with Evelina Martin "dite" Barnabé, sister of his friend, the oblate father Fabien Barnabé. But with insufficient means to propose marriage, Riel returned to the west, hoping that she might follow. However, she decided that she would be unsuited to prairie life, and their correspondence soon ended.
In the fall of 1878, Riel returned to St. Paul, and briefly visited his friends and family. This was a time of rapid change for the Métis of the Red River—the buffalo on which they depended were becoming increasingly scarce, the influx of settlers was ever-increasing, and much land was sold to unscrupulous land speculators. Like other Red River Métis who had left Manitoba, Riel headed further west to start a new life.
Travelling to the Montana Territory, he became a trader and interpreter in the area surrounding Fort Benton. Observing rampant alcoholism and its detrimental impact on the Native American and Métis people, he engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to curtail the whisky trade. In 1881, he married Marguerite Monet "dit" Bellehumeur (1861–1886), a young Métis, "in the fashion of the country" on 28 April, an arrangement that was solemnized on 9 March 1882 at Carroll, Montana by Father Damiani. They were to have three children: Jean-Louis (1882–1908); Marie-Angélique (1883–1897); and a boy who was born and died on 21 October 1885, less than one month before Riel was hanged.
Riel soon became involved in the politics of Montana, and in 1882, actively campaigned on behalf of the Republican Party. He brought a suit against a Democrat for rigging a vote, but was then himself accused of fraudulently inducing British subjects to take part in the election. In response, Riel applied for United States citizenship and was naturalized on 16 March 1883. With two young children, he had by 1884 settled down and was teaching school at the St. Peter's Jesuit mission in the Sun River district of Montana.
Following the Red River Rebellion, Métis travelled west and settled in the Saskatchewan Valley, especially along the south branch of the river in the country surrounding the Saint-Laurent mission (near modern St. Laurent de Grandin, Saskatchewan). But by the 1880s, it had become clear that westward migration was no panacea for the troubles of the Métis and the plains Indians. The rapid collapse of the buffalo herd was causing near starvation among the Plains Cree and Blackfoot First Nations. This was exacerbated by a reduction in government assistance in 1883, and by a general failure of Ottawa to live up to its treaty obligations.
The Métis were likewise obliged to give up the hunt and take up agriculture—but this transition was accompanied by complex issues surrounding land claims similar to those that had previously arisen in Manitoba. Moreover, settlers from Europe and the eastern provinces were also moving into the Saskatchewan territories, and they too had complaints related to the administration of the territories. Virtually all parties therefore had grievances, and by 1884 English settlers, Anglo-Métis and Métis communities were holding meetings and petitioning a largely unresponsive government for redress.
In the electoral district of Lorne, a meeting of the south branch Métis was held in the village of Batoche on 24 March, and thirty representatives voted to ask Riel to return and represent their cause. On 6 May a joint "Settler's Union" meeting was attended by both the Métis and English-speaking representatives from Prince Albert, including William Henry Jackson, an Ontario settler sympathetic to the Métis and known to them as Honoré Jackson, and James Isbister of the Anglo-Métis. It was here resolved to send a delegation to ask Riel's assistance in presenting their grievances to the Canadian government.
The head of the delegation to Riel was Gabriel Dumont, a respected buffalo hunter and leader of the Saint-Laurent Métis who had known Riel in Manitoba. James Isbister was the lone Anglo-Métis delegate. Riel was easily swayed to support their cause—which was perhaps not surprising in view of Riel's continuing conviction that he was the divinely selected leader of the Métis and the prophet of a new form of Christianity. Riel also intended to use the new position of influence to pursue his own land claims in Manitoba. The party departed 4 June, and arrived back at Batoche on 5 July.
Upon his arrival Métis and English settlers alike formed an initially favourable impression of Riel following a series of speeches in which he advocated moderation and a reasoned approach. During June 1884, the Plains Cree leaders Big Bear and Poundmaker were independently formulating their complaints, and subsequently held meetings with Riel. However, the Native grievances were quite different from those of the settlers, and nothing was then resolved. Inspired by Riel, Honoré Jackson and representatives of other communities set about drafting a petition, and Jackson on 28 July released a manifesto detailing grievances and the settler's objectives. A joint English-Métis central committee with Jackson acting as secretary worked to reconcile proposals from different communities. In the interim, Riel's support began to waver.
As Riel's religious pronouncements became increasingly heretical the clergy distanced themselves, and father Alexis André cautioned Riel against mixing religion and politics. Also, in response to bribes by territorial lieutenant-governor and Indian commissioner Edgar Dewdney, local English-language newspapers adopted an editorial stance critical of Riel. Nevertheless, the work continued, and on 16 December Riel forwarded the committee's petition to the government, along with the suggestion that delegates be sent to Ottawa to engage in direct negotiation. Receipt of the petition was acknowledged by Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, Macdonald's Secretary of State, although Macdonald himself would later deny having ever seen it. By then many original followers had left; only 250 remained at Batoche when it fell in May 1885.
Historian Donald Creighton has argued that Riel had become a changed man:
In the 15 years since he had left Red River, his megalomania had grown greater than ever. His ungovernable rages, delusions of grandeur, messianic claims, and dictatorial impulses had all become more extreme; but these violent excesses were not the only symptoms of his curious mental and moral decline. He had lost his shrewd appreciation of realities. His sense of direction was confused in his purposes were equivocal. He showed, at intervals, a cynical selfishness and the ruthless cupidity. ... although in public he professed that his sole aim was the redress of the Métis grievances, and private he was quite ready to promise that if the government made him a satisfactory personal payment of a few thousand dollars he would induce his credulous followers to accept almost any settlement the federal authorities desired, and would quietly leave Canada forever.
While Riel awaited news from Ottawa he considered returning to Montana, but had by February resolved to stay. Without a productive course of action, Riel began to engage in obsessive prayer, and was experiencing a significant relapse of his mental agitations. This led to a deterioration in his relationship with the Catholic hierarchy, as he publicly espoused an increasingly heretical doctrine. On 11 February 1885, a response to the petition was received. The government proposed to take a census of the North-West Territories, and to form a commission to investigate grievances. This angered a faction of the Métis who saw it as a mere delaying tactic; they favoured taking up arms at once.
Riel became the leader of this faction, but he lost the support of almost all Anglophones and Anglo-Métis, the Catholic Church, and the great majority of Indians. He also lost the support of the Métis faction supporting local leader Charles Nolin. But Riel, undoubtedly influenced by his messianic delusions, became increasingly supportive of this course of action. In the church at Saint-Laurent on 15 March, Riel disrupted a sermon to argue for this position, following which he was barred from receiving the sacraments. He took more and more about his "divine revelations". But disenchanted with the status quo, and swayed by Riel's charisma and eloquent rhetoric, hundreds of Métis remained loyal to Riel, despite his proclamations that Bishop Ignace Bourget should be accepted as pope, and that ""Rome has fallen"".
At his trial, Riel denied allegations that his religious beliefs were as irrational as was being (and continue to be) alleged. He explained as follows:
I wish to leave Rome aside, inasmuch as it is the cause of division between Catholics and Protestants. I did not wish to force my views ... If I could have any influence in the new world it would be to help in that way, even if it takes 200 years to become practical ... so my children's children can shake hands with the Protestants of the new world in a friendly manner. I do not wish those evils which exist in Europe to be continued, as much as I can influence it, among the (Metis). I do not wish that to be repeated in America.
On 18 March it became known that the North-West Mounted Police garrison at Battleford was being reinforced. Although only 100 men had been sent in response to warnings from father Alexis André and NWMP superintendent L.N.F. Crozier, a rumour soon began to circulate that 500 heavily armed troops were advancing on the territory. Métis patience was exhausted, and Riel's followers seized arms, took hostages, and cut the telegraph lines between Batoche and Battleford. The Provisional Government of Saskatchewan was declared at Batoche on 19 March, with Riel as the political and spiritual leader and with Dumont assuming responsibility for military affairs.
Riel formed a council called the Exovedate (a neologism meaning "those who have left the flock"), and sent representatives to court Poundmaker and Big Bear. On 21 March, Riel's emissaries demanded that Crozier surrender Fort Carlton, but this was refused. The situation was becoming critical, and on 23 March Dewdney sent a telegraph to Macdonald indicating that military intervention might be necessary. Scouting near Duck Lake on 26 March, a force led by Gabriel Dumont unexpectedly chanced upon a party from Fort Carlton. In the ensuing Battle of Duck Lake, the police were routed, and the Natives also rose up once the news became known. The die was cast for a violent outcome, and the North-West Rebellion was begun in earnest.
Riel had counted on the Canadian government being unable to effectively respond to another uprising in the distant North-West Territories, thereby forcing them to accept political negotiation. This was essentially the same strategy that had worked to such great effect during the 1870 rebellion. In that instance, the first troops did not arrive until three months after Riel seized control. However, Riel had completely overlooked the significance of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Despite some uncompleted gaps, the first Canadian regular and militia units, under the command of Major-General Frederick Dobson Middleton, arrived in Duck Lake less than two weeks after Riel had made his demands.
Knowing that he could not defeat the Canadians in direct confrontation, Dumont had hoped to force the Canadians to negotiate by engaging in a long-drawn out campaign of guerrilla warfare; Dumont realised a modest success along these lines at the Battle of Fish Creek on 24 April 1885. Riel, however, insisted on concentrating forces at Batoche to defend his "city of God". The outcome of the ensuing Battle of Batoche which took place from 9 to 12 May was never in doubt, and on 15 May a disheveled Riel surrendered to Canadian forces. Although Big Bear's forces managed to hold out until the Battle of Loon Lake on 3 June, the rebellion was a dismal failure for Métis and Natives alike, as they surrendered or fled.
Several individuals closely tied to the government requested that the trial be held in Winnipeg in July 1885. Some historians contend that the trial was moved to Regina because of concerns with the possibility of an ethnically mixed and sympathetic jury. Tom Flanagan states that an amendment of the North-West Territories Act (which dropped the provision that trials with crimes punishable by death should be tried in Manitoba) meant that the trial could be convened within the North-West Territories and did not have to be held in Winnipeg.
Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald ordered the trial to be convened in Regina, where Riel was tried before a jury of six English and Scottish Protestants, all from the area surrounding the city. The trial began on 28 July 1885, and lasted five days. Riel delivered two long speeches during his trial, defending his own actions and affirming the rights of the Métis people. He rejected his lawyer's attempt to argue that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, asserting,
The jury found him guilty but recommended mercy; nonetheless, Judge Hugh Richardson sentenced him to death, with the date of his execution initially set for 18 September 1885. "We tried Riel for treason," one juror later said, "And he was hanged for the murder of Scott."
Boulton writes in his memoirs that, as the date of his execution approached, Riel regretted his opposition to the defence of insanity and vainly attempted to provide evidence that he was not sane. Requests for a retrial and an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain were denied. Sir John A. Macdonald, who was instrumental in upholding Riel's sentence, is famously quoted as saying:
Before his execution, Riel was reconciled with the Catholic Church, and assigned Father André as his spiritual advisor. He was also given writing materials so that he could employ his time in prison to write a book. Louis Riel was hanged for treason on 16 November 1885 at the North-West Mounted Police barracks in Regina.
Boulton writes of Riel's final moments,
... [Riel's] last words were to say good-bye to Dr. Jukes and thank him for his kindness, and just before the white cap was pulled over his face he said, "" meaning "thank Ms. Forget".
The cap was pulled down, and while he was praying the trap was pulled. Death was not instantaneous. Louis Riel's pulse ceased four minutes after the trap-door fell and during that time the rope around his neck slowly strangled and choked him to death. The body was to have been interred inside the gallows' enclosure, and the grave was commenced, but an order came from the Lieutenant-Governor to hand the body over to Sheriff Chapleau which was accordingly done that night.
Following the execution, Riel's body was returned to his mother's home in St. Vital, where it lay in state. On 12 December 1886, his remains were laid in the churchyard of the Saint-Boniface Cathedral following the celebration of a requiem mass.
The trial and execution of Riel caused a bitter and prolonged reaction which convulsed Canadian politics for decades. The execution was both supported and opposed by the provinces. For example, conservative Ontario strongly supported Riel's execution, but Quebec was vehemently opposed to it. Francophones were upset Riel was hanged because they thought his execution was a symbol of English dominance. The Orange Irish Protestant element in Ontario had demanded the execution as the punishment for Riel's treason and his execution of Thomas Scott in 1870. With their revenge satisfied, the Orange turned their attention to other matters (especially the Jesuit Estates proposal). In Quebec there was no forgetting, and the politician Honoré Mercier rose to power by mobilizing the opposition in 1886.
Riel remains controversial. J. M. Bumsted in 2000 said that for Manitoba historian James Jackson, the murder of Scott – "perhaps the result of Riel's incipient madness – was the great blemish on Riel's achievement, depriving him of his proper role as the father of Manitoba."
The Saskatchewan Métis' requested land grants were all provided by the government by the end of 1887, and the government resurveyed the Métis river lots in accordance with their wishes. The Métis did not understand the long term value of their new land, however, and it was soon bought by speculators who later turned huge profits from it. Riel's worst fears were realised—following the failed rebellion, the French language and Roman Catholic religion faced increasing marginalisation in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as exemplified by the controversy surrounding the Manitoba Schools Question. The Métis themselves were increasingly forced to live on undesirable land or in the shadow of Indian reserves (as they did not themselves have treaty status). Saskatchewan did not attain provincehood until 1905.
Riel's execution and Macdonald's refusal to commute his sentence caused lasting discord in Quebec, and led to a fundamental alteration in the Canadian political order. In Quebec, Honoré Mercier exploited the discontent to reconstitute the Parti National. This party, which promoted Quebec nationalism, won a majority in the 1886 Quebec election by winning a number of seats formerly controlled by the Quebec Conservative Party. The federal election of 1887 likewise saw significant gains by the federal Liberals, again at the expense of the Conservatives. This led to the victory of the Liberal party under Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the federal election of 1896, which in turn set the stage for the domination of Canadian federal politics by the Liberal party in the 20th century.
That Riel's name still has resonance in Canadian politics was evidenced on 16 November 1994, when Suzanne Tremblay, a Bloc Québécois member of parliament, introduced private members' bill C-228, "An Act to revoke the conviction of Louis David Riel". The unsuccessful bill was widely perceived in English Canada as an attempt to arouse support for Quebec nationalism before the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty.
Bill C-213 or Louis Riel Day Act and Bill C-417 Louis Riel Act are the more notable acts which have gone through parliament. Bill C-297 to revoke the conviction of Louis Riel was introduced to the House of Commons 21 October and 22 November 1996, however the motion lacked unanimous consent from the House and was dropped. Bill C-213 or the Louis Riel Day Act of 1997 attempted to revoke the conviction of Louis Riel for high treason and establish a National Day in his honour on 16 November. Bill C-417 or the Louis Riel Act which also had a first reading in parliament to revoke the conviction of Louis Riel, and establish 15 July as "Louis Riel Day" was tabled.
On 18 February 2008, the province of Manitoba officially recognized the first Louis Riel Day as a general provincial holiday. It will now fall on the third Monday of February each year in the Province of Manitoba.
Historians have debated the Riel case so often and so passionately that he is the most written-about person in all of Canadian history. Interpretations have varied dramatically over time. The first amateur English language histories hailed the triumph of civilization, represented by English-speaking Protestants, over savagery represented by the half-breed Métis who were Catholic and spoke French. Riel was portrayed as an insane traitor and an obstacle to the expansion of Canada to the West. By the mid-20th century academic historians had dropped the theme of savagery versus civilization, deemphasized the Métis, and focused on Riel, presenting his execution as a major cause of the bitter division in Canada along ethnocultural and geographical lines of religion and language. W. L. Morton says of the execution:
[It] gave rise to a bitter and prolonged reaction which convulsed the course of national politics for the next decade. In Ontario it had been demanded and applauded by the Orange element as the punishment of treason and a vindication of loyalty. In Quebec Riel was defended, despite his apostasy and megalomania, as the symbol, indeed as a hero of his race.
Morton argued that Riel's demands were unrealistic:
[They] did touch on some real grievances, such as the need for increased representation of the people in the Council of the Territories, but they did not present a program of practical substance which the government might have granted without betrayal of its responsibilities. ... the Canadian government can hardly be blamed for refusing to continue its private negotiations with him, or for sending in the troops to suppress rebellion.
The Catholic bishops had originally supported the Métis, but reversed themselves when they realized that Riel was leading a heretical movement. They made sure that he was not honored as a martyr. However the bishops lost their influence during the Quiet Revolution, and activists in Québec found in Riel the perfect hero, with the image now of a freedom fighter who stood up for his people against an oppressive government in the face of widespread racist bigotry. His insanity was ignored and he was made a folk hero by the Francophones, the Catholic nationalists, the native rights movement, and the New Left student movement. Activists who espoused violence embraced his image; in the 1960s, the Quebec terrorist group, the Front de libération du Québec adopted the name "Louis Riel" for one of its terrorist cells.
Across Canada there emerged a new interpretation of reality in his rebellion, holding that the Métis had major unresolved grievances; that the government was indeed unresponsive; that Riel resorted to violence only as a last resort; and he was given a questionable trial, then executed by a vengeful government. John Foster said in 1985 that:
the interpretive drift of the last half-century ... has witnessed increasingly shrill though frequently uncritical condemnations of Canadian government culpability and equally uncritical identification with the "victimization" of the "innocent" Métis.
However, a leading specialist Thomas Flanagan reversed his views after editing Riel's writings:
As I sifted the evidence this became less and less convincing to me until I concluded that the opposite was closer to the truth: that the Métis grievances were at least partly of their own making; that the government was on the verge of resolving them when the Rebellion broke out; that Riel's resort to arms could not be explained by the failure of constitutional agitation and that he received a surprisingly fair trial.
As for the insanity, historians have noted that many religious leaders the past have exhibited behavior that looks exactly like insanity. Flanigan emphasizes that Riel exemplified the tradition of religious mystics involved in politics, especially those with a sense that the world was about to be totally transformed by their religious vision. In his case it meant his delivering the Métis from colonial domination. More broadly, Flanagan argues that Riel was devoutly religious and rejected equalitarianism (which he equated with secularism), concluding he was "a millenarian theocrat, sympathetic to the 'ancien régime' and opposed to the French Revolution, democracy, individualism, and secular society."
Métis scholars have noted that Riel is a more important figure to non-Métis than to Métis; he is the only Métis figure most non-Métis are aware of. Political scientists such as Thomas Flanagan have pointed out certain parallels between Riel's following during the North-West Rebellion and millenarian cults.
A resolution was passed by Parliament on 10 March 1992 citing that Louis Riel was the founder of Manitoba.
Two statues of Riel are located in Winnipeg. One of the Winnipeg statues, the work of architect Étienne Gaboury and sculptor Marcien Lemay, depicts Riel as a naked and tortured figure. It was unveiled in 1970 and stood in the grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building for 23 years. After much outcry (especially from the Métis community) that the statue was an undignified misrepresentation, the statue was removed and placed at the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface. It was replaced in 1994 with a statue of Louis Riel designed by Miguel Joyal depicting Riel as a dignified statesman. The unveiling ceremony was on 16 May 1996, in Winnipeg.
A statue of Riel on the grounds of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina was installed and later removed for similar reasons.
In numerous communities across Canada, Riel is commemorated in the names of streets, schools, neighbourhoods, and other buildings. Examples in Winnipeg include the landmark Esplanade Riel pedestrian bridge linking Old Saint-Boniface with Winnipeg, the Louis Riel School Division, Louis Riel Avenue in Old Saint-Boniface, and Riel Avenue in St. Vital's Minnetonka neighbourhood (which is sometimes called Riel). The student centre and campus pub at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon are named after Riel ("Place Riel" and "Louis"', respectively). Highway 11, stretching from Regina to just south of Prince Albert, has been named "Louis Riel Trail" by the province; the roadway passes near locations of the 1885 rebellion. One of the student residences at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia is named Louis Riel House. There is a Louis Riel School in Calgary, Alberta. and Ottawa, Ontario.
On 26 September 2007, Manitoba legislature passed a bill establishing a statutory holiday on the third Monday in February as "Louis Riel Day", the same day some other provinces celebrate Family Day, beginning in 2008. The first Louis Riel Day was celebrated on 18 February 2008. This new statutory holiday coincides with the celebration on 15–24 February of the Festival du Voyageur.
In the spring of 2008, the Government of Saskatchewan Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Christine Tell proclaimed in Duck Lake that "the 125th commemoration, in 2010, of the 1885 Northwest Resistance is an excellent opportunity to tell the story of the prairie Métis and First Nations peoples' struggle with Government forces and how it has shaped Canada today." One of three Territorial Government Buildings remains on Dewdney Avenue in the Saskatchewan capital city of Regina, which was the site of the Trial of Louis Riel, where the drama the "Trial of Louis Riel" is still performed. Following the May trial, Louis Riel was hanged 16 November 1885. The RCMP Heritage Centre, in Regina, opened in May 2007. The Métis brought his body to his mother's home, now the Riel House National Historic Site, and then interred at the St. Boniface Basilica in Manitoba, his birthplace, for burial.
In 1925, the French writer Maurice Constantin-Weyer who lived 10 years in Manitoba published in French a fictionalized biography of Louis Riel titled "La Bourrasque". An English translation/adaptation was published in 1930 : "A Martyr's Folly" (Toronto, The Macmillan Company), and a new version in 1954, "The Half-Breed" (New York, The Macaulay Compagny).
Portrayals of Riel's role in the Red River Rebellion include the 1979 CBC television film "Riel" and Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown's acclaimed 2003 graphic novel "Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography".
In the 1940 film "North West Mounted Police" Riel is portrayed by "Francis McDonald".
An opera about Riel entitled "Louis Riel" was commissioned for Canada's centennial celebrations in 1967. It was an opera in three acts, written by Harry Somers, with an English and French libretto by Mavor Moore and Jacques Languirand. The Canadian Opera Company produced and performed the first run of the opera in September and October 1967.
A 1968 Episode of the TV Series "The Virginian" (S07E05 – The Wind of Outrage, Episode 180), appears to be a vignette of Louis Riel, as the story represents his circumstances in Montana in 1884 pretty closely, while also depicting a fictional version of his reasons for returning to Canada from exile. The character Louis Boissevain is played by Ricardo Montalbán.
From the late 1960s until the early 1990s, the city of Saskatoon hosted "Louis Riel Day", a summer celebration that included a relay race that combined running, backpack carrying, canoeing, hill climbing, and horseback riding along the South Saskatchewan River in the city's downtown core. Traditionally, the event also included a cabbage roll eating contest and tug-of-war competition, as well as live musical performances. Although not affiliated with the Saskatoon Exhibition, for years Louis Riel Day was scheduled for the day before the start of the fair, and as such came to be considered the Exhibition's unofficial kick-off (the scheduling of the two events was separated in later years). The event was discontinued when major sponsors pulled out.
Billy Childish wrote a song entitled "Louis Riel", which was performed by Thee Headcoats. Texas musician Doug Sahm wrote a song entitled "Louis Riel," which appeared on the album "S.D.Q. '98". In the song, Sahm likens the lore surrounding Riel to David Crockett's legend in his home state, spinning an abridged tale of Riel's life as a revolutionary: "... but you gotta respect him for what he thought was right ... And all around Regina they talk about him still – why did they have to kill Louis Riel?"
The Seattle-based Indie rock band Grand Archives also wrote a song entitled "Louis Riel" that appears on their 2008 self-titled album.
A track entitled "Snowin' Today: A Lament for Louis Riel" appears on the 2009 album "Live: Two Nights in March" by Saskatchewan singer/guitarist Little Miss Higgins; a studio version features on her 2010 release "Across The Plains".
On 22 October 2003, the Canadian news channel CBC Newsworld and its French-language equivalent, Réseau de l'information, staged a simulated retrial of Riel. Viewers were invited to enter a verdict on the trial over the internet, and more than 10,000 votes were received—87% of which were "not guilty". The results of this straw poll led to renewed calls for Riel's posthumous pardon. Also on the basis of a public poll, the CBC's "Greatest Canadian" project ranked Riel as the 11th "Greatest Canadian".
An episode of the TV-series "How the West Was Won" from 1979 was named "L'Affaire Riel", featuring Louis Riel while in exile in the United States.
In 2001, Canadian sketch comedy troupe Royal Canadian Air Farce featured Riel in its send-up of the CBC documentary series "Canada: A People's History." Significant parallels were drawn between Riel's actions and those of modern-day Québécois separatists, and the comedian who portrayed Riel was made up to look like then-Premier Lucien Bouchard. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18664 |
Listerine
Listerine is an American brand of antiseptic mouthwash product. It is promoted with the slogan "Kills germs that cause bad breath". Named after Joseph Lister, who pioneered antiseptic surgery at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland, Listerine was developed in 1879 by Joseph Lawrence, a chemist in St. Louis, Missouri.
Originally marketed by the Lambert Pharmacal Company (which later became Warner–Lambert), Listerine has been manufactured and distributed by Johnson & Johnson since that company's acquisition of Pfizer's consumer healthcare division on December 20, 2006.
The Listerine brand name is also used in toothpaste, chewable tablets and self-dissolving teeth-whitening strips.
Inspired by Louis Pasteur's ideas on microbial infection, the English doctor Joseph Lister demonstrated in 1865 that use of carbolic acid on surgical dressings would significantly reduce rates of post-surgical infection. Lister's work in turn inspired St. Louis-based doctor Joseph Lawrence to develop an alcohol-based formula for a surgical antiseptic which included eucalyptol, menthol, methyl salicylate, and thymol (its exact composition is a trade secret). Lawrence named his antiseptic "Listerine" in honor of Lister.
Lawrence hoped to promote Listerine's use as a general germicide as well as a surgical antiseptic, and licensed his formula to a local pharmacist named Jordan Wheat Lambert in 1881. Lambert subsequently started the Lambert Pharmacal Company, marketing Listerine. Listerine was promoted to dentists for oral care in 1895 and was the first over-the-counter mouthwash sold in the United States, in 1914. It became widely known and entered common household use after Jordan Wheat Lambert's son Gerard Lambert joined the company and promoted an aggressive marketing campaign.
According to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's book "Freakonomics":
In 1955, Lambert Pharmacal merged with New York-based Warner-Hudnut and became Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company and incorporated in Delaware with its corporate headquarters in Morris Plains, New Jersey. In 2000, Pfizer acquired Warner-Lambert. Among Lambert's assets was the original land for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
From 1921 until the mid-1970s, Listerine was also marketed as preventive and remedy for colds and sore throats. In 1976, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that these claims were misleading, and that Listerine had "no efficacy" at either preventing or alleviating the symptoms of sore throats and colds. Warner-Lambert was ordered to stop making the claims, and to include in the next $10.2 million worth of Listerine ads specific mention that "Listerine will not help prevent colds or sore throats or lessen their severity." The advertisement run by Listerine added the preamble "contrary to prior advertising".
For a short time, beginning in 1927, the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company marketed Listerine Cigarettes.
From the 1930s into the 1950s, advertisements claimed that applying Listerine to the scalp could prevent "infectious dandruff".
Listerine was packaged in a glass bottle inside a corrugated cardboard tube for nearly 80 years before the first revamps were made to the brand: in 1992, Cool Mint Listerine was introduced in addition to the original Listerine Antiseptic formula and, in 1994, both brands were introduced in plastic bottles for the first time. In 1995, FreshBurst was added, then in 2003 Natural Citrus. In 2006 a new addition to the "less intense" variety, Vanilla Mint, was released. Nine different kinds of Listerine are on the market in the U.S. and elsewhere: Original, Cool Mint, FreshBurst, Natural Citrus, Naturals, Soft Mint (Vanilla Mint), UltraClean (formerly Advanced Listerine), Tooth Defense (mint shield), and Whitening pre-brush rinse (clean mint). In the United Kingdom, where in recent years the only option for most residents to obtain the original Listerine was to purchase from a dwindling number of larger branches of Boots the Chemist (which has a near monopoly of chemist shops in the United Kingdom) only the flavoured products are now obtainable as Boots has removed the Original from its selection. Original is not listed on the Listerine UK website as among the Listerine products available in the United Kingdom.
The active ingredients listed on Listerine packaging are essential oils which are menthol (mint) 0.042%, thymol (thyme) 0.064%, methyl salicylate (wintergreen) 0.06%, and eucalyptol (eucalyptus) 0.092%. In combination all have an antiseptic effect and there is some thought that methyl salicylate may have an anti inflammatory effect as well. Ethanol, which is toxic to bacteria at concentrations of 40%, is present in concentrations of 21.6% in the flavored product and 26.9% in the original gold Listerine Antiseptic. At this concentration, the ethanol serves to dissolve the active ingredients.
The addition of the active ingredients means the ethanol is considered to be undrinkable, known as denatured alcohol, and it is therefore not regulated as an alcoholic beverage in the United States. (Specially Denatured Alcohol Formula 38-B, specified in Title 27, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 21, Subpart D) However, consumption of mouthwash to obtain intoxication does occur, especially among alcoholics and underage drinkers.
There has been concern that the use of alcohol-containing mouthwash such as Listerine may increase the risk of developing oral cancer. As of 2010, seven meta-analyses have found no connection between alcohol-containing mouthwashes and oral cancer, and three have found increased risk.
In January 2009, Andrew Penman, chief executive of The Cancer Council New South Wales, called for further research on the matter. In a March 2009 brief, the American Dental Association said "the available evidence does not support a connection between oral cancer and alcohol-containing mouthrinse". In 2009, Johnson and Johnson launched a new alcohol-free version of the product called Listerine Zero.
On April 11, 2007, McNeil-PPC disclosed that there were potentially contaminants in all Listerine Agent Cool Blue products sold since its launch in 2006, and that all bottles were being recalled. The recall affected some 4,000,000 bottles sold since that time. According to the company, Listerine Agent Cool Blue is the only product affected by the contamination and no other products in the Listerine family were under recall. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18665 |
Ludo (board game)
Ludo (; ) is a strategy board game for two to four players, in which the players race their four from start to finish according to the rolls of a single die. Like other cross and circle games, Ludo is derived from the Indian game Pachisi, but simpler. The game and its variations are popular in many countries and under various names.
Pachisi was created in India in the 6th century. The earliest evidence of this game's evolution in India is the depiction of boards on the caves of Ellora. The original version is also described in Indian epic Mahabharata in which Shakuni uses the cursed dice to beat the Pandavas and at last after losing everything, Yudhisthira puts his wife Draupadi on stake and loses her too. However, it is important to be noted that Pandavas get all their belongings back after Draupadi vows to curse the whole Kuru lineage but stops at the intervention of Gandhari and seeing an opportunity to vent Draupadi's anger, Kuru king Dhritarashtra promises to give back the Pandavas, all that they had lost in the game. It was also known as Chaupar in ancient times. The contemporary version was played by the Mughal emperors of India; a notable example is Akbar.
Pachisi was modified to use a cubic die with dice cup and patented as "Ludo" in England in 1896. The Royal Navy took Ludo and converted it into the board game Uckers.
Ludo exists under different game names and various game derivations:
A similar German game from 1914 is called "Mensch ärgere dich nicht" (Man, Don't Get Angry), and has equivalent names in Bulgarian, Serbian, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Romanian, Polish and Turkish. The North American name "Aggravation" is in the same vein.
Special areas of the Ludo board are typically coloured bright yellow, green, red, and blue. Each player is assigned a colour and has four tokens in their colour. The board is normally square with a cross-shaped , with each arm of the cross having three columns of squares, usually six per column. The middle columns usually have five squares coloured; these represent a player's "home column". A sixth coloured square not on the home column is a player's "starting square". At the centre of the board is a large "finishing square", often composed of coloured triangles atop the players' home columns (thus depicting "arrows" pointing to the finish).
Two, three, or four can play, without partnerships. At the beginning of the game, each player's four tokens are out of play and in the player's "yard" (one of the large corner areas of the board in the player's colour). When able to, the players will enter their tokens one per turn on their respective starting squares, and proceed to race them clockwise around the board along the "game track" (the path of squares not part of any player's home column). When reaching the square below his home column, a player continues by moving tokens up the column to the finishing square. The rolls of a single die control the swiftness of the tokens, and entry to the finishing square requires a precise roll from the player. The first to bring all their tokens to the finish wins the game. The others often continue play to determine second-, third-, and fourth-place finishers.
Each player rolls the die; the highest roller begins the game. Players alternate turns in a clockwise direction.
To enter a token into play from its yard to its starting square, a player must roll a "6". The player has to draw a token from home every time he gets a "6" unless home is empty or the start box has 2 own tokens (is doubled). If the player has no tokens yet in play and rolls other than a "6", the turn passes to the next player.
Players must always move a token according to the die value rolled. Once a player has one or more tokens in play, he selects a token and moves it forwards along the track the number of squares indicated by the die. If an opponent's token is blocking your pathway, you will need to land on the same space as the token to capture it. You cannot move past that token. are not allowed; if no move is possible, the turn moves to the next player.
If player cannot draw a token from home, rolling a "6" earns the player an additional or "bonus" roll in that turn. If the bonus roll results in a "6" again, the player earns again an additional bonus roll. If the third roll is also a "6", the player may not move and the turn immediately passes to the next player.
If the advance of a token ends on a square occupied by an opponent's token, the opponent token is returned to its owner's yard. The returned token can be reentered into play only when the owner rolls a "6". If a piece lands on the same space as another piece of the same colour, the pieces are doubled and form a "block". If the advance of a block ends on an opponent’s block, the latter is captured and returned to its owner’s yard, collectively.
A player's home column squares are always safe since no opponent may enter them. In the home column, you cannot jump over your token. Roll the exact number needed to get each token onto the home triangle.
In some parts of Africa the following rules are reportedly played:
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18666 |
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average (see below) time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, its current age, and other demographic factors including gender. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth (LEB), which can be defined in two ways. "Cohort" LEB is the mean length of life of an actual birth cohort (all individuals born in a given year) and can be computed only for cohorts born many decades ago, so that all their members have died. "Period" LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year.
National LEB figures reported by national agencies and international organizations for human populations are indeed estimates of "period" LEB. In the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, human LEB was 26 years; the 2010 world LEB was 67.2 years. For recent years, LEB in Eswatini (Swaziland) is about 49, while LEB in Japan is about 83. The combination of high infant mortality and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, epidemics, plagues, wars, and childbirth, particularly before modern medicine was widely available, significantly lowers LEB. For example, a society with a LEB of 40 may have few people dying at precisely 40: most will die before 30 or after 55. In populations with high infant mortality rates, LEB is highly sensitive to the rate of death in the first few years of life. Because of this sensitivity to infant mortality, LEB can be subjected to gross misinterpretation, leading one to believe that a population with a low LEB will necessarily have a small proportion of older people. Another measure, such as life expectancy at age 5 (e5), can be used to exclude the effect of infant mortality to provide a simple measure of overall mortality rates other than in early childhood; in the hypothetical population above, life expectancy at 5 would be another 65. Aggregate population measures, such as the proportion of the population in various age groups, should also be used alongside individual-based measures like formal life expectancy when analyzing population structure and dynamics. However, pre-modern societies still had universally higher mortality rates and universally lower life expectancies at every age for both genders, and this example was relatively rare. In societies with life expectancies of 30, for instance, a 40-year remaining timespan at age 5 may not have been uncommon, but a 60-year one was.
Mathematically, life expectancy is the mean number of years of life remaining at a given age, assuming age-specific mortality rates remain at their most recently measured levels. It is denoted by formula_1, which means the mean number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged formula_2, according to a particular mortality experience. Longevity, maximum lifespan, and life expectancy are not synonyms. Life expectancy is defined statistically as the mean number of years remaining for an individual or a group of people at a given age. Longevity refers to the characteristics of the relatively long lifespan of some members of a population. Maximum lifespan is the age at death for the longest-lived individual of a species. Moreover, because life expectancy is an average, a particular person may die many years before or many years after the "expected" survival. The term "maximum lifespan" has a quite different meaning and is more related to longevity.
Life expectancy is also used in plant or animal ecology, and in life tables (also known as actuarial tables). The term and concept of life expectancy may also be used in the context of manufactured objects, though the related term shelf life is commonly used for consumer products, and the terms "mean time to breakdown" (MTTB) and "mean time between failures" (MTBF) are used in engineering.
Records of human lifespan above age 100 are highly susceptible to errors. For example, the previous world-record holder for human lifespan, Carrie White, was uncovered as a simple typographic error after more than two decades. Therefore, the capacity for equivalent hidden errors make maximum lifespan records highly dubious. The longest verified lifespan for any human is that of Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who is claimed to have lived to age 122 years, 164 days, between 21 February 1875 and 4 August 1997, which however is disputed. This is referred to as the "maximum life span," which is the upper boundary of life, the maximum number of years any human is known to have lived. A theoretical study shows that the maximum life expectancy at birth is limited by the human life characteristic value δ, which is around 104 years. According to a study by biologists Bryan G. Hughes and Siegfried Hekimi, there is no evidence for limit on human lifespan. However, this view has been questioned on the basis of error patterns.
The following information is derived from the 1961 "Encyclopædia Britannica" and other sources, some with questionable accuracy. Unless otherwise stated, it represents estimates of the life expectancies of the world population as a whole. In many instances, life expectancy varied considerably according to class and gender.
Life expectancy at birth takes account of infant mortality but not prenatal mortality.
Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed the life expectancy at birth among 13th-century English nobles at 30. Having survived until the age of 21, a male member of the English aristocracy in this period could expect to live:
In a similar way, the life expectancy of scholars in the Medieval Islamic world was 59–84.3 years.
17th-century English life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because infant and child mortality remained high. Life expectancy was under 25 years in the early Colony of Virginia, and in seventeenth-century New England, about 40 percent died before reaching adulthood. During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The under-5 mortality rate in London decreased from 745 (745 out of how many? 1,000? - needs clarification) in 1730–1749 to 318 in 1810–1829.
Public health measures are credited with much of the recent increase in life expectancy. During the 20th century, despite a brief drop due to the 1918 flu pandemic starting around that time the average lifespan in the United States increased by more than 30 years, of which 25 years can be attributed to advances in public health.
Human beings are expected to live on average 30–40 years in Eswatini and 82.6 years in Japan, but the latter's recorded life expectancy may have been very slightly increased by counting many infant deaths as stillborn. An analysis published in 2011 in "The Lancet" attributes Japanese life expectancy to equal opportunities and public health as well as diet.
There are great variations in life expectancy between different parts of the world, mostly caused by differences in public health, medical care, and diet. The impact of AIDS on life expectancy is particularly notable in many African countries. According to projections made by the United Nations (UN) in 2002, the life expectancy at birth for 2010–2015 (if HIV/AIDS did not exist) would have been:
Actual life expectancy in Botswana declined from 65 in 1990 to 49 in 2000 before increasing to 66 in 2011. In South Africa, life expectancy was 63 in 1990, 57 in 2000, and 58 in 2011. And in Zimbabwe, life expectancy was 60 in 1990, 43 in 2000, and 54 in 2011.
During the last 200 years, African countries have generally not had the same improvements in mortality rates that have been enjoyed by countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
In the United States, African-American people have shorter life expectancies than their European-American counterparts. For example, white Americans born in 2010 are expected to live until age 78.9, but black Americans only until age 75.1. This 3.8-year gap, however, is the lowest it has been since 1975 at the latest. The greatest difference was 7.1 years in 1993. In contrast, Asian-American women live the longest of all ethnic groups in the United States, with a life expectancy of 85.8 years. The life expectancy of Hispanic Americans is 81.2 years. According to the new government reports in the US, life expectancy in the country dropped again because of the rise in suicide and drug overdose rates. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found nearly 70,000 more Americans died in 2017 than 2016, with rising rates of death among 25- to 44-year-olds.
Cities also experience a wide range of life expectancy based on neighborhood breakdowns. This is largely due to economic clustering and poverty conditions that tend to associate based on geographic location. Multi-generational poverty found in struggling neighborhoods also contributes. In United States cities such as Cincinnati, the life expectancy gap between low income and high income neighborhoods touches 20 years.
Economic circumstances also affect life expectancy. For example, in the United Kingdom, life expectancy in the wealthiest and richest areas is several years higher than in the poorest areas. This may reflect factors such as diet and lifestyle, as well as access to medical care. It may also reflect a selective effect: people with chronic life-threatening illnesses are less likely to become wealthy or to reside in affluent areas. In Glasgow, the disparity is amongst the highest in the world: life expectancy for males in the heavily deprived Calton area stands at 54, which is 28 years less than in the affluent area of Lenzie, which is only 8 km away.
A 2013 study found a pronounced relationship between economic inequality and life expectancy. However, a study by José A. Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux at the University of Michigan found that life expectancy actually increased during the Great Depression, and during recessions and depressions in general. The authors suggest that when people are working extra hard during good economic times, they undergo more stress, exposure to pollution, and likelihood of injury among other longevity-limiting factors.
Life expectancy is also likely to be affected by exposure to high levels of highway air pollution or industrial air pollution. This is one way that occupation can have a major effect on life expectancy. Coal miners (and in prior generations, asbestos cutters) often have lower life expectancies than average. Other factors affecting an individual's life expectancy are genetic disorders, drug use, tobacco smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, access to health care, diet and exercise.
Female human life expectancy is considerably greater than that of males, despite females having higher morbidity rates, see Health Survival paradox. There are many reasons for this. Traditional arguments tend to favor sociology-environmental factors: historically, men have generally consumed more tobacco, alcohol and drugs than women in most societies, and are more likely to die from many associated diseases such as lung cancer, tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver. Men are also more likely to die from injuries, whether unintentional (such as occupational, war or car accidents) or intentional (suicide). Men are also more likely to die from most of the leading causes of death (some already stated above) than women. Some of these in the United States include: cancer of the respiratory system, motor vehicle accidents, suicide, cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, prostate cancer, and coronary heart disease. These far outweigh the female mortality rate from breast cancer and cervical cancer. In the past, mortality rates for females in child-bearing age groups were higher than for males at the same age.
A paper from 2015 found that female fetuses have a higher mortality rate than male fetuses. This finding contradicts papers dating from 2002 and earlier that attribute the male sex to higher in-utero mortality rates. Among the smallest premature babies (those under 2 pounds or 900 g), females have a higher survival rate. At the other extreme, about 90% of individuals aged 110 are female. The difference in life expectancy between men and women in the United States dropped from 7.8 years in 1979 to 5.3 years in 2005, with women expected to live to age 80.1 in 2005. Data from the UK shows the gap in life expectancy between men and women decreasing in later life. This may be attributable to the effects of infant mortality and young adult death rates.
Some argue that shorter male life expectancy is merely another manifestation of the general rule, seen in all mammal species, that larger-sized individuals within a species tend, on average, to have shorter lives. This biological difference occurs because women have more resistance to infections and degenerative diseases.
In her extensive review of the existing literature, Kalben concluded that the fact that women live longer than men was observed at least as far back as 1750 and that, with relatively equal treatment, today males in all parts of the world experience greater mortality than females. Kalben's study, however, was restricted to data in Western Europe alone, where demographic transition occurred relatively early. In countries such as Hungary, Bulgaria, India and China, males continued to outlive females into the twentieth century. Of 72 selected causes of death, only 6 yielded greater female than male age-adjusted death rates in 1998 in the United States. With the exception of birds, for almost all of the animal species studied, males have higher mortality than females. Evidence suggests that the sex mortality differential in people is due to both biological/genetic and environmental/behavioral risk and protective factors.
There is a recent suggestion that mitochondrial mutations that shorten lifespan continue to be expressed in males (but less so in females) because mitochondria are inherited only through the mother. By contrast, natural selection weeds out mitochondria that reduce female survival; therefore such mitochondria are less likely to be passed on to the next generation. This thus suggests that females tend to live longer than males. The authors claim that this is a partial explanation.
In developed countries, starting around 1880, death rates decreased faster among women, leading to differences in mortality rates between males and females. Before 1880 death rates were the same. In people born after 1900, the death rate of 50- to 70-year-old men was double that of women of the same age. Men may be more vulnerable to cardiovascular disease than women, but this susceptibility was evident only after deaths from other causes, such as infections, started to decline. Most of the difference in life expectancy between the sexes is accounted for by differences in the rate of death by cardiovascular diseases among persons aged 50–70.
In developed countries, the number of centenarians is increasing at approximately 5.5% per year, which means doubling the centenarian population every 13 years, pushing it from some 455,000 in 2009 to 4.1 million in 2050. Japan is the country with the highest ratio of centenarians (347 for every 1 million inhabitants in September 2010). Shimane prefecture had an estimated 743 centenarians per million inhabitants.
In the United States, the number of centenarians grew from 32,194 in 1980 to 71,944 in November 2010 (232 centenarians per million inhabitants).
Mental illness is reported to occur in approximately 18% of the average American population.
The mentally ill have been shown to have a 10- to 25-year reduction in life expectancy.
Generally, the reduction of lifespan in the mentally ill population compared to the mentally stable population has been studied and documented.
The greater mortality of people with mental disorders may be due to death from injury, from co-morbid conditions, or from medication side effects.
For instance, psychiatric medications can increase the risk of developing diabetes. It has been shown that the psychiatric medication olanzapine can increase risk of developing agranulocytosis among other comorbidities. Psychiatric medicines also affect the gastrointestinal tract, where the mentally ill have a four times risk of gastrointestinal disease.
The life expectancy of people with diabetes, which is 9.3% of the U.S. population, is reduced by roughly ten to twenty years. Other demographics that tend to have a lower life expectancy than average include transplant recipients, and the obese.
Education on all levels has been shown to be strongly associated with increased life expectancy. This association may be due partly to higher income, which can lead to increased life expectancy. Despite the association, there is no causal relationship between higher education and life expectancy.
According to a paper from 2015, the mortality rate for the Caucasian population in the United States from 1993 to 2001 is four times higher for those who did not complete high school compared to those who have at least 16 years of education. In fact, within the U.S. adult population, those who have less than a high school education have the shortest life expectancies.
Pre-school education also plays a large role in life expectancy. It was found that high-quality early stage childhood education had positive effects on health. Researchers discovered this by analyzing the results of the Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC) finding that the disadvantaged children who were randomly assigned to treatment had lower instances of risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in their mid-30s.
Various species of plants and animals, including humans, have different lifespans. Evolutionary theory states that organisms that, by virtue of their defenses or lifestyle, live for long periods and avoid accidents, disease, predation, etc. are likely to have genes that code for slow aging, which often translates to good cellular repair. One theory is that if predation or accidental deaths prevent most individuals from living to an old age, there will be less natural selection to increase the intrinsic life span. That finding was supported in a classic study of opossums by Austad; however, the opposite relationship was found in an equally prominent study of guppies by Reznick.
One prominent and very popular theory states that lifespan can be lengthened by a tight budget for food energy called caloric restriction. Caloric restriction observed in many animals (most notably mice and rats) shows a near doubling of life span from a very limited calorific intake. Support for the theory has been bolstered by several new studies linking lower basal metabolic rate to increased life expectancy. That is the key to why animals like giant tortoises can live so long. Studies of humans with life spans of at least 100 have shown a link to decreased thyroid activity, resulting in their lowered metabolic rate.
In a broad survey of zoo animals, no relationship was found between the fertility of the animal and its life span.
The starting point for calculating life expectancy is the age-specific death rates of the population members. If a large amount of data is available, a statistical population can be created that allow the age-specific death rates to be simply taken as the mortality rates actually experienced at each age (the number of deaths divided by the number of years "exposed to risk" in each data cell). However, it is customary to apply smoothing to iron out, as much as possible, the random statistical fluctuations from one year of age to the next. In the past, a very simple model used for this purpose was the Gompertz function, but more sophisticated methods are now used.
These are the most common methods now used for that purpose:
While the data required are easily identified in the case of humans, the computation of life expectancy of industrial products and wild animals involves more indirect techniques. The life expectancy and demography of wild animals are often estimated by capturing, marking, and recapturing them. The life of a product, more often termed shelf life, is also computed using similar methods. In the case of long-lived components, such as those used in critical applications: in aircraft, methods like accelerated aging are used to model the life expectancy of a component.
The age-specific death rates are calculated separately for separate groups of data that are believed to have different mortality rates (such as males and females, and perhaps smokers and non-smokers if data are available separately for those groups) and are then used to calculate a life table from which one can calculate the probability of surviving to each age. In actuarial notation, the probability of surviving from age formula_2 to age formula_4 is denoted formula_5 and the probability of dying during age formula_2 (between ages formula_2 and formula_8) is denoted formula_9. For example, if 10% of a group of people alive at their 90th birthday die before their 91st birthday, the age-specific death probability at 90 would be 10%. That is a probability, not a mortality rate.
The expected future lifetime of a life age formula_2 in whole years (the "curtate expected lifetime" of "(x)") is denoted by the symbol formula_11. It is the conditional expected future lifetime (in whole years), assuming survival to age formula_2. If formula_13 denotes the curtate future lifetime at formula_2,
Substituting formula_16 in the sum and simplifying gives the equivalent formula:formula_17 If the assumption is made that on average, people live a half year in the year of death, the complete expectation of future lifetime at age formula_2 is formula_19.
Life expectancy is by definition an arithmetic mean. It can also be calculated by integrating the survival curve from 0 to positive infinity (or equivalently to the maximum lifespan, sometimes called 'omega'). For an extinct or completed cohort (all people born in year 1850, for example), it can of course simply be calculated by averaging the ages at death. For cohorts with some survivors, it is estimated by using mortality experience in recent years. The estimates are called period cohort life expectancies.
It is important to note that the statistic is usually based on past mortality experience and assumes that the same age-specific mortality rates will continue into the future. Thus, such life expectancy figures need to be adjusted for temporal trends before calculating how long a currently living individual of a particular age is expected to live. Period life expectancy remains a commonly used statistic to summarize the current health status of a population.
However, for some purposes, such as pensions calculations, it is usual to adjust the life table used by assuming that age-specific death rates will continue to decrease over the years, as they have usually done in the past. That is often done by simply extrapolating past trends; but some models exist to account for the evolution of mortality like the Lee–Carter model.
As discussed above, on an individual basis, a number of factors correlate with a longer life. Factors that are associated with variations in life expectancy include family history, marital status, economic status, physique, exercise, diet, drug use including smoking and alcohol consumption, disposition, education, environment, sleep, climate, and health care.
In order to assess the quality of these additional years of life, 'healthy life expectancy' has been calculated for the last 30 years. Since 2001, the World Health Organization has published statistics called Healthy life expectancy (HALE), defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health" excluding the years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. Since 2004, Eurostat publishes annual statistics called Healthy Life Years (HLY) based on reported activity limitations. The United States uses similar indicators in the framework of the national health promotion and disease prevention plan "Healthy People 2010". More and more countries are using health expectancy indicators to monitor the health of their population.
The long-standing quest for longer life led in the 2010s to a more promising focus on increasing HALE, also known as a person's "healthspan". Besides the benefits of keeping people healthier longer, a goal is to reduce health-care expenses on the many diseases associated with cellular senescence. Approaches being explored include fasting, exercise, and senolytic drugs.
Forecasting life expectancy and mortality forms an important subdivision of demography. Future trends in life expectancy have huge implications for old-age support programs like U.S. Social Security and pension since the cash flow in these systems depends on the number of recipients who are still living (along with the rate of return on the investments or the tax rate in pay-as-you-go systems). With longer life expectancies, the systems see increased cash outflow; if the systems underestimate increases in life-expectancies, they will be unprepared for the large payments that will occur, as humans live longer and longer.
Life expectancy forecasting is usually based on two different approaches:
Life expectancy is one of the factors in measuring the Human Development Index (HDI) of each nation along with adult literacy, education, and standard of living.
Life expectancy is also used in describing the physical quality of life of an area or, for an individual when the value of a life settlement is determined a life insurance policy sold for a cash asset.
Disparities in life expectancy are often cited as demonstrating the need for better medical care or increased social support. A strongly associated indirect measure is income inequality. For the top 21 industrialized countries, if each person is counted equally, life expectancy is lower in more unequal countries (r = −0.907). There is a similar relationship among states in the US (r = −0.620).
Life expectancy is commonly confused with the average age an adult could expect to live. This confusion may create the expectation that an adult would be unlikely to exceed an average life expectancy, even though, with all statistical probability, an adult, who has already avoided many statistical causes of adolescent mortality, should be expected to outlive the average life expectancy calculated from birth. One must compare life expectancy of the period after childhood, to estimate the life expectancy of an adult. Life expectancy can change dramatically after childhood, even in preindustrial times as is demonstrated by the Roman Life Expectancy table, which estimates life expectancy to be 25 years "at birth", but 53 years upon reaching age 25. Studies like Plymouth Plantation; "Dead at Forty" and Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004 similarly show a dramatic increase in life expectancy once adulthood was reached.
Life expectancy differs from maximum life span. Life expectancy is an average for all people in the population — including those who die shortly after birth, those who die in early adulthood (e.g. childbirth, war), and those who live unimpeded until old age. Maximum lifespan is an individual-specific concept — maximum lifespan is therefore an upper bound rather than an average. Science author Christopher Wanjek said "has the human race increased its life span? Not at all. This is one of the biggest misconceptions about old age." The maximum life span, or oldest age a human can live, may be constant. Further, there are many examples of people living significantly longer than the average life expectancy of their time period, such as Socrates, Saint Anthony, Michelangelo, and Benjamin Franklin.
However, anthropologist John D. Hawks criticizes the popular conflation of life span (life expectancy) and maximum life span when popular science writers falsely imply that the average adult human does not live longer than their ancestors. He writes, "[a]ge-specific mortality rates have declined across the adult lifespan. A smaller fraction of adults die at 20, at 30, at 40, at 50, and so on across the lifespan. As a result, we live longer on average... In every way we can measure, human lifespans are longer today than in the immediate past, and longer today than they were 2000 years ago... age-specific mortality rates in adults really have reduced substantially."
a. In standard actuarial notation, "e" refers to the expected future lifetime of "(x)" in whole years, while "eͦ" (with a ring above the "e") denotes the complete expected future lifetime of "(x)", including the fraction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18669 |
Liquid crystal
Liquid crystals (LCs) are a state of matter which has properties between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For instance, a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. There are many different types of liquid-crystal phases, which can be distinguished by their different optical properties (such as textures). The contrasting areas in the textures correspond to domains where the liquid-crystal molecules are oriented in different directions. Within a domain, however, the molecules are well ordered. LC materials may not always be in a liquid-crystal state of matter (just as water may turn into ice or water vapor).
Liquid crystals can be divided into thermotropic, lyotropic and metallotropic phases. Thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystals consist mostly of organic molecules, although a few minerals are also known. Thermotropic LCs exhibit a phase transition into the liquid-crystal phase as temperature is changed. Lyotropic LCs exhibit phase transitions as a function of both temperature and concentration of the liquid-crystal molecules in a solvent (typically water). Metallotropic LCs are composed of both organic and inorganic molecules; their liquid-crystal transition depends not only on temperature and concentration, but also on the inorganic-organic composition ratio.
Examples of liquid crystals can be found both in the natural world and in technological applications. Widespread Liquid-crystal displays use liquid crystals. Lyotropic liquid-crystalline phases are abundant in living systems but can also be found in the mineral world. For example, many proteins and cell membranes are liquid crystals. Other well-known examples of liquid crystals are solutions of soap and various related detergents, as well as the tobacco mosaic virus, and some clays.
In 1888, Austrian botanical physiologist Friedrich Reinitzer, working at the Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, examined the physico-chemical properties of various derivatives of cholesterol which now belong to the class of materials known as cholesteric liquid crystals. Previously, other researchers had observed distinct color effects when cooling cholesterol derivatives just above the freezing point, but had not associated it with a new phenomenon. Reinitzer perceived that color changes in a derivative cholesteryl benzoate were not the most peculiar feature. He found that cholesteryl benzoate does not melt in the same manner as other compounds, but has two melting points. At it melts into a cloudy liquid, and at it melts again and the cloudy liquid becomes clear. The phenomenon is reversible. Seeking help from a physicist, on March 14, 1888, he wrote to Otto Lehmann, at that time a "" in Aachen. They exchanged letters and samples. Lehmann examined the intermediate cloudy fluid, and reported seeing crystallites. Reinitzer's Viennese colleague von Zepharovich also indicated that the intermediate "fluid" was crystalline. The exchange of letters with Lehmann ended on April 24, with many questions unanswered. Reinitzer presented his results, with credits to Lehmann and von Zepharovich, at a meeting of the Vienna Chemical Society on May 3, 1888.
By that time, Reinitzer had discovered and described three important features of cholesteric liquid crystals (the name coined by Otto Lehmann in 1904): the existence of two melting points, the reflection of circularly polarized light, and the ability to rotate the polarization direction of light.
After his accidental discovery, Reinitzer did not pursue studying liquid crystals further. The research was continued by Lehmann, who realized that he had encountered a new phenomenon and was in a position to investigate it: In his postdoctoral years he had acquired expertise in crystallography and microscopy. Lehmann started a systematic study, first of cholesteryl benzoate, and then of related compounds which exhibited the double-melting phenomenon. He was able to make observations in polarized light, and his microscope was equipped with a hot stage (sample holder equipped with a heater) enabling high temperature observations. The intermediate cloudy phase clearly sustained flow, but other features, particularly the signature under a microscope, convinced Lehmann that he was dealing with a solid. By the end of August 1889 he had published his results in the Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie.
Lehmann's work was continued and significantly expanded by the German chemist Daniel Vorländer, who from the beginning of 20th century until his retirement in 1935, had synthesized most of the liquid crystals known. However, liquid crystals were not popular among scientists and the material remained a pure scientific curiosity for about 80 years.
After World War II, work on the synthesis of liquid crystals was restarted at university research laboratories in Europe. George William Gray, a prominent researcher of liquid crystals, began investigating these materials in England in the late 1940s. His group synthesized many new materials that exhibited the liquid crystalline state and developed a better understanding of how to design molecules that exhibit the state. His book "Molecular Structure and the Properties of Liquid Crystals" became a guidebook on the subject. One of the first U.S. chemists to study liquid crystals was Glenn H. Brown, starting in 1953 at the University of Cincinnati and later at Kent State University. In 1965, he organized the first international conference on liquid crystals, in Kent, Ohio, with about 100 of the world's top liquid crystal scientists in attendance. This conference marked the beginning of a worldwide effort to perform research in this field, which soon led to the development of practical applications for these unique materials.
Liquid crystal materials became a focus of research in the development of flat panel electronic displays beginning in 1962 at RCA Laboratories. When physical chemist Richard Williams applied an electric field to a thin layer of a nematic liquid crystal at 125 °C, he observed the formation of a regular pattern that he called domains (now known as Williams Domains). This led his colleague George H. Heilmeier to perform research on a liquid crystal-based flat panel display to replace the cathode ray vacuum tube used in televisions. But the para-Azoxyanisole that Williams and Heilmeier used exhibits the nematic liquid crystal state only above 116 °C, which made it impractical to use in a commercial display product. A material that could be operated at room temperature was clearly needed.
In 1966, Joel E. Goldmacher and Joseph A. Castellano, research chemists in Heilmeier group at RCA, discovered that mixtures made exclusively of nematic compounds that differed only in the number of carbon atoms in the terminal side chains could yield room-temperature nematic liquid crystals. A ternary mixture of Schiff base compounds resulted in a material that had a nematic range of 22–105 °C. Operation at room temperature enabled the first practical display device to be made. The team then proceeded to prepare numerous mixtures of nematic compounds many of which had much lower melting points. This technique of mixing nematic compounds to obtain wide operating temperature range eventually became the industry standard and is still used to tailor materials to meet specific applications.
In 1969, Hans Kelker succeeded in synthesizing a substance that had a nematic phase at room temperature, MBBA, which is one of the most popular subjects of liquid crystal research. The next step to commercialization of liquid-crystal displays was the synthesis of further chemically stable substances (cyanobiphenyls) with low melting temperatures by George Gray. That work with Ken Harrison and the UK MOD (RRE Malvern), in 1973, led to design of new materials resulting in rapid adoption of small area LCDs within electronic products.
These molecules are rod-shaped, some created in the laboratory and some appearing spontaneously in nature. Since then, two new types of LC molecules have been synthesized: disc-shaped (by Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar in India in 1977) and cone or bowl shaped (predicted by Lui Lam in China in 1982 and synthesized in Europe in 1985).
In 1991, when liquid crystal displays were already well established, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes working at the Université Paris-Sud received the Nobel Prize in physics "for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers".
A large number of chemical compounds are known to exhibit one or several liquid crystalline phases. Despite significant differences in chemical composition, these molecules have some common features in chemical and physical properties. There are three types of thermotropic liquid crystals: discotic, conic (bowlic), and rod-shaped molecules. Discotics are flat disc-like molecules consisting of a core of adjacent aromatic rings; the core in a conic LC is not flat, but is shaped like a rice bowl (a three-dimensional object). This allows for two dimensional columnar ordering, for both discotic and conic LCs. Rod-shaped molecules have an elongated, anisotropic geometry which allows for preferential alignment along one spatial direction.
An extended, structurally rigid, highly anisotropic shape seems to be the main criterion for liquid crystalline behavior, and as a result many liquid crystalline materials are based on benzene rings.
The various liquid-crystal phases (called mesophases) can be characterized by the type of ordering. One can distinguish positional order (whether molecules are arranged in any sort of ordered lattice) and orientational order (whether molecules are mostly pointing in the same direction), and moreover order can be either short-range (only between molecules close to each other) or long-range (extending to larger, sometimes macroscopic, dimensions). Most thermotropic LCs will have an isotropic phase at high temperature. That is that heating will eventually drive them into a conventional liquid phase characterized by random and isotropic molecular ordering (little to no long-range order), and fluid-like flow behavior. Under other conditions (for instance, lower temperature), a LC might inhabit one or more phases with significant anisotropic orientational structure and short-range orientational order while still having an ability to flow.
The ordering of liquid crystalline phases is extensive on the molecular scale. This order extends up to the entire domain size, which may be on the order of micrometers, but usually does not extend to the macroscopic scale as often occurs in classical crystalline solids. However some techniques, such as the use of boundaries or an applied electric field, can be used to enforce a single ordered domain in a macroscopic liquid crystal sample. The orientational ordering in a liquid crystal might extend along only one dimension, with the material being essentially disordered in the other two directions.
Thermotropic phases are those that occur in a certain temperature range. If the temperature rise is too high, thermal motion will destroy the delicate cooperative ordering of the LC phase, pushing the material into a conventional isotropic liquid phase. At too low temperature, most LC materials will form a conventional crystal. Many thermotropic LCs exhibit a variety of phases as temperature is changed. For instance, on heating a particular type of LC molecule (called mesogen) may exhibit various smectic phases followed by the nematic phase and finally the isotropic phase as temperature is increased. An example of a compound displaying thermotropic LC behavior is para-azoxyanisole.
One of the most common LC phases is the nematic. The word "nematic" comes from the Greek (""), which means "thread". This term originates from the thread-like topological defects observed in nematics, which are formally called 'disclinations'. Nematics also exhibit so-called "hedgehog" topological defects. In a nematic phase, the "calamitic" or rod-shaped organic molecules have no positional order, but they self-align to have long-range directional order with their long axes roughly parallel. Thus, the molecules are free to flow and their center of mass positions are randomly distributed as in a liquid, but still maintain their long-range directional order. Most nematics are uniaxial: they have one axis (called directrix) that is longer and preferred, with the other two being equivalent (can be approximated as cylinders or rods). However, some liquid crystals are biaxial nematics, meaning that in addition to orienting their long axis, they also orient along a secondary axis. Nematics have fluidity similar to that of ordinary (isotropic) liquids but they can be easily aligned by an external magnetic or electric field. Aligned nematics have the optical properties of uniaxial crystals and this makes them extremely useful in liquid-crystal displays (LCD).
Scientists have discovered that electrons can unite to flow together in high magnetic fields, to create an "electronic nematic" form of matter.
The smectic phases, which are found at lower temperatures than the nematic, form well-defined layers that can slide over one another in a manner similar to that of soap. The word "smectic" originates from the Latin word "smecticus", meaning cleaning, or having soap-like properties.
The smectics are thus positionally ordered along one direction. In the Smectic A phase, the molecules are oriented along the layer normal, while in the Smectic C phase they are tilted away from it. These phases are liquid-like within the layers. There are many different smectic phases, all characterized by different types and degrees of positional and orientational order. Beyond organic molecules, Smectic ordering has also been reported to occur within colloidal suspensions of 2-D materials or nanosheets.
The chiral nematic phase exhibits chirality (handedness). This phase is often called the "cholesteric" phase because it was first observed for cholesterol derivatives. Only chiral molecules can give rise to such a phase. This phase exhibits a twisting of the molecules perpendicular to the director, with the molecular axis parallel to the director. The finite twist angle between adjacent molecules is due to their asymmetric packing, which results in longer-range chiral order. In the smectic C* phase (an asterisk denotes a chiral phase), the molecules have positional ordering in a layered structure (as in the other smectic phases), with the molecules tilted by a finite angle with respect to the layer normal. The chirality induces a finite azimuthal twist from one layer to the next, producing a spiral twisting of the molecular axis along the layer normal.
The "chiral pitch", p, refers to the distance over which the LC molecules undergo a full 360° twist (but note that the structure of the chiral nematic phase repeats itself every half-pitch, since in this phase directors at 0° and ±180° are equivalent). The pitch, p, typically changes when the temperature is altered or when other molecules are added to the LC host (an achiral LC host material will form a chiral phase if doped with a chiral material), allowing the pitch of a given material to be tuned accordingly. In some liquid crystal systems, the pitch is of the same order as the wavelength of visible light. This causes these systems to exhibit unique optical properties, such as Bragg reflection and low-threshold laser emission, and these properties are exploited in a number of optical applications. For the case of Bragg reflection only the lowest-order reflection is allowed if the light is incident along the helical axis, whereas for oblique incidence higher-order reflections become permitted. Cholesteric liquid crystals also exhibit the unique property that they reflect circularly polarized light when it is incident along the helical axis and elliptically polarized if it comes in obliquely.
Blue phases are liquid crystal phases that appear in the temperature range between a chiral nematic phase and an isotropic liquid phase. Blue phases have a regular three-dimensional cubic structure of defects with lattice periods of several hundred nanometers, and thus they exhibit selective Bragg reflections in the wavelength range of visible light corresponding to the cubic lattice. It was theoretically predicted in 1981 that these phases can possess icosahedral symmetry similar to quasicrystals.
Although blue phases are of interest for fast light modulators or tunable photonic crystals, they exist in a very narrow temperature range, usually less than a few kelvins. Recently the stabilization of blue phases over a temperature range of more than 60 K including room temperature (260–326 K) has been demonstrated. Blue phases stabilized at room temperature allow electro-optical switching with response times of the order of 10−4 s.
In May 2008, the first Blue Phase Mode LCD panel had been developed.
Disk-shaped LC molecules can orient themselves in a layer-like fashion known as the discotic nematic phase. If the disks pack into stacks, the phase is called a discotic columnar. The columns themselves may be organized into rectangular or hexagonal arrays. Chiral discotic phases, similar to the chiral nematic phase, are also known.
Conic LC molecules, like in discotics, can form columnar phases. Other phases, such as nonpolar nematic, polar nematic, stringbean, donut and onion phases, have been predicted. Conic phases, except nonpolar nematic, are polar phases.
A lyotropic liquid crystal consists of two or more components that exhibit liquid-crystalline properties in certain concentration ranges. In the lyotropic phases, solvent molecules fill the space around the compounds to provide fluidity to the system. In contrast to thermotropic liquid crystals, these lyotropics have another degree of freedom of concentration that enables them to induce a variety of different phases.
A compound that has two immiscible hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts within the same molecule is called an amphiphilic molecule. Many amphiphilic molecules show lyotropic liquid-crystalline phase sequences depending on the volume balances between the hydrophilic part and hydrophobic part. These structures are formed through the micro-phase segregation of two incompatible components on a nanometer scale. Soap is an everyday example of a lyotropic liquid crystal.
The content of water or other solvent molecules changes the self-assembled structures. At very low amphiphile concentration, the molecules will be dispersed randomly without any ordering. At slightly higher (but still low) concentration, amphiphilic molecules will spontaneously assemble into micelles or vesicles. This is done so as to 'hide' the hydrophobic tail of the amphiphile inside the micelle core, exposing a hydrophilic (water-soluble) surface to aqueous solution. These spherical objects do not order themselves in solution, however. At higher concentration, the assemblies will become ordered. A typical phase is a hexagonal columnar phase, where the amphiphiles form long cylinders (again with a hydrophilic surface) that arrange themselves into a roughly hexagonal lattice. This is called the middle soap phase. At still higher concentration, a lamellar phase (neat soap phase) may form, wherein extended sheets of amphiphiles are separated by thin layers of water. For some systems, a cubic (also called viscous isotropic) phase may exist between the hexagonal and lamellar phases, wherein spheres are formed that create a dense cubic lattice. These spheres may also be connected to one another, forming a bicontinuous cubic phase.
The objects created by amphiphiles are usually spherical (as in the case of micelles), but may also be disc-like (bicelles), rod-like, or biaxial (all three micelle axes are distinct). These anisotropic self-assembled nano-structures can then order themselves in much the same way as thermotropic liquid crystals do, forming large-scale versions of all the thermotropic phases (such as a nematic phase of rod-shaped micelles).
For some systems, at high concentrations, inverse phases are observed. That is, one may generate an inverse hexagonal columnar phase (columns of water encapsulated by amphiphiles) or an inverse micellar phase (a bulk liquid crystal sample with spherical water cavities).
A generic progression of phases, going from low to high amphiphile concentration, is:
Even within the same phases, their self-assembled structures are tunable by the concentration: for example, in lamellar phases, the layer distances increase with the solvent volume. Since lyotropic liquid crystals rely on a subtle balance of intermolecular interactions, it is more difficult to analyze their structures and properties than those of thermotropic liquid crystals.
Similar phases and characteristics can be observed in immiscible diblock copolymers.
Liquid crystal phases can also be based on low-melting inorganic phases like ZnCl2 that have a structure formed of linked tetrahedra and easily form glasses. The addition of long chain soap-like molecules leads to a series of new phases that show a variety of liquid crystalline behavior both as a function of the inorganic-organic composition ratio and of temperature. This class of materials has been named metallotropic.
Thermotropic mesophases are detected and characterized by two major methods, the original method was use of thermal optical microscopy, in which a small sample of the material was placed between two crossed polarizers; the sample was then heated and cooled. As the isotropic phase would not significantly affect the polarization of the light, it would appear very dark, whereas the crystal and liquid crystal phases will both polarize the light in a uniform way, leading to brightness and color gradients. This method allows for the characterization of the particular phase, as the different phases are defined by their particular order, which must be observed. The second method, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), allows for more precise determination of phase transitions and transition enthalpies. In DSC, a small sample is heated in a way that generates a very precise change in temperature with respect to time. During phase transitions, the heat flow required to maintain this heating or cooling rate will change. These changes can be observed and attributed to various phase transitions, such as key liquid crystal transitions.
Lyotropic mesophases are analyzed in a similar fashion, though these experiments are somewhat more complex, as the concentration of mesogen is a key factor. These experiments are run at various concentrations of mesogen in order to analyze that impact.
Lyotropic liquid-crystalline phases are abundant in living systems, the study of which is referred to as lipid polymorphism. Accordingly, lyotropic liquid crystals attract particular attention in the field of biomimetic chemistry. In particular, biological membranes and cell membranes are a form of liquid crystal. Their constituent molecules (e.g. phospholipids) are perpendicular to the membrane surface, yet the membrane is flexible. These lipids vary in shape (see page on lipid polymorphism). The constituent molecules can inter-mingle easily, but tend not to leave the membrane due to the high energy requirement of this process. Lipid molecules can flip from one side of the membrane to the other, this process being catalyzed by flippases and floppases (depending on the direction of movement). These liquid crystal membrane phases can also host important proteins such as receptors freely "floating" inside, or partly outside, the membrane, e.g. CCT.
Many other biological structures exhibit liquid-crystal behavior. For instance, the concentrated protein solution that is extruded by a spider to generate silk is, in fact, a liquid crystal phase. The precise ordering of molecules in silk is critical to its renowned strength. DNA and many polypeptides, including actively-driven cytoskeletal filaments, can also form liquid crystal phases. Monolayers of elongated cells have also been described to exhibit liquid-crystal behavior, and the associated topological defects have been associated with biological consequences, including cell death and extrusion. Together, these biological applications of liquid crystals form an important part of current academic research.
Examples of liquid crystals can also be found in the mineral world, most of them being lyotropics. The first discovered was Vanadium(V) oxide, by Zocher in 1925. Since then, few others have been discovered and studied in detail. The existence of a true nematic phase in the case of the smectite clays family was raised by Langmuir in 1938, but remained open for a very long time and was only solved recently. With the rapid development of nanosciences, and the synthesis of many new anisotropic nanoparticles, the number of such mineral liquid crystals is quickly increasing, with, for example, carbon nanotubes and graphene.
A lamellar phase was even discovered, H3Sb3P2O14, which exhibits hyperswelling up to ~250 nm for the interlamellar distance.
Anisotropy of liquid crystals is a property not observed in other fluids. This anisotropy makes flows of liquid crystals behave more differentially than those of ordinary fluids. For example, injection of a flux of a liquid crystal between two close parallel plates (viscous fingering) causes orientation of the molecules to couple with the flow, with the resulting emergence of dendritic patterns. This anisotropy is also manifested in the interfacial energy (surface tension) between different liquid crystal phases. This anisotropy determines the equilibrium shape at the coexistence temperature, and is so strong that usually facets appear. When temperature is changed one of the phases grows, forming different morphologies depending on the temperature change. Since growth is controlled by heat diffusion, anisotropy in thermal conductivity favors growth in specific directions, which has also an effect on the final shape.
Microscopic theoretical treatment of fluid phases can become quite complicated, owing to the high material density, meaning that strong interactions, hard-core repulsions, and many-body correlations cannot be ignored. In the case of liquid crystals, anisotropy in all of these interactions further complicates analysis. There are a number of fairly simple theories, however, that can at least predict the general behavior of the phase transitions in liquid crystal systems.
As we already saw above, the nematic liquid crystals are composed of rod-like molecules with the long axes of neighboring molecules aligned approximately to one another. To describe this anisotropic structure, a dimensionless unit vector n called the "director", is introduced to represent the direction of preferred orientation of molecules in the neighborhood of any point. Because there is no physical polarity along the director axis, n and -n are fully equivalent.
The description of liquid crystals involves an analysis of order. A second rank symmetric traceless tensor order parameter is used to describe the orientational order of a nematic liquid crystal, although a scalar order parameter is usually sufficient to describe uniaxial nematic liquid crystals. To make this quantitative, an orientational order parameter is usually defined based on the average of the second Legendre polynomial:
where formula_2 is the angle between the liquid-crystal molecular axis and the "local director" (which is the 'preferred direction' in a volume element of a liquid crystal sample, also representing its "local optical axis"). The brackets denote both a temporal and spatial average. This definition is convenient, since for a completely random and isotropic sample, "S" = 0, whereas for a perfectly aligned sample S=1. For a typical liquid crystal sample, "S" is on the order of 0.3 to 0.8, and generally decreases as the temperature is raised. In particular, a sharp drop of the order parameter to 0 is observed when the system undergoes a phase transition from an LC phase into the isotropic phase. The order parameter can be measured experimentally in a number of ways; for instance, diamagnetism, birefringence, Raman scattering, NMR and EPR can be used to determine S.
The order of a liquid crystal could also be characterized by using other even Legendre polynomials (all the odd polynomials average to zero since the director can point in either of two antiparallel directions). These higher-order averages are more difficult to measure, but can yield additional information about molecular ordering.
A positional order parameter is also used to describe the ordering of a liquid crystal. It is characterized by the variation of the density of the center of mass of the liquid crystal molecules along a given vector. In the case of positional variation along the "z"-axis the density formula_3 is often given by:
The complex positional order parameter is defined as formula_5 and formula_6 the average density. Typically only the first two terms are kept and higher order terms are ignored since most phases can be described adequately using sinusoidal functions. For a perfect nematic formula_7 and for a smectic phase formula_8 will take on complex values. The complex nature of this order parameter allows for many parallels between nematic to smectic phase transitions and conductor to superconductor transitions.
A simple model which predicts lyotropic phase transitions is the hard-rod model proposed by Lars Onsager. This theory considers the volume excluded from the center-of-mass of one idealized cylinder as it approaches another. Specifically, if the cylinders are oriented parallel to one another, there is very little volume that is excluded from the center-of-mass of the approaching cylinder (it can come quite close to the other cylinder). If, however, the cylinders are at some angle to one another, then there is a large volume surrounding the cylinder which the approaching cylinder's center-of-mass cannot enter (due to the hard-rod repulsion between the two idealized objects). Thus, this angular arrangement sees a "decrease" in the net positional entropy of the approaching cylinder (there are fewer states available to it).
The fundamental insight here is that, whilst parallel arrangements of anisotropic objects lead to a decrease in orientational entropy, there is an increase in positional entropy. Thus in some case greater positional order will be entropically favorable. This theory thus predicts that a solution of rod-shaped objects will undergo a phase transition, at sufficient concentration, into a nematic phase. Although this model is conceptually helpful, its mathematical formulation makes several assumptions that limit its applicability to real systems.
This statistical theory, proposed by Alfred Saupe and Wilhelm Maier, includes contributions from an attractive intermolecular potential from an induced dipole moment between adjacent rod-like liquid crystal molecules. The anisotropic attraction stabilizes parallel alignment of neighboring molecules, and the theory then considers a mean-field average of the interaction. Solved self-consistently, this theory predicts thermotropic nematic-isotropic phase transitions, consistent with experiment. Maier-Saupe mean field theory is extended to high molecular weight liquid crystals by incorporating the bending stiffness of the molecules and using the method of path integrals in polymer science.
McMillan's model, proposed by William McMillan, is an extension of the Maier–Saupe mean field theory used to describe the phase transition of a liquid crystal from a nematic to a smectic A phase. It predicts that the phase transition can be either continuous or discontinuous depending on the strength of the short-range interaction between the molecules. As a result, it allows for a triple critical point where the nematic, isotropic, and smectic A phase meet. Although it predicts the existence of a triple critical point, it does not successfully predict its value. The model utilizes two order parameters that describe the orientational and positional order of the liquid crystal. The first is simply the average of the second Legendre polynomial and the second order parameter is given by:
The values "zi, θi", and "d" are the position of the molecule, the angle between the molecular axis and director, and the layer spacing. The postulated potential energy of a single molecule is given by:
Here constant α quantifies the strength of the interaction between adjacent molecules. The potential is then used to derive the thermodynamic properties of the system assuming thermal equilibrium. It results in two self-consistency equations that must be solved numerically, the solutions of which are the three stable phases of the liquid crystal.
In this formalism, a liquid crystal material is treated as a continuum; molecular details are entirely ignored. Rather, this theory considers perturbations to a presumed oriented sample. The distortions of the liquid crystal are commonly described by the Frank free energy density. One can identify three types of distortions that could occur in an oriented sample: (1) twists of the material, where neighboring molecules are forced to be angled with respect to one another, rather than aligned; (2) splay of the material, where bending occurs perpendicular to the director; and (3) bend of the material, where the distortion is parallel to the director and molecular axis. All three of these types of distortions incur an energy penalty. They are distortions that are induced by the boundary conditions at domain walls or the enclosing container. The response of the material can then be decomposed into terms based on the elastic constants corresponding to the three types of distortions. Elastic continuum theory is a particularly powerful tool for modeling liquid crystal devices and lipid bilayers.
Scientists and engineers are able to use liquid crystals in a variety of applications because external perturbation can cause significant changes in the macroscopic properties of the liquid crystal system. Both electric and magnetic fields can be used to induce these changes. The magnitude of the fields, as well as the speed at which the molecules align are important characteristics industry deals with. Special surface treatments can be used in liquid crystal devices to force specific orientations of the director.
The ability of the director to align along an external field is caused by the electric nature of the molecules. Permanent electric dipoles result when one end of a molecule has a net positive charge while the other end has a net negative charge. When an external electric field is applied to the liquid crystal, the dipole molecules tend to orient themselves along the direction of the field.
Even if a molecule does not form a permanent dipole, it can still be influenced by an electric field. In some cases, the field produces slight re-arrangement of electrons and protons in molecules such that an induced electric dipole results. While not as strong as permanent dipoles, orientation with the external field still occurs.
The response of any system to an external electrical field is
where formula_12, formula_13 and formula_14 are the components of the electric field, electric displacement field and polarization density. The electric energy per volume stored in the system is
(summation over the doubly appearing index formula_16). In nematic liquid crystals, the polarization, and electric displacement both depend linearly on the direction of the electric field. The polarization should be even in the director since liquid crystals are invariants under reflexions of formula_17. The most general form to express formula_18 is
(summation over the index formula_20) with formula_21 and formula_22 the electric permittivity parallel and perpendicular to the director formula_17. Then density of energy is (ignoring the constant terms that do not contribute to the dynamics of the system)
(summation over formula_16). If formula_26 is positive, then the minimum of the energy is achieved when formula_27 and formula_17 are parallel. This means that the system will favor aligning the liquid crystal with the externally applied electric field. If formula_26 is negative, then the minimum of the energy is achieved when formula_27 and formula_17 are perpendicular (in nematics the perpendicular orientation is degenerated, making possible the emergence of vortices).
The difference formula_32 is called dielectrical anisotropy and is an important parameter in liquid crystal applications. There are both formula_33 and formula_34 commercial liquid crystals. 5CB and E7 liquid crystal mixture are two formula_33 liquid crystals commonly used. MBBA is a common formula_34 liquid crystal.
The effects of magnetic fields on liquid crystal molecules are analogous to electric fields. Because magnetic fields are generated by moving electric charges, permanent magnetic dipoles are produced by electrons moving about atoms. When a magnetic field is applied, the molecules will tend to align with or against the field. Electromagnetic radiation, e.g. UV-Visible light, can influence light-responsive liquid crystals which mainly carry at least a photo-switchable unit.
In the absence of an external field, the director of a liquid crystal is free to point in any direction. It is possible, however, to force the director to point in a specific direction by introducing an outside agent to the system. For example, when a thin polymer coating (usually a polyimide) is spread on a glass substrate and rubbed in a single direction with a cloth, it is observed that liquid crystal molecules in contact with that surface align with the rubbing direction. The currently accepted mechanism for this is believed to be an epitaxial growth of the liquid crystal layers on the partially aligned polymer chains in the near surface layers of the polyimide.
Several liquid crystal chemicals also align to a 'command surface' which is in turn aligned by electric field of polarized light. This process is called photoalignment.
The competition between orientation produced by surface anchoring and by electric field effects is often exploited in liquid crystal devices. Consider the case in which liquid crystal molecules are aligned parallel to the surface and an electric field is applied perpendicular to the cell. At first, as the electric field increases in magnitude, no change in alignment occurs. However at a threshold magnitude of electric field, deformation occurs. Deformation occurs where the director changes its orientation from one molecule to the next. The occurrence of such a change from an aligned to a deformed state is called a Fredericks transition and can also be produced by the application of a magnetic field of sufficient strength.
The Fredericks transition is fundamental to the operation of many liquid crystal displays because the director orientation (and thus the properties) can be controlled easily by the application of a field.
As already described, chiral liquid-crystal molecules usually give rise to chiral mesophases. This means that the molecule must possess some form of asymmetry, usually a stereogenic center. An additional requirement is that the system not be racemic: a mixture of right- and left-handed molecules will cancel the chiral effect. Due to the cooperative nature of liquid crystal ordering, however, a small amount of chiral dopant in an otherwise achiral mesophase is often enough to select out one domain handedness, making the system overall chiral.
Chiral phases usually have a helical twisting of the molecules. If the pitch of this twist is on the order of the wavelength of visible light, then interesting optical interference effects can be observed. The chiral twisting that occurs in chiral LC phases also makes the system respond differently from right- and left-handed circularly polarized light. These materials can thus be used as polarization filters.
It is possible for chiral LC molecules to produce essentially achiral mesophases. For instance, in certain ranges of concentration and molecular weight, DNA will form an achiral line hexatic phase. An interesting recent observation is of the formation of chiral mesophases from achiral LC molecules. Specifically, bent-core molecules (sometimes called banana liquid crystals) have been shown to form liquid crystal phases that are chiral. In any particular sample, various domains will have opposite handedness, but within any given domain, strong chiral ordering will be present. The appearance mechanism of this macroscopic chirality is not yet entirely clear. It appears that the molecules stack in layers and orient themselves in a tilted fashion inside the layers. These liquid crystals phases may be ferroelectric or anti-ferroelectric, both of which are of interest for applications.
Chirality can also be incorporated into a phase by adding a chiral dopant, which may not form LCs itself. Twisted-nematic or super-twisted nematic mixtures often contain a small amount of such dopants.
Liquid crystals find wide use in liquid crystal displays, which rely on the optical properties of certain liquid crystalline substances in the presence or absence of an electric field. In a typical device, a liquid crystal layer (typically 4 μm thick) sits between two polarizers that are crossed (oriented at 90° to one another). The liquid crystal alignment is chosen so that its relaxed phase is a twisted one (see Twisted nematic field effect). This twisted phase reorients light that has passed through the first polarizer, allowing its transmission through the second polarizer (and reflected back to the observer if a reflector is provided). The device thus appears transparent. When an electric field is applied to the LC layer, the long molecular axes tend to align parallel to the electric field thus gradually untwisting in the center of the liquid crystal layer. In this state, the LC molecules do not reorient light, so the light polarized at the first polarizer is absorbed at the second polarizer, and the device loses transparency with increasing voltage. In this way, the electric field can be used to make a pixel switch between transparent or opaque on command. Color LCD systems use the same technique, with color filters used to generate red, green, and blue pixels. Chiral smectic liquid crystals are used in ferroelectric LCDs which are fast-switching binary light modulators. Similar principles can be used to make other liquid crystal based optical devices.
Liquid crystal tunable filters are used as electrooptical devices, e.g., in hyperspectral imaging.
Thermotropic chiral LCs whose pitch varies strongly with temperature can be used as crude liquid crystal thermometers, since the color of the material will change as the pitch is changed. Liquid crystal color transitions are used on many aquarium and pool thermometers as well as on thermometers for infants or baths. Other liquid crystal materials change color when stretched or stressed. Thus, liquid crystal sheets are often used in industry to look for hot spots, map heat flow, measure stress distribution patterns, and so on. Liquid crystal in fluid form is used to detect electrically generated hot spots for failure analysis in the semiconductor industry.
Liquid crystal lenses converge or diverge the incident light by adjusting the refractive index of liquid crystal layer with applied voltage or temperature. Generally, the liquid crystal lenses generate a parabolic refractive index distribution by arranging molecular orientations. Therefore, a plane wave is reshaped into a parabolic wavefront by a liquid crystal lens. The focal length of liquid crystal lenses could be continuously tunable when the external electric field can be properly tuned. Liquid crystal lenses are a kind of adaptive optics. Imaging system can be benefited with focusing correction, image plane adjustment, or changing the range of depth-of-field or depth of focus. Liquid crystal lens is one of the candidates to develop vision correction device for myopia and presbyopia eyes (e.g., tunable eyeglass and smart contact lenses).
Liquid crystal lasers use a liquid crystal in the lasing medium as a distributed feedback mechanism instead of external mirrors. Emission at a photonic bandgap created by the periodic dielectric structure of the liquid crystal gives a low-threshold high-output device with stable monochromatic emission.
Polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) sheets and rolls are available as adhesive backed Smart film which can be applied to windows and electrically switched between transparent and opaque to provide privacy.
Many common fluids, such as soapy water, are in fact liquid crystals. Soap forms a variety of LC phases depending on its concentration in water.
Liquid crystal films have revolutionized the world of technology. Currently they are used in the most diverse devices, such as digital clocks, mobile phones, calculating machines and televisions. In some studies to be published shortly by the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jctb.4677) and by Liquid Crystals (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02678292.2015.1061713), Maria Catarina Silva and João Sotomayor from LAQV REQUIMTE, Faculty of Science and Technology, and João Figueirinhas from CFMC-UL, Instituto Superior Técnico, present a new application involving these films. In the future, this application may allow the use of liquid crystal films in optical memory devices, with a process similar to the recording and reading of CDs and DVDs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17973 |
Law of definite proportions
In chemistry, the law of definite proportion, sometimes called Proust's law, or law of constant composition states that a given
chemical compound always contain its component elements in fixed ratio (by mass) and does not depend on its source and method of preparation. For example, oxygen makes up about 8/9 of the mass of any sample of pure water, while hydrogen makes up the remaining 1/9 of the mass. Along with the law of multiple proportions, the law of definite proportions forms the basis of stoichiometry.
The law of constant proportion was given by Joseph Proust in 1779. This observation was first made by the English theologian and chemist Joseph Priestley, and Antoine Lavoisier, a French nobleman and chemist centered on the process of combustion.
The law of definite proportions might seem obvious to the modern chemist, inherent in the very definition of a chemical compound. At the end of the 18th century, however, when the concept of a chemical compound had not yet been fully developed, the law was novel. In fact, when first proposed, it was a controversial statement and was opposed by other chemists, most notably Proust's fellow Frenchman Claude Louis Berthollet, who argued that the elements could combine in any proportion. The existence of this debate demonstrates that, at the time, the distinction between pure chemical compounds and mixtures had not yet been fully developed.
The law of definite proportions contributed to, and was placed on a firm theoretical basis by, the atomic theory that John Dalton promoted beginning in 1803, which explained matter as consisting of discrete atoms, that there was one type of atom for each element, and that the compounds were made of combinations of different types of atoms in fixed proportions.
A related early idea was Prout's hypothesis, formulated by English chemist William Prout, who proposed that the hydrogen atom was the fundamental atomic unit. From this hypothesis was derived the whole number rule, which was the rule of thumb that atomic masses were whole number multiples of the mass of hydrogen. This was later rejected in the 1820s and 30s following more refined measurements of atomic mass, notably by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, which revealed in particular that the atomic mass of chlorine was 35.45, which was incompatible with the hypothesis. Since the 1920s this discrepancy has been explained by the presence of isotopes; the atomic mass of any isotope is very close to satisfying the whole number rule, with the mass defect caused by differing binding energies being significantly smaller.
Although very useful in the foundation of modern chemistry, the law of definite proportions is not universally true. There exist non-stoichiometric compounds whose elemental composition can vary from sample to sample. Such compounds follow the law of multiple proportion. An example is the iron oxide wüstite, which can contain between 0.83 and 0.95 iron atoms for every oxygen atom, and thus contain anywhere between 23% and 25% oxygen by mass. The ideal formula is FeO, but due to crystallographic vacancies it is about Fe0.95O. In general, Proust's measurements were not precise enough to detect such variations.
In addition, the isotopic composition of an element can vary depending on its source, hence its contribution to the mass of even a pure stoichiometric compound may vary. This variation is used in radiometric dating since astronomical, atmospheric, oceanic, crustal and deep Earth processes may concentrate some environmental isotopes preferentially. With the exception of hydrogen and its isotopes, the effect is usually small, but is measurable with modern instrumentation.
An additional note: many natural polymers vary in composition (for instance DNA, proteins, carbohydrates) even when "pure". Polymers are generally not considered "pure chemical compounds" except when their molecular weight is uniform (monodisperse) and their stoichiometry is constant. In this unusual case, they still may violate the law due to isotopic variations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17981 |
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He wrote the novels "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" and "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy", and also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting tuberculosis.
Sterne grew up in a military family and spent his youth travelling from place to place, never remaining in any location for over a year. Sterne's wealthy uncle provided the funds for Sterne to attend Hipperholme Grammar School as Sterne's father was ordered to Jamaica where he would die of malaria a few years later. Sterne attended Jesus College on a sizarship where he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. While he was serving a vicarship at Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741.
Sterne's "A Political Romance", an ecclesiastical satire, received harsh criticism by the church and was burnt. Having discovered a talent for writing, Sterne published the first few volumes of his best-known novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen". Sterne struggled with tuberculosis and travelled to France to find relief from his illness. His travels in France were documented in "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy", which was published a few weeks before his death. Published posthumously was "Journal to Eliza", a collection of his letters to Eliza Draper, a woman for whom Sterne had romantic feelings. Sterne died in 1768 and was buried in the churchyard of St George's, Hanover Square. It has been alleged that Sterne's body was stolen after burial and sold to anatomists at Cambridge University. After being recognised, he was reinterred. His alleged skull was found after the churchyard was redeveloped and was transferred to Coxwold churchyard in 1969 by the Laurence Sterne Trust.
Sterne was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary on 24 November 1713. His father, Roger Sterne, was an ensign in a British regiment recently returned from Dunkirk, which was disbanded on the day of Sterne's birth. Within six months the family had returned to Yorkshire. His great-grandfather Richard Sterne had been the Master of the Jesus College, Cambridge as well as the Archbishop of York. Roger Stern was the youngest son of Richard Sterne's youngest son and consequently, Roger Sterne inherited little of Richard Sterne's wealth. Roger Sterne left his family and enlisted in the army at the age of 25; he enlisted uncommissioned, which was unusual for someone from a family of high social position. Despite being promoted to an officer, he was of the lowest commission and lacked financial resources. Roger Sterne married Agnes Hobert, the widow of a military captain.
The first decade of Laurence Sterne's life was spent moving from place to place as his father was reassigned throughout Ireland. During this period Sterne never lived in one place for more than a year. In 1724, Roger took Sterne to his wealthy brother, Richard, so that Laurence could attend Hipperholme Grammar School near Halifax; Laurence never saw his father again as Roger was ordered to Jamaica where he died of malaria in 1731. Laurence was admitted to a sizarship at Jesus College, in July 1733 at the age of 20. He graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in January 1737 and returned in the summer of 1740 to be awarded his Master of Arts degree.
Sterne was ordained as a deacon on 6 March 1737 and as a priest on 20 August 1738. His religion is said to have been the "centrist Anglicanism of his time", known as "latitudinarianism". A few days after his ordination as a priest, Sterne was awarded the vicarship living of Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire. Sterne married Elizabeth Lumley on 30 March 1741, despite both being ill with consumption. In 1743, he was presented to the neighbouring living of Stillington by Rev. Richard Levett, Prebendary of Stillington, who was patron of the living. Subsequently Sterne did duty both there and at Sutton. He was also a prebendary of York Minster. Sterne's life at this time was closely tied with his uncle, Jaques Sterne, the Archdeacon of Cleveland and Precentor of York Minster. Sterne's uncle was an ardent Whig, and urged Sterne to begin a career of political journalism which resulted in some scandal for Sterne and, eventually, a terminal falling-out between the two men.
Jaques Sterne was a powerful clergyman but a mean-tempered man and a rabid politician. In 1741–42 Laurence Sterne wrote political articles supporting the administration of Sir Robert Walpole for a newspaper founded by his uncle but soon withdrew from politics in disgust. His uncle became his arch-enemy, thwarting his advancement whenever possible. Despite the friction with his uncle, Laurence's Whig sympathies remained with him throughout his life. Laurence lived in Sutton for twenty years, during which time he kept up an intimacy which had begun at Cambridge with John Hall-Stevenson, a witty and accomplished "bon vivant", owner of Skelton Hall in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire.
In 1759, to support his dean in a church squabble, Sterne wrote "A Political Romance" (later called "The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat"), a Swiftian satire of dignitaries of the spiritual courts. At the demands of embarrassed churchmen, the book was burnt. Thus, Sterne lost his chances for clerical advancement but discovered his real talents; until the completion of this first work, "he hardly knew that he could write at all, much less with humour so as to make his reader laugh".
Having discovered his talent, at the age of 46, he turned over his parishes to a curate, and dedicated himself to writing for the rest of his life. It was while living in the countryside, having failed in his attempts to supplement his income as a farmer and struggling with tuberculosis, that Sterne began work on his best-known novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", the first volumes of which were published in 1759. Sterne was at work on his celebrated comic novel during the year that his mother died, his wife was seriously ill, and his daughter was also taken ill with a fever. He wrote as fast as he possibly could, composing the first 18 chapters between January and March 1759. Due to his poor financial position, Sterne was forced to borrow money for the printing of his novel, suggesting that Sterne was confident in the prospective commercial success of his work and that the local critical reception of the novel was favourable enough to justify the loan.
The publication of "Tristram Shandy" made Sterne famous in London and on the continent. He was delighted by the attention, famously saying "I wrote not [to] be "fed" but to be "famous."" He spent part of each year in London, being fêted as new volumes appeared. Even after the publication of volumes three and four of "Tristram Shandy", his love of attention (especially as related to financial success) remained undiminished. In one letter, he wrote "One half of the town abuse my book as bitterly, as the other half cry it up to the skies—the best is, they abuse it and buy it, and at such a rate, that we are going on with a second edition, as fast as possible." Indeed, Baron Fauconberg rewarded Sterne by appointing him as the perpetual curate of Coxwold, North Yorkshire in March 1760.
In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, the composer and former slave Ignatius Sancho wrote to Sterne encouraging him to use his pen to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade. In July 1766 Sterne received Sancho's letter shortly after he had finished writing a conversation between his fictional characters Corporal Trim and his brother Tom in "Tristram Shandy", wherein Tom described the oppression of a black servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon which he had visited. Sterne's widely publicised response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.
Sterne continued to struggle with his illness, and departed England for France in 1762 in an effort to find a climate that would alleviate his suffering. Sterne was lucky to attach himself to a diplomatic party bound for Turin, as England and France were still adversaries in the Seven Years' War. Sterne was gratified by his reception in France, where reports of the genius of "Tristram Shandy" had made him a celebrity. Aspects of this trip to France were incorporated into Sterne's second novel, "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy".
Early in 1767, Sterne met Eliza Draper, the wife of an official of the East India Company, then staying on her own in London. He was quickly captivated by Eliza’s charm, vivacity, and intelligence, and she did little to discourage the attentions of such a celebrated man. They met frequently, exchanged miniature portraits, and Sterne’s admiration seems to have turned into an obsession which he took no trouble to conceal. To his great distress, Eliza had to return to India three months after their first meeting, and he died from consumption a year later without seeing her again. At the beginning of 1768, Sterne brought out his "Sentimental Journey" which contains some extravagant references to her, and the relationship, though platonic, aroused considerable interest. He also wrote his "Journal to Eliza" part of which he sent to her, and the rest of which came to light when it was presented to the British Museum in 1894. After Sterne’s death, Eliza allowed ten of his letters to be published under the title "Letters from Yorick to Eliza" and succeeded in suppressing her letters to him, though some blatant forgeries were produced, probably by William Combe, in a volume entitled "Eliza's Letters to Yorick".
Less than a month after "Sentimental Journey" was published, early in 1768, Sterne died in his lodgings at 41 Old Bond Street on 18 March, at the age of 54. He was buried in the churchyard of St George's, Hanover Square on 22 March. It was widely rumoured that Sterne's body was stolen shortly after it was interred and sold to anatomists at Cambridge University. Circumstantially, it was said that his body was recognised by Charles Collignon, who knew him and discreetly reinterred back in St George's, in an unknown plot. A year later a group of Freemasons erected a memorial stone with a rhyming epitaph near to his original burial place. A second stone was erected in 1893, correcting some factual errors on the memorial stone. When the churchyard of St. George's was redeveloped in 1969, amongst 11,500 skulls disinterred, several were identified with drastic cuts from anatomising or a post-mortem examination. One was identified to be of a size that matched a bust of Sterne made by Nollekens.
The skull was held up to be his, albeit with "a certain area of doubt". Along with nearby skeletal bones, these remains were transferred to Coxwold churchyard in 1969 by the Laurence Sterne Trust. The story of the reinterment of Sterne's skull in Coxwold is alluded to in Malcolm Bradbury's novel "To the Hermitage".
The works of Laurence Sterne are few in comparison to other eighteenth-century authors of comparable stature. Sterne's early works were letters; he had two sermons published (in 1747 and 1750), and tried his hand at satire. He was involved in, and wrote about, local politics in 1742. His major publication prior to "Tristram Shandy" was the satire "A Political Romance" (1759), aimed at conflicts of interest within York Minster. A posthumously published piece on the art of preaching, "A Fragment in the Manner of Rabelais", appears to have been written in 1759. Rabelais was by far Sterne's favourite author, and in his correspondence he made clear that he considered himself as Rabelais' successor in humour writing, distancing himself from Jonathan Swift. Sterne's novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" sold widely in England and throughout Europe. Translations of the work began to appear in all the major European languages almost upon its publication, and Sterne influenced European writers as diverse as Denis Diderot and the German Romanticists. His work had also noticeable influence over Brazilian author Machado de Assis, who made use of the digressive technique in the novel "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas".
English writer and literary critic Samuel Johnson's verdict in 1776 was that "Nothing odd will do long. "Tristram Shandy" did not last." This is strikingly different from the views of European critics of the day, who praised Sterne and "Tristram Shandy" as innovative and superior. Voltaire called it "clearly superior to Rabelais", and later Goethe praised Sterne as "the most beautiful spirit that ever lived". Swedish translator Johan Rundahl described Sterne as an arch-sentimentalist. The title page to volume one includes a short Greek epigraph, which in English reads: "Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men." Before the novel properly begins, Sterne also offers a dedication to Lord William Pitt. He urges Pitt to retreat with the book from the cares of statecraft.
The novel itself starts with the narration, by Tristram, of his own conception. It proceeds mostly by what Sterne calls "progressive digressions" so that we do not reach Tristram's birth before the third volume. The novel is rich in characters and humour, and the influences of Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes are present throughout. The novel ends after 9 volumes, published over a decade, but without anything that might be considered a traditional conclusion. Sterne inserts sermons, essays and legal documents into the pages of his novel; and he explores the limits of typography and print design by including marbled pages and an entirely black page within the narrative. Many of the innovations that Sterne introduced, adaptations in form that were an exploration of what constitutes the novel, were highly influential to Modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and more contemporary writers such as Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. Italo Calvino referred to "Tristram Shandy" as the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century". The Russian Formalist writer Viktor Shklovsky regarded "Tristram Shandy" as the archetypal, quintessential novel," the most typical novel of world literature."
However, the leading critical opinions of "Tristram Shandy" tend to be markedly polarised in their evaluations of its significance. Since the 1950s, following the lead of D. W. Jefferson, there are those who argue that, whatever its legacy of influence may be, "Tristram Shandy" in its original context actually represents a resurgence of a much older, Renaissance tradition of "Learned Wit"—owing a debt to such influences as the Scriblerian approach. "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" has many stylistic parallels with "Tristram Shandy", and indeed, the narrator is one of the minor characters from the earlier novel. Although the story is more straightforward, "A Sentimental Journey" is interpreted by critics as part of the same artistic project to which "Tristram Shandy" belongs. Two volumes of Sterne's "Sermons" were published during his lifetime; more copies of his "Sermons" were sold in his lifetime than copies of "Tristram Shandy". The sermons, however, are conventional in substance. Several volumes of letters were published after his death, as was "Journal to Eliza". These collections of letters, more sentimental than humourous, tell of Sterne's relationship with Eliza Draper. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17988 |
Linear A
Linear A is a writing system used by the Minoans (Cretans) from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. It was succeeded by Linear B, which was used by the Mycenaeans to write an early form of Greek. No texts in Linear A have been deciphered.
Linear A belongs to a group of scripts that evolved independently of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems. During the second millennium BC, there were four major branches: Linear A, Linear B, Cypro-Minoan, and Cretan hieroglyphic. In the 1950s, Linear B was deciphered as Mycenaean Greek. Linear B shares many symbols with Linear A, and they may notate similar syllabic values. But neither those nor any other proposed readings lead to a language that scholars can read.
Most hypotheses about the Linear A script and Minoan language start with Linear B.
Linear A has hundreds of signs, believed to represent syllabic, ideographic, and semantic values in a manner similar to Linear B. While many of those assumed to be syllabic signs are similar to ones in Linear B, approximately 80% of Linear A's logograms are unique; the difference in sound values between Linear A and Linear B signs ranges from 9% to 13%. It primarily appears in the left-to-right direction, but occasionally appears as a right-to-left or boustrophedon script.
Linear A may be divided into four categories:
Numbers follow a decimal system, units are represented by vertical dashes, tens by horizontal dashes, hundreds by circles, and thousands by circles with rays. Specific signs that coincide with numerals are regarded as fractions.
An interesting feature is the recording of numbers in the script: The highest number recorded in known Linear A texts is 3000, but there are special symbols to indicate fractions and weights.
Linear A has been unearthed chiefly on Crete, but also at other sites in Greece, as well as Turkey and Israel. The extant corpus, comprising some 1,427 specimens totalling 7,362 to 7,396 signs, if scaled to standard type, would fit easily on two sheets of paper. Linear A has been written on various media, such as stone offering tables, gold and silver hairpins, and ceramics. The earliest inscriptions of Linear A come from Phaistos, in a layer dated at the end of the Middle Minoan II period: that is, no later than c. 1700 BC. Linear A texts have been found throughout the island of Crete and also on some Aegean islands (Kythera, Kea, Thera, Melos), in mainland Greece (Ayos Stephanos), on the west coast of Asia Minor (Miletos, Troy), and in the Levant (Tel Haror).
The main discoveries of Linear A tablets have been at three sites on Crete:
Discoveries have been made at the following locations on Crete:
Until 1973, only one Linear A tablet had been found outside Crete (on Kea). Since then, other locations have yielded inscriptions.
Most—if not all—inscriptions found outside Crete appear to have been made locally, as indicated by the composition of the substrate and other indications. Also, close analysis of the inscriptions found outside Crete indicates the use of a script that is somewhere between Linear A and Linear B, combining elements from both.
Linear A became prominent during the Middle Minoan Period, specifically from 1625–1450 BC. It was contemporary with and possibly derived from Cretan hieroglyphs, and is an ancestor of Linear B. The sequence and the geographical spread of Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B, the three overlapping but distinct writing systems on Bronze Age Crete and the Greek mainland, can be summarized as follows:
Archaeologist Arthur Evans named the script "Linear" because its characters consisted simply of lines inscribed in clay, in contrast to the more pictographic characters in Cretan hieroglyphs that were used during the same period.
Several tablets inscribed in signs similar to Linear A were found in the Troad in northwestern Anatolia. While their status is disputed, they may be imports, as there is no evidence of Minoan presence in the Troad. Classification of these signs as a unique Trojan script (proposed by contemporary Russian linguist Nikolai Kazansky) is not accepted by other linguists.
Egyptian evidence related to the Keftiu (Cretan/Crete) language consists of a spell against Asian chickenpox and a writing name exercise called Keftiu. The spell, probably originated from the reign of Amenhotep III (1390–1352 BC), evolves as follows: "sntÈk|pwpyw| yÈymªntÈÈrk|k|r", or, in the vocal transliteration adopted by Wolfgang Helck: "santaka pupiwa ya’ayamantarakú ka ra".
Egyptian writing of Keftiu (Cretan/Crete) names such as mÈd|d|m, or "mi-da" is evidence for the language of the Keftiu, essentially indicating that it contains Semitic vocabulary. (see below).
In 1945, E. Pugliese Carratelli first introduced the classification of Linear A and Linear B parallels. However, in 1961 W.C. Brice modified the Carratelli system that was based on a wider range of Linear A sources, but Brice did not suggest Linear B equivalents to the Linear A signs. Louis Godart and Jean-Pierre Olivier introduced in the 1985 "Recueil des inscriptions en linéaire A (GORILA)," based on E.L Bennett's standard numeration of the signs of Linear B, introduced a joint numeration of the Linear A and B signs. The Egyptian exercise in writing the names of Keftiu even informs us of another Minoan ethnic identity in the form of mÈd|d|m whose first element cannot be associated with the name Midas, since it was already labeled by a linearly inscribed Hagia Triada (or HT 41.4) dating to c. 1350 BC. This Egyptian evidence of the Keftiu language essentially indicates that words in its vocabulary are Semitic, but in the language predominantly of the Luwians. One might conclude from this that a Semitic language was used in Minoan Crete as a lingua franca for a largely Luwian population.
The majority of signs in the Linear A script appear to have graphical equivalents in the Linear B syllabary. Comparison of the Hagia Triada tablets HT 95 and HT 86 shows that they contain identical lists of words and some kind of phonetic alteration. Scholars that approached Linear A with the phonetic values of Linear B produced a series of identical words. The Linear B–Linear A parallels: ku-ku-da-ra, pa-i-to, ku-mi-na, di-de-ro →di-de-ru, qa-qa-ro→qa-qa-ru, a-ra-na-ro→a-ra-na-re.
It is difficult to evaluate a given analysis of Linear A as there is little point of reference for reading its inscriptions. The simplest approach to decipherment may be to presume that the values of Linear A match more or less the values given to the deciphered Linear B script, used for Mycenaean Greek.
In 1957, Bulgarian scholar Vladimir I. Georgiev published his "Le déchiffrement des inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A" ("The decipherment of Cretan inscriptions in Linear A") stating that Linear A contains Greek linguistic elements. Georgiev then published another work in 1963, titled "Les deux langues des inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A" ("The two languages of Cretan inscriptions in Linear A"), suggesting that the language of the Hagia Triada tablets was Greek but that the rest of the Linear A corpus was in Hittite-Luwian. In December 1963, Gregory Nagy of Harvard University developed a list of Linear A and Linear B terms based on the assumption "that signs of identical or similar shape in the two scripts will represent similar or identical phonetic values"; Nagy concluded that the language of Linear A bears "Greek-like" and Indo-European elements. Michael Ventris' decipherment of Linear B in 1952 suggests an old form of Greek: it is derived from Linear A. Therefore, we can assume that the signs related to the Linear A express the same value as the Linear B. In all Linear B values for related words give a large number of identical forms or identical root forms, but alternate with the final vowel, or almost identical forms among linear texts, mainly those of Hagia Triada.
Extracting conclusions or arguments from a simple morphology can hardly be considered methodologically satisfactory. Yves Duhoux in the "Linear A as Greek" discussion at AEGEANET in March 1998:I would like to remind you of some basic facts related to the Greekness of Linear A's language: (1) The word for "total" is different in Linear A and in Linear B: LB "to - so(- de)"; LA > B "ku-ro." (2) The Linear B language is significantly less "prefixing" than Linear A. (3) Votive Linear A texts, where we are pretty sure to have variant forms of the same "word", show morphological (I mean: grammatical) features totally different from Linear B. The conclusion must be that even if one can find some casual resemblances between words in both languages (remember this MUST statistically happen: e.g. English and Persian use the same word "bad" to express the meaning of BAD, although it is proven that both words have no genetic relation at all), they are probably structurally different.
Since the late 1950s, some scholars have suggested that the Linear A language could be an Anatolian language.
Palmer (1958) put forward a theory, based on Linear B phonetic values, suggesting that Linear A language could be related closely to Luwian. The theory, however, failed to gain universal support for the following reasons:
There are recent works focused on the Luwian connection, not in terms of the Minoan language being Anatolian, but rather in terms of possible borrowings from Luwian, including the origin of the writing system itself.
In an article from 2001, Margalit Finkelberg, Professor of Classics emerita at Tel Aviv University, demonstrated a "high degree of correspondence between the phonological and morphological system of Minoan and that of Lycian" and proposed that "the language of Linear A is either the direct ancestor of Lycian or a closely related idiom."
Cyrus H. Gordon first proposed in 1966–1969 that the texts contained Semitic vocabulary that was based on the lexical items such as "kull -." meaning 'all' (Akkadian "kalu, kullatu," Hebrew "kol"). Gordon uses morphological evidence to suggest that "u-" serves as a prefix in Linear A like Semitic copula "u-". However, Gordon's copula "u-" is based on an incomplete word, and even if some of Gordon's identifications were true, a complete case for a Semitic language has not yet been built.
In 2001, the journal "Ugarit-Forschungen" published the article "The First Inscription in Punic – Vowel Differences in Linear A and B" by Jan Best, claiming to demonstrate how and why Linear A notates an archaic form of Phoenician. This was a continuation of attempts by Cyrus Gordon in finding connections between Minoan and West Semitic languages.
Another recent interpretation, based on the frequencies of the syllabic signs and on complete palaeographic comparative studies, suggests that the Minoan Linear A language belongs to the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages. Studies by Hubert La Marle include a presentation of the morphology of the language, avoid the complete identification of phonetic values between Linear A and B, and also avoid comparing Linear A with Cretan hieroglyphs. La Marle uses the frequency counts to identify the type of syllables written in Linear A, and takes into account the problem of loanwords in the vocabulary.
However, La Marle's interpretation of Linear A has been subject to some criticism; it was rejected by John Younger of the University of Kansas who showed that La Marle had invented at will erroneous and arbitrary new transcriptions, based on resemblances with many different script systems (as Phoenician, Hieroglyphic Egyptian, Hieroglyphic Hittite, Ethiopian, Cypro-Minoan, etc.), ignoring established evidence and internal analysis, while for some words La Marle proposes religious meanings inventing names of gods and rites. La Marle made a rebuttal in "An answer to John G. Younger's remarks on Linear A" in 2010.
Italian scholar Giulio M. Facchetti attempted to link Linear A to the Tyrrhenian language family comprising Etruscan, Rhaetic, and Lemnian. This family is reasoned to be a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean substratum of the 2nd millennium BC, sometimes referred to as Pre-Greek. Facchetti proposed some possible similarities between the Etruscan language and ancient Lemnian, and other Aegean languages like Minoan.
Michael Ventris who (with John Chadwick) successfully deciphered Linear B also believed in a link between Minoan and Etruscan. The same perspective is supported by S. Yatsemirsky in Russia.
According to Gareth Alun Owens, Linear A represents the Minoan language, which Owens classifies as a distinct branch of Indo-European potentially related to Greek, Sanskrit, Hittite, Latin, etc. At "The Cretan Literature Centre", Owens stated:Beginning our research with inscriptions in Linear A carved on offering tables found in the many peak sanctuaries on the mountains of Crete, we recognise a clear relationship between Linear A and Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. There is also a connection to Hittite and Armenian. This relationship allows us to place the Minoan language among the so-called Indo-European languages, a vast family that includes modern Greek and the Latin of Ancient Rome. The Minoan and Greek languages are considered to be different branches of Indo-European. The Minoans probably moved from Anatolia to the island of Crete about 10,000 years ago. There were similar population movements to Greece. The relative isolation of the population which settled in Crete resulted in the development of its own language, Minoan, which is considered different to Mycenaean. In the Minoan language (Linear A), there are no purely Greek words, as is the case in Mycenaean Linear B; it contains only words also found in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, i.e. sharing the same Indo-European origin.
Some researchers suggest that a few words or word elements may be recognized, without (yet) enabling any conclusion about relationship with other languages. In general, they use analogy with Linear B in order to propose phonetic values of the syllabic sounds. John Younger, in particular, thinks that place names usually appear in certain positions in the texts, and notes that the proposed phonetic values often correspond to known place names as given in Linear B texts (and sometimes to modern Greek names). For example, he proposes that three syllables, read as "KE-NI-SO", might be the indigenous form of Knossos. Likewise, in Linear A, "MA+RU" is suggested to mean "wool", and to correspond both to a Linear B pictogram with this meaning, and to the classical Greek word μαλλός with the same meaning (in that case a loan word from Minoan).
The Linear A alphabet (U+10600–U+1077F) was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17989 |
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC, doing business as Lucasfilm Games, is an American licensor. Until 2013, it was also a video game developer and publisher. LucasArts is best known for its graphic adventure games, as well as games based on the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California.
It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as Lucasfilm Games, the video game development group of his film company, Lucasfilm. Lucas initially served as the company's chairman. During a 1990 reorganization of Lucas companies, the Lucasfilm Games division was renamed LucasArts.
LucasArts was acquired by The Walt Disney Company through the acquisition of its parent company Lucasfilm in 2012. On April 3, 2013, Disney halted all internal development at LucasArts and laid off most of its staff. However, LucasArts remained open so that it could retain its function as a licensor.
Development of games based on the "Star Wars" license will be carried out by Electronic Arts, through an exclusive license, for the core gaming market. Disney Interactive Studios retained the ability to develop, and LucasArts retained the ability to license the franchise for the casual gaming market. Development of video games based upon other Lucasfilm properties will now be assumed by Disney Interactive Studios or licensed to third parties.
In 1979, George Lucas wanted to explore other areas of entertainment, and created the Lucasfilm Computer Division in 1979, which included a department for computer games (the Games Group) and another for graphics. The graphics department was spun off into its own corporation in 1982, ultimately becoming Pixar.
The Lucasfilm Games Group originally cooperated with Atari, which helped fund the video game group's founding, to produce video games. Though the group had spun out of Lucasfilm, the video game development license for Lucasfilm's "Star Wars" were held by Atari at the time, forcing the group to start with original concepts; Ron Gilbert, one of the group's first employees, believed that if the Lucasfilm Games Group had the rights for "Star Wars" from the start, they would have never branched into any new intellectual property.
The first products from the Games Group were unique action games like "Ballblazer" in 1984, and "Rescue on Fractalus!". Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari had received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until 1985, by publisher Epyx. Lucasfilm's next two games were "Koronis Rift" and "The Eidolon". Their first games were only developed by Lucasfilm, and a publisher would distribute the games. Atari published their games for Atari systems, Activision and Epyx would do their computer publishing. "Maniac Mansion" was the first game to be published and developed by Lucasfilm Games.
The early charter of Lucasfilm Games was to make experimental, innovative, and technologically advanced video games. "Habitat", an early online role-playing game and one of the first to support a graphical front-end, was one such title. It was only released as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64. Quantum Link could not provide the bandwidth at the time to support the game, so the full Habitat was never released outside of the beta test. However, Lucasfilm Games recouped the cost of development by releasing a sized-down version called "Club Caribe" in 1988. Lucasfilm later licensed the software to Fujitsu, who released it in Japan as "Fujitsu Habitat" in 1990. Fujitsu later licensed Habitat for world-wide distribution, and released an updated version called "WorldsAway" in 1995. The latest iteration of Habitat is still called "WorldsAway", which can be found at MetroWorlds.
Initially, the Games Group worked from Lucas' Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California. In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, which also comprised Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division. During this, the division had moved out of Skywalker Ranch to near-by offices in San Rafael, California.
Also in 1990, LucasArts started to publish "The Adventurer", their own gaming magazine where one could read about their upcoming games and interviews with the developers. The final issue was published in 1996.
In the same year, Lucas Learning was created as a subsidiary of LucasArts, providing educational software for classrooms.
"iMUSE" ("Interactive MUsic Streaming Engine") is an interactive music system used in a number of LucasArts video games. It synchronizes music with the visual action in the game, and transitions from one musical theme to another. iMUSE was developed in the early 1990s by composers Michael Land and Peter McConnell while working at LucasArts. The iMUSE system is patented by LucasArts, and was added to the SCUMM game engine in 1991. The first game to use iMUSE was "" and it has been used in all LucasArts adventure games since. It has also been used for some non-adventure LucasArts titles, including "" (DOS version), "" (DOS version), and "".
The first adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games was "" in 1986, based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same name. The 1987 title "Maniac Mansion" introduced SCUMM, the scripting language behind most of the company's later adventure offerings. The adventures released in the following years, such as "Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders" in 1988, "" in 1989, and the 1990 titles "Loom" and "The Secret of Monkey Island" helped Lucasfilm Games build a reputation as one of the leading developers in the genre. The original five adventure games created with SCUMM were released in a compilation titled "LucasArts Classic Adventures" in 1992.
LucasArts was often referred to as one of the two big names in the field, competing with Sierra On-line as a developer of high quality adventures. The first half of the 1990s was the heyday for the company's adventure fame, with classic titles such as "" in 1991, "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" in 1992, "" and "" in 1993, and the 1995 titles "Full Throttle" and "The Dig".
In the latter half of the decade, the popularity of adventure games faded and the costs associated with game development increased as high-resolution art and C.D.-quality audio became standard fare. The P.C. market wanted titles that would show off expensive new graphics cards to best effect, a change replicated in the home console market as the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 dictated the nature of the majority of games produced for those platforms. The adventure genre failed to find popularity with the masses of new gamers.
Despite their declining popularity, LucasArts still continued to release adventure titles. In 1997, "The Curse of Monkey Island", the last LucasArts adventure game to retain traditional two-dimensional graphics and point-and-click interface, was released. This was followed by "Grim Fandango" in 1998, LucasArts' first attempt to convert a 2D adventure to a 3D environment. The highly stylised visuals, outstanding soundtrack, superb voice acting and sophisticated writing earned Grim Fandango many plaudits, including GameSpot's Game of the Year award. "Escape from Monkey Island" (2000), the fourth installment in the "Monkey Island" series, featured the same control scheme as Grim Fandango, and was generally well received. It is the last original adventure game the company has released.
Two sequels to existing franchises, "Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels" and "", were announced to be in development but these projects were cancelled, in 2003 and 2004 respectively, before the games were finished. When the rights to the Sam & Max franchise expired in 2005, the creator of Sam & Max, Steve Purcell, regained ownership. He then licensed Sam & Max to Telltale Games to be developed into an episodic game. Telltale Games is made up primarily of former LucasArts employees who had worked on the Sam & Max sequel and were let go after the project was canceled.
LucasArts halted adventure game development for the next five years, focusing instead on their "Star Wars" games. They remained silent and did not rerelease their old games on digital distribution platforms, as other studios were doing at the time. However, in 2002, the company pledged that at least 50% of its releases would have nothing to do with "Star Wars". It was not until 2009 that they returned to the genre. On June 1, 2009, LucasArts announced both "The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition", a high-definition remake of the original game with revised graphics, music and voice work, and "Tales of Monkey Island", a new episodic installment in the "Monkey Island" series that was developed by Telltale Games.
Then, on July 6, 2009, they announced that they would be rereleasing a number of their classic games, including "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" and "LOOM", on Steam. The rereleases were, for the first time, native versions built for Microsoft Windows. This was the first time in many years that the studio had offered any support for its classic adventure titles.
The second game in the Monkey Island series also received a high-definition remake, entitled "" in 2010. Both Monkey Island special edition games were released in a compilation, "Monkey Island Special Edition Collection", exclusively in Europe in 2011.
The release of the unofficial SCUMM virtual machine, ScummVM, has led to something of a resurgence for LucasArts adventure games among present-day gamers. Using ScummVM, legacy adventure titles can easily be run on modern computers and even more unusual platforms such as video game consoles, mobile phones and PDAs.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lucasfilm Games developed a series of military vehicle simulation games, the first of which were the naval simulations "PHM Pegasus" in 1986 and "Strike Fleet" in 1987. These two titles were published by Electronic Arts for a variety of computer platforms, including PC, Commodore 64 and Apple II.
In 1988, "Battlehawks 1942" launched a trilogy of World War II air combat simulations, giving the player a chance to fly as an American or Japanese pilot in the Pacific Theater. Battlehawks 1942 was followed by "" in 1989, recreating the battle between the Luftwaffe and RAF for Britain's air supremacy. The trilogy ended with "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" in 1991, in which the player could choose to fly on either the American or German side. The trilogy was lauded for its historical accuracy and detailed supplementary material—Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, for instance, was accompanied by a 224-page historical manual. The World War II trilogy was released with cover art by illustrator Marc Ericksen, in a compilation titled "Air Combat Classics" in 1994.
The World War II trilogy was created by a team led by Lawrence Holland, a game designer who later founded Totally Games. Totally Games would continue to develop games almost exclusively to LucasArts for a decade, with the most noted outcome of the symbiosis being . They were also responsible for LucasArts' 2003 return to the aerial battles of World War II with "Secret Weapons Over Normandy", a title released on PlayStation 2, Xbox and P.C.
In 1996, LucasArts released "Afterlife", a simulator in which players build their own Heaven and Hell, with several jokes and puns (such as a prison in Hell called San Quentin Tarantino).
Even though LucasArts had created games based on other Lucasfilm properties before ("Labyrinth", "Indiana Jones"), they did not use the "Star Wars" license until the early 1990s: "Star Wars" games began appearing in the 1980s, but were developed by other companies for LucasArts because the license for the games had been sold before LucasArts was formed. The first in-house development was the space combat simulator "", developed by Larry Holland's independent team, which went on to spawn a .
The CD-ROM-only "Star Wars" game "" became one of the biggest successes of the company and was considered a killer app for CD-ROM drives in the early 1990s.
After the unprecedented success of id Software's "Doom", the PC gaming market shifted towards production of three-dimensional first person shooters. LucasArts contributed to this trend with the 1995 release of "", a first person shooter that successfully transplanted the Doom formula to a Star Wars setting. The Dark Forces Strategy guide claims that development was well underway before Doom was released and that the game was pushed back once Doom hit shelves so that it could be polished. The game was well received and spawned a new franchise: the "Jedi Knight" games. This began with the sequel to "Dark Forces", "" released in 1997; this game reflected the changing face of PC gaming, being one of the first games to appreciably benefit when used in conjunction with a dedicated 3D graphics card like 3dfx's Voodoo range. The game received an expansion pack, "Mysteries of the Sith", in 1998 and a full sequel in 2002 with "". 2003's "" can be seen as a spin-off from the series, but was less well received by reviewers, who complained that the franchise was becoming formulaic.
Apart from "Star Wars"-themed 3D shooters, LucasArts also created the western-themed game "Outlaws" in 1997 and "Armed and Dangerous" (in collaboration with Planet Moon Studios) in 2003.
In 2000, Simon Jeffery became the LucasArts president. He was president of LucasArts until 2003 and some successful "Star Wars" games released during his management like "Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast", "Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2", "Knights of the Old Republic", "Star Wars Jedi Academy" and "Star Wars Galaxies". Development of some other successful "Star Wars" Games began during his management, like "Star Wars Republic Commando" and "Star Wars Battlefront".
In 2002, LucasArts recognized that the over-reliance on "Star Wars" was reducing the quality of its output, and announced that future releases would be at least 50% non-Star Wars-related. However, many of the original titles were either unsuccessful or even cancelled before release, and since then LucasArts again had mainly "Star Wars" titles in production.
Also in 2002, LucasArts released a compilation CD filled with music from their past games. The album is titled "The Best of LucasArts Original Soundtracks" and features music from the "Monkey Island" series, "Grim Fandango", "Outlaws", and "The Dig".
2003 saw the fruitful collaboration of LucasArts and BioWare on the well reviewed role-playing game, "". Combining modern 3D graphics with high-quality storytelling and a sophisticated role-playing game system, this game reinvigorated the "Star Wars" franchise. Its 2004 sequel "" continued in the same vein, but LucasArts was criticized for forcing the developer Obsidian Entertainment to release the sequel unfinished, resulting in a significant amount of cut content, a disappointing ending and numerous bugs.
In 2003, LucasArts and the "Star Wars" franchise also branched out in a new direction—the world of the MMORPG, with the creation of "Star Wars Galaxies". After a successful launch, the first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed, was released in 2004. The new expansion featured the addition of real-time space combat. This was continued in "Rage of the Wookiees", an additional expansion which added an additional planet for users to explore. Also, a new expansion, "Trials of Obi-Wan" was released on November 1, 2005 consisting of several new missions focusing on the Episode 3 planet, Mustafar. While "Star Wars Galaxies" still retains a devoted following, it has also alienated many players. "Star Wars Galaxies" has chosen to ignore the timeline established in the original films, during which the game is set, and has allowed players to play as Jedi characters. The game has also undergone several major redesigns, which have been received with mixed reactions by players.
In April 2004, Jim Ward, V.P. of marketing, online and global distributions at Lucasfilm, was appointed president of LucasArts. Ward performed a top-to-bottom audit of LucasArts infrastructure, describing the company's state as "quite a mess." In 2003, LucasArts had reportedly grossed just over $100,000,000 according to N.P.D., primarily from its "Star Wars" titles — significantly less than the grosses from the year's top single titles such as "". Ward produced a five-year investment plan to refit the company. Previous "Star Wars" games had been produced by external developers such as Raven Software, BioWare and Obsidian; Ward now prioritized making LucasArts' internal game development work effectively and adapt to the evolving game industry. "", "", and "" survived cuts that closed down other in-development games and reduced staff from about 450 to 190 employees.
Ward also canceled Star Wars Rogue Squadron Trilogy which was 50% completed and it was going to be released on the Xbox in 2004.
Factor 5 was going to develop a Rogue Squadron game titled Rogue Squadron: X-Wing vs Tie Fighter for the Xbox 360 but it was canceled by LucasArts.
After Factor 5's exclusivity with Sony ended they decided to release Rogue Squadron Trilogy for the Wii, but it was eventually cancelled as well.
In 2004, LucasArts released "", based on the same formula as the popular "Battlefield" series of games. It ended up becoming the best-selling "Star Wars" game of all time to that point, aided by a marketing tie-in with the original trilogy D.V.D. release. Its sequel, "", was released on November 1, 2005 and featured new locales such as Episode III planets Mustafar, Mygeeto, etc., in addition to space combat, playable Jedi, and new special units like Bothan spies and Imperial officers. In this same year, the second "Knights of the Old Republic" game was in production. LucasArts told Obsidian Entertainment that the project needed to be finished by that year's holiday season. Obsidian was forced to cut huge amounts of content from the game, resulting in a rushed, unfinished Knights of the Old Republic II.
In March 2005, LucasArts published "", the first game in the popular Lego video game franchise by Traveller's Tales. It was based on the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy. In May 2005, LucasArts released "", a third person action game based on the film. Also in 2005, LucasArts released "", and one of their few non-"Star Wars" games, "", developed by Pandemic Studios.
On February 16, 2006, LucasArts released "", a real-time strategy game developed by Petroglyph. September 12, 2006 saw the release of "", the sequel to the popular "Lego Star Wars: The Video Game". "Lego Star Wars II", once again developed by Traveller's Tales and published by LucasArts, follows the same basic format as the first game, but, as the name indicates, covers the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
A game titled "Traxion" was announced. "Traxion" was a rhythm game which was under development for the PlayStation Portable by British developer Kuju Entertainment, scheduled to be released in Q4 2006 by LucasArts, but was instead cancelled in January 2007. The game was to feature a number of minigames, and would support imported songs from the player's own mp3 library as well as the game's bundled collection.
In May 2007, LucasArts announced "Fracture" and stated that "new intellectual properties serve a vital role to the growth of LucasArts". "" was labelled the number one new IP in 2005 and Thrillville the number one new children's IP in 2006. Fracture was released on October 7, 2008 to average reviews. "" was released on January 11, 2005 to critical and commercial success which led to a sequel, "". "Thrillville" was released on November 21, 2006, and "" was released on October 16, 2007.
On September 16, 2008, "" was released to mixed reviews, though it quickly became the fastest selling "Star Wars" game of all time.
The rapid scaling down of internal projects at LucasArts was also reflected in its handling of games developed by external developers. During the tenure of Ward, Free Radical was contracted to produce "Star Wars: Battlefront III", which had been in production for 2 years. Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis described how working with LucasArts evolved from being "the best relationship we'd ever had with a publisher" to withholding money for 6 months and abusing the independent developer's position to withhold the full project cancellation fee—this was a major event which contributed towards Free Radical entering administration.
Ward left the company in early February 2008, for personal reasons. He was replaced by Howard Roffman as interim president. Darrell Rodriguez, who came from Electronic Arts, took Roffman's place in April 2008. About a month prior to release of "", LucasArts scaled down the internal development studio. The aforementioned game received a mediocre score from some media outlets such as IGN, GameSpot and GameTrailers. After release, minor adjustment in staffing resulted in even more layoffs.
The successor to "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords", in the form of the MMORPG "", was announced on October 21, 2008, at an invitation-only press event. developed by BioWare. It was released in December 2011.
They also published "" in 2009 for all current systems. The game is a tie-in to "" television series and was released on October 6, 2009, receiving generally negative reviews.
During television network G4's coverage of the 2006 E3 Convention, a LucasArts executive was asked about the return of popular franchises such as "Monkey Island". The executive responded that the company was currently focusing on new franchises, and that LucasArts may return to the "classic franchises" in 2015, though it was unclear as to whether the date was put forwards as an actual projection, or hyperbole. This turned out to be hyperbole, as LucasArts and Telltale Games announced new adventure games in a joint press release in 2009. The games announced were "Tales of Monkey Island", which was to be developed by Telltale, and a LucasArts-developed enhanced remake of the 1990 title "The Secret of Monkey Island", with the intent of bringing the old game to a new audience. According to LucasArts, this announcement was "just the start of LucasArts’ new mission to revitalize its deep portfolio of beloved gaming franchises". Following the success of this, LucasArts released the sequel, "" in the summer of 2010.
The company began experiencing turnovers in layoffs in 2010. Rodriguez left in May after just two years on the job. A Lucasfilm board of Directors and a game industry veteran, Jerry Bowerman, filled in during the transition. Rodriguez was ultimately replaced in June by Paul Meegan, formerly of Gears of War developer Epic Games.
In July 2010, Haden Blackman, who served as creative director on the original "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed", LucasArts' most successful internally produced title of recent years, and the sequel, unexpectedly left. However, the company scored a surprise coup in August 2010 when Clint Hocking, a high-profile game director from Ubisoft, announced that he would be joining LucasArts. His tenure at LucasArts was short lived however, as Hocking left LucasArts in June 2012 before the game he was working on was released. In September 2010, a third of the employees at LucasArts were fired.
In March 2011, LucasArts published a sequel to the popular Lego Star Wars series, "", based on the , once again developed by Traveller's Tales. Sony Online Entertainment announced in June 2011 that Star Wars Galaxies would be shutting down at the end of 2011. Its services were terminated on December 15, 2011.
Another canceled title of Lucasarts was a Darth Maul game which was going to be developed by the same company which made the Wii version of The Force Unleashed II.
On April 26, 2011, LucasArts announced that it had acquired a license from Epic Games to develop a number of future titles using the Unreal Engine 3 for a number of platforms. "Star Wars 1313", a proposed action-adventure about Boba Fett navigating Coruscant's subterranean underworld, was confirmed to use the Unreal Engine 3. However, the game was cancelled as a result of the closure of the development arm of LucasArts.
In April 2012, LucasArts published "Kinect Star Wars", developed by Terminal Reality, for the Xbox 360. It was poorly reviewed by critics, receiving an aggregated score of 53.32% on GameRankings and 55/100 on Metacritic.
In August 2012, Meegan, who replaced Rodriguez as president in 2010, also left his position at LucasArts after just two years on the job. Kevin Parker and Gio Corsi were named to co-lead the studio until the studio would choose a permanent president, with the former as interim head of business operations and the latter as interim head of studio production.
The last game released through LucasArts as a subsidiary of an independent Lucasfilm was "Angry Birds Star Wars", a game that gave the "Angry Birds" characters costumes and abilities based on the original "Star Wars" trilogy. It was released on November 8, 2012, before the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm was finalized. The game was developed and published by Rovio Entertainment, and licensed by LucasArts.
On October 30, 2012, LucasArts was acquired by The Walt Disney Company through the acquisition of its parent company Lucasfilm in a deal for $4.05 billion. A Disney representative stated that its intent at the time was for all employees at Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries to remain at their present positions. A LucasArts representative said that "for the time being, all projects are business as usual".
On December 4, 2012, the acquisition of Lucasfilm was approved by the Federal Trade Commission, allowing the deal to be finalized without dealing with antitrust problems. On December 21, 2012, the deal was completed, and Lucasfilm and all of its subsidiaries became wholly owned by Disney.
Information that surfaced in March 2013 suggested that "Star Wars" games already in development, such as "Star Wars 1313" and "First Assault", may have been put on hold in order to put more focus on "". At the time, LucasArts also had three untitled games in development: an open-world RPG, an FPS, and an aerial combat game. According to a job listing posted via the Lucasfilm website, LucasArts was also planning on creating a new online service which they claimed would "revolutionize the industry."
On April 3, 2013, Lucasfilm confirmed that LucasArts would cease to operate as a video game developer. Future video games based on its properties will either be developed by Disney Interactive Studios or licensed to third-party developers. As a result, all of its future internal projects were cancelled, and most of its staff were laid off from the company. However, LucasArts remained open with a skeleton staff of fewer than ten employees so it could retain its function as a video game licensor. Disney indicated that the new business model would "[minimize] the company's risk while achieving a broad portfolio of quality "Star Wars" games." Around 150 staff members lost their jobs as a result of the closure. The layoffs at LucasArts also resulted in layoffs at fellow visual effects subsidiary Industrial Light & Magic; as many of LucasArts' employees also worked for ILM, the company was left overstaffed.
On May 6, 2013, it was revealed that Electronic Arts would develop "Star Wars" games, through an exclusive multi-year license, for the core gaming market. But the agreement allowed Disney Interactive Studios to further develop for the casual gaming market of "mobile, social, tablet and online game categories", and LucasArts to further license the franchise. On July 15, 2013, a sequel to "Angry Birds Star Wars" based on the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, titled "Angry Birds Star Wars II", was announced. It was the first game released through LucasArts under Disney ownership when it launched for mobile platforms on September 18, 2013.
On October 4, 2013, Disney Interactive announced "", a "Star Wars" game for mobile devices based on Tiny Tower. It was developed by Disney Mobile and NimbleBit, and was published by LucasArts for mobile devices on November 8, 2013. On December 17, 2013, Disney Interactive announced "", a "Star Wars" space combat simulation game developed by Area 52 games in conjunction with Disney Mobile and LucasArts. A closed beta period began in North America on January 14, 2014.
The first "Star Wars" game announced under Electronic Arts' exclusive license was "Star Wars Battlefront", a reboot of the , developed by DICE. The game was released in the third quarter of 2015. The second game by Electronic Arts under their Star Wars license was a free to play mobile game titled "". It was announced at the 2015 E3 Expo, where it was announced as a collectible card game RPG. The game received a soft launch in Australia during October 2015, and was formally released on November 24, 2015. On May 10, 2016, a sequel to the 2015 reboot of the Star Wars Battlefront series was announced, featuring content from the sequel trilogy of films. It was released on November 17, 2017.
At the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony Computer Entertainment announced "Grim Fandango Remastered", developed by Double Fine Productions as a console exclusive for PlayStation platforms. It was released in 2015 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS. During Sony's new PlayStation Experience convention in 2014, another remaster by Double Fine, "Day of the Tentacle Remastered", was announced. It was released in March 2016 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux. At the 2015 PlayStation Experience, another remastered game by Double Fine was announced, "Full Throttle Remastered". It was released in April 2017 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Ex-LucasArts developers have founded numerous San Francisco game development studios such as Double Fine Productions (2000), Telltale Games (2004), MunkyFun (2008), Dynamighty (2011), SoMa Play (2013), and Fifth Journey (2015) playing a significant role in the continued development of computer games in the Bay Area.
The original Lucasfilm Games logo was based upon the existing Lucasfilm movie logo, with a number of variations on it being used. The long-lived LucasArts logo, affectionately known as the "Gold Guy", was introduced in 1990 and first used within "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge" (the first game shipped under the LucasArts name). The logo consisted of a crude gold-colored figure inspired from a similar petroglyph, standing on a purple letter "L" inscribed with the company name. The figure had its hands up in the air, as if a sun were rising from behind him. It was also said to resemble an eye, with the rays of the sun as eyelashes. The logo was revised in late 2005, losing the letter "L" pedestal and introducing a more rounded version of the gold-colored figure. The last game to feature the original “Gold Guy” was "", while the new logo was first seen in "". In the games, the figure sometimes does an action like throw a lightsaber or cast Force Lightning.
In 1998, LucasArts approached Finnish game developer Remedy Entertainment, citing that their logo was copied from the top portion of the LucasArts logo, and threatened legal action. Remedy was by that time already in the process of redesigning their logo, so they complied by taking their old logo offline from their website, and introducing their new logo a little later.
Footnotes
Citations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17990 |
Lafcadio Hearn
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (; ; 27 June 1850 – 26 September 1904), also known by the Japanese name , was a Greek-Irish writer who later became a naturalized Japanese citizen. He is best remembered for his books about Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as "". In the United States, he is also known for his writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there.
Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada to a Greek mother and an Irish father, after which a complex series of conflicts and events led to him being moved to Dublin, where he was abandoned first by his mother, then his father, and finally by his father's aunt (who had been appointed his official guardian). At the age of 19, he was put on a boat to the United States, where he found work as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans. From there, he was sent as a correspondent to the French West Indies, where he stayed for two years, and then to Japan, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
In Japan, Hearn married a Japanese woman with whom he had four children. His writings about Japan offered the Western world a glimpse into a largely unknown but fascinating culture at the time.
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on the Greek Ionian Island of Lefkada on 27 June 1850, the son of Rosa Antoniou Kassimatis, a Greek woman of noble Kytheran descent, and Charles Bush Hearn, an Irishman from County Offaly who was a surgeon in the British Army. His father was stationed in Lefkada during the British protectorate of the United States of the Ionian Islands. Lafcadio was baptized Patrikios Lefcadios Hearn (Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν) in the Greek Orthodox Church, but he seems to have been called "Patrick Lefcadio Kassimati Charles Hearn" in English, and the middle name "Lafcadio" was given to him in honour of the island where he was born. Hearn's parents were married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on 25 November 1849, several months after his mother had given birth to Hearn's older brother, George Robert Hearn, on 24 July 1849. George died on 17 August 1850, two months after Lafcadio's birth.
Hearn's father Charles was promoted to Staff Surgeon Second Class and in 1850 was reassigned from Lefkada to the British West Indies. Since his family did not approve of the marriage, and because he was worried that his relationship might harm his career prospects, Charles did not inform his superiors of his son or pregnant wife and left his family behind. In 1852, he arranged to send his son and wife to live with his family in Dublin, where they received a cool reception. Hearn's Protestant mother, Elizabeth Holmes Hearn, had difficulty accepting Rosa's Greek Orthodox views and lack of education (she was illiterate and spoke no English). Rosa found it difficult to adapt to a foreign culture and the Protestantism of her husband's family, and was eventually taken under the wing of Elizabeth's sister, Sarah Holmes Brenane, a widow who had converted to Catholicism.
Despite Sarah's efforts, Rosa suffered from homesickness. When her husband returned to Ireland on medical leave in 1853, it became clear that the couple had become estranged. Charles Hearn was assigned to the Crimean Peninsula, again leaving his pregnant wife and child in Ireland. When he came back in 1856, severely wounded and traumatized, Rosa had returned to her home island of Cerigo in Greece, where she gave birth to their third son, Daniel James Hearn. Lafcadio had been left in the care of Sarah Brenane.
Charles petitioned to have the marriage with Rosa annulled, on the basis of her lack of signature on the marriage contract, which made it invalid under English law. After being informed of the annulment, Rosa almost immediately married Giovanni Cavallini, a Greek citizen of Italian ancestry who was later appointed by the British as governor of Cerigotto. Cavallini required as a condition of the marriage that Rosa give up custody of both Lafcadio and James. As a result, James was sent to his father in Dublin and Lafcadio remained in the care of Sara, who had disinherited Charles because of the annulment). Neither Lafcadio nor James saw their mother again, who had four children with her second husband. Rosa was eventually committed to the National Mental Asylum on Corfu, where she died in 1882.
Charles Hearn, who had left Lafcadio in the care of Sarah Brenane for the past four years, now appointed her as Lafcadio's permanent guardian. He married his childhood sweetheart, Alicia Goslin, in July 1857, and left with his new wife for a posting in Secunderabad, where they had three daughters prior to Alicia's death in 1861. Lafcadio never saw his father again: Charles Hearn died of malaria in the Gulf of Suez in 1866.
In 1857, at age seven and despite the fact that both his parents were still alive, Hearn became the permanent ward of his great aunt, Sarah Brenane. She divided her residency between Dublin in the winter months, her husband's estate at Tramore, County Waterford on the southern Irish coast, and a house at Bangor, North Wales. Brenane also engaged a tutor during the school year to provide basic instruction and the rudiments of Catholic dogma. Hearn began exploring Brenane's library and read extensively in Greek literature, especially myths.
In 1861, Hearn's aunt, aware that Hearn was turning away from Catholicism, and at the urging of Henry Hearn Molyneux, a relative of her late husband and a distant cousin of Hearn, enrolled him at the "Institution Ecclésiastique", a Catholic church school in Yvetot, France. Hearn's experiences at the school confirmed his lifelong conviction that Catholic education consisted of "conventional dreariness and ugliness and dirty austerities and long faces and Jesuitry and infamous distortion of children's brains." Hearn became fluent in French and would later translate into English the works of Guy de Maupassant and Gustave Flaubert.
In 1863, again at the suggestion of Molyneux, Hearn was enrolled at St. Cuthbert's College, Ushaw, a Catholic seminary at what is now the University of Durham. In this environment, Hearn adopted the nickname "Paddy" to try to fit in better, and was the top student in English composition for three years. At age 16, while at Ushaw, Hearn injured his left eye in a schoolyard mishap. The eye became infected and, despite consultations with specialists in Dublin and London, and a year spent out of school convalescing, went blind. Hearn also suffered from severe myopia, so his injury left him permanently with poor vision, requiring him to carry a magnifying glass for close work and a pocket telescope to see anything beyond a short distance (Hearn avoided eyeglasses, believing they would gradually weaken his vision further). The iris was permanently discolored, and left Hearn self-conscious about his appearance for the rest of his life, causing him to cover his left eye while conversing and always posing for the camera in profile so that the left eye was not visible.
In 1867, Henry Molyneux, who had become Sarah Brenane's financial manager, went bankrupt, along with Brenane. There was no money for tuition, and Hearn was sent to London's East End to live with Brenane's former maid. She and her husband had little time or money for Hearn, who wandered the streets, spent time in workhouses, and generally lived an aimless, rootless existence. His main intellectual activities consisted of visits to libraries and the British Museum.
By 1869, Henry Molyneux had recovered some financial stability and Brenane, now 75, was infirm. Resolving to end his expenditures on the 19-year-old Hearn, he purchased a one-way ticket to New York and instructed Hearn to find his way to Cincinnati, to locate Molyneux's sister and her husband, Thomas Cullinan, and to obtain their assistance in making a living. Upon meeting Hearn in Cincinnati, the family had little assistance to offer: Cullinan gave him $5 and wished him luck in seeking his fortune. As Hearn would later write, "I was dropped moneyless on the pavement of an American city to begin life."
For a time, he was impoverished, living in stables or store rooms in exchange for menial labor. He eventually befriended the English printer and communalist Henry Watkin, who employed him in his printing business, helped find him various odd jobs, lent him books from his library, including utopianists Fourier, Dixon and Noyes, and gave Hearn a nickname which stuck with him for the rest of his life, The Raven, from the Poe poem. Hearn also frequented the Cincinnati Public Library, which at that time had an estimated 50,000 volumes. In the spring of 1871 a letter from Henry Molyneux informed him of Sarah Brenane's death and Molyneux's appointment as sole executor. Despite Brenane having named him as the beneficiary of an annuity when she became his guardian, Hearn received nothing from the estate and never heard from Molyneux again.
By the strength of his talent as a writer, Hearn obtained a job as a reporter for the "Cincinnati Daily Enquirer", working for the newspaper from 1872 to 1875. Writing with creative freedom in one of Cincinnati's largest circulating newspapers, he became known for his lurid accounts of local murders, developing a reputation as the paper's premier sensational journalist, as well as the author of sensitive accounts of some of the disadvantaged people of Cincinnati. "The Library of America" selected one of these murder accounts, "Gibbeted," for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of "American True Crime", published in 2008. After one of his murder stories, the Tanyard Murder, had run for several months in 1874, Hearn established his reputation as Cincinnati's most audacious journalist, and the "Enquirer" raised his salary from $10 to $25 per week.
In 1874, Hearn and the young Henry Farny, later a renowned painter of the American West, wrote, illustrated, and published an 8-page weekly journal of art, literature and satire entitled "Ye Giglampz." The Cincinnati Public Library reprinted a facsimile of all nine issues in 1983. The work was considered by a twentieth century critic to be "Perhaps the most fascinating sustained project he undertook as an editor."
On 14 June 1874, Hearn, aged 23, married Alethea ("Mattie") Foley, a 20-year-old African American woman, an action in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law at that time. In August 1875, in response to complaints from a local clergyman about his anti-religious views and pressure from local politicians embarrassed by some of his satirical writing in "Ye Giglampz," the "Enquirer" fired him, citing as its reason his illegal marriage. He went to work for the rival newspaper "The Cincinnati Commercial." The "Enquirer" offered to re-hire him after his stories began appearing in the "Commercial" and its circulation began increasing, but Hearn, incensed at the paper's behavior, refused. Hearn and Foley separated, but attempted reconciliation several times before divorcing in 1877. Foley remarried in 1880.
While working for the "Commercial" Hearn agreed to be carried to the top of Cincinnati's tallest building on the back of a famous steeplejack, Joseph Roderiguez Weston, and wrote a half-terrified, half-comic account of the experience. It was also during this time that Hearn wrote a series of accounts of the Bucktown and Levee neighborhoods of Cincinnati, "...one of the few depictions we have of black life in a border city during the post-Civil War period." He also wrote about local black song lyrics from the era, including a song titled "Shiloh" that was dedicated to a Bucktown resident named "Limber Jim." In addition, Hearn had printed in the "Commercial" a stanza he had overheard when listening to the songs of the roustabouts, working on the city's levee waterfront. Similar stanzas were recorded in song by Julius Daniels in 1926 and Tommy McClennan in his version of "Bottle Up and Go" (1939).
During the autumn of 1877, recently divorced from Mattie Foley and restless, Hearn had begun neglecting his newspaper work in favor of translating into English works of the French author Gautier. He had also grown increasingly disenchanted with Cincinnati, writing to Henry Watkin, "It is time for a fellow to get out of Cincinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of America." With the support of Watkin and "Cincinnati Commercial" publisher Murat Halstead, Hearn left Cincinnati for New Orleans, where he initially wrote dispatches on the "Gateway to the Tropics" for the "Commercial".
Hearn lived in New Orleans for nearly a decade, writing first for the newspaper "Daily City Item" beginning in June 1878, and later for the "Times Democrat". Since the "Item" was a 4-page publication, Hearn's editorial work changed the character of the newspaper dramatically. He began at the "Item" as a news editor, expanding to include book reviews of Bret Harte and Émile Zola, summaries of pieces in national magazines such as "Harper's", and editorial pieces introducing Buddhism and Sanskrit writings. As editor, Hearn created and published nearly two hundred woodcuts of daily life and people in New Orleans, making the "Item" the first Southern newspaper to introduce cartoons and giving the paper an immediate boost in circulation. Hearn gave up carving the woodcuts after six months when he found the strain was too great for his eye.
At the end of 1881, Hearn took an editorial position with the New Orleans "Times Democrat" and was employed translating items from French and Spanish newspapers as well as writing editorials and cultural reviews on topics of his choice. He also continued his work translating French authors into English: Gérard de Nerval, Anatole France, and most notably Pierre Loti, an author who influenced Hearn's own writing style. Milton Bronner, who edited Hearn's letters to Henry Watkin, wrote: "[T]he Hearn of New Orleans was the father of the Hearn of the West Indies and of Japan," and this view was endorsed by Norman Foerster. During his tenure at the "Times Democrat", Hearn also developed a friendship with editor Page Baker, who went on to champion Hearn's literary career; their correspondence is archived at the Loyola University New Orleans Special Collections & Archives.
The vast number of his writings about New Orleans and its environs, many of which have not been collected, include the city's Creole population and distinctive cuisine, the French Opera, and Louisiana Voodoo. Hearn wrote enthusiastically of New Orleans, but also wrote of the city's decay, "a dead bride crowned with orange flowers".
Hearn's writings for national publications, such as "Harper's Weekly" and "Scribner's Magazine", helped create the popular reputation of New Orleans as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. Hearn's best-known Louisiana works include:
Hearn also published in "Harper's Weekly" the first known written article (1883) about Filipinos in the United States, the Manilamen or Tagalogs, one of whose villages he had visited at Saint Malo, southeast of Lake Borgne in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.
At the time he lived there, Hearn was little known, and even now he is little known for his writing about New Orleans, except by local cultural devotees. However, more books have been written about him than any former resident of New Orleans except Louis Armstrong.
Hearn's writings for the New Orleans newspapers included impressionistic descriptions of places and characters and many editorials denouncing political corruption, street crime, violence, intolerance, and the failures of public health and hygiene officials. Despite the fact that he is credited with "inventing" New Orleans as an exotic and mysterious place, his obituaries of the vodou leaders Marie Laveau and Doctor John Montenet are matter-of-fact and debunking. Selections of Hearn's New Orleans writings have been collected and published in several works, starting with "Creole Sketches" in 1924, and more recently in "Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn."
"Harper's" sent Hearn to the West Indies as a correspondent in 1887. He spent two years in Martinique and in addition to his writings for the magazine, produced two books: "Two Years in the French West Indies" and "Youma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave", both published in 1890.
In 1890, Hearn went to Japan with a commission as a newspaper correspondent, which was quickly terminated. It was in Japan, however, that he found a home and his greatest inspiration. Through the goodwill of Basil Hall Chamberlain, Hearn gained a teaching position during the summer of 1890 at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in Matsue, a town in western Japan on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum and his old residence are still two of Matsue's most popular tourist attractions. During his fifteen-month stay in Matsue, Hearn married Koizumi Setsu, the daughter of a local samurai family, with whom he had four children. He became a naturalized Japanese, assuming the name Koizumi Yakumo, in 1896 after accepting a teaching position in Tokyo. After having been Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and, later on, Spencerian, he became Buddhist.
During late 1891, Hearn obtained another teaching position in Kumamoto, at the Fifth Higher Middle School, where he spent the next three years and completed his book "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" (1894). In October 1894, he secured a journalism job with the English-language newspaper "Kobe Chronicle", and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching English literature at Tokyo Imperial University, a job he had until 1903. In 1904, he was a professor at Waseda University.
While in Japan he encountered the art of ju-jutsu which made a deep impression upon him: "Hearn, who encountered judo in Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, contemplated its concepts with the awed tones of an explorer staring about him in an extraordinary and undiscovered land. "What Western brain could have elaborated this strange teaching, never to oppose force by force, but only direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely through his own strength, to vanquish him solely by his own efforts? Surely none! The Western mind appears to work in straight lines; the Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles."
On 26 September 1904, Hearn died of heart failure in Tokyo at the age of 54. His grave is at the Zōshigaya Cemetery in the Tokyo's Toshima district.
In the late 19th century, Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to Westerners. However, with the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, particularly at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, Japanese styles became fashionable in Western countries. Consequently, Hearn became known to the world by his writings concerning Japan. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing Japan, but because he offered the West some of its first descriptions of pre-industrial and Meiji Era Japan, his work is generally regarded as having historical value.
Admirers of Hearn's work have included Ben Hecht, John Erskine, and Malcolm Cowley.
The Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi adapted four Hearn tales into his 1964 film, "Kwaidan". Some of his stories have been adapted by Ping Chong into his puppet theatre, including the 1999 "Kwaidan" and the 2002 "OBON: Tales of Moonlight and Rain".
Yone Noguchi is quoted as saying about Hearn, "His Greek temperament and French culture became frost-bitten as a flower in the North."
There is also a cultural center named after Hearn at the University of Durham.
Hearn was a major translator of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant.
The first museum in Europe for Lafcadio Hearn was inaugurated in Lefkada, Greece, his birthplace, on 4 July 2014, as Lefcadio Hearn Historical Center. It contains early editions, rare books and Japanese collectibles. The visitors, through photos, texts and exhibits, can wander in the significant events of Lafcadio Hearn's life, but also in the civilizations of Europe, America and Japan of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through his lectures, writings and tales. The municipalities of Kumamoto, Matsue, Shinjuku, Yaizu, Toyama University, the Koizumi family and other people from Japan and Greece contributed to the establishment of Lefcadio Hearn Historical Center.
He is also depicted as the main inspiration for Yukari Yakumo and Maribel Hearn in Touhou Project games and audio CDs
Source:
2019. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (soft cover). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17992 |
Learning theory (education)
Learning Theory describes how students absorb, process, and retain knowledge during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences, as well as prior experience, all play a part in how understanding, or a world view, is acquired or changed and knowledge and skills retained.
Behaviorists look at learning as an aspect of conditioning and advocate a system of rewards and targets in education. Educators who embrace cognitive theory believe that the definition of learning as a change in behaviour is too narrow, and study the learner rather than their environment—and in particular the complexities of human memory. Those who advocate constructivism believe that a learner's ability to learn relies largely on what they already know and understand, and the acquisition of knowledge should be an individually tailored process of construction. Transformative learning theory focuses on the often-necessary change required in a learner's preconceptions and world view. Geographical learning theory focuses on the ways that contexts and environments shape the learning process.
Outside the realm of educational psychology, techniques to directly observe the functioning of the brain during the learning process, such as event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging, are used in educational neuroscience. The theory of multiple intelligences, where learning is seen as the interaction between dozens of different functional areas in the brain each with their own individual strengths and weaknesses in any particular human learner, has also been proposed, but empirical research has found the theory to be unsupported by evidence.
Plato (428 BC–347 BC) proposed the question: How does an individual learn something new when the topic is brand new to that person? This question may seem trivial; however, think of a human like a computer. The question would then become: How does a computer take in any factual information without previous programming? Plato answered his own question by stating that knowledge is present at birth and all information learned by a person is merely a recollection of something the soul has already learned previously, which is called the Theory of Recollection or Platonic epistemology. This answer could be further justified by a paradox: If a person knows something, they don't need to question it, and if a person does not know something, they don't know to question it. Plato says that if one did not previously know something, then they cannot learn it. He describes learning as a passive process, where information and knowledge are ironed into the soul over time. However, Plato's theory elicits even more questions about knowledge: If we can only learn something when we already had the knowledge impressed onto our souls, then how did our souls gain that knowledge in the first place? Plato's theory can seem convoluted; however, his classical theory can still help us understand knowledge today.
John Locke (1632–1704) offered an answer to Plato's question as well. Locke offered the "blank slate" theory where humans are born into the world with no innate knowledge and are ready to be written on and influenced by the environment. The thinker maintained that knowledge and ideas originate from two sources, which are sensation and reflection. The former provides insights regarding external objects (including their properties) while the latter provides the ideas about one's mental faculties (volition and understanding). In the theory of empiricism, these sources are direct experience and observation. Locke, like David Hume, is considered an empiricist because he lecates the source of human knowledge in the empirical world.
Locke recognized that something had to be present, however. This something, to Locke, seemed to be "mental powers". Locke viewed these powers as a biological ability the baby is born with, similar to how a baby knows how to biologically function when born. So as soon as the baby enters the world, it immediately has experiences with its surroundings and all of those experiences are being transcribed to the baby's "slate". All of the experiences then eventually culminate into complex and abstract ideas. This theory can still help teachers understand their students' learning today.
The term "behaviorism" was coined by John Watson (1878–1959). Watson believed the behaviorist view is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science with a goal to predict and control behavior. In an article in the "Psychological Review", he stated that, "Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness."
Methodological behaviorism is based on the theory of only explaining public events, or observable behavior. B.F. Skinner introduced another type of behaviorism called radical behaviorism, or the conceptual analysis of behavior, which is based on the theory of also explaining private events; particularly, thinking and feelings. Radical behaviorism forms the conceptual piece of behavior analysis.
In behavior analysis, learning is the acquisition of a new behavior through conditioning and social learning.
The three mains types of conditioning and learning:
Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning. He observed that if dogs come to associate the delivery of food with a white lab coat or the ringing of a bell, they produce saliva, even when there is no sight or smell of food. Classical conditioning considers this form of learning the same, whether in dogs or in humans. Operant conditioning reinforces this behavior with a reward or a punishment. A reward increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring, a punishment decreases its likelihood. Social learning theory observes behavior and is followed with modeling.
These three learning theories form the basis of applied behavior analysis, the application of behavior analysis, which uses analyzed antecedents, functional analysis, replacement behavior strategies, and often data collection and reinforcement to change behavior. The old practice was called behavior modification, which only used "assumed" antecedents and consequences to change behavior without acknowledging the conceptual analysis; analyzing the function of behavior and teaching of new behaviors that would serve the same function was never relevant in behavior modification.
Behaviorists view the learning process as a change in behavior, and arrange the environment to elicit desired responses through such devices as behavioral objectives, Competency-based learning, and skill development and training. Educational approaches such as Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention, curriculum-based measurement, and direct instruction have emerged from this model.
Transfer of learning is the idea that what one learns in school somehow carries over to situations different from that particular time and that particular setting. Transfer was amongst the first phenomena tested in educational psychology. Edward Lee Thorndike was a pioneer in transfer research. He found that though transfer is extremely important for learning, it is a rarely occurring phenomenon. In fact, he held an experiment where he had the subjects estimate the size of a specific shape and then he would switch the shape. He found that the prior information did not help the subjects; instead it impeded their learning.
One explanation of why transfer does not occur often involves surface structure and deep structure. The surface structure is the way a problem is framed. The deep structure is the steps for the solution. For example, when a math story problem changes contexts from asking how much it costs to reseed a lawn to how much it costs to varnish a table, they have different surface structures, but the steps for getting the answers are the same. However, many people are more influenced by the surface structure. In reality, the surface structure is unimportant. Nonetheless, people are concerned with it because they believe that it provides background knowledge on how to do the problem. Consequently, this interferes with their understanding of the deep structure of the problem. Even if somebody tries to concentrate on the deep structure, transfer still may be unsuccessful because the deep structure is not usually obvious. Therefore, surface structure gets in the way of people's ability to see the deep structure of the problem and transfer the knowledge they have learned to come up with a solution to a new problem.
Current learning pedagogies focus on conveying rote knowledge, independent of the context that gives it meaning. Because of this, students often struggle to transfer this stand-alone information into other aspects of their education. Students need much more than abstract concepts and self-contained knowledge; they need to be exposed to learning that is practiced in the context of authentic activity and culture. Critics of situated cognition, however, would argue that by discrediting stand-alone information, the transfer of knowledge across contextual boundaries becomes impossible. There must be a balance between situating knowledge while also grasping the deep structure of material, or the understanding of how one arrives to know such information.
Some theorists argue that transfer does not even occur at all. They believe that students transform what they have learned into the new context. They say that transfer is too much of a passive notion. They believe students, instead, transform their knowledge in an active way. Students don't simply carry over knowledge from the classroom, but they construct the knowledge in a way that they can understand it themselves. The learner changes the information they have learned to make it best adapt to the changing contexts that they use the knowledge in. This transformation process can occur when a learner feels motivated to use the knowledge—however, if the student does not find the transformation necessary, it is less likely that the knowledge will ever transform
There are many different conditions that influence transfer of learning in the classroom. These conditions include features of the task, features of the learner, features of the organization and social context of the activity. The features of the task include practicing through simulations, problem-based learning, and knowledge and skills for implementing new plans. The features of learners include their ability to reflect on past experiences, their ability to participate in group discussions, practice skills, and participate in written discussions. All the unique features contribute to a student's ability to use transfer of learning. There are structural techniques that can aid learning transfer in the classroom. These structural strategies include hugging and bridging.
Hugging uses the technique of simulating an activity to encourage reflexive learning. An example of the hugging strategy is when a student practices teaching a lesson or when a student role plays with another student. These examples encourage critical thinking that engages the student and helps them understand what they are learning—one of the goals of transfer of learning and desirable difficulties.
Bridging is when instruction encourages thinking abstractly by helping to identify connections between ideas and to analyze those connections. An example is when a teacher lets the student analyze their past test results and the way they got those results. This includes amount of study time and study strategies. Looking at their past study strategies can help them come up with strategies to improve performance. These are some of the ideas important to successful to hugging and bridging practices.
There are many benefits of transfer of learning in the classroom. One of the main benefits is the ability to quickly learn a new task. This has many real-life applications such as language and speech processing. Transfer of learning is also very useful in teaching students to use higher cognitive thinking by applying their background knowledge to new situations.
Cognitive theories grew out of Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology was developed in Germany in the early 1900s by Wolfgang Kohler and was brought to America in the 1920s. The German word "Gestalt" is roughly equivalent to the English "configuration" or "organization" and emphasizes the whole of human experience. Over the years, the Gestalt psychologists provided demonstrations and described principles to explain the way we organize our sensations into perceptions. Max Wertheimer, one of the founding fathers of Gestalt Theory, observed that sometimes we interpret motion when there is no motion at all. For example: a powered sign used at a convenience store to indicate that the store is open or closed might be seen as a sign with "constant light". However, the lights are actually flashing. Each light has been programmed to blink rapidly at their own individual pace. Perceived as a whole however, the sign appears fully lit without flashes. If perceived individually, the lights turn off and on at designated times. Another example of this would be a brick house: As a whole, it is viewed as a standing structure. However, it is actually composed of many smaller parts, which are individual bricks. People tend to see things from a holistic point of view rather than breaking it down into sub units.
In Gestalt theory, psychologists say that instead of obtaining knowledge from what's in front of us, we often learn by making sense of the relationship between what's new and old. Because we have a unique perspective of the world, humans have the ability to generate their own learning experiences and interpret information that may or may not be the same for someone else.
Gestalt psychologists criticize behaviorists for being too dependent on overt behavior to explain learning. They propose looking at the patterns rather than isolated events. Gestalt views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labeled "cognitive theories". Two key assumptions underlie this cognitive approach: that the memory system is an active organized processor of information and that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning. Gestalt theorists believe that for learning to occur, prior knowledge must exist on the topic. When the learner applies their prior knowledge to the advanced topic, the learner can understand the meaning in the advanced topic, and learning can occur. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to consider how human memory works to promote learning, and an understanding of short term memory and long term memory is important to educators influenced by cognitive theory. They view learning as an internal mental process (including insight, information processing, memory and perception) where the educator focuses on building intelligence and cognitive development. The individual learner is more important than the environment.
Once memory theories like the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model and Baddeley's working memory model were established as a theoretical framework in cognitive psychology, new cognitive frameworks of learning began to emerge during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Today, researchers are concentrating on topics like cognitive load and information processing theory. These theories of learning play a role in influencing instructional design. Cognitive theory is used to explain such topics as social role acquisition, intelligence and memory as related to age.
In the late twentieth century, situated cognition emerged as a theory that recognized current learning as primarily the transfer of decontextualized and formal knowledge. Bredo (1994) depicts situated cognition as "shifting the focus from individual in environment to individual and environment". In other words, individual cognition should be considered as intimately related with the context of social interactions and culturally constructed meaning. Learning through this perspective, in which known and doing become inseparable, becomes both applicable and whole.
Much of the education students receive is limited to the culture of schools, without consideration for authentic cultures outside of education. Curricula framed by situated cognition can bring knowledge to life by embedding the learned material within the culture students are familiar with. For example, formal and abstract syntax of math problems can be transformed by placing a traditional math problem within a practical story problem. This presents an opportunity to meet that appropriate balance between situated and transferable knowledge. Lampert (1987) successfully did this by having students explore mathematical concepts that are continuous with their background knowledge. She does so by using money, which all students are familiar with, and then develops the lesson to include more complex stories that allow for students to see various solutions as well as create their own. In this way, knowledge becomes active, evolving as students participate and negotiate their way through new situations.
Founded by Jean Piaget, constructivism emphasizes the importance of the active involvement of learners in constructing knowledge for themselves. Students are thought to use background knowledge and concepts to assist them in their acquisition of novel information. On approaching such new information, the learner faces a loss of equilibrium with their previous understanding, and this demands a change in cognitive structure. This change effectively combines previous and novel information to form an improved cognitive schema. Constructivism can be both subjectively and contextually based. Under the theory of radical constructivism, coined by Ernst von Glasersfeld, understanding relies on one's subjective interpretation of experience as opposed to objective "reality". Similarly, William Cobern's idea of contextual constructivism encompasses the effects of culture and society on experience.
Constructivism asks why students do not learn deeply by listening to a teacher, or reading from a textbook. To design effective teaching environments, it believes one needs a good understanding of what children already know when they come into the classroom. The curriculum should be designed in a way that builds on the pupil's background knowledge and is allowed to develop with them. Begin with complex problems and teach basic skills while solving these problems. The learning theories of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and David A. Kolb serve as the foundation of the application of constructivist learning theory in the classroom. Constructivism has many varieties such as active learning, discovery learning, and knowledge building, but all versions promote a student's free exploration within a given framework or structure. The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working answering open-ended questions and solving real-world problems. To do this, a teacher should encourage curiosity and discussion among his/her students as well as promoting their autonomy. In scientific areas in the classroom, constructivist teachers provide raw data and physical materials for the students to work with and analyze.
Transformative learning theory seeks to explain how humans revise and reinterpret meaning. Transformative learning is the cognitive process of effecting change in a frame of reference. A frame of reference defines our view of the world. The emotions are often involved. Adults have a tendency to reject any ideas that do not correspond to their particular values, associations and concepts.
Our frames of reference are composed of two dimensions: habits of mind and points of view. Habits of mind, such as ethnocentrism, are harder to change than points of view. Habits of mind influence our point of view and the resulting thoughts or feelings associated with them, but points of view may change over time as a result of influences such as reflection, appropriation and feedback. Transformative learning takes place by discussing with others the "reasons presented in support of competing interpretations, by critically examining evidence, arguments, and alternative points of view". When circumstances permit, transformative learners move toward a frame of reference that is more inclusive, discriminating, self-reflective, and integrative of experience.
American Universities such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and University of Southern California began offering majors and degrees dedicated to educational neuroscience or neuroeducation in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Such studies seek to link an understanding of brain processes with classroom instruction and experiences. Neuroeducation analyzes biological changes in the brain from processing new information. It looks at what environmental, emotional, and social situations best help the brain store and retain new information via the linking of neurons—and best keep the dendrites from being reabsorbed, losing the information. The 1990s were designated "The Decade of the Brain", and advances took place in neuroscience at an especially rapid pace. The three dominant methods for measuring brain activities are event-related potential, functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography (MEG).
The integration and application to education of what we know about the brain was strengthened in 2000 when the American Federation of Teachers stated: "It is vital that we identify what science tells us about how people learn in order to improve the education curriculum." What is exciting about this new field in education is that modern brain imaging techniques now make it possible, in some sense, to watch the brain as it learns, and the question then arises: can the results of neuro-scientific studies of brains as they are learning usefully inform practice in this area? The neuroscience field is young. Researchers expected that new technologies and ways of observing will produce new scientific evidence that helps refine the paradigms of what students need and how they learn best. In particular, it may bring more informed strategies for teaching students with learning disabilities.
All individuals have the ability to develop mental discipline and the skill of mindfulness, the two go hand in hand. Mental discipline is huge in shaping what people do, say, think and feel. It's critical in terms of the processing of information and involves the ability to recognize and respond appropriately to new things and information people come across, or have recently been taught. Mindfulness is important to the process of learning in many aspects. Being mindful means to be present with and engaged in whatever you are doing at a specific moment in time. Being mindful can aid in helping us to more critically think, feel and understand the new information we are in the process of absorbing.
The formal discipline approach seeks to develop causation between the advancement of the mind by exercising it through exposure to abstract school subjects such as science, language and mathematics. With student's repetitive exposure to these particular subjects, some scholars feel that the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to science, language and math is of "secondary importance", and believe that the strengthening and further development of the mind that this curriculum provides holds far greater significance to the progressing learner in the long haul. D.C. Phillips and Jonas F. Soltis provide some skepticism to this notion. Their skepticism stems largely in part from feeling that the relationship between formal discipline and the overall advancement of the mind is not as strong as some would say. They illustrate their skepticism by opining that it is foolish to blindly assume that people are better off in life, or at performing certain tasks, because of taking particular, yet unrelated courses.
The existence of multiple intelligences is proposed by psychologist Howard Gardner, who suggests that different kinds of intelligence exists in human beings. It is a theory that has been fashionable in continuous professional development (CPD) training courses for teachers. However, the theory of multiple intelligences is often cited as an example of pseudoscience because it lacks empirical evidence or falsifiability.
Multimedia learning refers to the use of visual and auditory teaching materials that may include video, computer and other information technology. Multimedia learning theory focuses on the principles that determine the effective use of multimedia in learning, with emphasis on using both the visual and auditory channels for information processing.
The auditory channel deals with information that is heard, and the visual channel processes information that is seen. The visual channel holds less information than the auditory channel. If both the visual and auditory channels are presented with information, more knowledge is retained. However, if too much information is delivered it is inadequately processed, and long term memory is not acquired. Multimedia learning seeks to give instructors the ability to stimulate both the visual and auditory channels of the learner, resulting in better progress.
Many educators and researchers believe that information technology could bring innovation on traditional educational instructions. Teachers and technologists are searching for new and innovative ways to design learner-centered learning environments effectively, trying to engage learners more in the learning process. Claims have been made that online games have the potential to teach, train and educate and they are effective means for learning skills and attitudes that are not so easy to learn by rote memorization.
There has been a lot of research done in identifying the learning effectiveness in game based learning. Learner characteristics and cognitive learning outcomes have been identified as the key factors in research on the implementation of games in educational settings. In the process of learning a language through an online game, there is a strong relationship between the learner's prior knowledge of that language and their cognitive learning outcomes. For the people with prior knowledge of the language, the learning effectiveness of the games is much more than those with none or less knowledge of the language.
Other learning theories have also been developed for more specific purposes. For example, andragogy is the art and science to help adults learn. Connectivism is a recent theory of networked learning, which focuses on learning as making connections. The Learning as a Network (LaaN) theory builds upon connectivism, complexity theory, and double-loop learning. It starts from the learner and views learning as the continuous creation of a personal knowledge network (PKN).
Learning style theories propose that individuals learn in different ways, that there are distinct learning styles and that knowledge of a learner's preferred learning style leads to faster and more satisfactory improvement. However, the current research has not been able to find solid scientific evidence to support the main premises of learning styles theory.
People remember how things made them feel, and use those emotional imprints to create memories on demand.
In theories that make use of cognitive restructuring, an informal curriculum promotes the use of prior knowledge to help students gain a broad understanding of concepts. New knowledge cannot be told to students, it believes, but rather the students' current knowledge must be challenged. In this way, students adjust their ideas to more closely resemble actual theories or concepts. By using this method students gain the broad understanding they're taught and later are more willing to learn and keep the specifics of the concept or theory. This theory further aligns with the idea that teaching the concepts and the language of a subject should be split into multiple steps.
Other informal learning theories look at the sources of motivation for learning. Intrinsic motivation may create a more self-regulated learner, yet schools undermine intrinsic motivation. Critics argue that the average student learning in isolation performs significantly less well than those learning with collaboration and mediation. Students learn through talk, discussion, and argumentation.
According to Theodora Polito, "every well-constructed theory of education [has] at [its] center a philosophical anthropology," which is "a philosophical reflection on some basic problems of mankind." Philosophical anthropology is an exploration of human nature and humanity. Aristotle, an early influence on the field, deemed human nature to be "rational animality," wherein humans are closely related to other animals but still set apart by their ability to form rational thought. Philosophical anthropology expanded upon these ideas by clarifying that rationality is, "determined by the biological and social conditions in which the lives of human beings are embedded." Fully developed learning theories address some of the "basic problems of mankind" by examining these biological and social conditions to understand and manipulate the rationality of humanity in the context of learning.
Philosophical anthropology is evident in behaviorism, which requires an understanding of humanity and human nature in order to assert that the similarities between humans and other animals are critical and influential to the process of learning. Situated cognition focuses on how humans interact with each other and their environments, which would be considered the "social conditions" explored within the field of philosophical anthropology. Transformative learning theories operate with the assumption that humans are rational creatures capable of examining and redefining perspectives, something that is heavily considered within philosophical anthropology.
An awareness and understanding of philosophical anthropology contributes to a greater comprehension and practice of any learning theory. In some cases, philosophy can be used to further explore and define uncertain terms within the field of education. Philosophy can also be a vehicle to explore the purpose of education, which can greatly influence an educational theory.
Critics of learning theories that seek to displace traditional educational practices claim that there is no need for such theories; that the attempt to comprehend the process of learning through the construction of theories creates problems and inhibits personal freedom.
45. Teaching for Transfer of Learning. Thomas, Ruth; National Center for Research in Vocational Education, Berkeley, CA.. 93 NCRVE, December 1992.
46. Perkins, D. (1992). Transfer of Learning. International Encyclopedia of Education, 2. Retrieved March 23, 2015. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17994 |
Long-term memory
Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model where informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to short-term and working memory, which persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds. Long-term memory is commonly labelled as explicit memory (declarative), as well as episodic memory, semantic memory, autobiographical memory, and implicit memory (procedural memory).
According to Miller, whose paper in 1956 popularized the theory of the "magic number seven", short-term memory is limited to a certain number of chunks of information, while long-term memory has a limitless store.
According to the dual store memory model proposed by Richard C. Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968, memories can reside in the short-term "buffer" for a limited time while they are simultaneously strengthening their associations in long-term memory. When items are first presented, they enter short-term memory for approximately twenty to thirty seconds, but due to its limited space, as new items enter, older ones are pushed out. The limit of items that can be held in the short-term memory is an average between four and seven, yet, with practice and new skills that number can be increased. However, each time an item in short-term memory is rehearsed, it is strengthened in long-term memory. Similarly, the longer an item stays in short-term memory, the stronger its association becomes in long-term memory.
In 1974 Baddeley and Hitch proposed an alternative theory of short-term memory: Baddeley's model of working memory. According to this theory, short-term memory is divided into different slave systems for different types of input items, and there is an executive control supervising what items enter and exit those systems. The slave systems include the phonological loop, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer (later added by Baddeley).
Long-term memory encodes information semantically for storage, as researched by Baddeley. In vision, the information needs to enter working memory before it can be stored into long-term memory. This is evidenced by the fact that the speed with which information is stored into long-term memory is determined by the amount of information that can be fit, at each step, into visual working memory. In other words, the larger the capacity of working memory for certain stimuli, the faster will these materials be learned.
Synaptic Consolidation is the process by which items are transferred from short-term to long-term memory. Within the first minutes or hours after acquisition, the engram (memory trace) is encoded within synapses, becoming resistant (though not immune) to interference from outside sources.
As long-term memory is subject to fading in the natural forgetting process, maintenance rehearsal (several recalls/retrievals of memory) may be needed to preserve long-term memories. Individual retrievals can take place in increasing intervals in accordance with the principle of spaced repetition. This can happen quite naturally through reflection or deliberate recall (also known as recapitulation), often dependent on the perceived importance of the material. Using testing methods as a form of recall can lead to the testing effect, which aids long-term memory through information retrieval and feedback.
Some theories consider sleep to be an important factor in establishing well-organized long-term memories. "(See also sleep and learning.)" Sleep plays a key function in the consolidation of new memories.
According to Tarnow's theory, long-term memories are stored in dream format (reminiscent of the Penfield & Rasmussen's findings that electrical excitations of the cortex give rise to experiences similar to dreams). During waking life an executive function interprets long-term memory consistent with reality checking . It is further proposed in the theory that the information stored in memory, no matter how it was learned, can affect performance on a particular task without the subject being aware that this memory is being used. Newly acquired declarative memory traces are believed to be reactivated during NonREM sleep to promote their hippocampo-neocortical transfer for long-term storage. Specifically, new declarative memories are better remembered if recall follows Stage II non-rapid eye movement sleep. The reactivation of memories during sleep can lead to lasting synaptic changes within certain neural networks. It is the high spindle activity, low oscillation activity, and delta wave activity during NREM sleep that helps to contribute to declarative memory consolidation. In learning before sleep spindles are redistributed to neuronally active upstates within slow oscillations. Sleep spindles are thought to induce synaptic changes and thereby contribute to memory consolidation during sleep. Here, we examined the role of sleep in the object-place recognition task, a task closely comparable to tasks typically applied for testing human declarative memory: It is a one-trial task, hippocampus-dependent, not stressful and can be repeated within the same animal. Sleep deprivation reduces vigilance or arousal levels, affecting the efficiency of certain cognitive functions such as learning and memory.
The theory that sleep benefits memory retention is not a new idea. It has been around since Ebbinghaus's experiment on forgetting in 1885. More recently studies have been done by Payne and colleagues and Holtz and colleagues. In Payne and colleague's experiment participants were randomly selected and split into two groups. Both groups were given semantically related or unrelated word pairs, but one group was given the information at 9 am and the other group received theirs at 9 pm. Participants were then tested on the word pairs at one of three intervals 30 minutes, 12 hours, or 24 hours later. It was found that participants who had a period of sleep between the learning and testing sessions did better on the memory tests. This information is similar to other results found by previous experiments by Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924). It has also been found that many domains of declarative memory are affected by sleep such as emotional memory, semantic memory, and direct encoding.
Holtz found that not only does sleep affect consolidation of declarative memories, but also procedural memories. In this experiment, fifty adolescent participants were taught either word pairs (which represents declarative memory) and a finger tapping task (procedural memory) at one of two different times of day. What they found was that the procedural finger tapping task was best encoded and remembered directly before sleep, but the declarative word pairs task was better remembered and encoded if learned at 3 in the afternoon.
The brain does not store memories in one unified structure, as might be seen in a computer's hard disk drive. Instead, different types of memory are stored in different regions of the brain. Long-term memory is typically divided up into two major headings: explicit memory and implicit memory.
Explicit memory (or declarative memory) refers to all memories that are consciously available. These are encoded by the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and perirhinal cortex, but consolidated and stored elsewhere. The precise location of storage is unknown, but the temporal cortex has been proposed as a likely candidate. Research by Meulemans and Van der Linden (2003) found that amnesiac patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe performed more poorly on explicit learning tests than did healthy controls. However, these same amnesiac patients performed at the same rate as healthy controls on implicit learning tests. This implies that the medial temporal lobe is heavily involved in explicit learning, but not in implicit learning.
Declarative memory has three major subdivisions:
Episodic memory refers to memory for specific events in time, as well as supporting their formation and retrieval. Some examples of episodic memory would be remembering someone's name and what happened at your last interaction with each other. Experiments conducted by Spaniol and colleagues indicated that older adults have worse episodic memories than younger adults because episodic memory requires context dependent memory.
Semantic memory refers to knowledge about factual information, such as the meaning of words. Semantic memory is independent information such as information remembered for a test. In contrast with episodic memory, older adults and younger adults do not show much of a difference in semantic memory, presumably because semantic memory does not depend on context memory.
Autobiographical memory refers to knowledge about events and personal experiences from an individual's own life. Though similar to episodic memory, it differs in that it contains only those experiences which directly pertain to the individual, from across their lifespan. Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000) argue that this is one component of the self-memory system.
Implicit memory (procedural memory) refers to the use of objects or movements of the body, such as how exactly to use a pencil, drive a car, or ride a bicycle. This type of memory is encoded and it is presumed stored by the striatum and other parts of the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia is believed to mediate procedural memory and other brain structures and is largely independent of the hippocampus. Research by Manelis, Hanson, and Hanson (2011) found that the reactivation of the parietal and occipital regions was associated with implicit memory. Procedural memory is considered non-declarative memory or unconscious memory which includes priming and non-associative learning.
The first part of nondeclarative memory (implicit memory) involves priming. Priming occurs when you do something faster after you have already done that activity, such as writing or using a fork.
Other categories of memory may also be relevant to the discussion of long-term memory. For example:
Emotional memory, the memory for events that evoke a particularly strong emotion, is a domain that can involve both declarative and procedural memory processes. Emotional memories are consciously available, but elicit a powerful, unconscious physiological reaction. Research indicates that the amygdala is extremely active during emotional situations, and acts with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in the encoding and consolidation of emotional events.
Working memory is not part of long-term memory, but is important for long-term memory to function. Working memory holds and manipulates information for a short period of time, before it is either forgotten or encoded into long-term memory. Then, in order to remember something from long-term memory, it must be brought back into working memory. If working memory is overloaded it can affect the encoding of long-term memory. If one has a good working memory they may have a better long-term memory encoding.
Minor everyday slips and lapses of memory are fairly commonplace, and may increase naturally with age, when ill, or when under stress. Some women may experience more memory lapses following the onset of the menopause.
In general, more serious problems with memory occur due to traumatic brain injury or neurodegenerative disease.
The majority of findings on memory have been the result of studies that lesioned specific brain regions in rats or primates, but some of the most important work has been the result of accidental or inadvertent brain trauma. The most famous case in recent memory studies is the case study of HM, who had parts of his hippocampus, parahippocampal cortices, and surrounding tissue removed in an attempt to cure his epilepsy. His subsequent total anterograde amnesia and partial retrograde amnesia provided the first evidence for the localization of memory function, and further clarified the differences between declarative and procedural memory.
Many neurodegenerative diseases can cause memory loss. Some of the most prevalent (and, as a consequence, most intensely researched) include Alzheimer's disease, dementia, Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease. None act specifically on memory; instead, memory loss is often a casualty of generalized neuronal deterioration. Currently, these illnesses are irreversible, but research into stem cells, psychopharmacology, and genetic engineering holds much promise.
Those with Alzheimer's disease generally display symptoms such as getting momentarily lost on familiar routes, placing possessions in inappropriate locations and distortions of existing memories or completely forgetting memories. Researchers have often used the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm (DRM) to study the effects of Alzheimer's disease on memory. The DRM paradigm presents a list of words such as doze, pillow, bed, dream, nap, etc., with a theme word that is not presented. In this case, the theme word would have been sleep. Alzheimer's disease patients are more likely to recall the theme word as being part of the original list than healthy adults. There is a possible link between longer encoding time and increased false memory in LTM. The patients end up relying on the gist of information instead of the specific words themselves. Alzheimer's leads to an uncontrolled inflammatory response brought on by extensive amyloid deposition in the brain, which leads to cell death in the brain. This gets worse over time and eventually leads to cognitive decline, after the loss of memory. Pioglitazone may improve cognitive impairments, including memory loss and may help protect long-term and visuospatial memory from neurodegenerative disease.
Parkinson's disease patients have problems with cognitive performance; these issues resemble what is seen in frontal lobe patients and can often lead to dementia. It is thought that Parkinson's disease is caused by degradation of the dopaminergic mesocorticolimbic projection originating from the ventral tegmental area. It has also been indicated that the hippocampus plays an important role in episodic and spatial (parts of LTM) memory and Parkinson's disease patients have abnormal hippocampuses resulting in abnormal functioning of LTM. L-dopa injections are often used to try to relieve Parkinson's disease symptoms as well as behavioral therapy.
Schizophrenia patients have trouble with attention and executive functions which in turn affects long-term memory consolidation and retrieval. They cannot encode or retrieve temporal information properly, which causes them to select inappropriate social behaviors. They cannot effectively use the information they possess. The prefrontal cortex, where schizophrenia patients have structural abnormalities, is involved with the temporal lobe and also affects the hippocampus, which causes their difficulty in encoding and retrieving temporal information (including long-term memory).
Long-term memory, unlike short-term memory, is dependent upon the synthesis of new proteins. This occurs within the cellular body, and concerns the particular transmitters, receptors, and new synapse pathways that reinforce the communicative strength between neurons. The production of new proteins devoted to synapse reinforcement is triggered after the release of certain signaling substances (such as calcium within hippocampal neurons) in the cell. In the case of hippocampal cells, this release is dependent upon the expulsion of magnesium (a binding molecule) that is expelled after significant and repetitive synaptic signaling. The temporary expulsion of magnesium frees NMDA receptors to release calcium in the cell, a signal that leads to gene transcription and the construction of reinforcing proteins. For more information, see long-term potentiation (LTP).
One of the newly synthesized proteins in LTP is also critical for maintaining long-term memory. This protein is an autonomously active form of the enzyme protein kinase C (PKC), known as PKMζ. PKMζ maintains the activity-dependent enhancement of synaptic strength and inhibiting PKMζ erases established long-term memories, without affecting short-term memory or, once the inhibitor is eliminated, the ability to encode and store new long-term memories is restored.
Also, BDNF is important for the persistence of long-term memories.
The long-term stabilization of synaptic changes is also determined by a parallel increase of pre- and postsynaptic structures such as axonal bouton, dendritic spine and postsynaptic density.
On the molecular level, an increase of the postsynaptic scaffolding proteins PSD-95 and HOMER1c has been shown to correlate with the stabilization of synaptic enlargement.
The cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) is a transcription factor which is believed to be important in consolidating short-term to long-term memories, and which is believed to be downregulated in Alzheimer's disease.
Rats exposed to an intense learning event may retain a life-long memory of the event, even after a single training session. The long-term memory of such an event appears to be initially stored in the hippocampus, but this storage is transient. Much of the long-term storage of the memory seems to take place in the anterior cingulate cortex. When such an exposure was experimentally applied, more than 5,000 differently methylated DNA regions appeared in the hippocampus neuronal genome of the rats at one and at 24 hours after training. These alterations in methylation pattern occurred at many genes that were down-regulated, often due to the formation of new 5-methylcytosine sites in CpG rich regions of the genome. Furthermore, many other genes were upregulated, likely often due to hypomethylation. Hypomethylation often results from the removal of methyl groups from previously existing 5-methylcytosines in DNA. Demethylation is carried out by several proteins acting in concert, including TET enzymes as well as enzymes of the DNA base excision repair pathway (see Epigenetics in learning and memory). The pattern of induced and repressed genes in brain neurons subsequent to an intense learning event likely provides the molecular basis for a long-term memory of the event.
A couple of studies have had results that contradict the dual-store memory model. Studies showed that in spite of using distractors, there was still both a recency effect for a list of items and a contiguity effect.
Another study revealed that how long an item spends in short-term memory is not the key determinant in its strength in long-term memory. Instead, whether the participant actively tries to remember the item while elaborating on its meaning determines the strength of its store in long-term memory.
An alternative theory is that there is only one memory store with associations among items and their contexts. In this model, the context serves as a cue for retrieval, and the recency effect is greatly caused by the factor of context. Immediate and delayed free-recall will have the same recency effect because the relative similarity of the contexts still exists. Also, the contiguity effect still occurs because contiguity also exists between similar contexts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17995 |
Latin declension
Latin declension is the set of patterns according to which Latin words are declined, or have their endings altered to show grammatical case, number and gender. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined (verbs are conjugated), and a given pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and grammatical gender. Each noun follows one of the five declensions, but some irregular nouns have exceptions.
Adjectives are of two kinds: those like 'good' use first-declension endings for the feminine, and second-declension for masculine and neuter. Other adjectives such as belong to the third declension. There are no fourth- or fifth-declension adjectives.
Pronouns are also of two kinds, the personal pronouns such as 'I' and 'you ()', which have their own irregular declension, and the third-person pronouns such as 'this' and 'that' which can generally be used either as pronouns or adjectivally. These latter decline in a similar way to the first and second noun declensions, but there are differences; for example the genitive singular ends in "-īus" or "-ius" instead of "-ī" or "-ae".
The cardinal numbers 'one', 'two', and 'three' also have their own declensions ("ūnus" has genitive "-īus" like a pronoun), and there are also numeral adjectives such as 'a pair, two each', which decline like ordinary adjectives.
A complete Latin noun declension consists of up to seven grammatical cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative. However, the locative is limited to few nouns: generally names of cities, small islands and a few other words.
The case names are often abbreviated to the first three letters.
The grammarian Aelius Donatus (4th century AD), whose work was used as standard throughout the Middle Ages, placed the cases in this order:
This order was based on the order used by earlier Greek grammarians, with the addition of the ablative, which does not exist in Greek. The names of the cases also were mostly translated from the Greek terms, such as from the Greek .
The traditional order was formerly used in England, for example in "The School and University Eton Latin Grammar" (1861). and it is also still used in Germany and most European countries. Gildersleeve and Lodge's "Latin Grammar" of 1895, also follows this order. More recent American grammars, such as Allen and Greenough's "New Latin Grammar" (1903) and Wheelock's Latin (first published in 1956), use this order but with the vocative at the end.
However, in Britain and countries influenced by Britain, the Latin cases are usually given in the following order: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative. This order was first introduced in Benjamin Hall Kennedy's "Latin Primer" (1866), with the aim of making tables of declensions easier to recite and memorise. It is also used in France and Belgium.
Syncretism, where one form in a paradigm shares the ending of another form in the paradigm, is common in Latin. The following are the most notable patterns of syncretism:
Old Latin had essentially two patterns of endings. One pattern was shared by the first and second declensions, which derived from the Proto-Indo-European thematic declension. The other pattern was used by the third, fourth and fifth declensions, and derived from the athematic PIE declension.
There are two principal parts for Latin nouns: the nominative singular and the genitive singular. Each declension can be unequivocally identified by the ending of the genitive singular (-"ae", -"i", -"is", -"ūs", -"ei"). The stem of the noun can be identified by the form of the genitive singular as well.
There are five declensions for Latin nouns:
Nouns of this declension usually end in "-a" in the nominative singular and are mostly feminine, e.g. ('road') and ('water'). There is a small class of masculine exceptions generally referring to occupations, e.g. ('poet'), ('farmer') and ('sailor').
The predominant letter in the ending forms of this declension is "a". The nominative singular form consists of the stem and the ending "-a", and the genitive singular form is the stem plus "-ae".
The locative endings for the first declension are "-ae" (singular) and "-īs" (plural), similar to the genitive singular and ablative plural, as in ' 'in war' and ' 'at Athens'.
The first declension also includes three types of Greek loanwords, derived from Ancient Greek's alpha declension. They are declined irregularly in the singular, but sometimes treated as native Latin nouns, e.g. nominative ('athlete') instead of the original "athlētēs. Archaic (Homeric) first declension Greek nouns and adjectives had been formed in exactly the same way as in Latin: "nephelēgeréta Zeus" ('Zeus the cloud-gatherer') had in classical Greek become "nephelēgerétēs.
For full paradigm tables and more detailed information, see the Wiktionary appendix First declension.
The second declension is a large group of nouns consisting of mostly masculine nouns like ('horse') and ('boy') and neuter nouns like ('fort'). There are several small groups of feminine exceptions, including names of gemstones, plants, trees, and some towns and cities.
In the nominative singular, most masculine nouns consist of the stem and the ending "-us", although some end in "-er", which is not necessarily attached to the complete stem. Neuter nouns generally have a nominative singular consisting of the stem and the ending "-um". However, every second-declension noun has the ending "-ī" attached as a suffix to the root of the noun in the genitive singular form. The predominant letter in the ending forms of this declension is "o".
The locative endings for the second declension are "-ī" (singular) and "-īs" (plural); "at Corinth", "at Milan", and "at Philippi".
Nouns ending in "-ius" and "-ium" have a genitive singular in "-ī" in earlier Latin, which was regularized to "-iī" in the later language. Masculine nouns in "-ius" have a vocative singular in "-ī" at all stages. These forms in "-ī" are stressed on the same syllable as the nominative singular, sometimes in violation of the usual Latin stress rule. For example, the genitive and vocative singular "Vergilī" (from ) is pronounced "Vergílī", with stress on the penult, even though it is short. In Old Latin, however, the vocative was declined regularly, using "-ie" instead, e.g. "fīlie" "[O] son", archaic vocative of "fīlius".
There is no contraction of "-iī(s)" in plural forms and in the locative.
In the older language, nouns ending with "-vus", "-quus" and "-vum" take "o" rather than "u" in the nominative and accusative singular. For example, ('slave') could be "servos", accusative "servom".
Some masculine nouns of the second declension end in "-er" or "-ir" in the nominative singular. The declension of these nouns is identical to that of the regular second declension, except for the lack of suffix in the nominative and vocative singular.
Some (but not all) nouns in "-er" drop the "e" genitive and other cases. For example, ('father-in-law') keeps its "e". However, the noun ('(school)master') drops its "e" in the genitive singular.
For declension tables of second-declension nouns, see the .
The vocative "puere" is found but only in Plautus. The genitive plural "virum" is found in poetry.
The second declension contains two types of masculine Greek nouns and one form of neuter Greek noun. These nouns are irregular only in the singular, as are their first-declension counterparts. Greek nouns in the second declension are derived from the Omicron declension.
Some Greek nouns may also be declined as normal Latin nouns. For example, can appear as "theātrum".
The inflection of ('god') is irregular. The vocative singular of "deus" is not attested in Classical Latin. In Ecclesiastical Latin the vocative of "Deus" ('God') is "Deus".
In poetry, "-um" may substitute "-ōrum" as the genitive plural ending.
The Latin word "vīrus" (the "ī" indicates a long "i") means "1. slimy liquid, slime; 2. poison, venom", denoting the venom of a snake. This Latin word is probably related to the Greek ("ios") meaning "venom" or "rust" and the Sanskrit word "" meaning "toxic, poison".
Since "vīrus" in antiquity denoted something uncountable, it was a mass noun. Mass nouns pluralize only under special circumstances, hence the non-existence of plural forms in the texts.
In Neo-Latin, a plural form is necessary in order to express the modern concept of ‘viruses’, which leads to the following declension:
The third declension is the largest group of nouns. The nominative singular of these nouns may end in "-a", "-e", "-ī", "-ō", "-y", "-c", "-l", "-n", "-r", "-s", "-t", or "-x". This group of nouns includes masculine, neuter, and feminine nouns.
The stem of a consonant-stem noun may be found from the genitive case by removing the ending "-is". For example, the stem of 'peace' is "pāc-".
Examples are 'river', 'flower', and 'peace'.
Masculine, feminine and neuter nouns often have their own special nominative singular endings. For instance, many masculine nouns end in "-or" (, 'love'). Many feminine nouns end in "-īx" (, 'phoenix'), and many neuter nouns end in "-us" with an "r" stem in the oblique cases ( 'burden'; 'time').
The locative endings for the third declension are "-ī" or "-e" (singular) and "-ibus" (plural), as in 'in the country' and 'at Tralles'.
The third declension also has a set of nouns that are declined differently. They are called "i"-stems. "i"-stems are broken into two subcategories: pure and mixed. Pure "i"-stems are indicated by special neuter endings. Mixed "i"-stems are indicated by the double consonant rule. Stems indicated by the parisyllabic rule are usually mixed, occasionally pure.
The mixed declension is distinguished from the consonant type only by having "-ium" in the genitive plural (and occasionally "-īs" in the accusative plural). The pure declension is characterized by having "-ī" in the ablative singular, "-ium" in the genitive plural, "-ia" in the nominative and accusative plural neuter, and "-im" in the accusative singular masculine and feminine (however, adjectives have "-em").
The accusative plural ending "-īs" is found in early Latin up to Virgil, but from the early empire onwards it was replaced by "-ēs".
The accusative singular ending "-im" is found only in a few words: always in 'cough', 'thirst', 'River Tiber'; usually in 'axe', 'tower'; occasionally in 'ship'. Most nouns, however, have accusative singular "-em".
The ablative singular "-ī" is found in nouns which have "-im", and also, optionally, in some other nouns, e.g. or 'in the fire'.
There are two mixed-declension neuter nouns: ('heart') and ('bone'). Also, the mixed declension is used in the plural-only adjective ('most').
The rules for determining "i"-stems from non-"i"-stems and mixed "i"-stems are guidelines rather than rules: many words that might be expected to be "i"-stems according to the parisyllabic rule actually are not, such as ('dog') or ('youth'), which have genitive plural 'of dogs' and 'of young men'. Likewise, ('father'), ('mother'), ('brother'), and ('parent') violate the double-consonant rule. This fluidity even in Roman times resulted in much more uncertainty in Medieval Latin.
Some nouns in "-tāt-", such as 'city, community' can have either consonant-stem or "i"-stem genitive plural: or 'of the cities'.
In the third declension, there are four irregular nouns.
The fourth declension is a group of nouns consisting of mostly masculine words such as ('wave') and ('port') with a few feminine exceptions, including ('hand'). The fourth declension also includes several neuter nouns including ('knee'). Each noun has the ending "-ūs" as a suffix attached to the root of the noun in the genitive singular form. The predominant letter in the ending forms of this declension is "u", but the declension is otherwise very similar to the third-declension "i" stems.
In the dative and ablative plural, "-ibus" is sometimes replaced with "-ubus". This is so for only a few nouns, such as , ('limbs').
The locative endings for the fourth declension are "-ī" (singular), and probably "-ū" (singular) as well; "at [the] senate", "at home".
The fifth declension is a small group of nouns consisting of mostly feminine nouns like ('affair, matter, thing') and "diēs, diēī" ('day'; but in names of days). Each noun has either the ending "-ēī" or "-eī" as a suffix attached to the root of the noun in the genitive singular form.
Nouns ending in "-iēs" have long "ēī" in the dative and genitive, while nouns ending in a consonant + "-ēs" have short "eī" in these cases.
The locative ending of the fifth declension was "-ē" (singular only), identical to the ablative singular, as in ('today').
The first and second persons are irregular, and both pronouns are indeclinable for gender; and the third person reflexive pronoun sē, suī always refers back to the subject, regardless of whether the subject is singular or plural.
The genitive forms , , , , are used as complements in certain grammatical constructions, whereas , are used with a partitive meaning ('[one] of us', '[one] of you'). To express possession, the possessive pronouns (essentially adjectives) , , , are used, declined in the first and second declensions to agree in number and case with the thing possessed, e.g. "pater meus" 'my father', "māter mea" 'my mother'. The vocative singular masculine of "meus" is "mī": "mī Attice" 'my dear Atticus'.
The possessive adjective "vester" has an archaic variant, "voster"; similar to "noster".
Usually, to show the ablative of accompaniment, would be added to the ablative form. However, with personal pronouns (first and second person), the reflexive and the interrogative, "-cum" is added onto the end of the ablative form. That is: 'with me', 'with us', 'with you', , and (sometimes ).
Pronouns have also an emphatic form bi using the suffix "-met" (, /, , ), used in all cases, except by the genitive plural forms.
In accusative case, the forms "mēmē" and "tētē" exist as emphatic, but they are not widely used.
When 'his' or 'her' refers to someone else, not the subject, the genitive pronoun "eius" (as well as "eōrum" and "eārum") 'of him' is used instead of "suus":
When one sentence is embedded inside another with a different subject, "sē" and "suus" can refer to either subject:
For the third-person pronoun 'he', see below.
Relative, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns are generally declined like first and second declension adjectives, with the following differences:
These differences characterize the pronominal declension, and a few special adjectives ( 'whole', 'alone', 'one', 'no', 'another', 'another [of two]', etc.) are also declined according to this pattern.
All demonstrative, relative, and indefinite pronouns in Latin can also be used adjectivally, with some small differences; for example in the interrogative pronoun, 'who?' and 'what?' are usually used for the pronominal form, and 'which?' for the adjectival form.
The weak demonstrative pronoun , , 'that' also serves as the third person pronoun 'he, she, it':
This pronoun is also often used adjectivally, e.g. "is homo" 'that man', "ea pecunia" 'that money'. It has no possessive adjective; the genitive is used instead: "pater eius" 'his/her father'; "pater eōrum" 'their father'.
The pronoun or pronominal adjective means 'the same'. It is derived from "is" with the suffix "-dem". However, some forms have been assimilated.
Similar in declension is 'another'.
The interrogative pronouns are used strictly for asking questions. They are distinct from the relative pronoun and the interrogative adjective (which is declined like the relative pronoun). Interrogative pronouns rarely occur in the plural. The plural interrogative pronouns are the same as the plural relative pronouns.
First- and second-declension adjective are inflected in the masculine, the feminine and the neuter; the masculine form typically ends in "-us" (although some end in "-er", see below), the feminine form ends in "-a", and the neuter form ends in "-um". Therefore, some adjectives are given like .
Adjectives ending "-ius" use the vocative "-ie" ("ebrie", "[O] drunk man", vocative of "ebrius"), just as in Old Latin all "-ius" nouns did ("fīlie", "[O] son", archaic vocative of "fīlius").
Some first- and second-declension adjectives' masculine form end in "-er". As with second-declension "-r" nouns, some adjectives retain the "e" throughout inflection, and some omit it. omits its "e" while keeps it.
Nine first and second declension pronominal adjectives are irregular in the genitive and the dative in all genders. They can be remembered by using the mnemonic acronym "ūnus nauta". They are:
Third-declension adjectives are normally declined like third-declension "i"-stem nouns, except for the fact they usually have "-ī" rather than "-e" in the ablative singular (unlike "i"-stem nouns, in which only pure i-stems have "-ī"). Some adjectives, however, like the one-ending ('old, aged'), have "-e" in the ablative singular, "-um" in the genitive plural, and "-a" in the nominative and accusative neuter plural.
These have a single nominative ending for all genders, although as usual the endings for the other cases vary. As with nouns, a genitive is given for the purpose of showing the inflection.
Third-declension adjectives that have two endings have one form for the masculine and feminine, and a separate form for the neuter. The ending for the masculine and feminine is "-is", and the ending for the neuter is "-e". It is not necessary to give the genitive, as it is the same as the nominative masculine singular.
Third-declension adjectives with three endings have three separate nominative forms for all three genders. Like third and second declension "-r" nouns, the masculine ends in "-er". The feminine ends in "-ris", and the neuter ends in "-re". The genitive is the same as the nominative feminine singular.
As in English, adjectives have superlative and comparative forms. For regular first and second declension and third declension adjectives with one or two endings, the comparative is formed by adding "-ior" for the masculine and feminine, and "-ius" for the neuter to the stem. The genitives for both are formed by adding "-iōris". Therefore, they are declined in the third declension, but they are not declined as "i"-stems. Superlatives are formed by adding "-issimus, -issima, -issimum" to the stem and are thus declined like first and second declension adjectives.
Adjectives (in the first and second as well as third declensions) that have masculine nominative singular forms ending in "-er" are slightly different. As with normal adjectives, the comparative is formed by adding "-ior" to the stem, but for the superlative, "-rimus" is added to the nominative masculine singular.
Some third declension adjectives with two endings in "-lis" in the masculine–feminine nominative singular have irregular superlative forms. The following are the only adjectives that do.
First and second declension adjectives that end in "-eus" or "-ius" are unusual in that they do not form the comparative and superlative by taking endings at all. Instead, ('more') and ('most'), the comparative and superlative degrees of ('much, greatly'), respectively, are used.
Many adjectives in "-uus", except those in "-quus" or "-guus", also follow this rule.
As in most languages, Latin has adjectives that have irregular comparatives and superlatives.
There are several different kinds of numeral words in Latin: the two most common are cardinal numerals and ordinal numerals. There are also several more rare numerals, e.g., distributive numerals and adverbial numerals.
All cardinal numerals are indeclinable, except ('one'), ('two'), ('three'), plural hundreds ('two hundred'), ('three hundred') etc., and ('thousand'), which have cases and genders like adjectives. is declined like a first- and second-declension pronoun with "-īus" in the genitive, and "-ī" in the dative. is declined irregularly, is declined like a third-declension plural adjective, "-centī" ('hundred') numerals decline like first- and second-declension adjectives, and is invariable in the singular and declined like a third-declension "i"-stem neuter noun in the plural:
The existence of plural endings for "ūnus" might seem unnecessary; however, they are used with "pluralia tantum" nouns, e. g. "ūna castra" (one [military] camp), "ūnae scālae" (one ladder).
The word ('both'), is declined like "duo" except that its "o" is long. Both declensions derive from the Indo-European dual number, otherwise defunct in Latin, rather than the plural.
The numeral ('one hundred') is indeclinable, but all the other hundred numerals are declinable.
The word "mīlle" 'thousand' is a singular indeclinable adjective. However, its plural, "mīlia", is a plural third-declension "i"-stem neuter noun. To write the phrase "four thousand horses" in Latin, the genitive is used: "quattuor mīlia equōrum", literally, "four thousands of horses".
The rest of the numbers are indeclinable whether used as adjectives or as nouns.
For further information on the different sets of Latin numerals, see Latin numerals (linguistics).
Adverbs are not declined. However, adverbs must be formed if one wants to make an adjective into an adverb.
First and second declension adjectives' adverbs are formed by adding "-ē" onto their stems.
Typically, third declension adjectives' adverbs are formed by adding "-iter" to the stem. However, most third declension adjectives with one ending simply add "-er" to the stem.
Adverbs' comparative forms are identical to the nominative neuter singular of the corresponding comparative adjective. Adverbs' superlative forms are simply formed by attaching the regular ending "-ē" to the corresponding superlative adjective. As with their corresponding adjectival forms, first and second declensions adjectives ending in "-eus" or "-ius" use and as opposed to distinct endings.
As with adjectives, there are irregular adverbs with peculiar comparative and superlative forms.
Some nouns are only used in the singular (singulare tantum) such as:
Some nouns are only used in the plural (plurale tantum), or when plural have a singular meaning such as:
Indeclinable nouns are nouns which only have one form in all cases (of the singular).
Heterogeneous nouns are nouns which vary in respect to gender. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17997 |
Latin phonology and orthography
Latin phonology continually evolved over the centuries, making it difficult for speakers in one era to know how Latin was spoken in prior eras. A given phoneme may be represented by different letters in different periods. This article deals primarily with modern scholarship's best reconstruction of Classical Latin's phonemes (phonology) and the pronunciation and spelling used by educated people in the late Roman Republic. This article then touches upon later changes and other variants. Knowledge of how Latin was pronounced comes from Roman grammar books, common misspellings by Romans, transcriptions into other ancient languages, and from how pronunciation has evolved in derived Romance languages.
Latin orthography is the spelling of Latin words written in the scripts of all historical phases of Latin from Old Latin to the present. All scripts use the Latin alphabet, but conventional spellings may vary from phase to phase. The Roman alphabet, or Latin alphabet, was adapted from the Old Italic script to represent the phonemes of the Latin language. The Old Italic script had in turn been borrowed from the Greek alphabet, itself adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. The Latin alphabet most resembles the Greek alphabet around 540 BC, as it appears on the black-figure pottery of the time.
The forms of the Latin alphabet used during the Classical period did not distinguish between upper case and lower case. Roman inscriptions typically use Roman square capitals, which resemble modern capitals, and handwritten text often uses old Roman cursive, which includes letterforms similar to modern lowercase.
This article uses small caps for Latin text, representing Roman square capitals, and long vowels are marked with acutes, representing apices. In the tables below, Latin letters and digraphs are paired with the phonemes they usually represent in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In ancient Latin spelling, individual letters mostly corresponded to individual phonemes, with three main exceptions:
In the tables below, Latin letters and digraphs are paired with the phonemes that they usually represent in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
This is a table of the consonant sounds of Classical Latin. Sounds in parentheses are allophones, sounds with an asterisk exist mainly in loanwords and sounds with a dagger (†) are phonemes only in some analyses.
Latin has ten native vowels, spelled "a", "e", "i", "o", "u". In Classical Latin, each vowel had short and long versions: and . The long versions of the close and mid vowels "e", "i", "o", "u" had a different vowel quality from the short versions, so that long were similar to short . Some loanwords from Greek had the vowel "y", which was pronounced as by educated speakers but approximated with the native vowels "u" and "i" by less educated speakers.
Each vowel letter (with the possible exception of "y") represents at least two phonemes. "a" can represent either short or long , "e" represents either or , etc.
Short mid vowels () and close vowels () were pronounced with a different quality from their long counterparts, being also more open: , , and . This opening made the short vowels "i u" similar in quality to long "é ó" respectively. "i é" and "u ó" were often written in place of each other in inscriptions:
Short most likely had a more open allophone before and tended toward near-open .
Short and were probably pronounced closer when they occurred before another vowel. was written as in inscriptions. Short before another vowel is often written with , as in , indicating that its quality was similar to that of long and is almost never confused with "e" in this position.
"y" was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon Υ. This letter represented the close front rounded vowel, both short and long: . Latin did not have this sound as a distinctive phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with in Old Latin and in Classical and Late Latin if they were unable to produce .
An intermediate vowel sound (likely a close central vowel or possibly its rounded counterpart ), called , can be reconstructed for the classical period. Such a vowel is found in , , (also spelled , , ) and other words. It developed out of a historical short , later fronted by vowel reduction. In the vicinity of labial consonants, this sound was not as fronted and may have retained some rounding. It was sometimes spelled by the claudian letter Ⱶ ⱶ.
Vowels followed by a nasal consonant were allophonically realised as long nasal vowels in two environments:
Those long nasal vowels had the same quality as ordinary long vowels. In Vulgar Latin, the vowels lost their nasalisation, and they merged with the long vowels (which were themselves shortened by that time). This is shown by many forms in the Romance languages, such as Spanish from Vulgar Latin (originally ) and Italian from Vulgar Latin (Classical Latin ). On the other hand, the short vowel and was restored in French and from and ("e" is the normal development of Latin short "i"), likely by analogy with other forms beginning in the prefix "in-".
When a final "-m" occurred before a plosive or nasal in the next word, however, it was pronounced as a nasal at the place of articulation of the following consonant. For instance, was written for in inscriptions, and was a double entendre, possibly for .
"ae", "oe", "au", "ei", "eu" could represent diphthongs: "ae" represented , "oe" represented , "au" represented , "ei" represented , and "eu" represented . "ui" sometimes represented the diphthong , as in and . The diphthong "ei" mostly had changed to "ī" by the classical epoch; "ei" remained only in a few words such as the interjection .
If there is a tréma above the second vowel, both vowels are pronounced separately: "aë" , "aü" , "eü" and "oë" . However, disillabic "eu" in morpheme borders is traditionally written without the tréma: 'my'.
In Old Latin, "ae", "oe" were written as "ai", "oi" and probably pronounced as , with a fully closed second element, similar to the final syllable in French . In the late Old Latin period, the last element of the diphthongs was lowered to , so that the diphthongs were pronounced and in Classical Latin. They were then monophthongized to and , starting in rural areas at the end of the Republican period. The process, however, does not seem to have been completed before the 3rd century AD in Vulgar Latin, and some scholars say that it may have been regular by the 5th century. Cross-linguistically, the diphthong is rare, but it is frequent in e.g. the Khmer language, where it occurs even in the self-designation , which is pronounced .
Vowel and consonant length were more significant and more clearly defined in Latin than in modern English. Length is the duration of time that a particular sound is held before proceeding to the next sound in a word. In the modern spelling of Latin, especially in dictionaries and academic work, macrons are frequently used to mark long vowels: , while the breve is sometimes used to indicate that a vowel is short: .
Long consonants were usually indicated through doubling, but ancient Latin orthography did not distinguish between the vocalic and consonantal uses of "i" and "v". Vowel length was indicated only intermittently in classical sources and even then through a variety of means. Later medieval and modern usage tended to omit vowel length altogether. A short-lived convention of spelling long vowels by doubling the vowel letter is associated with the poet Lucius Accius. Later spelling conventions marked long vowels with an apex (a diacritic similar to an acute accent) or, in the case of long i, by increasing the height of the letter (long i); in the second century AD, those were given apices as well. Distinctions of vowel length had become less important in later Latin and have ceased to be phonemic in the modern Romance languages, in which the previous long and short versions of the vowels have been either lost or replaced by other phonetic contrasts. However, distinctions of consonant length is still phonemic in the Romance language of Italian, as the Italian word means "the ninth" while the word means "grandfather".
A minimal set showing both long and short vowels and long and short consonants is ('buttocks'), ('year'), ('old woman').
The letters "b", "d", "f", "h", "m", "n" are always pronounced as in English , , , , , respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:
In Old Latin, as in Proto-Italic, stress normally fell on the first syllable of a word. During this period, the word-initial stress triggered changes in the vowels of non-initial syllables, the effects of which are still visible in classical Latin. Compare for example:
In the earliest Latin writings, the original unreduced vowels are still visible. Study of this vowel reduction, as well as syncopation (dropping of short unaccented syllables) in Greek loan words, indicates that the stress remained word-initial until around the time of Plautus, in the 3rd century BC. The placement of the stress then shifted to become the pattern found in classical Latin.
In Classical Latin, stress changed. It moved from the first syllable to one of the last three syllables, called the antepenult, the penult, and the ultima (short for 'before almost last', 'almost last', and 'last syllable'). Its position is determined by the syllable weight of the penult. If the penult is heavy, it is accented; if the penult is light and there are more than two syllables, the antepenult is accented. In a few words originally accented on the penult, accent is on the ultima because the two last syllables have been contracted, or the last syllable has been lost.
To determine stress, syllable weight of the penult must be determined. To determine syllable weight, words must be broken up into syllables. In the following examples, syllable structure is represented using these symbols: C (a consonant), K (a stop), R (a liquid), and V (a short vowel), VV (a long vowel or diphthong).
Every short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong belongs to a single syllable. This vowel forms the syllable nucleus. Thus has four syllables, one for every vowel (a i ā u: V V VV V), has three (ae e u: VV V V), has two (u ō: V VV), and has one (ui: VV).
A consonant before a vowel, or a consonant cluster at the beginning of a word, is placed in the same syllable as the following vowel. This consonant or consonant cluster forms the syllable onset.
After this, if there is an additional consonant inside the word, it is placed at the end of the syllable. This consonant is the syllable coda. Thus if a consonant cluster of two consonants occurs between vowels, they are broken up between syllables: one goes with the syllable before, the other with the syllable after.
There are two exceptions. A consonant cluster of a stop "p t c b d g" followed by a liquid "l r" between vowels usually goes to the syllable after it, although it is also sometimes broken up like other consonant clusters.
As shown in the examples above, Latin syllables have a variety of possible structures. Here are some of them. The first four examples are light syllables, and the last six are heavy. All syllables have at least one V (vowel). A syllable is heavy if it has another V or a VC after the first V. In the table below, the extra V or VC is bolded, indicating that it makes the syllable heavy.
Thus, a syllable is heavy if it ends in a long vowel or diphthong, a short vowel and a consonant, a long vowel and a consonant, or a diphthong and a consonant. Syllables ending in a diphthong and consonant are rare in Classical Latin.
The syllable onset has no relationship to syllable weight; both heavy and light syllables can have no onset or an onset of one, two, or three consonants.
In Latin a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a long vowel or diphthong is traditionally called ('syllable long by nature'), and a syllable that is heavy because it ends in a consonant is called ('long by position'). These terms are translations of Greek ("syllabḕ makrá phýsei" = 'syllable long by nature') and ("makrà thései" = 'long by proposition'), respectively; therefore should not be mistaken for implying a syllable "is long because of its position/place in a word" but rather "is treated as 'long' by convention". This article uses the words "heavy" and "light" for syllables, and "long" and "short" for vowels since the two are not the same.
In a word of three or more syllables, the weight of the penult determines where the accent is placed. If the penult is light, accent is placed on the antepenult; if it is heavy, accent is placed on the penult. Below, stress is marked by placing the stress mark before the stressed syllable.
Iambic shortening or is vowel shortening that occurs in words of the type "light–heavy", where the light syllable is stressed. By this sound change, words like , , , with long final vowel change to , , , with short final vowel.
Where one word ended with a vowel (including a nasalized vowel, represented by a vowel plus "m") and the next word began with a vowel, the former vowel, at least in verse, was regularly elided; that is, it was omitted altogether, or possibly (in the case of and ) pronounced like the corresponding semivowel. When the second word was or , a different form of elision sometimes occurred (prodelision): the vowel of the preceding word was retained, and the "e" was elided instead. Elision also occurred in Ancient Greek, but in that language, it is shown in writing by the vowel in question being replaced by an apostrophe, whereas in Latin elision is not indicated at all in the orthography, but can be deduced from the verse form. Only occasionally is it found in inscriptions, as in for .
Modern usage, even for classical Latin texts, varies in respect of "I" and "V". During the Renaissance, the printing convention was to use "I" (upper case) and "i" (lower case) for both vocalic and consonantal , to use "V" in the upper case and in the lower case to use "v" at the start of words and "u" subsequently within the word regardless of whether and was represented.
Many publishers (such as Oxford University Press) have adopted the convention of using "I" (upper case) and "i" (lower case) for both and , and "V" (upper case) and "u" (lower case) for both and .
An alternative approach, less common today, is to use "i" and "u" only for the vowels and "j" and "v" for the approximants.
Most modern editions, however, adopt an intermediate position, distinguishing between "u" and "v" but not between "i" and "j". Usually, the non-vocalic "v" after "q" or "g" is still printed as "u" rather than "v", probably because in this position it did not change from to in post-classical times.
Textbooks and dictionaries usually indicate the length of vowels by putting a macron or horizontal bar above the long vowel, but it is not generally done in regular texts. Occasionally, mainly in early printed texts up to the 18th century, one may see a circumflex used to indicate a long vowel where this makes a difference to the sense, for instance, ('from Rome' ablative) compared to ('Rome' nominative). Sometimes, for instance in Roman Catholic service books, an acute accent over a vowel is used to indicate the stressed syllable. It would be redundant for one who knew the classical rules of accentuation and made the correct distinction between long and short vowels, but most Latin speakers since the 3rd century have not made any distinction between long and short vowels, but they have kept the accents in the same places; thus, the use of accent marks allows speakers to read a word aloud correctly even if they never heard it spoken aloud.
Since around the beginning of the Renaissance period onwards, with the language being used as an international language among intellectuals, pronunciation of Latin in Europe came to be dominated by the phonology of local languages, resulting in a variety of different pronunciation systems. See the article "Latin regional pronunciation" for more details on those (with the exception of the Italian one, which is described in the section on "Ecclesiastical pronunciation" below).
When Latin words are used as loanwords in a modern language, there is ordinarily little or no attempt to pronounce them as the Romans did; in most cases, a pronunciation suiting the phonology of the receiving language is employed.
Latin words in common use in English are generally fully assimilated into the English sound system, with little to mark them as foreign, for example, "cranium", "saliva". Other words have a stronger Latin feel to them, usually because of spelling features such as the digraphs "ae" and "oe" (occasionally written as ligatures: "æ" and "œ", respectively), which both denote in English. The digraph "ae" or ligature "æ" in some words tend to be given an pronunciation, for example, "curriculum vitae".
However, using loan words in the context of the language borrowing them is a markedly different situation from the study of Latin itself. In this classroom setting, instructors and students attempt to recreate at least some sense of the original pronunciation. What is taught to native anglophones is suggested by the sounds of today's Romance languages, the direct descendants of Latin. Instructors who take this approach rationalize that Romance vowels probably come closer to the original pronunciation than those of any other modern language (see also the section below on "Derivative languages").
However, other languages—including Romance family members—all have their own interpretations of the Latin phonological system, applied both to loan words and formal study of Latin. But English, Romance, or other teachers do not always point out that the particular accent their students learn is not actually the way ancient Romans spoke.
Because of the central position of Rome within the Catholic Church, an Italian pronunciation of Latin became commonly accepted, but this was not the case until the latter part of the 19th century. This pronunciation corresponds to that of the Latin-derived words in Italian. Before then, the pronunciation of Latin in church was the same as the pronunciation as Latin in other fields and tended to reflect the sound values associated with the nationality of the speaker. Other ecclesiastical variations are still in use (e.g. Germanic pronunciations), especially outside the Catholic Church.
The following are the main points that distinguish modern Italianate ecclesiastical pronunciation from Classical Latin pronunciation:
The letters "b", "d", "f", "m", "n" are always pronounced as in English , , , , respectively, and they do not usually cause any difficulties. The exceptions are mentioned below:
In his "Vox Latina: A guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin", William Sidney Allen remarked that this pronunciation, used by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere, and whose adoption Pope Pius X recommended in a 1912 letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, "is probably less far removed from classical Latin than any other 'national' pronunciation"; but, as can be seen from the table above, there are, nevertheless, very significant differences. The introduction to the "Liber Usualis" indicates that Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation should be used at Church liturgies. The Pontifical Academy for Latin is the pontifical academy in the Vatican that is charged with the dissemination and education of Catholics in the Latin language.
Outside of Austria, Germany, Czechia and Slovakia, it is the most widely used standard in choral singing which, with a few exceptions like Stravinsky's , is concerned with liturgical texts. Anglican choirs adopted it when classicists abandoned traditional English pronunciation after World War II. The rise of historically informed performance and the availability of guides such as Copeman's "Singing in Latin" has led to the recent revival of regional pronunciations.
Because it gave rise to many modern languages, Latin did not "die"; it merely evolved over the centuries in different regions in diverse ways. The local dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romansh, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many others.
Key features of Vulgar Latin and Romance languages include:
The following examples are both in verse, which demonstrates several features more clearly than prose.
Virgil's , Book 1, verses 1–4. Quantitative metre (dactylic hexameter). Translation: "I sing of arms and the man, who, driven by fate, came first from the borders of Troy to Italy and the Lavinian shores; he [was] much afflicted both on lands and on the deep by the power of the gods, because of fierce Juno's vindictive wrath."
Note the elisions in and in the third line. For a fuller discussion of the prosodic features of this passage, see Dactylic hexameter.
Some manuscripts have "" rather than "" in the second line.
Beginning of by Thomas Aquinas (13th century). Rhymed accentual metre. Translation: "Extol, [my] tongue, the mystery of the glorious body and the precious blood, which the fruit of a noble womb, the king of nations, poured out as the price of the world."
1. Traditional orthography as in Roman Catholic service books (stressed syllable marked with an acute accent on words of three syllables or more).
2. "Italianate" ecclesiastical pronunciation | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17999 |
Latin conjugation
Conjugation has two meanings. One meaning is the creation of derived forms of a verb from basic forms, or principal parts. It may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, mood, aspect, voice, or other language-specific factors.
The second meaning of the word conjugation is a group of verbs which all have the same pattern of inflections. Thus all those Latin verbs which have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on. The number of conjugations of regular verbs is usually said to be four.
The word "conjugation" comes from the Latin , a calque of the Greek syzygia, literally "yoking together (horses into a team)".
For simple verb paradigms, see the Wiktionary appendix pages for first conjugation, second conjugation, third conjugation, and fourth conjugation.
The ancient Romans themselves, beginning with Varro (1st century BC), originally divided their verbs into three conjugations ( "there are three different conjugations for verbs: the first, second, and third" (Donatus), 4th century AD), according to whether the ending of the 2nd person singular had an "a", an "e" or an "i" in it. However, others, such as Sacerdos (3rd century AD), Dositheus (4th century AD) and Priscian (c. 500 AD), recognised four different groups.
Modern grammarians generally recognise four conjugations, according to whether their active present infinitive has the ending -āre, -ēre, -ere, or -īre (or the corresponding passive forms), for example: (1) "to love", (2) "to see", (3) "to rule" and (4) "to hear". There are also some verbs of mixed conjugation, having some endings like the 3rd and others like the 4th conjugation, for example, "to capture".
In addition to regular verbs, which belong to one or other of the four conjugations, there are also a few irregular verbs, which have a different pattern of endings. The most important of these is the verb "to be". There also exist deponent and semi-deponent Latin verbs (verbs with a passive form but active meaning), as well as defective verbs (verbs in which some of the tenses are missing).
A verb's full paradigm relies on multiple stems. The present indicative active and the present infinitive are both based on the present stem.
It is not possible to infer the stems for other tenses from the present stem. This means that, although the infinitive active form normally shows the verb conjugation, knowledge of several different forms is necessary to be able to confidently produce the full range of forms for any particular verb.
In a dictionary, Latin verbs are listed with four "principal parts" (or fewer for deponent and defective verbs), which allow the student to deduce the other conjugated forms of the verbs. These are:
The first conjugation is characterized by the vowel "ā" and can be recognized by the "-āre" ending of the present active infinitive form. The non-perfect tenses conjugate as follows:
* The 2nd person singular passive ' can be shortened to '. "-re" was the regular form in early Latin and (except in the present indicative) in Cicero; "-ris" was preferred later.
In early Latin (Plautus), the 3rd singular endings "-at" and "-et" were pronounced "-āt" and "-ēt" with a long vowel.
Other forms:
The principal parts usually adhere to one of the following patterns:
The verb ' "I give" is irregular in that except in the 2nd singular ' and imperative ', the "a" is short, e.g. ' "I will give".
The "a" is also short in the supine ' and its derivatives, but the other parts of ' "I stand" are regular.
Deponent verbs in this conjugation all follow the pattern below, which is the passive of the first type above:
The three perfect tenses of the 1st conjugation go as in the following table:
In poetry (and also sometimes in prose, e.g. Livy), the 3rd person plural of the perfect indicative is often ' instead of '. Occasionally the form is also found.
In early Latin, the future perfect indicative had a short "i" in , but by the time of Cicero these forms were usually pronounced with a long "i", in the same way as in the perfect subjunctive. Virgil has a short "i" for both tenses; Horace uses both forms for both tenses; Ovid uses both forms for the future perfect, but a long "i" in the perfect subjunctive.
The "-v-" of the perfect active tenses sometimes drops out, especially in the pluperfect subjunctive: ' for '. Forms such as ' and ' are also found.
The passive tenses also have feminine and neuter forms, e.g. ' "she was loved", ' "it was announced".
Forms made with instead of and instead of are also found. See Latin tenses.
For other meanings of the perfect and pluperfect subjunctive, see Latin tenses#Perfect subjunctive.
Other forms:
The second conjugation is characterized by the vowel ē, and can be recognized by the -eō ending of the first person present indicative and the -ēre ending of the present active infinitive form:
The passive also often means "I seem".
Other forms:
The principal parts usually adhere to one of the following patterns:
In verbs with perfect in "-vī", syncopated (i.e. abbreviated) forms are common, such as for .
Deponent verbs in this conjugation are few. They mostly go like the passive of , but and have a perfect participle with "ss":
The following are semi-deponent, that is, they are deponent only in the three perfect tenses:
The third conjugation has a variable short stem vowel, which may be e, i,or u in different environments. Verbs of this conjugation end in –ere in the present active infinitive.
The future tense in the 3rd and 4th conjugation ("-am, -ēs, -et" etc.) differs from that in the 1st and 2nd conjugation ("-bō, -bis, -bit" etc.).
Other forms:
Four 3rd conjugation verbs have no ending in the imperative singular: ' "lead!", ' "say!", ' "bring!", ' "do!". Others, like "run!", have the ending "-e".
There is no regular rule for constructing the perfect stem of third-conjugation verbs, but the following patterns are used:
Although "to give" is 1st conjugation, its compounds are 3rd conjugation and have internal reduplication:
Likewise the compounds of have internal reduplication. Although is transitive, its compounds are intransitive:
Deponent verbs in the 3rd conjugation include the following:
There are also a number of 3rd conjugation deponents with the ending "-scor":
Deponent in some tenses only is the following:
The following is deponent only in the non-perfect tenses:
Intermediate between the third and fourth conjugation are the third-conjugation verbs with suffix –iō. These resemble the fourth conjugation in some forms.
Other forms:
Some examples are:
Deponent verbs in this group include:
The fourth conjugation is characterized by the vowel ī and can be recognized by the –īre ending of the present active infinitive:
Other forms:
Principal parts of verbs in the fourth conjugation generally adhere to the following patterns:
Deponent verbs in the 4th conjugation include the following:
The verb "to arise" is also regarded as 4th conjugation, although some parts, such as the 3rd singular present tense and imperfect subjunctive , have a short vowel like the 3rd conjugation. But its compound "to rise up, attack" is entirely 4th conjugation.
In the perfect tenses, shortened forms without "-v-" are common, for example, for . Cicero, however, prefers the full forms to .
The verb "to be" is the most common verb in Latin. It is conjugated as follows:
In early Latin (e.g. Plautus), ' can be found for the present subjunctive '. In poetry the subjunctive also sometimes occurs.
An alternative imperfect subjunctive is sometimes made using etc. See further: Latin tenses#Forem.
Other forms:
The present participle is found only in the compounds ' "absent" and ' "present".
In Plautus and Lucretius, an infinitive ' is sometimes found for ' "to be able".
The principal parts of these verbs are as follows:
The perfect tenses conjugate in the regular way.
For the difference in meaning between and , see Latin tenses#Eram and fuī
The verb and its derivatives and (short for ) resemble a 3rd conjugation verb, but the present subjunctive ending in "-im" is different:
The spellings ' and ' were used up until the time of Cicero for ' and '.
These verbs are not used in the passive.
Other forms:
Principal parts:
The perfect tenses are formed regularly.
The verb "I go" is an irregular 4th conjugation verb, in which the "i" of the stem sometimes becomes "e". Like 1st and 2nd conjugation verbs, it uses the future "-bō, -bis, -bit":
Other forms:
The impersonal passive forms ' "they go", ' "they went" are sometimes found.
The principal parts of some verbs which conjugate like are the following:
In the perfect tenses of these verbs, the "-v-" is almost always omitted, especially in the compounds, although the form is common in the Vulgate Bible translation.
The verb "to bring, to bear, to carry" is 3rd conjugation, but irregular in that the vowel following the root "fer-" is sometimes omitted. The perfect tense and supine stem are also irregularly formed.
The future tense in the 3rd and 4th conjugation ("-am, -ēs, -et" etc.) differs from that in the 1st and 2nd conjugation ("-bō, -bis, -bit" etc.).
Other forms:
Compounds of include the following:
The principal parts of some verbs which conjugate like are the following:
The perfect tense , however, belongs to the verb :
The irregular verb "to become, to happen, to be done, to be made" as well as being a verb in its own right serves as the passive of "to do, to make". The perfect tenses are identical with the perfect passive tenses of .
The 1st and 2nd plural forms are almost never found.
Other forms:
The verb "to eat" has regular 3rd conjugation forms appearing alongside irregular ones:
Other forms:
The passive form "it is eaten" is also found.
In early Latin a present subjunctive etc. is found.
In writing, there is a possibility of confusion between the forms of this verb and those of "I am" and "I give out, put forth"; for example, "to eat" vs. "to be"; "he eats" vs. "he gives out".
The compound verb "to eat up, consume" is similar.
The non-finite forms of verbs are participles, infinitives, supines, gerunds and gerundives. The verbs used are:
There are four participles: present active, perfect passive, future passive, and future active.
There are seven main infinitives. They are in the present active, present passive, perfect active, perfect passive, future active, future passive, and potential active. Further infinitives can be made using the gerundive.
The future passive infinitive was not very commonly used. The Romans themselves often used an alternate expression, followed by a subjunctive clause.
The supine is the fourth principal part of the verb, as given in Latin dictionaries. It resembles a masculine noun of the fourth declension. Supines only occur in the accusative and ablative cases.
The gerund is formed similarly to the present active participle. However, the "-ns" becomes an "-ndus", and the preceding "ā" or "ē" is shortened. Gerunds are neuter nouns of the second declension, but the nominative case is not present. The gerund is a noun, meaning "the act of doing (the verb)", and forms a suppletive paradigm to the infinitive, which cannot be declined. For example, the genitive form can mean "of praising", the dative form can mean "for praising", the accusative form can mean "praising", and the ablative form can mean "by praising", "in respect to praising", etc.
One common use of the gerund is with the preposition to indicate purpose. For example, could be translated as "ready to attack". However the gerund was avoided when an object was introduced, and a passive construction with the gerundive was preferred. For example, for "ready to attack the enemy" the construction is preferred over .
The gerundive has a form similar to that of the gerund, but it is a first and second declension adjective, and functions as a future passive participle (see above). It means "(which is) to be ...ed". Often, the gerundive is used with part of the verb , to show obligation.
An older form of the 3rd and 4th conjugation gerundive ends in "-undum", e.g. ( for ). This ending is also found with the gerundive of 'I go': 'it is necessary to go'.
For some examples of uses of Latin gerundives, see the Gerundive article.
There are two periphrastic conjugations. One is active, and the other is passive.
The first periphrastic conjugation uses the future participle. It is combined with the forms of . It is translated as "I am going to praise," "I was going to praise", etc.
The second periphrastic conjugation uses the gerundive. It is combined with the forms of and expresses necessity. It is translated as "I am needing to be praised", "I was needing to be praised", etc., or as "I have to (must) be praised", "I had to be praised," etc.
Deponent verbs are verbs that are passive in form (that is, conjugated as though in the passive voice) but active in meaning. These verbs have only three principal parts, since the perfect of ordinary passives is formed periphrastically with the perfect participle, which is formed on the same stem as the supine. Some examples coming from all conjugations are:
Deponent verbs use active conjugations for tenses that do not exist in the passive: the gerund, the supine, the present and future participles and the future infinitive. They cannot be used in the passive themselves (except the gerundive), and their analogues with "active" form do not in fact exist: one cannot directly translate "The word is said" with any form of , and there are no forms like "loquō", "loquis", "loquit", etc.
Semi-deponent verbs form their imperfective aspect tenses in the manner of ordinary active verbs; but their perfect tenses are built periphrastically like deponents and ordinary passives; thus, semi-deponent verbs have a perfect active participle instead of a perfect passive participle. An example:
Unlike the proper passive of active verbs, which is always intransitive, some deponent verbs are transitive, which means that they can take an object. For example:
Note: In the Romance languages, which lack deponent or passive verb forms, the Classical Latin deponent verbs either disappeared (being replaced with non-deponent verbs of a similar meaning) or changed to a non-deponent form. For example, in Spanish and Italian, changed to "mirar(e)" by changing all the verb forms to the previously nonexistent "active form", and changed to "osar(e)" by taking the participle and making an "-ar(e)" verb out of it (note that "au" went to "o").
Defective verbs are verbs that are conjugated in only some instances.
The following are conjugated irregularly:
The Romance languages lost many of these verbs, but others (such as ) survived but became regular fully conjugated verbs (in Italian, ).
Impersonal verbs are those lacking a person. In English impersonal verbs are usually used with the neuter pronoun "it" (as in "It seems," or "it is raining"). Latin uses the third person singular. These verbs lack a fourth principal part. A few examples are:
The future active participle is normally formed by removing the "–um" from the supine, and adding a "–ūrus." However, some deviations occur.
Several verb forms may occur in alternative forms (in some authors these forms are fairly common, if not more common than the canonical ones):
Like in most Romance languages, syncopated forms and contractions are present in Latin. They may occur in the following instances: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18000 |
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott (; November 29, 1832March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet best known as the author of the novel "Little Women" (1868) and its sequels "Little Men" (1871) and "Jo's Boys" (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults that focused on spies and revenge.
Published in 1868, "Little Women" is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted many times to the stage, film, and television.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. All her life she was active in such reform movements as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke, two days after her father died, in Boston on March 6, 1888.
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, which is now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on her father's 33rd birthday. She was the daughter of transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and social worker Abby May and the second of four daughters: Anna Bronson Alcott was the eldest; Elizabeth Sewall Alcott and Abigail May Alcott were the two youngest. As a child, she was a tomboy who preferred boys’ games. The family moved to Boston in 1834, where Alcott's father established an experimental school and joined the Transcendental Club with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Bronson Alcott's opinions on education and tough views on child-rearing as well as his moments of mental instability shaped young Alcott's mind with a desire to achieve perfection, a goal of the transcendentalists. His attitudes towards Alcott's wild and independent behavior, and his inability to provide for his family, created conflict between Bronson Alcott and his wife and daughters. Abigail resented her husband's inability to recognize her sacrifices and related his thoughtlessness to the larger issue of the inequality of sexes. She passed this recognition and desire to redress wrongs done to women on to Louisa.
In 1840, after several setbacks with the school, the Alcott family moved to a cottage on of land, situated along the Sudbury River in Concord, Massachusetts. The three years they spent at the rented Hosmer Cottage were described as idyllic. By 1843, the Alcott family moved, along with six other members of the Consociate Family, to the Utopian Fruitlands community for a brief interval in 1843–1844. After the collapse of the Utopian Fruitlands, they moved on to rented rooms and finally, with Abigail May Alcott's inheritance and financial help from Emerson, they purchased a homestead in Concord. They moved into the home they named "Hillside" on April 1, 1845, but had moved on by 1852 when it was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne who renamed it The Wayside. Moving 22 times in 30 years, the Alcotts returned to Concord once again in 1857 and moved into Orchard House, a two-story clapboard farmhouse, in the spring of 1858.
Alcott's early education included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau who inspired her to write "Thoreau's Flute" based on her time at Walden Pond. Most of the education she received though, came from her father who was strict and believed in "the sweetness of self-denial." She also received some instruction from writers and educators such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Julia Ward Howe, all of whom were family friends. She later described these early years in a newspaper sketch entitled "Transcendental Wild Oats." The sketch was reprinted in the volume "Silver Pitchers" (1876), which relates the family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" at Fruitlands.
Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her sisters also supported the family, working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants. Only the youngest, May, was able to attend public school. Due to all of these pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott. Her first book was "Flower Fables" (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott is quoted as saying "I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day" and was driven in life not to be poor.
In 1847 she and her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, when they housed a fugitive slave for one week and had discussions with Frederick Douglass. Alcott read and admired the "Declaration of Sentiments", published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, advocating for women's suffrage and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election. The 1850s were hard times for the Alcotts, and in 1854 Louisa found solace at the Boston Theatre where she wrote The Rival Prima Donnas, which she later burned due to a quarrel between the actresses on who would play what role. At one point in 1857, unable to find work and filled with such despair, Alcott contemplated suicide. During that year, she read Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Brontë and found many parallels to her own life. In 1858, her younger sister Elizabeth died, and her older sister Anna married a man named John Pratt. This felt, to Alcott, to be a breaking up of their sisterhood.
As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860 Alcott began writing for the "Atlantic Monthly". When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital in Georgetown, DC, for six weeks in 1862–1863. She intended to serve three months as a nurse, but halfway through she contracted typhoid and became deathly ill, though she eventually recovered. Her letters homerevised and published in the Boston anti-slavery paper "Commonwealth" and collected as "Hospital Sketches" (1863, republished with additions in 1869)brought her first critical recognition for her observations and humor. She wrote about the mismanagement of hospitals and the indifference and callousness of some of the surgeons she encountered, and about her own passion for seeing the war first hand. Her main character, Tribulation Periwinkle, showed a passage from innocence to maturity and is a "serious and eloquent witness". Her novel "Moods" (1864), based on her own experience, was also promising.
After her service as a nurse, Alcott's father wrote her a heartfelt poem titled "To Louisa May Alcott. From her father". The poem describes how proud her father is of her for working as a nurse and helping injured soldiers as well as bringing cheer and love into their home. He ends the poem by telling her she's in his heart for being a selfless faithful daughter. This poem was featured in the book "Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889)". This poem is also featured in the book "Louisa May Alcott, the Children's Friend" that talks about her childhood and close relationship with her father.
In the mid-1860s Alcott wrote passionate, fiery novels and sensational stories under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard. Among these are "A Long Fatal Love Chase" and "Pauline's Passion and Punishment". Her protagonists for these books are strong and smart. She also produced stories for children, and after they became popular, she did not go back to writing for adults. Other books she wrote are the novelette "A Modern Mephistopheles" (1875), which people thought Julian Hawthorne wrote, and the semi-autobiographical novel "Work" (1873).
Alcott became even more successful with the first part of "Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy" (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts, published by the Roberts Brothers. Alcott originally delayed writing the novel, seeing herself incapable of writing a story for girls, despite her publisher, Thomas Niles' urges for her to do so. Part two, or "Part Second", also known as "Good Wives" (1869), followed the March sisters into adulthood and marriage. "Little Men" (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of "Little Women". "Jo's Boys" (1886) completed the "March Family Saga".
In "Little Women", Alcott based her heroine "Jo" on herself. But whereas Jo marries at the end of the story, Alcott remained single throughout her life. She explained her "spinsterhood" in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body. … because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.” However, Alcott's romance while in Europe with the young Polish man Ladislas "Laddie" Wisniewski was detailed in her journals but then deleted by Alcott herself before her death. Alcott identified Laddie as the model for Laurie in "Little Women". Likewise, every character seems to be paralleled to some extent, from Beth's death mirroring Lizzie's to Jo's rivalry with the youngest, Amy, as Alcott felt a sort of rivalry for (Abigail) May, at times. Though Alcott never married, she did take in May's daughter, Louisa, after May's untimely death in 1879, caring for little "Lulu" for the next eight years.
"Little Women" was well-received, with critics and audiences finding it suitable for many age groups. A reviewer of "Eclectic Magazine" called it "the very best of books to reach the hearts of the young of any age from six to sixty". It was a fresh, natural representation of daily life. With the success of "Little Women", Alcott shied away from the attention and would sometimes act as a servant when fans would come to her house.
Along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, Alcott was part of a group of female authors during the Gilded Age, who addressed women's issues in a modern and candid manner. Their works were, as one newspaper columnist of the period commented, "among the decided 'signs of the times'".
In 1877 Alcott was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston. After her youngest sister May died in 1879, Louisa took over the care of her niece, Lulu, who was named after Louisa. Alcott suffered chronic health problems in her later years, including vertigo. She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning. During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Recent analysis of Alcott's illness suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not mercury exposure. However, mercury is a known trigger for autoimmune diseases as well. An 1870 portrait of Alcott does show her cheeks to be quite flushed, perhaps with the "butterfly rash" across cheeks and nose which is often characteristic of lupus, but there is no conclusive evidence available for a firm diagnosis.
Alcott died of a stroke at age 55 in Boston, on March 6, 1888, two days after her father's death. Louisa's last known words were, "Is it not meningitis?" She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as "Authors' Ridge". Her niece Lulu was only eight years old when Louisa died. She was cared for by Anna Alcott Pratt, then reunited with her father in Europe and lived abroad until her death in 1976.
Louisa frequently wrote in her journals about going on long walks and runs. She challenged prevailing social norms regarding gender by encouraging her young female readers to run as well.
The Alcotts' Concord, MA home, Orchard House (c. 1650), where the family lived for 20 years and where "Little Women" was written and set in 1868, has been a historic house museum since 1912, and pays homage to the Alcotts by focusing on public education and historic preservation. Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Harriet Reisen wrote "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind "Little Women,"" which later became a PBS documentary directed by Nancy Porter. In 2008, John Matteson wrote "Eden's Outcasts - The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father", which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Louisa May Alcott was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.
"Little Women" inspired film versions in 1933, 1949, 1994, 2018, and 2019. The novel also inspired television series in 1958, 1970, 1978, and 2017, and anime versions in 1981 and 1987.
"Little Men" inspired film versions in 1934, 1940, and 1998. This novel also was the basis for a 1998 television series.
Other films based on Alcott novels and stories are "An Old-Fashioned Girl" (1949), "The Inheritance" (1997), and "An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving" (2008). In 2009 PBS produced an "American Masters" episode titled "Louisa May Alcott – The Woman Behind 'Little Women' ". In 2016 a Google Doodle of the author was created by Google artist Sophie Diao.
A dramatized version of Alcott appeared as a character in the television series "Dickinson", in the episode "There's a Certain Slant of Light," which premiered on November 1, 2019. Alcott was portrayed by Zosia Mamet..
Sources
Archival materials
Other | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18002 |
LALR parser
In computer science, an LALR parser or Look-Ahead LR parser is a simplified version of a canonical LR parser, to parse (separate and analyze) a text according to a set of production rules specified by a formal grammar for a computer language. ("LR" means left-to-right, rightmost derivation.)
The LALR parser was invented by Frank DeRemer in his 1969 PhD dissertation, "Practical Translators for LR(k) languages", in his treatment of the practical difficulties at that time of implementing LR(1) parsers. He showed that the LALR parser has more language recognition power than the LR(0) parser, while requiring the same number of states as the LR(0) parser for a language that can be recognized by both parsers. This makes the LALR parser a memory-efficient alternative to the LR(1) parser for languages that are LALR. It was also proven that there exist LR(1) languages that are not LALR. Despite this weakness, the power of the LALR parser is sufficient for many mainstream computer languages, including Java, though the reference grammars for many languages fail to be LALR due to being ambiguous.
The original dissertation gave no algorithm for constructing such a parser given a formal grammar. The first algorithms for LALR parser generation were published in 1973. In 1982, DeRemer and Tom Pennello published an algorithm that generated highly memory-efficient LALR parsers. LALR parsers can be automatically generated from a grammar by an LALR parser generator such as Yacc or GNU Bison. The automatically generated code may be augmented by hand-written code to augment the power of the resulting parser.
In 1965, Donald Knuth invented the LR parser (Left to Right, Rightmost derivation). The LR parser can recognize any deterministic context-free language in linear-bounded time. Rightmost derivation has very large memory requirements and implementing an LR parser was impractical due to the limited memory of computers at that time. To address this shortcoming, in 1969, Frank DeRemer proposed two simplified versions of the LR parser, namely the Look-Ahead LR (LALR) and the Simple LR parser that had much lower memory requirements at the cost of less language-recognition power, with the LALR parser being the most-powerful alternative. In 1977, memory optimizations for the LR parser were invented but still the LR parser was less memory-efficient than the simplified alternatives.
In 1979, Frank DeRemer and Tom Pennello announced a series of optimizations for the LALR parser that would further improve its memory efficiency. Their work was published in 1982.
Generally, the LALR parser refers to the LALR(1) parser, just as the LR parser generally refers to the LR(1) parser. The "(1)" denotes one-token lookahead, to resolve differences between rule patterns during parsing. Similarly, there is an LALR(2) parser with two-token lookahead, and LALR("k") parsers with "k"-token lookup, but these are rare in actual use. The LALR parser is based on the LR(0) parser, so it can also be denoted LALR(1) = LA(1)LR(0) (1 token of lookahead, LR(0)) or more generally LALR("k") = LA("k")LR(0) (k tokens of lookahead, LR(0)). There is in fact a two-parameter family of LA("k")LR("j") parsers for all combinations of "j" and "k", which can be derived from the LR("j" + "k") parser, but these do not see practical use.
As with other types of LR parsers, an LALR parser is quite efficient at finding the single correct bottom-up parse in a single left-to-right scan over the input stream, because it does not need to use backtracking. Being a lookahead parser by definition, it always uses a lookahead, with being the most-common case.
The LALR(1) parser is less powerful than the LR(1) parser, and more powerful than the SLR(1) parser, though they all use the same production rules. The simplification that the LALR parser introduces consists in merging rules that have identical kernel item sets, because during the LR(0) state-construction process the lookaheads are not known. This reduces the power of the parser because not knowing the lookahead symbols can confuse the parser as to which grammar rule to pick next, resulting in reduce/reduce conflicts. All conflicts that arise in applying a LALR(1) parser to an unambiguous LR(1) grammar are reduce/reduce conflicts. The SLR(1) parser performs further merging, which introduces additional conflicts.
The standard example of an LR(1) grammar that cannot be parsed with the LALR(1) parser, exhibiting such a reduce/reduce conflict, is:
In the LALR table construction, two states will be merged into one state and later the lookaheads will be found to be ambiguous. The one state with lookaheads is:
An LR(1) parser will create two different states (with non-conflicting lookaheads), neither of which is ambiguous. In an LALR parser this one state has conflicting actions (given lookahead c or d, reduce to E or F), a "reduce/reduce conflict"; the above grammar will be declared ambiguous by a LALR parser generator and conflicts will be reported.
To recover, this ambiguity is resolved by choosing E, because it occurs before F in the grammar. However, the resultant parser will not be able to recognize the valid input sequence codice_1, since the ambiguous sequence codice_2 is reduced to codice_3, rather than the correct codice_4, but codice_5 is not in the grammar.
The LALR("j") parsers are incomparable with LL("k") parsers: for any "j" and "k" both greater than 0, there are LALR("j") grammars that are not LL("k") grammars and conversely. In fact, it is undecidable whether a given LL(1) grammar is LALR("k") for any formula_1.
Depending on the presence of empty derivations, a LL(1) grammar can be equal to a SLR(1) or a LALR(1) grammar. If the LL(1) grammar has no empty derivations it is SLR(1) and if all symbols with empty derivations have non-empty derivations it is LALR(1). If symbols having only an empty derivation exist, the grammar may or may not be LALR(1). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18004 |
Language center
The term language center (or more accurately centers, e.g. Broca's area and Wernicke's area) refers to the areas of the brain which serve a particular function for speech processing and production. Language is a core system, which gives humans the capacity to solve difficult problems and provides them with a unique type of social interaction. Language allows individuals to attribute symbols (e.g. words or signs) to specific concepts and display them through sentences and phrases that follow proper grammatical rules. Moreover, speech is the mechanism in which language is orally expressed.Information is exchanged in a larger system including language-related regions. These regions are connected by white matter fiber tracts that make possible the transmission of information between regions. The white matter fibers bunches were recognized to be important for language production after suggesting that it is possible to make a connection between multiple language centers. The three classical language areas that are involved in language production and processing are Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and angular gyrus.
Broca's Area was first suggested to play a role in speech function by the French neurologist and anthropologist Paul Broca in 1861. The basis for this discovery was the analysis of speech problems resulting from injuries to this region of the brain, located in the inferior frontal gyrus. Paul Broca had a patient called Leborgne who could only pronounce the word “tan” when speaking. Paul Broca, after working with another patient with similar impairment, concluded that damage in the inferior frontal gyrus affected articulate language.
Broca’s area is well-known for being the syntactic processing “center”. It has been known since Paul Broca associated speech production with an area in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus, which he called “Broca’s area”. Although this area is in charge of speech production, its particular role in the language system is unknown. However, it is involved in phonological, semantic, and syntactic processing and working memory. The anterior region of Broca’s area is involved in semantic processing, while the posterior region in the phonological processing (Bohsali, 2015). Moreover, the whole of Broca’s area has been shown to have a higher activation while doing reading tasks than other types of tasks.
In a simple explanation of speech production, this area approaches phonological word representation chronologically divided into segments of syllables which then is sent to different motor areas where they are converted into a phonetic code. The study of how this area produces speech has been made with paradigms using both single and complex words.
Broca’s area is correlated with phonological segmentation, unification, and syntactic processing, which are all connected to linguistic information. This area, although it synchronizes the transformation of information within cortical systems involved in spoken word production, does not contribute to the production of single words. The inferior frontal lobe is the one in charge of word production.
Furthermore, Broca’s area is structurally related to the thalamus and both are engaged in language processing. The connectivity between both areas is two thalamic nuclei, the pulvinar, and the ventral nucleus, which are involved in language processing and linguistic functions similar to BA 44 and 45 in Broca’s area. Pulvinar is connected to many frontal regions of the frontal cortex and ventral nucleus is involved in speech production. The frontal speech regions of the brain have been shown to participate in speech sound perception.
Broca's Area is today still considered an important language center, playing a central role in processing syntax, grammar, and sentence structure.
Wernicke’s area was named for German doctor Carl Wernicke, who discovered it in 1874 in the course of his research into aphasias (loss of ability to speak).This area of the brain is involved in language comprehension. Therefore, Wernicke’s area is for understanding oral language. Besides Wernicke’s area, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), supramarginal gyrus (SMG), and angular gyrus (AG) participate in language comprehension. Therefore, language comprehension is not located in a specific area. Contrarily, it involves large regions of the inferior parietal lobe and left temporal.
While the finale of speech production is a sequence of muscle movements, the activation of knowledge about the sequence of phonemes (consonants and vowel speech sounds) that creates a word is a phonological retrieval. Wernicke’s area contributes to phonological retrieval. All speech production tasks (e.g. word retrieval, repetition, and reading aloud) require phonological retrieval. The phonological retrieval system involved in speech repetition is the auditory phoneme perception system and the visual letter perception system is the one that serves for reading aloud. The communicative speech production entails a phase preceding phonological retrieval. The speech comprehension implicates representing sequences of phonemes onto word meaning.
The angular gyrus is an important element in processing concrete and abstract concepts. It also has a role in verbal working memory during retrieval for verbal information and in visual memory for when turning written language into spoken language. The left AG is activated in semantic processing requiring concept retrieval and conceptual integration. Moreover, the left AG is activated during problems of multiplication and addition requiring retrieval of arithmetic factors in verbal memory. Therefore, it is involved in verbal coding of numbers.
The insula is implicated in speech and language, taking part in functional and structural connections with motor, linguistic, sensory, and limbic brain areas. The knowledge about the function of the insula in speech production comes from different studies with patients who suffered from apraxia of speech. These studies have led researchers to know about the involvement of different parts of the insula. These parts are: the left anterior insula, which is related to speech production; and the bilateral anterior insula, involved in misleading speech comprehension.
Many different sources state that the study of the brain and therefore, language disorders, originated in the 19th century and linguistic analysis of those disorders began throughout the 20th century. Studying language impairments in the brain after injuries aids to comprehend how the brain works and how it changes after an injury. When this happens, the brain suffers an impairment that is referred to as “aphasia”. Lesions to Broca's Area resulted primarily in disruptions to speech production; damage to Wernicke's Area, which is located in the lower part of the temporal lobe, lead mainly to disruptions in speech reception.
There are numerous distinctive ways in which language can be affected. Phonemic paraphasia, an attribute of conduction aphasia and Wernicke aphasia, is not the speech comprehension impairment. Instead, it is the speech production damage, where the desire phonemes are selected erroneously or in an incorrect sequence. Therefore, although Wernicke’s aphasia, a combination of phonological retrieval and semantic systems impairment, affects speech comprehension, it also involves speech production damage. Phonemic paraphasia and anomia (impaired word retrieval) are the results of phonological retrieval impairment.
Another lesion that involves impairment in language production and processing is the “apraxia of speech”, a difficulty synchronizing articulators essential for speech production. This lesion is located in the superior pre-central gyrus of the insula and is more likely to occur to patients with Broca’s aphasia. Dominant ventral anterior (VA) nucleus, another type of lesion, is the result of word-finding and semantic paraphasia’s difficulties engaging in language processing. Moreover, individuals with thalamic lesions experience difficulties linking semantic concepts with correct phonological representations in word production.
Dyslexia is a language processing disorder. It involves learning difficulties such as reading, writing, word recognition, phonological recording, numeracy, and spelling. Although having access to appropriate intervention during childhood, these difficulties continue throughout the lifespan. Moreover, children are diagnosed with dyslexia when more than one factor affecting learning, such as reading, appears visible. Children diagnosed with dyslexia that have difficulties in concrete cognitive functioning is called an assumption of specificity, and it helps to diagnose dyslexia.
Some characteristics that distinguish dyslexics are incompetent phonological processing abilities causing misread of unfamiliar words and affecting comprehension; inadequacy of working memory affecting speaking, reading, and writing; errors in oral reading; oral skills difficulties as expressing oneself; and writing skills problems like expressing and spelling errors. Dyslexics not only experience learning difficulties but also other secondary characteristics as having difficulties organizing, planning, social interactions, motor skills, visual perception, and short-term memory. These characteristics affect personal and academic life.
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder caused by damage in the central and/or peripheral nervous system and it is related to degenerative neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Dysarthria is caused by a mechanical difficulty in the vocal cords or neurological disease-producing abnormal articulation of phonemes, such as instead of “b” a “p”. A type of dyspraxia based on distortions of words is called apraxic dysarthria This type is related to facial apraxia and motor aphasia if Broca’s area is involved.
Improvements in computer technology, in the late 20th century, has allowed a better understanding of the correlation between brain and language, and the disorder that this entails. This improvement has permitted a better visualization of the brain structure in high resolution three-dimensional images. It has also allowed to observe brain activity through the blood flow (Dronkers, Ivanova, & Baldo, 2017).
New medical imaging techniques such as PET and fMRI have allowed researchers to generate pictures showing which areas of a living brain are active at a given time. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique used for locating, in the brain, particular functions to different activity related. This technique shows the location and magnitude of neural activity variations, influenced by external stimulation and fluctuation at rest. MRI is a technique that was developed in the 20th century to observe brain activity in healthy and abnormal brains. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging or diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a technique use for track white matter bundles "in vivo" and gives information of the internal fibrous structure by the measure of water diffusion. This diffusion tensor is used for infer white matter connectivity.
In the past, research was primarily based on observations of loss of ability resulting from damage to the cerebral cortex. Indeed, medical imaging has represented a radical step forward for research on speech processing. Since then, a whole series of relatively large areas of the brain are involved in speech processing. In more recent research, subcortical regions (those lying below the cerebral cortex such as the putamen and the caudate nucleus), as well as the pre-motor areas (BA 6), have received increased attention. It is now generally assumed that the following structures of the cerebral cortex near the primary and secondary auditory cortices play a fundamental role in speech processing:
· "Superior temporal gyrus" (STG): morphosyntactic processing (anterior section), integration of syntactic and semantic information (posterior section)
· "Inferior frontal gyrus" (IFG, Brodmann area (BA) 45/47): syntactic processing, working memory
· "Inferior frontal gyrus" (IFG, BA 44): syntactic processing, working memory
· "Middle temporal gyrus" (MTG): lexical semantic processing
· Angular gyrus (AG): semantic processes (posterior temporal cortex)
The left hemisphere is usually dominant in right-handed people, although bilateral activations are not uncommon in the area of syntactic processing. It is now accepted that the right hemisphere plays an important role in the processing of suprasegmental acoustic features like prosody; which is “the rhythmic and melodic variations in speech”. There are two types of prosodic information: emotional prosody (right hemisphere), which is the emotional that the speaker gives to the speech, and linguistic prosody (left hemisphere), the syntactic and thematic structure of the speech.
Most areas of speech processing develop in the second year of life in the dominant half (hemisphere) of the brain, which often (though not necessarily) corresponds to the opposite of the dominant hand. 98% of right-handed people are left-hemisphere dominant, and the majority of left-handed people are as well.
Computerized tomographic (CT) scans is another technique of the 1970s, which produce low spatial resolution but provides the location of the injury "in vivo". Moreover, Voxel-based Lesion Symptom Mapping (VLSM) and Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) techniques contributed to the understanding that specific brain regions have different roles when supporting speech processing. VLSM has been used to observe complex language functions sustained by different regions. Furthermore, VBM is a helpful technique to analysis language impairments related to neurodegenerative disease.
The differentiation of speech production into only two large sections of the brain (i.e. Broca's and Wernicke's areas), that was accepted long before the advent of medical imaging techniques, is now considered outdated. Broca's Area was first suggested to play a role in speech function by the French neurologist and anthropologist Paul Broca in 1861. The basis for this discovery was the analysis of speech problems resulting from injuries to this region of the brain, located in the inferior frontal gyrus. Lesions to Broca's Area resulted primarily in disruptions to speech production. Damage to Wernicke's Area, which is located in the lower part of the temporal lobe, lead mainly to disruptions in speech reception. This area was named for German doctor Carl Wernicke, who discovered it in 1874 in the course of his research into aphasias (loss of ability to speak).
Broca's Area is today still considered an important language center, playing a central role in processing syntax, grammar, and sentence structure.
In summary, these early research efforts demonstrated that semantic and structural speech production takes place in different areas of the brain. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18008 |
Lift (force)
A fluid flowing around the surface of an object exerts a force on it. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. It contrasts with the drag force, which is the component of the force parallel to the flow direction. Lift conventionally acts in an upward direction in order to counter the force of gravity, but it can act in any direction at right angles to the flow.
If the surrounding fluid is air, the force is called an aerodynamic force. In water or any other liquid, it is called a hydrodynamic force.
Dynamic lift is distinguished from other kinds of lift in fluids. Aerostatic lift or buoyancy, in which an internal fluid is lighter than the surrounding fluid, does not require movement and is used by balloons, blimps, dirigibles, boats, and submarines. Planing lift, in which only the lower portion of the body is immersed in a liquid flow, is used by motorboats, surfboards, and water-skis.
A fluid flowing around the surface of an object applies a force against it. It makes no difference whether the fluid is flowing past a stationary body or the body is moving through a stationary volume of fluid. Lift is the component of this force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction. Lift is always accompanied by a drag force, which is the component of the surface force parallel to the flow direction.
Lift is mostly associated with the wings of fixed-wing aircraft, although it is more widely generated by many other streamlined bodies such as propellers, kites, helicopter rotors, racing car wings, maritime sails, and wind turbines in air, and by sailboat keels, ship's rudders, and hydrofoils in water. Lift is also exploited by flying and gliding animals, especially by birds, bats, and insects, and even in the plant world by the seeds of certain trees.
While the common meaning of the word "lift" assumes that lift opposes weight, lift can be in any direction with respect to gravity, since it is defined with respect to the direction of flow rather than to the direction of gravity. When an aircraft is cruising in straight and level flight, most of the lift opposes gravity. However, when an aircraft is climbing, descending, or banking in a turn the lift is tilted with respect to the vertical. Lift may also act as downforce in some aerobatic manoeuvres, or on the wing on a racing car. Lift may also be largely horizontal, for instance on a sailing ship.
The lift discussed in this article is mainly in relation to airfoils, although marine hydrofoils and propellers share the same physical principles and work in the same way, despite differences between air and water such as density, compressibility, and viscosity.
An airfoil is a streamlined shape that is capable of generating significantly more lift than drag. A flat plate can generate lift, but not as much as a streamlined airfoil, and with somewhat higher drag.
There are several ways to explain how an airfoil generates lift. Some are more complicated or more physically rigorous than others; some have been shown to be incorrect. For example, there are explanations based directly on Newton's laws of motion and explanations based on Bernoulli's principle. Either can be used to explain lift.
An airfoil generates lift by exerting a downward force on the air as it flows past. According to Newton's third law, the air must exert an equal and opposite (upward) force on the airfoil, which is lift.
The airflow changes direction as it passes the airfoil and follows a path that is curved downward. According to Newton's second law, this change in flow direction requires a downward force applied to the air by the airfoil. Then Newton's third law requires the air to exert an upward force on the airfoil; thus a reaction force, lift, is generated opposite to the directional change. In the case of an airplane wing, the wing exerts a downward force on the air and the air exerts an upward force on the wing.
The downward turning of the flow is not produced solely by the lower surface of the airfoil, and the air flow above the airfoil accounts for much of the downward-turning action.
Bernoulli's principle states that there is a direct mathematical relationship between the pressure of a fluid and the speed of that fluid, so if one knows the speed at all points within the airflow one can calculate the pressure, and vice versa. For any airfoil generating lift, there must be a pressure imbalance, i.e. lower average air pressure on the top than on the bottom. Bernoulli's principle states that this pressure difference must be accompanied by a speed difference.
Starting with the flow pattern observed in both theory and experiments, the increased flow speed over the upper surface can be explained in terms of streamtube pinching and conservation of mass.
For incompressible flow, the rate of volume flow (e.g. volume units per minute) must be constant within each streamtube since matter is not created or destroyed. If a streamtube becomes narrower, the flow speed must increase in the narrower region to maintain the constant flow rate, to satisfy the principle of conservation of mass.
The upper streamtubes constrict as they flow up and around the airfoil. Conservation of mass says that the flow speed must increase as the stream tube area decreases. Similarly, the lower streamtubes expand and their flowrate slows.
From Bernoulli's principle, the pressure on the upper surface where the flow is moving faster is lower than the pressure on the lower surface where it is moving slower. This pressure difference creates a net aerodynamic force, pointing upward.
As explained below under a more comprehensive physical explanation, producing a lift force requires maintaining pressure differences in both the vertical and horizontal directions, and thus requires both downward turning of the flow and changes in flow speed consistent with Bernoulli's principle. The simplified explanations given above are therefore incomplete because they define lift in terms of only one or the other. And depending on the details, they have other shortcomings as well.
The explanation based on flow deflection and Newton's laws is correct but is incomplete. It does not explain how the airfoil can impart downward turning to a much deeper swath of the flow than it actually touches. Further, it doesn't explain how the pressure differences in the horizontal direction are sustained. That is, it leaves out the Bernoulli part of the interaction.
Explanations based on increased flow speed and Bernoulli's principle first try to establish that there is higher flow speed over the upper surface, but they fail to explain correctly what causes the flow to speed up:
Bernoulli-only explanations imply that a speed difference arises from causes other than a pressure difference, and that the speed difference then leads to a pressure difference by Bernoulli's principle. This implied one-way causation is a misconception. The real cause-and-effect relationship between pressure and velocity is reciprocal. Finally, Bernoulli-only explanations don't explain how the pressure differences in the vertical direction are sustained. That is, they leave out the downward-turning part of the interaction.
Many alternative explanations for the generation of lift by an airfoil have been put forward, most intended to explain the phenomenon of lift to a general audience. Although the explanations may share features in common with the explanations above, additional assumptions and simplifications may be introduced. Some explanations introduce assumptions which proved to be wrong, such as "equal transit-time", and some used controversial terminology, such as "Coandă effect".
Basic or popular sources often describe the "equal transit-time" theory of lift, which incorrectly assumes that the parcels of air that divide at the leading edge of an airfoil must rejoin at the trailing edge, forcing the air traveling along the longer upper surface to go faster. Bernoulli's principle is then cited to conclude that since the air moves slower along the bottom of the wing, the air pressure must be higher, pushing the wing up.
However, there is no physical principle that requires equal transit time and experimental results show that this assumption is false. In fact, the air moving over the top of an airfoil generating lift moves "much" "faster" than the equal transit theory predicts. Further, the theory violates Newton's third law of motion, since it describes a force on the wing with no opposite force.
The assertion that the air must arrive simultaneously at the trailing edge is sometimes referred to as the "equal transit-time fallacy".
In its original sense, the "Coandă effect" refers to the tendency of a fluid jet to stay attached to an adjacent surface that curves away from the flow, and the resultant entrainment of ambient air into the flow. The effect is named for Henri Coandă, the Romanian aerodynamicist who exploited it in many of his patents.
More broadly, some consider the effect to include the tendency of any fluid boundary layer to adhere to a curved surface, not just the boundary layer accompanying a fluid jet. It is in this broader sense that the Coandă effect is used by some to explain why airflow remains attached to the top side of an airfoil. Jef Raskin, for example, describes a simple demonstration, using a straw to blow over the upper surface of a wing. The wing deflects upwards, thus demonstrating that the Coandă effect creates lift. This demonstration correctly demonstrates the Coandă effect as a fluid jet (the exhaust from a straw) adhering to a curved surface (the wing). However, the upper surface in this flow is a complicated, vortex-laden mixing layer, while on the lower surface the flow is quiescent. The physics of this demonstration are very different from that of the general flow over the wing. The usage in this sense is encountered in some popular references on aerodynamics. This is a controversial use of the term "Coandă effect." The more established view in the aerodynamics field is that the Coandă effect is defined in the more limited sense above, and the flow following the upper surface simply reflects an absence of boundary-layer separation; thus it is not an example of the Coandă effect.
Lift is a result of pressure differences and depends on angle of attack, airfoil shape, air density, and airspeed.
Pressure is the normal force per unit area exerted by the air on itself and on surfaces that it touches. The lift force is transmitted through the pressure, which acts perpendicular to the surface of the airfoil. Thus, the net force manifests itself as pressure differences. The direction of the net force implies that the average pressure on the upper surface of the airfoil is lower than the average pressure on the underside.
These pressure differences arise in conjunction with the curved airflow. When a fluid follows a curved path, there is a pressure gradient perpendicular to the flow direction with higher pressure on the outside of the curve and lower pressure on the inside. This direct relationship between curved streamlines and pressure differences, sometimes called the streamline curvature theorem, was derived from Newton's second law by Leonhard Euler in 1754:
The left side of this equation represents the pressure difference perpendicular to the fluid flow. On the right hand side ρ is the density, v is the velocity, and R is the radius of curvature. This formula shows that higher velocities and tighter curvatures create larger pressure differentials and that for straight flow (R → ∞) the pressure difference is zero.
The angle of attack is the angle between the chord line of an airfoil and the oncoming airflow. A symmetrical airfoil will generate zero lift at zero angle of attack. But as the angle of attack increases, the air is deflected through a larger angle and the vertical component of the airstream velocity increases, resulting in more lift. For small angles a symmetrical airfoil will generate a lift force roughly proportional to the angle of attack.
As the angle of attack increases, the lift reaches a maximum at some angle; increasing the angle of attack beyond this critical angle of attack causes the upper-surface flow to separate from the wing; there is less deflection downward so the airfoil generates less lift. The airfoil is said to be stalled.
The lift force depends on the shape of the airfoil, especially the amount of camber (curvature such that the upper surface is more convex than the lower surface, as illustrated at right). Increasing the camber generally increases lift.
Cambered airfoils will generate lift at zero angle of attack. When the chord line is horizontal, the trailing edge has a downward direction and since the air follows the trailing edge it is deflected downward. When a cambered airfoil is upside down, the angle of attack can be adjusted so that the lift force is upwards. This explains how a plane can fly upside down.
The ambient flow conditions which affect lift include the fluid density, viscosity and speed of flow. Density is affected by temperature, and by the medium's acoustic velocity - i.e. by compressibility effects.
Lift is proportional to the density of the air and approximately proportional to the square of the flow speed. Lift also depends on the size of the wing, being generally proportional to the wing's area projected in the lift direction. In calculations it is convenient to quantify lift in terms of a lift coefficient based on these factors.
No matter how smooth the surface of an airfoil seems, any surface is rough on the scale of air molecules. Air molecules flying into the surface bounce off the rough surface in random directions relative to their original velocities. The result is that when the air is viewed as a continuous material, it is seen to be unable to slide along the surface, and the air's velocity relative to the airfoil decreases to nearly zero at the surface (i.e., the air molecules "stick" to the surface instead of sliding along it), something known as the no-slip condition. Because the air at the surface has near-zero velocity but the air away from the surface is moving, there is a thin boundary layer in which air close to the surface is subjected to a shearing motion. The air's viscosity resists the shearing, giving rise to a shear stress at the airfoil's surface called skin friction drag. Over most of the surface of most airfoils, the boundary layer is naturally turbulent, which increases skin friction drag.
Under usual flight conditions, the boundary layer remains attached to both the upper and lower surfaces all the way to the trailing edge, and its effect on the rest of the flow is modest. Compared to the predictions of inviscid flow theory, in which there is no boundary layer, the attached boundary layer reduces the lift by a modest amount and modifies the pressure distribution somewhat, which results in a viscosity-related pressure drag over and above the skin friction drag. The total of the skin friction drag and the viscosity-related pressure drag is usually called the profile drag.
An airfoil's maximum lift at a given airspeed is limited by boundary-layer separation. As the angle of attack is increased, a point is reached where the boundary layer can no longer remain attached to the upper surface. When the boundary layer separates, it leaves a region of recirculating flow above the upper surface, as illustrated in the flow-visualization photo at right. This is known as the "stall", or "stalling". At angles of attack above the stall, lift is significantly reduced, though it does not drop to zero. The maximum lift that can be achieved before stall, in terms of the lift coefficient, is generally less than 1.5 for single-element airfoils and can be more than 3.0 for airfoils with high-lift slotted flaps and leading-edge devices deployed.
The flow around bluff bodies – i.e. without a streamlined shape, or stalling airfoils – may also generate lift, in addition to a strong drag force. This lift may be steady, or it may oscillate due to vortex shedding. Interaction of the object's flexibility with the vortex shedding may enhance the effects of fluctuating lift and cause vortex-induced vibrations. For instance, the flow around a circular cylinder generates a Kármán vortex street: vortices being shed in an alternating fashion from the cylinder's sides. The oscillatory nature of the flow produces a fluctuating lift force on the cylinder, even though the net (mean) force is negligible. The lift force frequency is characterised by the dimensionless Strouhal number, which depends on the Reynolds number of the flow.
For a flexible structure, this oscillatory lift force may induce vortex-induced vibrations. Under certain conditions – for instance resonance or strong spanwise correlation of the lift force – the resulting motion of the structure due to the lift fluctuations may be strongly enhanced. Such vibrations may pose problems and threaten collapse in tall man-made structures like industrial chimneys.
In the Magnus effect, a lift force is generated by a spinning cylinder in a freestream. Here the mechanical rotation acts on the boundary layer, causing it to separate at different locations on the two sides of the cylinder. The asymmetric separation changes the effective shape of the cylinder as far as the flow is concerned such that the cylinder acts like a lifting airfoil with circulation in the outer flow.
As described above under "Simplified physical explanations of lift on an airfoil", there are two main popular explanations: one based on downward deflection of the flow (Newton's laws), and one based on pressure differences accompanied by changes in flow speed (Bernoulli's principle). Either of these, by itself, correctly identifies some aspects of the lifting flow but leaves other important aspects of the phenomenon unexplained. A more comprehensive explanation involves both downward deflection and pressure differences (including changes in flow speed associated with the pressure differences), and requires looking at the flow in more detail.
The airfoil shape and angle of attack work together so that the airfoil exerts a downward force on the air as it flows past. According to Newton's third law, the air must then exert an equal and opposite (upward) force on the airfoil, which is the lift.
The net force exerted by the air occurs as a pressure difference over the airfoil's surfaces. Pressure in a fluid is always positive in an absolute sense, so that pressure must always be thought of as pushing, and never as pulling. The pressure thus pushes inward on the airfoil everywhere on both the upper and lower surfaces. The flowing air reacts to the presence of the wing by reducing the pressure on the wing's upper surface and increasing the pressure on the lower surface. The pressure on the lower surface pushes up harder than the reduced pressure on the upper surface pushes down, and the net result is upward lift.
The pressure difference which results in lift acts directly on the airfoil surfaces; however, understanding how the pressure difference is produced requires understanding what the flow does over a wider area.
An airfoil affects the speed and direction of the flow over a wide area, producing a pattern called a "velocity field". When an airfoil produces lift, the flow ahead of the airfoil is deflected upward, the flow above and below the airfoil is deflected downward, and the flow behind the airfoil is deflected upward again, leaving the air far behind the airfoil in the same state as the oncoming flow far ahead. The flow above the upper surface is sped up, while the flow below the airfoil is slowed down. Together with the upward deflection of air in front and the downward deflection of the air immediately behind, this establishes a net circulatory component of the flow. The downward deflection and the changes in flow speed are pronounced and extend over a wide area, as can be seen in the flow animation on the right. These differences in the direction and speed of the flow are greatest close to the airfoil and decrease gradually far above and below. All of these features of the velocity field also appear in theoretical models for lifting flows.
The pressure is also affected over a wide area, in a pattern of non-uniform pressure called a "pressure field". When an airfoil produces lift, there is a diffuse region of low pressure above the airfoil, and usually a diffuse region of high pressure below, as illustrated by the isobars (curves of constant pressure) in the drawing. The pressure difference that acts on the surface is just part of this pressure field.
The non-uniform pressure exerts forces on the air in the direction from higher pressure to lower pressure. The direction of the force is different at different locations around the airfoil, as indicated by the block arrows in the "pressure distribution with isobars" figure. Air above the airfoil is pushed toward the center of the low-pressure region, and air below the airfoil is pushed outward from the center of the high-pressure region.
According to "Newton's second law", a force causes air to accelerate in the direction of the force. Thus the vertical arrows in the "pressure distribution with isobars" figure indicate that air above and below the airfoil is accelerated, or turned downward, and that the non-uniform pressure is thus the cause of the downward deflection of the flow visible in the flow animation. To produce this downward turning, the airfoil must have a positive angle of attack or have its rear portion curved downward as on an airfoil with camber. Note that the downward turning of the flow over the upper surface is the result of the air being pushed downward by higher pressure above it than below it. Some explanations that refer to the "Coandă effect" suggest that viscosity plays a key role in the downward turning, but this is false. (see below under "Controversy regarding the Coandă effect").
The arrows ahead of the airfoil indicate that the flow ahead of the airfoil is deflected upward, and the arrows behind the airfoil indicate that the flow behind is deflected upward again, after being deflected downward over the airfoil. These deflections are also visible in the flow animation.
The arrows ahead of the airfoil and behind also indicate that air passing through the low-pressure region above the airfoil is sped up as it enters, and slowed back down as it leaves. Air passing through the high-pressure region below the airfoil sees the opposite - it is slowed down and then sped up. Thus the non-uniform pressure is also the cause of the changes in flow speed visible in the flow animation. The changes in flow speed are consistent with "Bernoulli's principle", which states that in a steady flow without viscosity, lower pressure means higher speed, and higher pressure means lower speed.
Thus changes in flow direction and speed are directly caused by the non-uniform pressure. But this cause-and-effect relationship is not just one-way; it works in both directions simultaneously. The air's motion is affected by the pressure differences, but the existence of the pressure differences depends on the air's motion. The relationship is thus a mutual, or reciprocal, interaction: Air flow changes speed or direction in response to pressure differences, and the pressure differences are sustained by the air's resistance to changing speed or direction. A pressure difference can exist only if something is there for it to push against. In aerodynamic flow, the pressure difference pushes against the air's inertia, as the air is accelerated by the pressure difference. This is why the air's mass is part of the calculation, and why lift depends on air density.
Sustaining the pressure difference that exerts the lift force on the airfoil surfaces requires sustaining a pattern of non-uniform pressure in a wide area around the airfoil. This requires maintaining pressure differences in both the vertical and horizontal directions, and thus requires both downward turning of the flow and changes in flow speed according to Bernoulli's principle. The pressure differences and the changes in flow direction and speed sustain each other in a mutual interaction. The pressure differences follow naturally from Newton's second law and from the fact that flow along the surface follows the predominantly downward-sloping contours of the airfoil. And the fact that the air has mass is crucial to the interaction.
Producing a lift force requires both downward turning of the flow and changes in flow speed consistent with Bernoulli's principle. Each of the simplified explanations given above in Simplified physical explanations of lift on an airfoil falls short by trying to explain lift in terms of only one or the other, thus explaining only part of the phenomenon and leaving other parts unexplained.
When the pressure distribution on the airfoil surface is known, determining the total lift requires adding up the contributions to the pressure force from local elements of the surface, each with its own local value of pressure. The total lift is thus the integral of the pressure, in the direction perpendicular to the farfield flow, over the airfoil surface.
formula_2
where:
The above lift equation neglects the skin friction forces, which are small compared to the pressure forces.
By using the streamwise vector i parallel to the freestream in place of k in the integral, we obtain an expression for the pressure drag "Dp" (which includes the pressure portion of the profile drag and, if the wing is three-dimensional, the induced drag). If we use the spanwise vector j, we obtain the side force "Y".
The validity of this integration generally requires the airfoil shape to be a closed curve that is piecewise smooth.
Lift depends on the size of the wing, being approximately proportional to the wing area. It is often convenient to quantify the lift of a given airfoil by its "lift coefficient" formula_4, which defines its overall lift in terms of a unit area of the wing.
If the value of formula_4 for a wing at a specified angle of attack is given, then the lift produced for specific flow conditions can be determined:
where
Mathematical theories of lift are based on continuum fluid mechanics, assuming that air flows as a continuous fluid. Lift is generated in accordance with the fundamental principles of physics, the most relevant being the following three principles:
Because an airfoil affects the flow in a wide area around it, the conservation laws of mechanics are embodied in the form of partial differential equations combined with a set of boundary condition requirements which the flow has to satisfy at the airfoil surface and far away from the airfoil.
To predict lift requires solving the equations for a particular airfoil shape and flow condition, which generally requires calculations that are so voluminous that they are practical only on a computer, through the methods of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Determining the net aerodynamic force from a CFD solution requires "adding up" (integrating) the forces due to pressure and shear determined by the CFD over every surface element of the airfoil as described under "pressure integration".
The Navier–Stokes equations (NS) provide the potentially most accurate theory of lift, but in practice, capturing the effects of turbulence in the boundary layer on the airfoil surface requires sacrificing some accuracy, and requires use of the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (RANS). Simpler but less accurate theories have also been developed.
These equations represent conservation of mass, Newton's second law (conservation of momentum), conservation of energy, the Newtonian law for the action of viscosity, the Fourier heat conduction law, an equation of state relating density, temperature, and pressure, and formulas for the viscosity and thermal conductivity of the fluid.
In principle, the NS equations, combined with boundary conditions of no through-flow and no slip at the airfoil surface, could be used to predict lift in any situation in ordinary atmospheric flight with high accuracy. However, airflows in practical situations always involve turbulence in the boundary layer next to the airfoil surface, at least over the aft portion of the airfoil. Predicting lift by solving the NS equations in their raw form would require the calculations to resolve the details of the turbulence, down to the smallest eddy. This is not yet possible, even on the most powerful current computer. So in principle the NS equations provide a complete and very accurate theory of lift, but practical prediction of lift requires that the effects of turbulence be modeled in the RANS equations rather than computed directly.
These are the NS equations with the turbulence motions averaged over time, and the effects of the turbulence on the time-averaged flow represented by turbulence modeling (an additional set of equations based on a combination of dimensional analysis and empirical information on how turbulence affects a boundary layer in a time-averaged average sense). A RANS solution consists of the time-averaged velocity vector, pressure, density, and temperature defined at a dense grid of points surrounding the airfoil.
The amount of computation required is a minuscule fraction (billionths) of what would be required to resolve all of the turbulence motions in a raw NS calculation, and with large computers available it is now practical to carry out RANS calculations for complete airplanes in three dimensions. Because turbulence models are not perfect, the accuracy of RANS calculations is imperfect, but it is adequate for practical aircraft design. Lift predicted by RANS is usually within a few percent of the actual lift.
The Euler equations are the NS equations without the viscosity, heat conduction, and turbulence effects. As with a RANS solution, an Euler solution consists of the velocity vector, pressure, density, and temperature defined at a dense grid of points surrounding the airfoil. While the Euler equations are simpler than the NS equations, they do not lend themselves to exact analytic solutions.
Further simplification is available through potential flow theory, which reduces the number of unknowns to be determined, and makes analytic solutions possible in some cases, as described below.
Either Euler or potential-flow calculations predict the pressure distribution on the airfoil surfaces roughly correctly for angles of attack below stall, where they might miss the total lift by as much as 10-20%. At angles of attack above stall, inviscid calculations do not predict that stall has happened, and as a result they grossly overestimate the lift.
In potential-flow theory, the flow is assumed to be irrotational, i.e. that small fluid parcels have no net rate of rotation. Mathematically, this is expressed by the statement that the curl of the velocity vector field is everywhere equal to zero. Irrotational flows have the convenient property that the velocity can be expressed as the gradient of a scalar function called a potential. A flow represented in this way is called potential flow.
In potential-flow theory, the flow is assumed to be incompressible. Incompressible potential-flow theory has the advantage that the equation (Laplace's equation) to be solved for the potential is linear, which allows solutions to be constructed by superposition of other known solutions. The incompressible-potential-flow equation can also be solved by conformal mapping, a method based on the theory of functions of a complex variable. In the early 20th century, before computers were available, conformal mapping was used to generate solutions to the incompressible potential-flow equation for a class of idealized airfoil shapes, providing some of the first practical theoretical predictions of the pressure distribution on a lifting airfoil.
A solution of the potential equation directly determines only the velocity field. The pressure field is deduced from the velocity field through Bernoulli's equation.
Applying potential-flow theory to a lifting flow requires special treatment and an additional assumption. The problem arises because lift on an airfoil in inviscid flow requires circulation in the flow around the airfoil (See "Circulation and the Kutta–Joukowski theorem" below), but a single potential function that is continuous throughout the domain around the airfoil cannot represent a flow with nonzero circulation. The solution to this problem is to introduce a branch cut, a curve or line from some point on the airfoil surface out to infinite distance, and to allow a jump in the value of the potential across the cut. The jump in the potential imposes circulation in the flow equal to the potential jump and thus allows nonzero circulation to be represented. However, the potential jump is a free parameter that is not determined by the potential equation or the other boundary conditions, and the solution is thus indeterminate. A potential-flow solution exists for any value of the circulation and any value of the lift. One way to resolve this indeterminacy is to impose the Kutta condition, which is that, of all the possible solutions, the physically reasonable solution is the one in which the flow leaves the trailing edge smoothly. The streamline sketches illustrate one flow pattern with zero lift, in which the flow goes around the trailing edge and leaves the upper surface ahead of the trailing edge, and another flow pattern with positive lift, in which the flow leaves smoothly at the trailing edge in accordance with the Kutta condition.
This is potential-flow theory with the further assumptions that the airfoil is very thin and the angle of attack is small. The linearized theory predicts the general character of the airfoil pressure distribution and how it is influenced by airfoil shape and angle of attack, but is not accurate enough for design work. For a 2D airfoil, such calculations can be done in a fraction of a second in a spreadsheet on a PC.
When an airfoil generates lift, several components of the overall velocity field contribute to a net circulation of air around it: the upward flow ahead of the airfoil, the accelerated flow above, the decelerated flow below, and the downward flow behind.
The circulation can be understood as the total amount of "spinning" (or vorticity) of an inviscid fluid around the airfoil.
The Kutta–Joukowski theorem relates the lift per unit width of span of a two-dimensional airfoil to this circulation component of the flow. It is a key element in an explanation of lift that follows the development of the flow around an airfoil as the airfoil starts its motion from rest and a starting vortex is formed and left behind, leading to the formation of circulation around the airfoil. Lift is then inferred from the Kutta-Joukowski theorem. This explanation is largely mathematical, and its general progression is based on logical inference, not physical cause-and-effect.
The Kutta–Joukowski model does not predict how much circulation or lift a two-dimensional airfoil will produce. Calculating the lift per unit span using Kutta–Joukowski requires a known value for the circulation. In particular, if the Kutta condition is met, in which the rear stagnation point moves to the airfoil trailing edge and attaches there for the duration of flight, the lift can be calculated theorically through the conformal mapping method.
The lift generated by a conventional airfoil is dictated by both its design and the flight conditions, such as forward velocity, angle of attack and air density. Lift can be increased by artificially increasing the circulation, for example by boundary-layer blowing or the use of blown flaps. In the Flettner rotor the entire airfoil is circular and spins about a spanwise axis to create the circulation.
The flow around a three-dimensional wing involves significant additional issues, especially relating to the wing tips. For a wing of low aspect ratio, such as a typical delta wing, two-dimensional theories may provide a poor model and three-dimensional flow effects can dominate. Even for wings of high aspect ratio, the three-dimensional effects associated with finite span can affect the whole span, not just close to the tips.
The vertical pressure gradient at the wing tips causes air to flow sideways, out from under the wing then up and back over the upper surface. This reduces the pressure gradient at the wing tip, therefore also reducing lift. The lift tends to decrease in the spanwise direction from root to tip, and the pressure distributions around the airfoil sections change accordingly in the spanwise direction. Pressure distributions in planes perpendicular to the flight direction tend to look like the illustration at right. This spanwise-varying pressure distribution is sustained by a mutual interaction with the velocity field. Flow below the wing is accelerated outboard, flow outboard of the tips is accelerated upward, and flow above the wing is accelerated inboard, which results in the flow pattern illustrated at right.
There is more downward turning of the flow than there would be in a two-dimensional flow with the same airfoil shape and sectional lift, and a higher sectional angle of attack is required to achieve the same lift compared to a two-dimensional flow. The wing is effectively flying in a downdraft of its own making, as if the freestream flow were tilted downward, with the result that the total aerodynamic force vector is tilted backward slightly compared to what it would be in two dimensions. The additional backward component of the force vector is called lift-induced drag.
The difference in the spanwise component of velocity above and below the wing (between being in the inboard direction above and in the outboard direction below) persists at the trailing edge and into the wake downstream. After the flow leaves the trailing edge, this difference in velocity takes place across a relatively thin shear layer called a vortex sheet.
The wingtip flow leaving the wing creates a tip vortex. As the main vortex sheet passes downstream from the trailing edge, it rolls up at its outer edges, merging with the tip vortices. The combination of the wingtip vortices and the vortex sheets feeding them is called the vortex wake.
In addition to the vorticity in the trailing vortex wake there is vorticity in the wing's boundary layer, called 'bound vorticity', which connects the trailing sheets from the two sides of the wing into a vortex system in the general form of a horseshoe. The horseshoe form of the vortex system was recognized by the British aeronautical pioneer Lanchester in 1907.
Given the distribution of bound vorticity and the vorticity in the wake, the Biot–Savart law (a vector-calculus relation) can be used to calculate the velocity perturbation anywhere in the field, caused by the lift on the wing. Approximate theories for the lift distribution and lift-induced drag of three-dimensional wings are based on such analysis applied to the wing's horseshoe vortex system. In these theories, the bound vorticity is usually idealized and assumed to reside at the camber surface inside the wing.
Because the velocity is deduced from the vorticity in such theories, some authors describe the situation to imply that the vorticity is the cause of the velocity perturbations, using terms such as "the velocity induced by the vortex", for example. But attributing mechanical cause-and-effect between the vorticity and the velocity in this way is not consistent with the physics. The velocity perturbations in the flow around a wing are in fact produced by the pressure field.
The flow around a lifting airfoil must satisfy Newton's second law regarding conservation of momentum, both locally at every point in the flow field, and in an integrated sense over any extended region of the flow. For an extended region, Newton's second law takes the form of the "momentum theorem for a control volume", where a control volume can be any region of the flow chosen for analysis. The momentum theorem states that the integrated force exerted at the boundaries of the control volume (a surface integral), is equal to the integrated time rate of change (material derivative) of the momentum of fluid parcels passing through the interior of the control volume. For a steady flow, this can be expressed in the form of the net surface integral of the flux of momentum through the boundary.
The lifting flow around a 2D airfoil is usually analyzed in a control volume that completely surrounds the airfoil, so that the inner boundary of the control volume is the airfoil surface, where the downward force per unit span formula_12 is exerted on the fluid by the airfoil. The outer boundary is usually either a large circle or a large rectangle. At this outer boundary distant from the airfoil, the velocity and pressure are well represented by the velocity and pressure associated with a uniform flow plus a vortex, and viscous stress is negligible, so that the only force that must be integrated over the outer boundary is the pressure. The free-stream velocity is usually assumed to be horizontal, with lift vertically upward, so that the vertical momentum is the component of interest.
For the free-air case (no ground plane), the force formula_12 exerted by the airfoil on the fluid is manifested partly as momentum fluxes and partly as pressure differences at the outer boundary, in proportions that depend on the shape of the outer boundary, as shown in the diagram at right. For a flat horizontal rectangle that is much longer than it is tall, the fluxes of vertical momentum through the front and back are negligible, and the lift is accounted for entirely by the integrated pressure differences on the top and bottom. For a square or circle, the momentum fluxes and pressure differences account for half the lift each. For a vertical rectangle that is much taller than it is wide, the unbalanced pressure forces on the top and bottom are negligible, and lift is accounted for entirely by momentum fluxes, with a flux of upward momentum that enters the control volume through the front accounting for half the lift, and a flux of downward momentum that exits the control volume through the back accounting for the other half.
The results of all of the control-volume analyses described above are consistent with the Kutta–Joukowski theorem described above. Both the tall rectangle and circle control volumes have been used in derivations of the theorem.
An airfoil produces a pressure field in the surrounding air, as explained under "The wider flow around the airfoil" above. The pressure differences associated with this field die off gradually, becoming very small at large distances, but never disappearing altogether. Below the airplane, the pressure field persists as a positive pressure disturbance that reaches the ground, forming a pattern of slightly-higher-than-ambient pressure on the ground, as shown on the right. Although the pressure differences are very small far below the airplane, they are spread over a wide area and add up to a substantial force. For steady, level flight, the integrated force due to the pressure differences is equal to the total aerodynamic lift of the airplane and to the airplane's weight. According to Newton's third law, this pressure force exerted on the ground by the air is matched by an equal-and-opposite upward force exerted on the air by the ground, which offsets all of the downward force exerted on the air by the airplane. The net force due to the lift, acting on the atmosphere as a whole, is therefore zero, and thus there is no integrated accumulation of vertical momentum in the atmosphere, as was noted by Lanchester early in the development of modern aerodynamics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18009 |
Leo III the Isaurian
Leo III the Isaurian, also known as the Syrian (; 685 – 18 June 741), was the Byzantine emperor from 717 until his death in 741 and founder of the Isaurian dynasty. He put an end to the Twenty Years' Anarchy, a period of great instability in the Byzantine Empire between 695 and 717, marked by the rapid succession of several emperors to the throne. He also successfully defended the Empire against the invading Umayyads and forbade the veneration of icons.
Leo, whose original name was Konon, was born in Germanikeia in the Syrian province of Commagene (modern Kahramanmaraş in Turkey). Some, including the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, have claimed that Konon's family had been resettled in Thrace, where he entered the service of Emperor Justinian II, when the latter was advancing on Constantinople with an army of loyalist followers, and horsemen provided by Tervel of Bulgaria in 705. Leo was fluent in Arabic, possibly as a native language, and was described by Theophanes as "the Saracen minded."
After the victory of Justinian II, Konon was dispatched on a diplomatic mission to Alania and Lazica to organize an alliance against the Umayyad Caliphate under Al-Walid I. According to the Chronicle of Theophanes Justinian wanted to get rid of Konon and took back the money that had been given to him to help advance Byzantine interests, thus leaving Konon stranded in Alania. The chronicle describes the mission as successful and Konon returning eventually to Justinian after crossing the Caucasus mountains in May with snowshoes and taking the fortress of Sideron (associated with Tsebelda) on the way.
Konon was appointed commander ("stratēgos") of the Anatolic theme by Emperor Anastasius II. On his deposition, Konon joined with his colleague Artabasdus, the "stratēgos" of the Armeniac theme, in conspiring to overthrow the new Emperor Theodosius III. Artabasdus was betrothed to Anna,
daughter of Leo as part of the agreement.
Leo entered Constantinople on 25 March 717 and forced the abdication of Theodosios III, becoming emperor as Leo III. The new emperor was immediately forced to attend to the Second Arab siege of Constantinople, which commenced in August of the same year. The Arabs were Umayyad forces sent by Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik and serving under his brother Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik. They had taken advantage of the civil discord in the Byzantine Empire to bring a force of 80,000 to 150,000 men and a massive fleet to the Bosphorus.
Careful preparations, begun three years earlier under Anastasius II, and the stubborn resistance put up by Leo wore out the invaders. An important factor in the victory of the Byzantines was their use of Greek fire. The Arab forces also fell victim to Bulgarian reinforcements arriving to aid the Byzantines. Leo was allied with the Bulgarians but the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor was uncertain if they were still serving under Tervel of Bulgaria or his eventual successor Kormesiy of Bulgaria.
Unable to continue the siege in the face of the Bulgarian onslaught, the impenetrability of Constantinople's walls, and their own exhausted provisions, the Arabs were forced to abandon the siege in August, 718. Sulayman himself had died the previous year and his successor Umar II would not attempt another siege. The siege had lasted 12 months.
Having thus saved the Empire from extinction, Leo proceeded to consolidate its administration, which in the previous years of anarchy had become completely disorganized. In 718 he suppressed a rebellion in Sicily and in 719 did the same on behalf of the deposed Emperor Anastasios II.
Leo secured the Empire's frontiers by inviting Slavic settlers into the depopulated districts and by restoring the army to efficiency; when the Umayyad Caliphate renewed its invasions in 726 and 739, as part of the campaigns of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, the Arab forces were decisively beaten, particularly at Akroinon in 740. His military efforts were supplemented by his alliances with the Khazars and the Georgians.
Leo undertook a set of civil reforms including the abolition of the system of prepaying taxes which had weighed heavily upon the wealthier proprietors, the elevation of the serfs into a class of free tenants and the remodelling of Family law, maritime law and criminal law, notably substituting mutilation for the death penalty in many cases. The new measures, which were embodied in a new code called the "Ecloga" ("Selection"), published in 726, met with some opposition on the part of the nobles and higher clergy. The Emperor also undertook some reorganization of the theme structure by creating new themata in the Aegean region.
Leo's most striking legislative reforms dealt with religious matters, especially iconoclasm ("icon-breaking," therefore an iconoclast is an "icon-breaker"). After an apparently successful attempt to enforce the baptism of all Jews and Montanists in the empire (722), he issued a series of edicts against the veneration of images (726–729). This prohibition of a custom, which had been in use among Christians for centuries, may have been inspired by Islamic influence as well as the desire to appease those who had not been Christians, and received the support of the official aristocracy. A majority of the theologians and all the monks opposed these measures with uncompromising hostility, and in the western parts of the Empire the people refused to obey the edict.
A revolt which broke out in Greece, mainly on religious grounds, was crushed by the imperial fleet in 727 (cf. Agallianos Kontoskeles). In 730, Patriarch Germanos I of Constantinople resigned rather than subscribe to an iconoclastic decree. Leo had him replaced by Anastasios, who willingly sided with the Emperor on the question of icons. Thus Leo suppressed the overt opposition of the capital.
In the Italian Peninsula, the defiant attitude of Popes Gregory II and later Gregory III on behalf of image-veneration led to a fierce quarrel with the Emperor. The former summoned councils in Rome to anathematize and excommunicate the iconoclasts (730, 732); in 740 Leo retaliated by transferring Southern Italy and Illyricum from the papal diocese to that of the patriarch of Constantinople. The struggle was accompanied by an armed outbreak in the exarchate of Ravenna in 727, which Leo finally endeavoured to subdue by means of a large fleet. But the destruction of the armament by a storm decided the issue against him; his southern Italian subjects successfully defied his religious edicts, and the Exarchate of Ravenna became effectively detached from the Empire.
Scholars have discussed the mutual influence of Muslim and Byzantine iconoclasm, noting that Caliph Yazid II had issued an iconoclastic edict, also targeting his Christian subjects, already in 721.
Leo III died of dropsy in June 741. He was succeeded by his son, Constantine V.
With his wife Maria, Leo III had four known children: his successor, Constantine V; Anna, who married Artabasdus; Irene; and Kosmo. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18010 |
Lombards
The Lombards () or Langobards () were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.
The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the "History of the Lombards" (written between 787 and 796) that the Lombards descended from a small tribe called the Winnili, who dwelt in southern Scandinavia ("Scadanan") before migrating to seek new lands. Roman-era authors however reported them in the 1st century AD, as one of the Suebian peoples, in what is now northern Germany, near the Elbe river. By the end of the 5th century, the Lombards had moved into the area roughly coinciding with modern Austria and Slovakia north of the Danube river, where they subdued the Heruls and later fought frequent wars with the Gepids. The Lombard king Audoin defeated the Gepid leader Thurisind in 551 or 552; his successor Alboin eventually destroyed the Gepids in 567.
Following this victory, Alboin decided to lead his people to Italy, which had become severely depopulated and devastated after the long Gothic War (535–554) between the Byzantine Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom there. In contrast with the Goths and the Vandals, the Lombards left Scandinavia and descended south through Germany, Austria and Slovenia, only leaving Germanic territory a few decades before reaching Italy. The Lombards would have consequently remained a predominantly Germanic tribe by the time they invaded Italy. The Lombards were joined by numerous Saxons, Heruls, Gepids, Bulgars, Thuringians, and Ostrogoths, and their invasion of Italy was almost unopposed. By late 569 they had conquered all of northern Italy and the principal cities north of the Po River except Pavia, which fell in 572. At the same time, they occupied areas in central Italy and southern Italy. They established a Lombard Kingdom in north and central Italy, later named "Regnum Italicum" ("Kingdom of Italy"), which reached its zenith under the 8th-century ruler Liutprand. In 774, the Kingdom was conquered by the Frankish King Charlemagne and integrated into his Empire. However, Lombard nobles continued to rule southern parts of the Italian peninsula well into the 11th century, when they were conquered by the Normans and added to their County of Sicily. In this period, the southern part of Italy still under Longobardic domination was known to the foreigners by the name Langbarðaland (Land of the Lombards), in the Norse runestones. Their legacy is also apparent in the regional name Lombardy (in the north of Italy).
According to their own traditions, the Lombards initially called themselves the "Winnili". After a reported major victory against the Vandals in the 1st century, they changed their name to "Lombards". The name "Winnili" is generally interpret as 'the wolves', related to the Proto-Germanic root "*wulfaz" 'wolf'."" The name "Lombard" was reportedly derived from the distinctively long beards of the Lombards. It is probably a compound of the Proto-Germanic elements *"langaz" (long) and *"bardaz" (beard).
The Lombards are classified as a Germanic people.
According to their own legends the Lombards originated in southern Scandinavia. The Northern European origins of the Lombards is supported by genetic, anthropological, archaeological and earlier literary evidence.
A legendary account of Lombard origins, history, and practices is the "Historia Langobardorum" ("History of the Lombards") of Paul the Deacon, written in the 8th century. Paul's chief source for Lombard origins, however, is the 7th-century "Origo Gentis Langobardorum" ("Origin of the Lombard People").
The "Origo Gentis Langobardorum" tells the story of a small tribe called the "Winnili" dwelling in southern Scandinavia ("Scadanan") (the "Codex Gothanus" writes that the Winnili first dwelt near a river called "Vindilicus" on the extreme boundary of Gaul). The Winnili were split into three groups and one part left their native land to seek foreign fields. The reason for the exodus was probably overpopulation. The departing people were led by the brothers Ybor and Aio and their mother Gambara and arrived in the lands of "Scoringa", perhaps the Baltic coast or the Bardengau on the banks of the Elbe. Scoringa was ruled by the Vandals and their chieftains, the brothers Ambri and Assi, who granted the Winnili a choice between tribute or war.
The Winnili were young and brave and refused to pay tribute, saying "It is better to maintain liberty by arms than to stain it by the payment of tribute." The Vandals prepared for war and consulted Godan (the god Odin), who answered that he would give the victory to those whom he would see first at sunrise. The Winnili were fewer in number and Gambara sought help from Frea (the goddess Frigg), who advised that all Winnili women should tie their hair in front of their faces like beards and march in line with their husbands. At sunrise, Frea turned her husband's bed so that he was facing east, and woke him. So Godan spotted the Winnili first and asked, "Who are these long-beards?," and Frea replied, "My lord, thou hast given them the name, now give them also the victory." From that moment onwards, the Winnili were known as the "Longbeards" (Latinised as "Langobardi", Italianised as "Longobardi", and Anglicized as "Langobards" or "Lombards").
When Paul the Deacon wrote the "Historia" between 787 and 796 he was a Catholic monk and devoted Christian. He thought the pagan stories of his people "silly" and "laughable". Paul explained that the name "Langobard" came from the length of their beards. A modern theory suggests that the name "Langobard" comes from "Langbarðr", a name of Odin. Priester states that when the Winnili changed their name to "Lombards", they also changed their old agricultural fertility cult to a cult of Odin, thus creating a conscious tribal tradition. Fröhlich inverts the order of events in Priester and states that with the Odin cult, the Lombards grew their beards in resemblance of the Odin of tradition and their new name reflected this. Bruckner remarks that the name of the Lombards stands in close relation to the worship of Odin, whose many names include "the Long-bearded" or "the Grey-bearded", and that the Lombard given name "Ansegranus" ("he with the beard of the gods") shows that the Lombards had this idea of their chief deity. The same Old Norse root Barth or Barði, meaning "beard", is shared with the Heaðobards mentioned in both "Beowulf" and in "Widsith", where they are in conflict with the Danes. They were possibly a branch of the Langobards.
Alternatively some etymological sources suggest an Old High German root, barta, meaning “axe” (and related to English halberd), while Edward Gibbon puts forth an alternative suggestion which argues that:
…Börde (or Börd) still signifies “a fertile plain by the side of a river,” and a district near Magdeburg is still called the lange Börde. According to this view Langobardi would signify “inhabitants of the long bord of the river;” and traces of their name are supposed still to occur in such names as Bardengau and Bardewick in the neighborhood of the Elbe.
According to Daines Barrington translating the Gallaecian Christian priest, historian and theologian Paulus Orosius, the Lombards or Winnili lived originally in the Vinuiloth (Vinovilith) mentioned by Jordanes, in his masterpiece Getica, to the north of Uppsala, Sweden. Scoringa was near the province of Uppland, so just north of Östergötland.
The footnote then explains the etymology of the name Scoringa:
The shores of Uppland and Östergötland are covered with small rocks and rocky islands, which are called in German Schæren and in Swedish Skiaeren. Heal signifies a port in the northern languages; consequently Skiæren-Heal is the port of the Skiæren, a name well adapted to the port of Stockholm, in the Upplandske Skiæren, and the country may be justly called Scorung or Skiærunga.
The legendary king Sceafa of Scandza was an ancient Lombardic king in Anglo-Saxon legend. The Old English poem Widsith, in a listing of famous kings and their countries, has Sceafa [weold] Longbeardum, so naming Sceafa as ruler of the Lombards.
Similarities between Langobardic and Gothic migration traditions have been noted among scholars. These early migration legends suggest that a major shifting of tribes occurred sometime between the 1st and 2nd century BC, which would coincide with the time that the Teutoni and Cimbri left their homelands in Scandinavia and migrated through Germany, eventually invading Roman Italy.
The first mention of the Lombards occurred between AD 9 and 16, by the Roman court historian Velleius Paterculus, who accompanied a Roman expedition as prefect of the cavalry. Paterculus says that under Tiberius the "power of the Langobardi was broken, a race surpassing even the Germans in savagery".
From the combined testimony of Strabo (AD 20) and Tacitus (AD 117), the Lombards dwelt near the mouth of the Elbe shortly after the beginning of the Christian era, next to the Chauci. Strabo states that the Lombards dwelt on both sides of the Elbe. He treats them as a branch of the Suebi, and states that:
Now as for the tribe of the Suebi, it is the largest, for it extends from the Rhenus to the Albis; and a part of them even dwells on the far side of the Albis, as, for instance, the Hermondori and the Langobardi; and at the present time these latter, at least, have, to the last man, been driven in flight out of their country into the land on the far side of the river.
Suetonius wrote that Roman general Nero Drusus defeated a large force of Germans and drove some “to the farther side of the Albis (Elbe)” river. It is conceivable that these refugees were the Langobardi and the Hermunduri mentioned by Strabo not long after.
The German archaeologist Willi Wegewitz defined several Iron Age burial sites at the Lower Elbe as "Langobardic". The burial sites are crematorial and are usually dated from the 6th century BC through the 3rd century AD, so a settlement breakoff seems unlikely. The lands of the lower Elbe fall into the zone of the Jastorf Culture and became Elbe-Germanic, differing from the lands between Rhine, Weser, and the North Sea. Archaeological finds show that the Lombards were an agricultural people.
Tacitus also counted the Lombards as a remote and aggressive Suebian tribe, one of those united in worship of the deity Nerthus, who he referred to as "Mother Earth", and also as subjects of Marobod the King of the Marcomanni. Marobod had made peace with the Romans, and that is why the Lombards were not part of the Germanic confederacy under Arminius at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. In AD 17, war broke out between Arminius and Marobod. Tacitus records:
In 47, a struggle ensued amongst the Cherusci and they expelled their new leader, the nephew of Arminius, from their country. The Lombards appeared on the scene with sufficient power to control the destiny of the tribe that had been the leader in the struggle for independence thirty-eight years earlier, for they restored the deposed leader to sovereignty.
To the south, Cassius Dio reported that just before the Marcomannic Wars, 6,000 Lombards and Obii (sometimes thought to be Ubii), crossed the Danube and invaded Pannonia. The two tribes were defeated, whereupon they ceased their invasion and sent Ballomar, King of the Marcomanni, as ambassador to Aelius Bassus, who was then administering Pannonia. Peace was made and the two tribes returned to their homes, which in the case of the Lombards was the lands of the lower Elbe. At about this time, in his "Germania" Tacitus says that "their scanty numbers are a distinction" because "surrounded by a host of most powerful tribes, they are safe, not by submitting, but by daring the perils of war".
In the mid-2nd century, the Lombards supposedly appeared in the Rhineland, because according to Claudius Ptolemy, the Suebic Lombards lived "below" the Bructeri and Sugambri, and between these and the Tencteri. To their east stretching northwards to the central Elbe are the Suebi Angili. But Ptolemy also mentions the "Laccobardi" to the north of the above-mentioned Suebic territories, east of the Angrivarii on the Weser, and south of the Chauci on the coast, probably indicating a Lombard expansion from the Elbe to the Rhine. This double mention has been interpreted as an editorial error by Gudmund Schütte, in his analysis of Ptolemy. However, the "Codex Gothanus" also mentions "Patespruna" (Paderborn) in connection with the Lombards.
From the 2nd century onwards, many of the Germanic tribes recorded as active during the Principate started to unite into bigger tribal unions, such as the Franks, Alamanni, Bavarii, and Saxons. The Lombards are not mentioned at first, perhaps because they were not initially on the border of Rome, or perhaps because they were subjected to a larger tribal union, like the Saxons. It is, however, highly probable that, when the bulk of the Lombards migrated, a considerable part remained behind and afterwards became absorbed by the Saxon tribes in the Elbe region, while the emigrants alone retained the name of Lombards. However, the "Codex Gothanus" states that the Lombards were subjected by the Saxons around 300 but rose up against them under their first king, Agelmund, who ruled for 30 years. In the second half of the 4th century, the Lombards left their homes, probably due to bad harvests, and embarked on their migration.
The migration route of the Lombards in 489, from their homeland to "Rugiland", encompassed several places: "Scoringa" (believed to be their land on the Elbe shores), "Mauringa", "Golanda", "Anthaib", "Banthaib", and "Vurgundaib" ("Burgundaib"). According to the Ravenna Cosmography, Mauringa was the land east of the Elbe.
The crossing into Mauringa was very difficult. The Assipitti (possibly the Usipetes) denied them passage through their lands and a fight was arranged for the strongest man of each tribe. The Lombard was victorious, passage was granted, and the Lombards reached Mauringa.
The Lombards departed from Mauringa and reached Golanda. Scholar Ludwig Schmidt thinks this was further east, perhaps on the right bank of the Oder. Schmidt considers the name the equivalent of Gotland, meaning simply "good land." This theory is highly plausible; Paul the Deacon mentions the Lombards crossing a river, and they could have reached "Rugiland" from the Upper Oder area via the Moravian Gate.
Moving out of Golanda, the Lombards passed through Anthaib and Banthaib until they reached Vurgundaib, believed to be the old lands of the Burgundes. In Vurgundaib, the Lombards were stormed in camp by "Bulgars" (probably Huns) and were defeated; King Agelmund was killed and Laimicho was made king. He was in his youth and desired to avenge the slaughter of Agelmund. The Lombards themselves were probably made subjects of the Huns after the defeat but rose up and defeated them with great slaughter, gaining great booty and confidence as they "became bolder in undertaking the toils of war."
In the 540s, Audoin (ruled 546–560) led the Lombards across the Danube once more into Pannonia, where they received Imperial subsidies as Justinian encouraged them to battle the Gepids. In 552, the Byzantines, aided by a large contingent of Foederati, notably Lombards, Heruls and Bulgars, defeated the last Ostrogoths led by Teia in the Battle of Taginae.
In approximately 560, Audoin was succeeded by his son Alboin, a young and energetic leader who defeated the neighboring Gepidae and made them his subjects; in 566, he married Rosamund, daughter of the Gepid king Cunimund. In the spring of 568, Alboin led the Lombard migration into Italy. According to the "History of the Lombards," "Then the Langobards, having left Pannonia, hastened to take possession of Italy with their wives and children and all their goods."
Various other peoples who either voluntarily joined or were subjects of King Alboin were also part of the migration. "Whence, even until today, we call the villages in which they dwell Gepidan, Bulgarian, Sarmatian, Pannonian, Suabian, Norican, or by other names of this kind." At least 20,000 Saxon warriors, old allies of the Lombards, and their families joined them in their new migration.
The first important city to fall was "Forum Iulii" (Cividale del Friuli) in northeastern Italy, in 569. There, Alboin created the first Lombard duchy, which he entrusted to his nephew Gisulf. Soon Vicenza, Verona and Brescia fell into Germanic hands. In the summer of 569, the Lombards conquered the main Roman centre of northern Italy, Milan. The area was then recovering from the terrible Gothic Wars, and the small Byzantine army left for its defence could do almost nothing. Longinus, the Exarch sent to Italy by Emperor Justin II, could only defend coastal cities that could be supplied by the powerful Byzantine fleet. Pavia fell after a siege of three years, in 572, becoming the first capital city of the new Lombard kingdom of Italy.
In the following years, the Lombards penetrated further south, conquering Tuscany and establishing two duchies, Spoleto and Benevento under Zotto, which soon became semi-independent and even outlasted the northern kingdom, surviving well into the 12th century. Wherever they went, they were joined by the Ostrogothic population, which was allowed to live peacefully in Italy with their Rugian allies under Roman sovereignty. The Byzantines managed to retain control of the area of Ravenna and Rome, linked by a thin corridor running through Perugia.
When they entered Italy, some Lombards retained their native form of paganism, while some were Arian Christians. Hence they did not enjoy good relations with the Early Christian Church. Gradually, they adopted Roman or Romanized titles, names, and traditions, and partially converted to orthodoxy (in the 7th century), though not without a long series of religious and ethnic conflicts. By the time Paul the Deacon was writing, the Lombard language, dress and even hairstyles had nearly all disappeared "in toto".
The whole Lombard territory was divided into 36 duchies, whose leaders settled in the main cities. The king ruled over them and administered the land through emissaries called "gastaldi". This subdivision, however, together with the independent indocility of the duchies, deprived the kingdom of unity, making it weak even when compared to the Byzantines, especially since these had begun to recover from the initial invasion. This weakness became even more evident when the Lombards had to face the increasing power of the Franks. In response, the kings tried to centralize power over time, but they definitively lost control over Spoleto and Benevento in the attempt.
In 572, Alboin was murdered in Verona in a plot led by his wife, Rosamund, who later fled to Ravenna. His successor, Cleph, was also assassinated, after a ruthless reign of 18 months. His death began an interregnum of years (the "Rule of the Dukes") during which the dukes did not elect any king, a period regarded as a time of violence and disorder. In 586, threatened by a Frankish invasion, the dukes elected Cleph's son, Authari, as king. In 589, he married Theodelinda, daughter of Garibald I of Bavaria, the Duke of Bavaria. The Catholic Theodelinda was a friend of Pope Gregory I and pushed for Christianization. In the meantime, Authari embarked on a policy of internal reconciliation and tried to reorganize royal administration. The dukes yielded half their estates for the maintenance of the king and his court in Pavia. On the foreign affairs side, Authari managed to thwart the dangerous alliance between the Byzantines and the Franks.
Authari died in 591 and was succeeded by Agilulf, the duke of Turin, who also married Theodelinda in the same year. Agilulf successfully fought the rebel dukes of northern Italy, conquering Padua in 601, Cremona and Mantua in 603, and forcing the Exarch of Ravenna to pay tribute. Agilulf died in 616; Theodelinda reigned alone until 628 when she was succeeded by Adaloald. Arioald, the head of the Arian opposition who had married Theodelinda's daughter Gundeperga, later deposed Adaloald.
Arioald was succeeded by Rothari, regarded by many authorities as the most energetic of all Lombard kings. He extended his dominions, conquering Liguria in 643 and the remaining part of the Byzantine territories of inner Veneto, including the Roman city of "Opitergium" (Oderzo). Rothari also made the famous edict bearing his name, the "Edictum Rothari", which established the laws and the customs of his people in Latin: the edict did not apply to the tributaries of the Lombards, who could retain their own laws. Rothari's son Rodoald succeeded him in 652, still very young, and was killed by his opponents.
At the death of King Aripert I in 661, the kingdom was split between his children Perctarit, who set his capital in Milan, and Godepert, who reigned from Pavia (Ticinum). Perctarit was overthrown by Grimoald, son of Gisulf, duke of Friuli and Benevento since 647. Perctarit fled to the Avars and then to the Franks. Grimoald managed to regain control over the duchies and deflected the late attempt of the Byzantine emperor Constans II to conquer southern Italy. He also defeated the Franks. At Grimoald's death in 671 Perctarit returned and promoted tolerance between Arians and Catholics, but he could not defeat the Arian party, led by Arachi, duke of Trento, who submitted only to his son, the philo-Catholic Cunincpert.
The Lombards engaged in fierce battles with Slavic peoples during these years: from 623–26 the Lombards unsuccessfully attacked the Carantanians, and, in 663–64, the Slavs raided the Vipava Valley and the Friuli.
Religious strife and the Slavic raids remained a source of struggle in the following years. In 705, the Friuli Lombards were defeated and lost the land to the west of the Soča River, namely the Gorizia Hills and the Venetian Slovenia. A new ethnic border was established that has lasted for over 1200 years up until the present time.
The Lombard reign began to recover only with Liutprand the Lombard (king from 712), son of Ansprand and successor of the brutal Aripert II. He managed to regain a certain control over Spoleto and Benevento, and, taking advantage of the disagreements between the Pope and Byzantium concerning the reverence of icons, he annexed the Exarchate of Ravenna and the duchy of Rome. He also helped the Frankish marshal Charles Martel drive back the Arabs. The Slavs were defeated in the Battle of Lavariano, when they tried to conquer the Friulian Plain in 720. Liutprand's successor Aistulf conquered Ravenna for the Lombards for the first time but had to relinquish it when he was subsequently defeated by the king of the Franks, Pippin III, who was called by the Pope.
After the death of Aistulf, Ratchis attempted to become king of Lombardy, but he was deposed by Desiderius, duke of Tuscany, the last Lombard to rule as king. Desiderius managed to take Ravenna definitively, ending the Byzantine presence in northern Italy. He decided to reopen struggles against the Pope, who was supporting the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento against him, and entered Rome in 772, the first Lombard king to do so. But when Pope Hadrian I called for help from the powerful Frankish king Charlemagne, Desiderius was defeated at Susa and besieged in Pavia, while his son Adelchis was forced to open the gates of Verona to Frankish troops. Desiderius surrendered in 774, and Charlemagne, in an utterly novel decision, took the title "King of the Lombards". Before then the Germanic kingdoms had frequently conquered each other, but none had adopted the title of King of another people. Charlemagne took part of the Lombard territory to create the Papal States.
The Lombardy region in Italy, which includes the cities of Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, and the old capital Pavia, is a reminder of the presence of the Lombards.
Though the kingdom centred on Pavia in the north fell to Charlemagne and the Franks in 774, the Lombard-controlled territory to the south of the Papal States was never subjugated by Charlemagne or his descendants. In 774, Duke Arechis II of Benevento, whose duchy had only nominally been under royal authority, though certain kings had been effective at making their power known in the south, claimed that Benevento was the successor state of the kingdom. He tried to turn Benevento into a "secundum Ticinum": a second Pavia. He tried to claim the kingship, but with no support and no chance of a coronation in Pavia.
Charlemagne came down with an army, and his son Louis the Pious sent men, to force the Beneventan duke to submit, but his submission and promises were never kept and Arechis and his successors were "de facto" independent. The Beneventan dukes took the title "prínceps" (prince) instead of that of king.
The Lombards of southern Italy were thereafter in the anomalous position of holding land claimed by two empires: the Carolingian Empire to the north and west and the Byzantine Empire to the east. They typically made pledges and promises of tribute to the Carolingians, but effectively remained outside Frankish control. Benevento meanwhile grew to its greatest extent yet when it imposed a tribute on the Duchy of Naples, which was tenuously loyal to Byzantium and even conquered the Neapolitan city of Amalfi in 838. At one point in the reign of Sicard, Lombard control covered most of southern Italy save the very south of Apulia and Calabria and Naples, with its nominally attached cities. It was during the 9th century that a strong Lombard presence became entrenched in formerly Greek Apulia. However, Sicard had opened up the south to the invasive actions of the Saracens in his war with Andrew II of Naples and when he was assassinated in 839, Amalfi declared independence and two factions fought for power in Benevento, crippling the principality and making it susceptible to external enemies.
The civil war lasted ten years and ended with a peace treaty imposed in 849 by Emperor Louis II, the only Frankish king to exercise actual sovereignty over the Lombard states. The treaty divided the kingdom into two states: the Principality of Benevento and the Principality of Salerno, with its capital at Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Andrew II of Naples hired Islamic mercenaries and formed a Muslim-Christian alliance for his war with Sicard of Benevento in 836; Sicard responded with other Muslim mercenaries. The Saracens initially concentrated their attacks on Sicily and Byzantine Italy, but soon Radelchis I of Benevento called in more mercenaries, who destroyed Capua in 841. Landulf the Old founded the present-day Capua, "New Capua", on a nearby hill. In general, the Lombard princes were less inclined to ally with the Saracens than with their Greek neighbours of Amalfi, Gaeta, Naples, and Sorrento. Guaifer of Salerno, however, briefly put himself under Muslim suzerainty.
In 847 a large Muslim force seized Bari, until then a Lombard gastaldate under the control of Pandenulf. Saracen incursions proceeded northwards until Adelchis of Benevento sought the help of his suzerain, Louis II, who allied with the Byzantine emperor Basil I to expel the Arabs from Bari in 869. An Arab landing force was defeated by the emperor in 871. Adelchis and Louis remained at war until the death of Louis in 875. Adelchis regarded himself as the true successor of the Lombard kings, and in that capacity he amended the "Edictum Rothari", the last Lombard ruler to do so.
After the death of Louis, Landulf II of Capua briefly flirted with a Saracen alliance, but Pope John VIII convinced him to break it off. Guaimar I of Salerno fought the Saracens with Byzantine troops. Throughout this period the Lombard princes swung in allegiance from one party to another. Finally, towards 915, Pope John X managed to unite the Christian princes of southern Italy against the Saracen establishments on the Garigliano river. The Saracens were ousted from Italy in the Battle of the Garigliano in 915.
The independent state of Salerno inspired the gastalds of Capua to move towards independence, and by the end of the century they were styling themselves "princes" and as a third Lombard state. The Capuan and Beneventan states were united by Atenulf I of Capua in 900. He subsequently declared them to be in perpetual union, and they were separated only in 982, on the death of Pandulf Ironhead. With all of the Lombard south under his control, except Salerno, Atenulf felt safe to use the title "Princeps Gentis Langobardorum" ("prince of the Lombard people"), which Arechis II had begun using in 774. Among Atenulf's successors the principality was ruled jointly by fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and uncles for the greater part of the century. Meanwhile, the prince Gisulf I of Salerno began using the title "Langobardorum Gentis Princeps" around mid-century, but the ideal of a united Lombard principality was realised only in December 977, when Gisulf died and his domains were inherited by Pandulf Ironhead, who temporarily held almost all Italy south of Rome and brought the Lombards into alliance with the Holy Roman Empire. His territories were divided upon his death.
Landulf the Red of Benevento and Capua tried to conquer the principality of Salerno with the help of John III of Naples, but with the aid of Mastalus I of Amalfi, Gisulf repulsed him. The rulers of Benevento and Capua made several attempts on Byzantine Apulia at this time, but late in the century, the Byzantines, under the stiff rule of Basil II, gained ground on the Lombards.
The principal source for the history of the Lombard principalities in this period is the "Chronicon Salernitanum", composed late in the 10th century at Salerno.
The diminished Beneventan principality soon lost its independence to the papacy and declined in importance until it fell in the Norman conquest of southern Italy. The Normans, first called in by the Lombards to fight the Byzantines for control of Apulia and Calabria (under the likes of Melus of Bari and Arduin, among others), had become rivals for hegemony in the south. The Salernitan principality experienced a golden age under Guaimar III and Guaimar IV, but under Gisulf II, the principality shrank to insignificance and fell in 1078 to Robert Guiscard, who had married Gisulf's sister Sichelgaita. The Capua principality was hotly contested during the reign of the hated Pandulf IV, the "Wolf of the Abruzzi", and, under his son, it fell, almost without contest, to the Norman Richard Drengot (1058). The Capuans revolted against Norman rule in 1091, expelling Richard's grandson Richard II and setting up one Lando IV.
Capua was again put under Norman rule after the Siege of Capua of 1098 and the city quickly declined in importance under a series of ineffectual Norman rulers. The independent status of these Lombard states is in general attested by the ability of their rulers to switch suzerains at will. Often the legal vassal of pope or emperor (either Byzantine or Holy Roman), they were the real power-brokers in the south until their erstwhile allies, the Normans, rose to preeminence: The Lombards regarded the Normans as barbarians and the Byzantines as oppressors. Regarding their own civilisation as superior, the Lombards did indeed provide the environment for the illustrious Schola Medica Salernitana.
Physical anthropologists have found striking similarities between Lombard skeletons and the skeletons of the contemporary population of the Swedish island of Gotland. This evidence suggest a Scandinavian origin for the Lombards.
A genetic study published in "Nature Communications" in September 2018 found strong genetic similarities between Lombards of Italy and earlier Lombards of Central Europe. The Lombards of Central Europe displayed no genetic similarities with earlier populations of this region, but were on the other hand strikingly similar genetically to Bronze Age Scandinavians. Lombard males were primarily carriers of subclades of haplogroup R1b and I2a2a1, both of whom are common among Germanic peoples. Lombard males were found to be more genetically homogenous than Lombard females. The evidence suggested that the Lombards originated in Northern Europe, and were a patriarchal people who settled Central Europe and then later Italy through a migration from the north.
A genetic study published in "Science Advances" in September 2018 examined the remains of a Lombard male buried at an Alemannic graveyard. He was found to be a carrier of the paternal haplogroup R1b1a2a1a1c2b2b and the maternal haplogroup H65a. The graveyard also included the remains of a Frankish and a Byzantine male, both of whom were also carriers of subclades of the paternal haplogroup R1b1a2a1a1. The Lombard, Frankish and Byzantine males were all found to be closely related, and displayed close genetic links to Northern Europe, particularly Lithuania and Iceland.
A genetic study published in the "American Journal of Physical Anthropology" in September 2018 examined the mtDNA of remains from various periods in Italian history, including the Lombard period. The evidence collected suggested that the Lombards were an endogameous elite community who did not leave much of an imprint on the maternal ancestry of the Italian population.
A genetic study published in the "European Journal of Human Genetics" in January 2019 examined the mtDNA of a large number of early medieval Lombard remains from Central Europe and Italy. These individuals were found to be closely related and displayed strong genetic links to Northern Europe. The evidence suggested that the Lombard settlement of Italy was the result of a migration from the north involving both males and females.
The Lombardic language is extinct (unless Cimbrian and Mocheno represent surviving dialects). The Germanic language declined, beginning in the 7th century, but may have been in scattered use until as late as about the year 1000. Only fragments of the language have survived, the main evidence being individual words quoted in Latin texts. In the absence of Lombardic texts, it is not possible to draw any conclusions about the language's morphology and syntax. The genetic classification of the language depends entirely on phonology. Since there is evidence that Lombardic participated in, and indeed shows some of the earliest evidence for, the High German consonant shift, it is usually classified as an Elbe Germanic or Upper German dialect.
Lombardic fragments are preserved in runic inscriptions. Primary source texts include short inscriptions in the Elder Futhark, among them the "bronze capsule of Schretzheim" (c. 600) and the silver belt buckle found in Pforzen, Ostallgäu (Schwaben). A number of Latin texts include Lombardic names, and Lombardic legal texts contain terms taken from the legal vocabulary of the vernacular. In 2005, Emilia Denčeva argued that the inscription of the Pernik sword may be Lombardic.
The Italian language preserves a large number of Lombardic words, although it is not always easy to distinguish them from other Germanic borrowings such as those from Gothic or from Frankish. They often bear some resemblance to English words, as Lombardic was akin to Old Saxon. For instance, "landa" from "land", "guardia" from "wardan" (warden), "guerra" from "werra" (war), "ricco" from "rikki" (rich), and "guadare" from "wadjan" (to wade).
From the "Codice diplomatico longobardo", a collection of legal documents that makes reference to many Lombardic terms, we obtain several terms still in use in the Italian language:
"barba" (beard), "marchio" (mark), "maniscalco" (blacksmith), "aia" (courtyard), "braida" (suburban meadow), "borgo" (burg, village), "fara" (fundamental unity of Lombard social and military organization, presently used as toponym), "pizzo" (peak, mountain top, now used as toponym), "sala" (hall, room, also used as toponym), "staffa" (stirrup), "stalla" (stable), "sculdascio", "faida" (feud), "manigoldo" (scoundrel), "sgherro" (henchman); "fanone" (baleen), "stamberga" (hovel); "anca" (hip), "guancia" (cheek), "nocca" (knuckle), "schiena" (back); "gazza" (magpie), "martora" (marten); "gualdo" (wood, presently used as toponym), "pozza" (pool); verbs like "bussare" (to knock), "piluccare" (to peck), "russare" (to snore).
During their stay at the mouth of the Elbe, the Lombards came into contact with other western Germanic populations, such as the Saxons and the Frisians. From these populations, which for long had been in contact with the Celts (especially the Saxons), they learned a rigid social organization into castes, rarely present in other Germanic peoples.
The Lombard kings can be traced back as early as c. 380 and thus to the beginning of the Great Migration. Kingship developed amongst the Germanic peoples when the unity of a single military command was found necessary. Schmidt believed that the Germanic tribes were divided according to cantons and that the earliest government was a general assembly that selected canton chiefs and war leaders in times of conflict. All such figures were probably selected from a caste of nobility. As a result of the wars of their wanderings, royal power developed such that the king became the representative of the people, but the influence of the people on the government did not fully disappear. Paul the Deacon gives an account of the Lombard tribal structure during the migration:
. . . in order that they might increase the number of their warriors, [the Lombards] confer liberty upon many whom they deliver from the yoke of bondage, and that the freedom of these may be regarded as established, they confirm it in their accustomed way by an arrow, uttering certain words of their country in confirmation of the fact.
Complete emancipation appears to have been granted only among the Franks and the Lombards.
Lombard society was divided into classes comparable to those found in the other Germanic successor states of Rome, Frankish Gaul and Visigothic Spain. There was a noble class, a class of free persons beneath them, a class of unfree non-slaves (serfs), and finally slaves. The aristocracy itself was poorer, more urbanised, and less landed than elsewhere. Aside from the richest and most powerful of the dukes and the king himself, Lombard noblemen tended to live in cities (unlike their Frankish counterparts) and hold little more than twice as much in land as the merchant class (a far cry from provincial Frankish aristocrats who held vast swathes of land, hundreds of times larger than those beneath his status). The aristocracy by the 8th century was highly dependent on the king for means of income related especially to judicial duties: many Lombard nobles are referred to in contemporary documents as "iudices" (judges) even when their offices had important military and legislative functions as well.
The freemen of the Lombard kingdom were far more numerous than in Frank lands, especially in the 8th century, when they are almost invisible in surviving documentary evidence. Smallholders, owner-cultivators, and rentiers are the most numerous types of person in surviving diplomata for the Lombard kingdom. They may have owned more than half of the land in Lombard Italy. The freemen were "exercitales" and "viri devoti", that is, soldiers and "devoted men" (a military term like "retainers"); they formed the levy of the Lombard army, and they were sometimes, if infrequently, called to serve, though this seems not to have been their preference. The small landed class, however, lacked the political influence necessary with the king (and the dukes) to control the politics and legislation of the kingdom. The aristocracy was more thoroughly powerful politically if not economically in Italy than in contemporary Gaul and Spain.
The urbanisation of Lombard Italy was characterised by the "città ad isole" (or "city as islands"). It appears from archaeology that the great cities of Lombard Italy — Pavia, Lucca, Siena, Arezzo, Milan — were themselves formed of minute islands of urbanisation within the old Roman city walls. The cities of the Roman Empire had been partially destroyed in the series of wars of the 5th and 6th centuries. Many sectors were left in ruins and ancient monuments became fields of grass used as pastures for animals, thus the Roman Forum became the "Campo Vaccino", the field of cows. The portions of the cities that remained intact were small, modest, contained a cathedral or major church (often sumptuously decorated), and a few public buildings and townhomes of the aristocracy. Few buildings of importance were stone, most were wood. In the end, the inhabited parts of the cities were separated from one another by stretches of pasture even within the city walls.
The legend from Origo may hint that initially, before the passage from Scandinavia to the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, the Lombards worshiped the Vanir. Later, in contact with other Germanic populations, they adopted the worship of the Æsir: an evolution that marked the passage from the adoration of deities related to fertility and the earth to the cult of warlike gods.
In chapter 40 of his Germania, Roman historian Tacitus, discussing the Suebian tribes of Germania, writes that the Lombards were one of the Suebian tribes united in worship of the deity Nerthus, who is often identified with the Norse goddess Freyja. The other tribes were the Reudigni, Aviones, Anglii, Varini, Eudoses, Suarines and Nuitones.
St. Barbatus of Benevento observed many pagan rituals and traditions amongst the Lombards authorised by the Duke Romuald, son of King Grimoald:
The Lombards were first touched by Christianity while still in Pannonia, but only touched: their conversion and Christianisation was largely nominal and far from complete. During the reign of Wacho, they were Orthodox Catholics allied with the Byzantine Empire, but Alboin converted to Arianism as an ally of the Ostrogoths and invaded Italy. All these Christian conversions primarily affected the aristocracy, while the common people remained pagan.
In Italy, the Lombards were intensively Christianised, and the pressure to convert to Catholicism was great. With the Bavarian queen Theodelinda, a Catholic, the monarchy was brought under heavy Catholic influence. After initial support for the anti-Rome party in the Schism of the Three Chapters, Theodelinda remained a close contact and supporter of Pope Gregory I. In 603, Adaloald, the heir to the throne, received Catholic baptism. During the next century, Arianism and paganism continued to hold out in Austria (the northeast of Italy) and in the Duchy of Benevento. A succession of Arian kings was militarily aggressive and presented a threat to the Papacy in Rome. In the 7th century, the nominally Christian aristocracy of Benevento was still practising pagan rituals such as sacrifices in "sacred" woods. By the end of the reign of Cunincpert, however, the Lombards were more or less completely Catholicised. Under Liutprand Catholicism became tangible as the king sought to justify his title "rex totius Italiae" by uniting the south of the peninsula with the north, thereby bringing together his Italo-Roman and Germanic subjects into one Catholic State.
The Duchy and eventually Principality of Benevento in southern Italy developed a unique Christian rite in the 7th and 8th centuries. The Beneventan rite is more closely related to the liturgy of the Ambrosian rite than to the Roman rite. The Beneventan rite has not survived in its complete form, although most of the principal feasts and several feasts of local significance are extant. The Beneventan rite appears to have been less complete, less systematic, and more liturgically flexible than the Roman rite.
Characteristic of this rite was the Beneventan chant, a Lombard-influenced chant that bore similarities to the Ambrosian chant of Milan. The Beneventan chant is largely defined by its role in the liturgy of the Beneventan rite; many Beneventan chants were assigned multiple roles when inserted into Gregorian chantbooks, appearing variously as antiphons, offertories, and communions, for example. It was eventually supplanted by the Gregorian chant in the 11th century.
The chief centre of the Beneventan chant was Montecassino, one of the first and greatest abbeys of Western monasticism. Gisulf II of Benevento had donated a large swathe of land to Montecassino in 744, and that became the basis for an important state, the "Terra Sancti Benedicti", which was a subject only to Rome. The Cassinese influence on Christianity in southern Italy was immense. Montecassino was also the starting point for another characteristic of Beneventan monasticism, the use of the distinct Beneventan script, a clear, angular script derived from the Roman cursive as used by the Lombards.
During their nomadic phase, the Lombards primarily created art that was easily carried with them, like arms and jewellery. Though relatively little of this has survived, it bears resemblance to the similar endeavours of other Germanic tribes of northern and central Europe from the same era.
The first major modifications to the Germanic style of the Lombards came in Pannonia and especially in Italy, under the influence of local, Byzantine, and Christian styles. The conversions from nomadism and paganism to settlement and Christianity also opened up new arenas of artistic expression, such as architecture (especially churches) and its accompanying decorative arts (such as frescoes).
Few Lombard buildings have survived. Most have been lost, rebuilt, or renovated at some point, so they preserve little of their original Lombard structure. Lombard architecture was well-studied in the 20th century, and the four-volume "Lombard Architecture" (1919) by Arthur Kingsley Porter is a "monument of illustrated history".
The small Oratorio di Santa Maria in Valle in Cividale del Friuli is probably one of the oldest preserved examples of Lombard architecture, as Cividale was the first Lombard city in Italy. Parts of Lombard constructions have been preserved in Pavia (San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, crypts of Sant'Eusebio and San Giovanni Domnarum) and Monza (cathedral). The "Basilic autariana" in Fara Gera d'Adda near Bergamo and the church of San Salvatore in Brescia also have Lombard elements. All these buildings are in northern Italy (Langobardia major), but by far the best-preserved Lombard structure is in southern Italy (Langobardia minor). The Church of Santa Sofia in Benevento was erected in 760 by Duke Arechis II, and it preserves Lombard frescoes on the walls and even Lombard capitals on the columns.
Lombard architecture flourished under the impulse provided by the Catholic monarchs like Theodelinda, Liutprand, and Desiderius to the foundation of monasteries to further their political control. Bobbio Abbey was founded during this time.
Some of the late Lombard structures of the 9th and 10th centuries have been found to contain elements of style associated with Romanesque architecture and have been so dubbed "first Romanesque". These edifices are considered, along with some similar buildings in southern France and Catalonia, to mark a transitory phase between the Pre-Romanesque and full-fledged Romanesque. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18011 |
Loki
Loki (, Modern , often Anglicized as ) is a god in Norse mythology. Loki is in some sources the son of Fárbauti and Laufey, and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. By the jötunn Angrboða, Loki is the father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the world serpent Jörmungandr. By his wife Sigyn, Loki is the father of Narfi and/or Nari. By the stallion Svaðilfari, Loki is the mother—giving birth in the form of a mare—to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir. In addition, Loki is referred to as the father of Váli in "Prose Edda", though this source also refers to Odin as the father of Váli twice, and Váli is found mentioned as a Son of Loki only once.
Loki's relation with the gods varies by source; Loki sometimes assists the gods and sometimes behaves in a malicious manner towards them. Loki is a shape shifter and in separate incidents he appears in the form of a salmon, a mare, a fly, and possibly an elderly woman named Þökk (Old Norse 'thanks'). Loki's positive relations with the gods end with his role in engineering the death of the god Baldr and Loki is eventually bound by Váli with the entrails of one of his sons. In both the "Poetic Edda" and the "Prose Edda", the goddess Skaði is responsible for placing a serpent above him while he is bound. The serpent drips venom from above him that Sigyn collects into a bowl; however, she must empty the bowl when it is full, and the venom that drips in the meantime causes Loki to writhe in pain, thereby causing earthquakes. With the onset of Ragnarök, Loki is foretold to slip free from his bonds and to fight against the gods among the forces of the jötnar, at which time he will encounter the god Heimdallr and the two will slay each other.
Loki is referred to in the "Poetic Edda", compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the "Prose Edda" and "Heimskringla", written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; the Norwegian Rune Poems, in the poetry of skalds, and in Scandinavian folklore. Loki may be depicted on the Snaptun Stone, the Kirkby Stephen Stone, and the Gosforth Cross. Loki's origins and role in Norse mythology, which some scholars have described as that of a trickster god, have been much debated by scholars. Loki has been depicted in or is referenced in a variety of media in modern popular culture.
The etymology of the name "Loki" has been extensively debated. The name has at times been associated with the Old Norse word "logi" ('flame'), but there seems not to be a sound linguistic basis for this. Rather, the later Scandinavian variants of the name (such as Faroese "Lokki", Danish "Lokkemand", Norwegian "Loke" and "Lokke", Swedish "Luki" and "Luku", along with Finnish "Lukki") point to an origin in the Germanic root *"luk"-, which denoted things to do with loops (like knots, hooks, closed-off rooms, and locks). This corresponds with usages such as the Swedish "lokkanät" and Faroese "Lokkanet" ('cobweb', literally 'Lokke's web') and Faroese "lokki"~"grindalokki"~"grindalokkur" ('daddy-long-legs', associated in pre-modern folk-taxonomy with spiders). Some Eastern Swedish traditions referring to the same figure use forms in "n"- like "Nokk(e)", but this corresponds to the *"luk"- etymology insofar as those dialects consistently used a different root, Germanic *"hnuk"-, in contexts where western varieties used *"luk"-: ""nokke" corresponds to "nøkkel"" ('key' in Eastern Scandinavian) "as "loki"~"lokke" to "lykil"" ('key' in Western Scandinavian). While it has been suggested that this association with closing could point to Loki's apocalyptic role at Ragnarök, "there is quite a bit of evidence that Loki in premodern society was thought to be the causer of knots/tangles/loops, or himself a knot/tangle/loop. Hence, it is natural that Loki is the inventor of the fishnet, which consists of loops and knots, and that the word "loki" ("lokke", "lokki", "loke", "luki") is a term for makers of cobwebs: spiders and the like." Though not prominent in the oldest sources, this identity as a "tangler" may be the etymological meaning of Loki's name.
In various poems from the "Poetic Edda" (stanza 2 of "Lokasenna", stanza 41 of "Hyndluljóð", and stanza 26 of "Fjölsvinnsmál"), and sections of the "Prose Edda" (chapter 32 of "Gylfaginning", stanza 8 of "Haustlöng", and stanza 1 of "Þórsdrápa") Loki is alternatively referred to as "Loptr", which is generally considered derived from Old Norse "lopt" meaning "air", and therefore points to an association with the air.
The name "Hveðrungr" (Old Norse '?roarer') is also used in reference to Loki, occurring in names for Hel (such as in "Ynglingatal", where she is called "hveðrungs mær") and in reference to Fenrir (as in "Völuspa").
In the "Poetic Edda", Loki appears (or is referenced) in the poems "Völuspá", "Lokasenna", "Þrymskviða", "Reginsmál", "Baldrs draumar", and "Hyndluljóð".
In stanza 35 of the "Poetic Edda" poem "Völuspá", a völva tells Odin that, among many other things, she sees Sigyn sitting very unhappily with her bound husband, Loki, under a "grove of hot springs". In stanza 51, during the events of Ragnarök, Loki appears free from his bonds and is referred to as the "brother of Býleistr" (here transcribed as "Byleist"):
In stanza 54, after consuming Odin and being killed by Odin's son Víðarr, Fenrir is described as "Loki's kinsman".
The poem "Lokasenna" (Old Norse "Loki's Flyting") centers around Loki flyting with other gods; Loki puts forth two stanzas of insults while the receiving figure responds with a single stanza, and then another figure chimes in. The poem begins with a prose introduction detailing that Ægir, a figure associated with the sea, is hosting a feast in his hall for a number of the gods and elves. There, the gods praise Ægir's servers Fimafeng and Eldir. Loki "could not bear to hear that," and kills the servant Fimafeng. In response, the gods grab their shields, shrieking at Loki, and chase him out of the hall and to the woods. The gods then return to the hall, and continue drinking.
Loki comes out of the woods, and meets Eldir outside of the hall. Loki greets Eldir (and the poem itself begins) with a demand that Eldir tell him what the gods are discussing over their ale inside the hall. Eldir responds that they discuss their "weapons and their prowess in war" and yet no one there has anything friendly to say about Loki. Loki says that he will go into the feast, and that, before the end of the feast, he will induce quarrelling among the gods, and "mix their mead with malice." Eldir responds that "if shouting and fighting you pour out on" to the gods, "they'll wipe it off on you." Loki then enters the hall, and everyone there falls silent upon noticing him.
Breaking the silence, Loki says that, thirsty, he had come to these halls from a long way away to ask the gods for a drink of "the famous mead." Calling the gods arrogant, Loki asks why they are unable to speak, and demands that they assign him a seat and a place for him at the feast, or tell him to leave. The skaldic god Bragi is the first to respond to Loki by telling him that Loki will not have a seat and place assigned to him by the gods at the feast, for the gods know what men they should invite. Loki does not respond to Bragi directly, but instead directs his attention to Odin, and states:
Odin then asks his silent son Víðarr to sit up, so that Loki (here referred to as the "wolf's father") may sit at the feast, and so that he may not speak words of blame to the gods in Ægir's hall. Víðarr stands and pours a drink for Loki. Prior to drinking, Loki declaims a toast to the gods, with a specific exception for Bragi. Bragi responds that he will give a horse, sword, and ring from his possessions so that he does not repay the gods "with hatred." Loki responds that Bragi will always be short of all of these things, accusing him of being "wary of war" and "shy of shooting." Bragi responds that, were they outside of Ægir's hall, Bragi would be holding Loki's head as a reward for his lies. Loki replies that Bragi is brave when seated, calling him a "bench-ornament," and that Bragi would run away when troubled by an angry, spirited man.
The goddess Iðunn interrupts, asking Bragi, as a service to his relatives and adopted relatives, not to say words of blame to Loki in Ægir's hall. Loki tells Iðunn to be silent, calling her the most "man-crazed" of all women, and saying that she placed her washed, bright arms around her brother's slayer. Iðunn says that she won't say words of blame in Ægir's hall, and affirms that she quietened Bragi, who was made talkative by beer, and that she doesn't want the two of them to fight. The goddess Gefjun asks why the two gods must fight, saying that Loki knows that he is joking, and that "all living things love him." Loki responds to Gefjun by stating that Gefjun's heart was once seduced by a "white boy" who gave her a jewel, and who Gefjun laid her thigh over.
Odin says that Loki must be insane to make Gefjun his enemy, as her wisdom about the fates of men may equal Odin's own. Loki says that Odin does a poor job in handing out honor in war to men, and that he's often given victory to the faint-hearted. Odin responds that even if this is true, Loki (in a story otherwise unattested) once spent eight winters beneath the earth as a woman milking cows, and during this time bore children. Odin declares this perverse. Loki counters that Odin once practiced seiðr (a type of sorcery) on the island of "Samsey" (now Samsø, Denmark), and, appearing as a wizard, traveled among mankind, which Loki condemns as perverse.
Frigg, a major goddess and Odin's wife, says that what Loki and Odin did in the ancient past should not be spoken of in front of others, and that ancient matters should always remain hidden. Loki brings up that Frigg is the daughter of Fjörgyn, a personification of the earth, and that she had once taken Odin's brothers Vili and Vé into her embrace. Frigg responds that if there was a boy like her now-deceased son Baldr in the hall, Loki would not be able to escape from the wrath of the gods. Loki reminds Frigg that he is responsible for the death of her son Baldr.
The goddess Freyja declares that Loki must be mad, stating that Frigg knows all fate, yet she does not speak it. Loki claims each of the gods and elves that are present have been Freyja's lover. Freyja replies that Loki is lying, that he just wants to "yelp about wicked things" that gods and goddesses are furious with him, and that he will go home thwarted. In response, Loki calls Freyja a malicious witch, and claims that Freyja was once astride her brother Freyr, when all of the other laughing gods surprised her and Freyja then farted. This scenario is otherwise unattested. Njörðr (Freyja and Freyr's father) says that it is harmless for a woman to have a lover or "someone else" beside her husband, and that what is surprising is a "pervert god coming here who has borne children."
Loki tells Njörðr to be silent, recalling Njörðr's status as once having been a hostage from the Vanir to the Æsir during the Æsir-Vanir War, that the "daughters of Hymir" once used Njörðr "as a pisspot," urinating in his mouth (an otherwise unattested comment). Njörðr responds that this was his reward when he was sent as a hostage to the Æsir, and that he fathered his son (Freyr), whom no one hates, and is considered a prince of the Æsir. Loki tells Njörðr to maintain his moderation, and that he won't keep it secret any longer that Njörðr fathered this son with his sister (unnamed), although one would expect him to be worse than he turned out.
The god Tyr defends Freyr, to which Loki replies that Tyr should be silent, for Tyr cannot "deal straight with people," and points out that it was Loki's son, the wolf Fenrir, who tore Tyr's hand off. (According to the prose introduction to the poem Tyr is now one-handed from having his arm bitten off by Loki's son Fenrir while Fenrir was bound.) Tyr responds that while he may have lost a hand, Loki has lost the wolf, and trouble has come to them both. Further, that Fenrir must now wait in shackles until the onset of Ragnarök. Loki tells Tyr to be silent a second time, and states that Tyr's wife (otherwise unattested) had a son by Loki, and that Tyr never received any compensation for this "injury," further calling him a "wretch."
Freyr himself interrupts at this point, and says that he sees a wolf lying before a river mouth, and that, unless Loki is immediately silent, like the wolf, Loki shall also be bound until Ragnarök. Loki retorts that Freyr purchased his consort Gerðr with gold, having given away his sword, which he will lack at Ragnarök. Byggvir (referred to in the prose introduction to the poem as a servant of Freyr) says that if he had as noble a lineage and as an honorable a seat as Freyr, he would grind down Loki, and make all of his limbs lame. Loki refers to Byggvir in terms of a dog, and says that Byggvir is always found at Freyr's ears, or twittering beneath a grindstone. Byggvir says that he's proud to be here by all the gods and men, and that he's said to be speedy. Loki tells him to be silent, that Byggvir does not know how to apportion food among men, and that he hides among the straw and dais when men go to battle.
The god Heimdallr says that Loki is drunk and witless, and asks Loki why he won't stop speaking. Loki tells Heimdallr to be silent, that he was fated a "hateful life," that Heimdallr must always have a muddy back, and serve as watchman of the gods. The goddess Skaði says that while Loki now appears light-hearted and "playing" with his "tail-wagging," he will soon be bound with his ice-cold son's guts on a sharp rock by the gods. Loki says that, even if this is his fate, that he was "first and foremost" with the other gods at the killing of Skaði's father, Þjazi. Skaði says that, with these events in mind, "baneful advice" will always come from her "sanctuaries and plains" to Loki. Loki says that Skaði was once gentler in speech to him (referring to himself as the "son of Laufey") when Skaði once invited him to her bed (an event that is unattested elsewhere), and that such events must be mentioned if they are to recall "shameful deeds."
Sif, wife of Thor, goes forth and pours Loki a glass of mead into a crystal cup in a prose narrative. Continuing the poem, Sif welcomes Loki and invites him to take a crystal cup filled with ancient mead, and says that among the children of the Æsir, she is singularly blameless. Loki "takes the horn," drinks it, and says that she would be, if it were so, and states that Sif had a lover beside Thor, namely, Loki himself (an event that is otherwise unattested). Beyla (referred to in the prose introduction to the poem as a servant of Freyr) says that all of the mountains are shaking, that she thinks Thor must be on his way home, and when Thor arrives he will bring peace to those that quarrel there. Loki tells Beyla to be silent, that she is "much imbued with malice," that no worse female has ever been among the "Æsir's children," and calling her a bad "serving-wench."
Thor arrives, and tells Loki to be silent, referring to him as an "evil creature," stating that with his hammer Mjöllnir he will silence Loki by hammering his head from his shoulders. Acknowledging that Thor has arrived, Loki asks Thor why he is raging, and says that Thor won't be so bold to fight against the wolf when he swallows Odin at Ragnarök. Thor again tells Loki to be silent, and threatens him with Mjöllnir, adding that he will throw Loki "up on the roads to the east," and thereafter no one will be able to see Loki. Loki states that Thor should never brag of his journeys to the east, claiming that there Thor crouched cowering in the thumb of a glove, mockingly referring to him as a "hero," and adding that such behaviour was unlike Thor. Thor responds by telling Loki to be silent, threatening him with Mjöllnir, and adding that every one of Loki's bones will be broken with it. Loki says he intends to live for a long while yet despite Thor's threats, and taunts Thor about an encounter Thor once had with the Skrýmir (Útgarða-Loki in disguise). Thor again commands Loki to be silent, threatens Loki with Mjöllnir, and says he will send Loki to Hel, below the gates of Nágrind.
In response to Thor, Loki says that he "spoke before the Æsir," and "before the sons of the Æsir" what his "spirit urged" him to say, yet before Thor alone he will leave, as he knows that Thor does strike. Loki ends the poetic verses of "Lokasenna" with a final stanza:
Following this final stanza a prose section details that after Loki left the hall, he disguised himself as a salmon and hid in the waterfall of Franangrsfors, where the Æsir caught him. The narrative continues that Loki was bound with the entrails of his son Nari, and his son Narfi changed into a wolf. Skaði fastened a venomous snake over Loki's face, and from it poison dripped. Sigyn, Loki's wife, sat with him holding a basin beneath the dripping venom, yet when the basin became full, she carried the poison away; and during this time the poison dripped on to Loki, causing him to writhe with such violence that all of the earth shook from the force, resulting in what are now known as earthquakes.
In the poem "Þrymskviða", Thor wakes and finds that his powerful hammer, Mjöllnir, is missing. Thor turns to Loki first, and tells him that nobody knows that the hammer has been stolen. The two then go to the court of the goddess Freyja, and Thor asks her if he may borrow her feather cloak so that he may attempt to find Mjöllnir. Freyja agrees, saying she'd lend it even if it were made of silver and gold, and Loki flies off, the feather cloak whistling.
In Jötunheimr, the jötunn Þrymr sits on a burial mound, plaiting golden collars for his female dogs, and trimming the manes of his horses. Þrymr sees Loki, and asks what could be amiss among the Æsir and the Elves; why is Loki alone in the Jötunheimr? Loki responds that he has bad news for both the elves and the Æsir: that Thor's hammer, Mjöllnir, is gone. Þrymr says that he has hidden Mjöllnir eight leagues beneath the earth, from which it will be retrieved if Freyja is brought to him as his wife. Loki flies off, the feather cloak whistling, away from Jötunheimr and back to the court of the gods.
Thor asks Loki if his efforts were successful, and that Loki should tell him while he's still in the air as "tales often escape a sitting man, and the man lying down often barks out lies." Loki states that it was indeed an effort, and also a success, for he has discovered that Þrymr has the hammer, but that it cannot be retrieved unless Freyja is brought to Þrymr as his wife. The two return to Freyja, and tell her to dress herself in a bridal head dress, as they will drive her to Jötunheimr. Freyja, indignant and angry, goes into a rage, causing all of the halls of the Æsir to tremble in her anger, and her necklace, the famed Brísingamen, falls from her. Freyja pointedly refuses.
As a result, the gods and goddesses meet and hold a thing to discuss and debate the matter. At the thing, the god Heimdallr puts forth the suggestion that, in place of Freyja, Thor should be dressed as the bride, complete with jewels, women's clothing down to his knees, a bridal head-dress, and the necklace Brísingamen. Thor rejects the idea, and Loki (here described as "son of Laufey") interjects that this will be the only way to get back Mjöllnir, and points out that without Mjöllnir, the jötnar will be able to invade and settle in Asgard. The gods dress Thor as a bride, and Loki states that he will go with Thor as his maid, and that the two shall drive to Jötunheimr together.
After riding together in Thor's goat-driven chariot, the two, disguised, arrive in Jötunheimr. Þrymr commands the jötnar in his hall to spread straw on the benches, for Freyja has arrived to be his wife. Þrymr recounts his treasured animals and objects, stating that Freyja was all that he was missing in his wealth.
Early in the evening, the disguised Loki and Thor meet with Þrymr and the assembled jötnar. Thor eats and drinks ferociously, consuming entire animals and three casks of mead. Þrymr finds the behaviour at odds with his impression of Freyja, and Loki, sitting before Þrymr and appearing as a "very shrewd maid", makes the excuse that "Freyja's" behaviour is due to her having not consumed anything for eight entire days before arriving due to her eagerness to arrive. Þrymr then lifts "Freyja's" veil and wants to kiss "her" until catching the terrifying eyes staring back at him, seemingly burning with fire. Loki states that this is because "Freyja" had not slept for eight nights in her eagerness.
The "wretched sister" of the jötnar appears, asks for a bridal gift from "Freyja", and the jötnar bring out Mjöllnir to "sanctify the bride", to lay it on her lap, and marry the two by "the hand" of the goddess Vár. Thor laughs internally when he sees the hammer, takes hold of it, strikes Þrymr, beats all of the jötnar, and kills the "older sister" of the jötnar.
Loki appears in both prose and the first six stanzas of the poem "Reginsmál". The prose introduction to "Reginsmál" details that, while the hero Sigurd was being fostered by Regin, son of Hreidmar, Regin tells him that once the gods Odin, Hœnir, and Loki went to Andvara-falls, which contained many fish. Regin, a dwarf, had two brothers; Andvari, who gained food by spending time in the Andvara-falls in the form of a pike, and Ótr, who would often go to the Andvara-falls in the form of an otter.
While the three gods are at the falls, Ótr (in the form of an otter) catches a salmon and eats it on a river bank, his eyes shut, when Loki hits and kills him with a stone. The gods think that this is great, and flay the skin from the otter to make a bag. That night, the three gods stay with Hreidmar (the father of Regin, Andvari, and the now-dead Ótr) and show him their catches, including the skin of the otter. Upon seeing the skin, Regin and Hreidmar "seized them and made them ransom their lives" in exchange for filling the otterskin bag the gods had made with gold and covering the exterior of the bag with red gold.
Loki is sent to retrieve the gold, and Loki goes to the goddess Rán, borrows her net, and then goes back to the Andvara-falls. At the falls, Loki spreads his net before Andvari (who is in the form of a pike), which Andvari jumps into. The stanzas of the poem then begin: Loki mocks Andvari, and tells him that he can save his head by telling Loki where his gold is. Andvari gives some background information about himself, including that he was cursed by a "norn of misfortune" in his "early days". Loki responds by asking Andvari "what requital" does mankind get if "they wound each other with words". Andvari responds that lying men receive a "terrible requital": having to wade in the river Vadgelmir, and that their suffering will be long.
Loki looks over the gold that Andvari possesses, and after Andvari hands over all of his gold, Andvari holds on to but a single ring; the ring Andvarinaut, which Loki also takes. Andvari, now in the form of a dwarf, goes into a rock, and tells Loki that the gold will result in the death of two brothers, will cause strife between eight princes, and will be useless to everyone.
Loki returns, and the three gods give Hreidmar the money from the gold hoard and flatten out the otter skin, stretch out its legs, and heap gold atop it, covering it. Hreidmar looks it over, and notices a single hair that has not been covered. Hreidmar demands that it be covered as well. Odin puts forth the ring Andvarinaut, covering the single hair.
Loki states that they have now handed over the gold, and that gold is cursed as Andvari is, and that it will be the death of Hreidmar and Regin both. Hreidmar responds that if he had known this before, he would have taken their lives, yet that he believes those are not yet born whom the curse is intended for, and that he doesn't believe him. Further, with the hoard, he will have red gold for the rest of his life. Hreidmar tells them to leave, and the poem continues without further mention of Loki.
In "Baldr draumar", Odin has awoken a deceased völva in Hel, and questions her repeatedly about his son Baldr's bad dreams. Loki is mentioned in stanza 14, the final stanza of the poem, where the völva tells Odin to ride home, to be proud of himself, and that no one else will come visit until "Loki is loose, escaped from his bonds" and the onset of Ragnarök.
Loki is referenced in two stanzas in "Völuspá hin skamma", found within the poem "Hyndluljóð". The first stanza notes that Loki produced "the wolf" with the jötunn Angrboða, that Loki himself gave birth to the horse Sleipnir by the stallion Svaðilfari, and that Loki (referred to as the "brother of Býleistr") thirdly gave birth to "the worst of all marvels". This stanza is followed by:
In the second of the two stanzas, Loki is referred to as "Lopt". Loki's consumption of a woman's heart is otherwise unattested.
In the poem "Fjölsvinnsmál", a stanza mentions Loki (as "Lopt") in association with runes. In the poem, Fjölsviðr describes to the hero Svipdagr that Sinmara keeps the weapon Lævateinn within a chest, locked with nine strong locks (due to significant translation differences, two translations of the stanza are provided here):
The "Prose Edda" book "Gylfaginning" tells various myths featuring Loki, including Loki's role in the birth of the horse Sleipnir and Loki's contest with Logi, fire personified.
High's introduction
Loki first appears in the "Prose Edda" in chapter 20 of the book "Gylfaginning", where he is referred to as the "ás called Loki" while the enthroned figure of Third explains to "Gangleri" (King Gylfi in disguise) the goddess Frigg's prophetic abilities while citing a stanza of "Lokasenna".
Loki is more formally introduced by High in chapter 34, where he is "reckoned among the Æsir", and High states that Loki is called by some "the Æsir's calumniator", "originator of deceits", and "the disgrace of all gods and men". High says that Loki's alternative name is "Lopt", that he is the son of the male jötunn Fárbauti, his mother is "Laufey or Nál", and his brothers are Helblindi and Býleistr. High describes Loki as "pleasing and handsome" in appearance, malicious in character, "very capricious in behaviour", and as possessing "to a greater degree than others" learned cunning, and "tricks for every purpose", often getting the Æsir into trouble, and then getting them out of it with his trickery. Loki's wife is named Sigyn, and they have a son named "Nari or Narfi". Otherwise, Loki had three children with the female jötunn Angrboða from Jötunheimr; the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr, and the female being Hel. The gods realized that these three children were being raised in Jötunheimr, and expected trouble from them partially due to the nature of Angrboða, but worse yet Loki. In chapter 35, Gangleri comments that Loki produced a "pretty terrible"—yet important—family.
Loki, Svaðilfari, and Sleipnir
In chapter 42, High tells a story set "right at the beginning of the gods' settlement, when the gods at established Midgard and built Val-Hall." The story is about an unnamed builder who has offered to build a fortification for the gods that will keep out invaders in exchange for the goddess Freyja, the sun, and the moon. After some debate, the gods agree to these conditions, but place a number of restrictions on the builder, including that he must complete the work within three seasons without the help of any man. The builder makes a single request; that he may have help from his stallion Svaðilfari, and due to Loki's influence, this is allowed. The stallion Svaðilfari performs twice the deeds of strength as the builder, and hauls enormous rocks—to the surprise of the gods. The builder, with Svaðilfari, makes fast progress on the wall, and three days before the deadline of summer, the builder is nearly at the entrance to the fortification. The gods convene, and figure out who is responsible, resulting in a unanimous agreement that, along with most trouble, Loki is to blame (here referred to as "Loki Laufeyjarson"—his surname derived from his mother's name, "Laufey").
The gods declare that Loki deserves a horrible death if he cannot find a scheme that will cause the builder to forfeit his payment, and threaten to attack him. Loki, afraid, swears oaths that he will devise a scheme to cause the builder to forfeit the payment, whatever it may cost himself. That night, the builder drives out to fetch stone with his stallion Svaðilfari, and out from a wood runs a mare. The mare neighs at Svaðilfari, and "realizing what kind of horse it was," Svaðilfari becomes frantic, neighs, tears apart his tackle, and runs towards the mare. The mare runs to the wood, Svaðilfari follows, and the builder chases after. The two horses run around all night, causing the building to be halted and the builder is then unable to regain the previous momentum of his work.
The builder goes into a rage, and when the Æsir realize that the builder is a hrimthurs, they disregard their previous oaths with the builder, and call for Thor. Thor arrives, and subsequently kills the builder by smashing the builder's skull into shards with the hammer Mjöllnir. However, Loki "had such dealings" with Svaðilfari that "somewhat later" Loki gives birth to a gray foal with eight legs; the horse Sleipnir—"the best horse among gods and men."
Loki, Útgarða-Loki, and Logi
In chapter 44, Third reluctantly relates a tale where Thor and Loki are riding in Thor's chariot, which is pulled by his two goats. Loki and Thor stop at the house of a peasant farmer, and there they are given lodging for a night. Thor slaughters his goats, prepares them, puts them in a pot, and Loki and Thor sit down for their evening meal. Thor invites the peasant family who own the farm to share with him the meal he has prepared, but warns them not to break the bones. Afterward, at the suggestion of Loki, the peasant child Þjálfi sucks the bone marrow from one of the goat bones, and when Thor goes to resurrect the goats, he finds one of the goats to be lame. In their terror, the family atones to Thor by giving Thor their son Þjálfi and their daughter Röskva.
Minus the goats, Thor, Loki, and the two children continue east until they arrive at a vast forest in Jötunheimr. They continue through the woods until dark. The four seek shelter for the night. They encounter an immense building. Finding shelter in a side room, they experience earthquakes through the night. The earthquakes cause all four but Thor, who grips his hammer in preparation of defense, to be fearful. The building turns out to be the huge glove of Skrymir, who has been snoring throughout the night, causing what seemed to be earthquakes. All four sleep beneath an oak tree near Skrymir in fear.
Thor wakes up in the middle of the night, and a series of events occur where Thor twice attempts to kill the sleeping Skrýmir with his hammer. Skrýmir awakes after each attempt, only to say that he detected an acorn falling on his head or that he wonders if bits of tree from the branches above have fallen on top of him. The second attempt awakes Skrýmir. Skrýmir gives them advice; if they are going to be cocky at the keep of Útgarðr it would be better for them to turn back now, for Útgarða-Loki's men there won't put up with it. Skrýmir throws his knapsack onto his back and abruptly goes into the forest. High comments that "there is no report that the Æsir expressed hope for a happy reunion".
The four travelers continue their journey until midday. They find themselves facing a massive castle in an open area. The castle is so tall that they must bend their heads back to their spines to see above it. At the entrance to the castle is a shut gate, and Thor finds that he cannot open it. Struggling, all four squeeze through the bars of the gate, and continue to a large hall. Inside the great hall are two benches, where many generally large people sit on two benches. The four see Útgarða-Loki, the king of the castle, sitting.
Útgarða-Loki says that no visitors are allowed to stay unless they can perform a feat. Loki, standing in the rear of the party, is the first to speak, claiming that he can eat faster than anyone. Útgarða-Loki comments that this would be a feat indeed, and calls for a being by the name of Logi to come from the benches. A trencher is fetched, placed on the floor of the hall, and filled with meat. Loki and Logi sit down on opposing sides. The two eat as quickly as they can and meet at the midpoint of the trencher. Loki consumed all of the meat off of the bones on his side, yet Logi had not only consumed his meat, but also the bones and the trencher itself. It was evident to all that Loki had lost. In turn, Þjálfi races against a figure by the name of Hugi three times and thrice loses.
Thor agrees to compete in a drinking contest but after three immense gulps fails. Thor agrees to lift a large, gray cat in the hall but finds that it arches his back no matter what he does, and that he can raise only a single paw. Thor demands to fight someone in the hall, but the inhabitants say doing so would be demeaning, considering Thor's weakness. Útgarða-Loki then calls for his nurse Elli, an old woman. The two wrestle but the harder Thor struggles the more difficult the battle becomes. Thor is finally brought down to a single knee. Útgarða-Loki says to Thor that fighting anyone else would be pointless. Now late at night, Útgarða-Loki shows the group to their rooms and they are treated with hospitality.
The next morning the group gets dressed and prepares to leave the keep. Útgarða-Loki appears, has his servants prepare a table, and they all merrily eat and drink. As they leave, Útgarða-Loki asks Thor how he thought he fared in the contests. Thor says that he is unable to say he did well, noting that he is particularly annoyed that Útgarða-Loki will now speak negatively about him. Útgarða-Loki points out that the group has left his keep and says that he hopes that they never return to it, for if he had an inkling of what he was dealing with he would never have allowed the group to enter in the first place. Útgarða-Loki reveals that all was not what it seemed to the group. Útgarða-Loki was in fact the immense Skrýmir, and that if the three blows Thor attempted to land had hit their mark, the first would have killed Skrýmir. In reality, Thor's blows were so powerful that they had resulted in three square valleys.
The contests, too, were an illusion. Útgarða-Loki reveals that Loki had actually competed against wildfire itself ("Logi", Old Norse "flame"), Þjálfi had raced against thought ("Hugi", Old Norse "thought"), Thor's drinking horn had actually reached to the ocean and with his drinks he lowered the ocean level (resulting in tides). The cat that Thor attempted to lift was in actuality the world serpent, Jörmungandr, and everyone was terrified when Thor was able to lift the paw of this "cat", for Thor had actually held the great serpent up to the sky. The old woman Thor wrestled was in fact old age ("Elli", Old Norse "old age"), and there is no one that old age cannot bring down. Útgarða-Loki tells Thor that it would be better for "both sides" if they did not meet again. Upon hearing this, Thor takes hold of his hammer and swings it at Útgarða-Loki but he is gone and so is his castle. Only a wide landscape remains.
Loki is mentioned in stanza 13 of the Norwegian rune poem in connection with the Younger Futhark Bjarkan rune:
According to Bruce Dickins, the reference to "Loki's deceit" in the poem "is doubtless to Loki's responsibility for Balder's death."
In 1950, a semi-circular flat stone featuring a depiction of a mustachioed face was discovered on a beach near Snaptun, Denmark. Made of soapstone that originated in Norway or Sweden, the depiction was carved around the year 1000 CE and features a face with scarred lips. The figure is identified as Loki due to his lips, considered a reference to a tale recorded in "Skáldskaparmál" where sons of Ivaldi stitch up Loki's lips.
The stone is identified as a hearth stone; the nozzle of the bellows would be inserted into the hole in the front of the stone, and the air produced by the bellows pushed flame through the top hole, all the while the bellows were protected from the heat and flame. The stone may point to a connection between Loki and smithing and flames. According to Hans Jørgen Madsen, the Snaptun Stone is "the most beautifully made hearth-stone that is known." The stone is housed and on display at the Moesgård Museum near Aarhus, Denmark.
A fragmentary late 10th-century cross located in St Stephen's Church, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria, England, features a bound figure with horns and a beard. This figure is sometimes theorized as depicting the bound Loki. Discovered in 1870, the stone consists of yellowish-white sandstone, and now sits at the front of the Kirkby Stephen church. A depiction of a similarly horned and round-shouldered figure was discovered in Gainford, County Durham and is now housed in the Durham Cathedral Library.
The mid-11th century Gosforth Cross has been interpreted as featuring various figures from Norse mythology and, like the Kirkby Stephen Stone, is also located in Cumbria. The bottom portion of the west side of the cross features a depiction of a long-haired female, kneeling figure holding an object above another prostrate, bound figure. Above and to their left is a knotted serpent. This has been interpreted as Sigyn soothing the bound Loki.
The notion of Loki survived into the modern period in the folklore of Scandinavia. In Denmark, Loki appeared as "Lokke". In Jutland, the phrases "Lokke slår sin havre" ("Lokke is reaping his oats") and "Lokkemand driver sine geder" ("Lokkemand drives his goats") are thereby recorded in the beginning of the 20th century, the latter with the variation of simply "Lokke". In Zealand the name "Lokke lejemand" ("Lokke the Playing Man") was used. In his study of Loki's appearance in Scandinavian folklore in the modern period, Danish folklorist Axel Olrik cites numerous examples of natural phenomena explained by way of Lokke in popular folk tradition, including rising heat. An example from 1841 reads as follows:
And in Thy, from the same source: "... when you look at the horizon in clear weather and sunshine, and the air seems to move in shimmering waves, or like a sheet of water which seems to rise and sink in waves." Olrik further cites several different types of plants named after Loki. Olrik detects three major themes in folklore attestations; Lokke appeared as an "air phenomenon", connected with the "home fire", and as a "teasing creature of the night".
"Loka Táttur" or "Lokka Táttur" (Faroese "tale—or "þáttr"—of Loki") is a Faroese ballad dating to the late Middle Ages that features the gods Loki, Odin, and Hœnir helping a farmer and a boy escape the wrath of a bet-winning jötunn. The tale notably features Loki as a benevolent god in this story, although his slyness is in evidence as usual.
Regarding scholarship on Loki, scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre comments (1964) that "more ink has been spilled on Loki than on any other figure in Norse myth. This, in itself, is enough to show how little scholars agree, and how far we are from understanding him."
Loki's origins and role in Norse mythology have been much debated by scholars. In 1835, Jacob Grimm was first to produce a major theory about Loki, in which he advanced the notion of Loki as a "god of fire". In 1889, Sophus Bugge theorized Loki to be variant of Lucifer of Christianity, an element of Bugge's larger effort to find a basis of Christianity in Norse mythology. After World War II, four scholarly theories dominated. The first of the four theories is that of Folke Ström, who in 1956 concluded that Loki is a hypostasis of the god Odin. In 1959, Jan de Vries theorized that Loki is a typical example of a trickster figure. In 1961, by way of excluding all non-Scandinavian mythological parallels in her analysis, Anna Birgitta Rooth concluded that Loki was originally a spider. Anne Holtsmark, writing in 1962, concluded that no conclusion could be made about Loki.
A popular theory proposed by the scholar Ursula Dronke is that "Lóðurr" is "a third name of Loki/Loptr". The main argument for this is that the gods Odin, Hœnir and Loki occur as a trio in "Haustlöng", in the prose prologue to "Reginsmál" and also in the "Loka Táttur" a Faroese ballad, an example of Norse deities appearing in later folklore. The Odin-kenning "Lóðurr's friend" furthermore appears to parallel the kenning "Loptr's friend" and Loki is similarly referred to as "Hœnir's friend" in "Haustlöng", strengthening the trio connection. While many scholars agree with this identification, it is not universally accepted. One argument against it is that Loki appears as a malevolent being later in "Völuspá", seemingly conflicting with the image of Lóðurr as a "mighty and loving" figure. Many scholars, including Jan de Vries and Georges Dumézil, have also identified Lóðurr as being the same deity as Loki. Scholar Haukur Þorgeirsson suggests that "Loki" and "Lóðurr" were different names for the same deity based on that Loki is referred to as Lóður in the rímur "Lokrur". Þorgeirsson argues that the writer must have had information about the identification from either a tradition or that the author drew the conclusion based on the "Prose Edda", as Snorri does not mention Lóðurr. Since the contents of the "Poetic Edda" are assumed to have been forgotten around 1400 when the rímur was written, Haukur argues for a traditional identification. Þorgeirsson also points to "Þrymlur" where the same identification is made with Loki and Lóðurr. Haukur says that unless the possible but unlikely idea that the 14th- and 15th-century poets possessed written sources unknown to us is true, the idea must have come from either an unlikely amount of sources from where the poets could have drawn a similar conclusion that Loki and Lóðurr are identical (like some recent scholars) or that remnants of an oral tradition remained. Haukur concludes that if Lóðurr was historically considered an independent deity from Loki, then a discussion of when and why he became identified with Loki is appropriate.
The scholar John Lindow highlights the recurring pattern of the bound monster in Norse mythology as being particularly associated to Loki. Loki and his three children by Angrboda were all bound in some way, and were all destined to break free at Ragnarok to wreak havoc on the world. He suggests a borrowed element from the traditions of the Caucasus region, and identifies a mythological parallel with the "Christian legend of the bound Antichrist awaiting the Last Judgment".
In the 19th century, Loki was depicted in a variety of ways, some strongly at odds with others. According to Stefan Arvidssen, "the conception of Loki varied during the nineteenth century. Sometimes he was presented as a dark-haired Semitic fifth columnist among the Nordic Aesir, but sometimes he was described as a Nordic Prometheus, a heroic bearer of culture".
Loki appears in Richard Wagner's opera cycle Ring of the Nibelung as "Loge" (a play on Old Norse "loge", "fire"), depicted as an ally of the gods (specifically as Wotan's assistant rather than Donner's), although he generally dislikes them and thinks of them as greedy, as they refuse to return the Rhine Gold to its rightful owners. In the conclusion of the first opera "Das Rheingold", he reveals his hope to turn into fire and destroy Valhalla, and in the final opera "Götterdämmerung" Valhalla is set alight, destroying the Gods.
As the myths tell of Loki changing gender on several occasions, some modern works interpret or depict the deity as genderfluid.
In 2008, five black smokers were discovered between Greenland and Norway, the most northerly group so far discovered, and given the name Loki's Castle, as their shape reminded discoverers of a fantasy castle, and (a University of Bergen press release says) "Loki" was "an appropriate name for a field that was so difficult to locate".
Loki has been depicted in or is referred to in an array of media in modern popular culture. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18013 |
Lisp (programming language)
Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation.
Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today. Only Fortran is older, by one year. Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Racket, Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure.
Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became the favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, conditionals, higher-order functions, recursion, the self-hosting compiler, and the read–eval–print loop.
The name "LISP" derives from "LISt Processor". Linked lists are one of Lisp's major data structures, and Lisp source code is made of lists. Thus, Lisp programs can manipulate source code as a data structure, giving rise to the macro systems that allow programmers to create new syntax or new domain-specific languages embedded in Lisp.
The interchangeability of code and data gives Lisp its instantly recognizable syntax. All program code is written as "s-expressions", or parenthesized lists. A function call or syntactic form is written as a list with the function or operator's name first, and the arguments following; for instance, a function that takes three arguments would be called as .
John McCarthy developed Lisp in 1958 while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). McCarthy published its design in a paper in "Communications of the ACM" in 1960, entitled "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I". He showed that with a few simple operators and a notation for anonymous functions borrowed from Church, one can build a Turing-complete language for algorithms.
Information Processing Language was the first AI language, from 1955 or 1956, and already included many of the concepts, such as list-processing and recursion, which came to be used in Lisp.
McCarthy's original notation used bracketed "M-expressions" that would be translated into S-expressions. As an example, the M-expression is equivalent to the S-expression . Once Lisp was implemented, programmers rapidly chose to use S-expressions, and M-expressions were abandoned. M-expressions surfaced again with short-lived attempts of MLisp by Horace Enea and CGOL by Vaughan Pratt.
Lisp was first implemented by Steve Russell on an IBM 704 computer using punched cards. Russell had read McCarthy's paper and realized (to McCarthy's surprise) that the Lisp "eval" function could be implemented in machine code. The result was a working Lisp interpreter which could be used to run Lisp programs, or more properly, "evaluate Lisp expressions".
Two assembly language macros for the IBM 704 became the primitive operations for decomposing lists: ("Contents of the Address part of Register" number) and ("Contents of the Decrement part of Register" number), where "register" is used to refer to registers of the computer's central processing unit (CPU). Lisp dialects still use and ( and ) for the operations that return the first item in a list and the rest of the list, respectively.
The first complete Lisp compiler, written in Lisp, was implemented in 1962 by Tim Hart and Mike Levin at MIT. This compiler introduced the Lisp model of incremental compilation, in which compiled and interpreted functions can intermix freely. The language used in Hart and Levin's memo is much closer to modern Lisp style than McCarthy's earlier code.
The first garbage collection routines were developed by MIT graduate student Daniel Edwards.
During the 1980s and 1990s, a great effort was made to unify the work on new Lisp dialects (mostly successors to Maclisp such as ZetaLisp and NIL (New Implementation of Lisp) into a single language. The new language, Common Lisp, was somewhat compatible with the dialects it replaced (the book "Common Lisp the Language" notes the compatibility of various constructs). In 1994, ANSI published the Common Lisp standard, "ANSI X3.226-1994 Information Technology Programming Language Common Lisp".
Since inception, Lisp was closely connected with the artificial intelligence research community, especially on PDP-10 systems. Lisp was used as the implementation of the programming language Micro Planner, which was used in the famous AI system SHRDLU. In the 1970s, as AI research spawned commercial offshoots, the performance of existing Lisp systems became a growing issue.
Over its sixty-year history, Lisp has spawned many variations on the core theme of an S-expression language. Moreover, each given dialect may have several implementations—for instance, there are more than a dozen implementations of Common Lisp.
Differences between dialects may be quite visible—for instance, Common Lisp uses the keyword codice_1 to name a function, but Scheme uses codice_2. Within a dialect that is standardized, however, conforming implementations support the same core language, but with different extensions and libraries.
After having declined somewhat in the 1990s, Lisp has experienced a resurgence of interest after 2000. Most new activity has been focused around implementations of Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, Clojure, and Racket, and includes development of new portable libraries and applications.
Many new Lisp programmers were inspired by writers such as Paul Graham and Eric S. Raymond to pursue a language others considered antiquated. New Lisp programmers often describe the language as an eye-opening experience and claim to be substantially more productive than in other languages. This increase in awareness may be contrasted to the "AI winter" and Lisp's brief gain in the mid-1990s.
Dan Weinreb lists in his survey of Common Lisp implementations eleven actively maintained Common Lisp implementations. Scieneer Common Lisp is a new commercial implementation forked from CMUCL with a first release in 2002.
The open source community has created new supporting infrastructure: CLiki is a wiki that collects Common Lisp related information, the Common Lisp directory lists resources, #lisp is a popular IRC channel and allows the sharing and commenting of code snippets (with support by lisppaste, an IRC bot written in Lisp), Planet Lisp collects the contents of various Lisp-related blogs, on LispForum users discuss Lisp topics, Lispjobs is a service for announcing job offers and there is a weekly news service, "Weekly Lisp News". "Common-lisp.net" is a hosting site for open source Common Lisp projects. Quicklisp is a library manager for Common Lisp.
Fifty years of Lisp (1958–2008) was celebrated at LISP50@OOPSLA. There are regular local user meetings in Boston, Vancouver, and Hamburg. Other events include the European Common Lisp Meeting, the European Lisp Symposium and an International Lisp Conference.
The Scheme community actively maintains over twenty implementations. Several significant new implementations (Chicken, Gambit, Gauche, Ikarus, Larceny, Ypsilon) have been developed in the 2000s (decade). The Revised5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme standard of Scheme was widely accepted in the Scheme community. The Scheme Requests for Implementation process has created a lot of quasi standard libraries and extensions for Scheme. User communities of individual Scheme implementations continue to grow. A new language standardization process was started in 2003 and led to the R6RS Scheme standard in 2007. Academic use of Scheme for teaching computer science seems to have declined somewhat. Some universities are no longer using Scheme in their computer science introductory courses; MIT now uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate computer science program and MITx massive open online course.
There are several new dialects of Lisp: Arc, Hy, Nu, Liskell, and LFE (Lisp Flavored Erlang). The parser for Julia is implemented in Femtolisp, a dialect of Scheme (Julia is inspired by Scheme, which in turn is a Lisp dialect).
In October 2019, Paul Graham released a specification for Bel, "a new dialect of Lisp."
Common Lisp and Scheme represent two major streams of Lisp development. These languages embody significantly different design choices.
Common Lisp is a successor to Maclisp. The primary influences were Lisp Machine Lisp, Maclisp, NIL, S-1 Lisp, Spice Lisp, and Scheme. It has many of the features of Lisp Machine Lisp (a large Lisp dialect used to program Lisp Machines), but was designed to be efficiently implementable on any personal computer or workstation. Common Lisp is a general-purpose programming language and thus has a large language standard including many built-in data types, functions, macros and other language elements, and an object system (Common Lisp Object System). Common Lisp also borrowed certain features from Scheme such as lexical scoping and lexical closures. Common Lisp implementations are available for targeting different platforms such as the LLVM, the Java virtual machine,
x86-64, PowerPC, Alpha, ARM, Motorola 68000, and MIPS, and operating systems such as Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Dragonfly BSD, and Heroku.
Scheme is a statically scoped and properly tail-recursive dialect of the Lisp programming language invented by Guy L. Steele, Jr. and Gerald Jay Sussman. It was designed to have exceptionally clear and simple semantics and few different ways to form expressions. Designed about a decade earlier than Common Lisp, Scheme is a more minimalist design. It has a much smaller set of standard features but with certain implementation features (such as tail-call optimization and full continuations) not specified in Common Lisp. A wide variety of programming paradigms, including imperative, functional, and message passing styles, find convenient expression in Scheme. Scheme continues to evolve with a series of standards (Revisedn Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme) and a series of Scheme Requests for Implementation.
Clojure is a recent dialect of Lisp that targets mainly the Java virtual machine, and the Common Language Runtime (CLR), the Python VM, the Ruby VM YARV, and compiling to JavaScript. It is designed to be a pragmatic general-purpose language. Clojure draws considerable influences from Haskell and places a very strong emphasis on immutability. Clojure provides access to Java frameworks and libraries, with optional type hints and type inference, so that calls to Java can avoid reflection and enable fast primitive operations. Clojure is not designed to be backwards compatible with other Lisp dialects.
Further, Lisp dialects are used as scripting languages in many applications, with the best-known being Emacs Lisp in the Emacs editor, AutoLISP and later Visual Lisp in AutoCAD, Nyquist in Audacity, Scheme in LilyPond. The potential small size of a useful Scheme interpreter makes it particularly popular for embedded scripting. Examples include SIOD and TinyScheme, both of which have been successfully embedded in the GIMP image processor under the generic name "Script-fu". LIBREP, a Lisp interpreter by John Harper originally based on the Emacs Lisp language, has been embedded in the Sawfish window manager.
Lisp has officially standardized dialects: R6RS Scheme, R7RS Scheme, IEEE Scheme, ANSI Common Lisp and ISO ISLISP.
Lisp was the first language where the structure of program code is represented faithfully and directly in a standard data structure—a quality much later dubbed "homoiconicity". Thus, Lisp functions can be manipulated, altered or even created within a Lisp program without lower-level manipulations. This is generally considered one of the main advantages of the language with regard to its expressive power, and makes the language suitable for syntactic macros and metacircular evaluation.
A conditional using an "if–then–else" syntax was invented by McCarthy in a Fortran context. He proposed its inclusion in ALGOL, but it was not made part of the Algol 58 specification. For Lisp, McCarthy used the more general "cond"-structure. Algol 60 took up "if–then–else" and popularized it.
Lisp deeply influenced Alan Kay, the leader of the research team that developed Smalltalk at Xerox PARC; and in turn Lisp was influenced by Smalltalk, with later dialects adopting object-oriented programming features (inheritance classes, encapsulating instances, message passing, etc.) in the 1970s. The Flavors object system introduced the concept of multiple inheritance and the mixin. The Common Lisp Object System provides multiple inheritance, multimethods with multiple dispatch, and first-class generic functions, yielding a flexible and powerful form of dynamic dispatch. It has served as the template for many subsequent Lisp (including Scheme) object systems, which are often implemented via a metaobject protocol, a reflective metacircular design in which the object system is defined in terms of itself: Lisp was only the second language after Smalltalk (and is still one of the very few languages) to possess such a metaobject system. Many years later, Alan Kay suggested that as a result of the confluence of these features, only Smalltalk and Lisp could be regarded as properly conceived object-oriented programming systems.
Lisp introduced the concept of automatic garbage collection, in which the system walks the heap looking for unused memory. Progress in modern sophisticated garbage collection algorithms such as generational garbage collection was stimulated by its use in Lisp.
Edsger W. Dijkstra in his 1972 Turing Award lecture said,
Largely because of its resource requirements with respect to early computing hardware (including early microprocessors), Lisp did not become as popular outside of the AI community as Fortran and the ALGOL-descended C language. Because of its suitability to complex and dynamic applications, Lisp is enjoying some resurgence of popular interest in the 2010s.
Lisp is an expression oriented language. Unlike most other languages, no distinction is made between "expressions" and "statements"; all code and data are written as expressions. When an expression is "evaluated", it produces a value (in Common Lisp, possibly multiple values), which can then be embedded into other expressions. Each value can be any data type.
McCarthy's 1958 paper introduced two types of syntax: "Symbolic expressions" (S-expressions, sexps), which mirror the internal representation of code and data; and "Meta expressions" (M-expressions), which express functions of S-expressions. M-expressions never found favor, and almost all Lisps today use S-expressions to manipulate both code and data.
The use of parentheses is Lisp's most immediately obvious difference from other programming language families. As a result, students have long given Lisp nicknames such as "Lost In Stupid Parentheses", or "Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses". However, the S-expression syntax is also responsible for much of Lisp's power: the syntax is extremely regular, which facilitates manipulation by computer. However, the syntax of Lisp is not limited to traditional parentheses notation. It can be extended to include alternative notations. For example, XMLisp is a Common Lisp extension that employs the metaobject protocol to integrate S-expressions with the Extensible Markup Language (XML).
The reliance on expressions gives the language great flexibility. Because Lisp functions are written as lists, they can be processed exactly like data. This allows easy writing of programs which manipulate other programs (metaprogramming). Many Lisp dialects exploit this feature using macro systems, which enables extension of the language almost without limit.
A Lisp list is written with its elements separated by whitespace, and surrounded by parentheses. For example, is a list whose elements are the three "atoms" , , and . These values are implicitly typed: they are respectively two integers and a Lisp-specific data type called a "symbol", and do not have to be declared as such.
The empty list is also represented as the special atom . This is the only entity in Lisp which is both an atom and a list.
Expressions are written as lists, using prefix notation. The first element in the list is the name of a function, the name of a macro, a lambda expression or the name of a "special operator" (see below). The remainder of the list are the arguments. For example, the function returns its arguments as a list, so the expression
evaluates to the list . The "quote" before the in the preceding example is a "special operator" which returns its argument without evaluating it. Any unquoted expressions are recursively evaluated before the enclosing expression is evaluated. For example,
evaluates to the list . Note that the third argument is a list; lists can be nested.
Arithmetic operators are treated similarly. The expression
evaluates to 10. The equivalent under infix notation would be "".
Lisp has no notion of operators as implemented in Algol-derived languages. Arithmetic operators in Lisp are variadic functions (or "n-ary"), able to take any number of arguments. A C-style '++' increment operator is sometimes implemented under the name incf giving syntax
equivalent to (setq x (+ x 1)), returning the new value of x.
"Special operators" (sometimes called "special forms") provide Lisp's control structure. For example, the special operator takes three arguments. If the first argument is non-nil, it evaluates to the second argument; otherwise, it evaluates to the third argument. Thus, the expression
evaluates to . Of course, this would be more useful if a non-trivial expression had been substituted in place of .
Lisp also provides logical operators and, or and not. The and and or operators do short circuit evaluation and will return their first nil and non-nil argument respectively.
will evaluate to "James".
Another special operator, , is used to bind variables to values which are then evaluated within an expression. This operator is also used to create functions: the arguments to are a list of arguments, and the expression or expressions to which the function evaluates (the returned value is the value of the last expression that is evaluated). The expression
evaluates to a function that, when applied, takes one argument, binds it to and returns the number one greater than that argument. Lambda expressions are treated no differently from named functions; they are invoked the same way. Therefore, the expression
evaluates to . Here, we're doing a function application: we execute the anonymous function by passing to it the value 5.
Named functions are created by storing a lambda expression in a symbol using the defun macro.
In the original LISP there were two fundamental data types: atoms and lists. A list was a finite ordered sequence of elements, where each element is either an atom or a list, and an atom was a number or a symbol. A symbol was essentially a unique named item, written as an alphanumeric string in source code, and used either as a variable name or as a data item in symbolic processing. For example, the list contains three elements: the symbol , the list , and the number 2.
The essential difference between atoms and lists was that atoms were immutable and unique. Two atoms that appeared in different places in source code but were written in exactly the same way represented the same object, whereas each list was a separate object that could be altered independently of other lists and could be distinguished from other lists by comparison operators.
As more data types were introduced in later Lisp dialects, and programming styles evolved, the concept of an atom lost importance. Many dialects still retained the predicate "atom" for legacy compatibility, defining it true for any object which is not a cons.
A Lisp list is implemented as a singly linked list. Each cell of this list is called a "cons" (in Scheme, a "pair"), and is composed of two pointers, called the "car" and "cdr". These are respectively equivalent to the and fields discussed in the article "linked list".
Of the many data structures that can be built out of cons cells, one of the most basic is called a "proper list". A proper list is either the special (empty list) symbol, or a cons in which the points to a datum (which may be another cons structure, such as a list), and the points to another proper list.
If a given cons is taken to be the head of a linked list, then its car points to the first element of the list, and its cdr points to the rest of the list. For this reason, the and functions are also called and when referring to conses which are part of a linked list (rather than, say, a tree).
Thus, a Lisp list is not an atomic object, as an instance of a container class in C++ or Java would be. A list is nothing more than an aggregate of linked conses. A variable which refers to a given list is simply a pointer to the first cons in the list. Traversal of a list can be done by "cdring down" the list; that is, taking successive cdrs to visit each cons of the list; or by using any of several higher-order functions to map a function over a list.
Because conses and lists are so universal in Lisp systems, it is a common misconception that they are Lisp's only data structures. In fact, all but the most simplistic Lisps have other data structures, such as vectors (arrays), hash tables, structures, and so forth.
Parenthesized S-expressions represent linked list structures. There are several ways to represent the same list as an S-expression. A cons can be written in "dotted-pair notation" as , where is the car and the cdr. A longer proper list might be written in dotted-pair notation. This is conventionally abbreviated as in "list notation". An improper list may be written in a combination of the two – as for the list of three conses whose last cdr is (i.e., the list in fully specified form).
Lisp provides many built-in procedures for accessing and controlling lists. Lists can be created directly with the procedure, which takes any number of arguments, and returns the list of these arguments.
Because of the way that lists are constructed from cons pairs, the procedure can be used to add an element to the front of a list. Note that the procedure is asymmetric in how it handles list arguments, because of how lists are constructed.
The procedure appends two (or more) lists to one another. Because Lisp lists are linked lists, appending two lists has asymptotic time complexity formula_1
Lisp lists, being simple linked lists, can share structure with one another. That is to say, two lists can have the same "tail", or final sequence of conses. For instance, after the execution of the following Common Lisp code:
the lists and are and respectively. However, the tail is the same structure in both lists. It is not a copy; the cons cells pointing to and are in the same memory locations for both lists.
Sharing structure rather than copying can give a dramatic performance improvement. However, this technique can interact in undesired ways with functions that alter lists passed to them as arguments. Altering one list, such as by replacing the with a , will affect the other:
This changes to , but thereby also changes to – a possibly unexpected result. This can be a source of bugs, and functions which alter their arguments are documented as "destructive" for this very reason.
Aficionados of functional programming avoid destructive functions. In the Scheme dialect, which favors the functional style, the names of destructive functions are marked with a cautionary exclamation point, or "bang"—such as (read "set car bang"), which replaces the car of a cons. In the Common Lisp dialect, destructive functions are commonplace; the equivalent of is named for "replace car." This function is rarely seen however as Common Lisp includes a special facility, , to make it easier to define and use destructive functions. A frequent style in Common Lisp is to write code functionally (without destructive calls) when prototyping, then to add destructive calls as an optimization where it is safe to do so.
Lisp evaluates expressions which are entered by the user. Symbols and lists evaluate to some other (usually, simpler) expression – for instance, a symbol evaluates to the value of the variable it names; evaluates to . However, most other forms evaluate to themselves: if entering into Lisp, it returns .
Any expression can also be marked to prevent it from being evaluated (as is necessary for symbols and lists). This is the role of the special operator, or its abbreviation (one quotation mark). For instance, usually if entering the symbol , it returns the value of the corresponding variable (or an error, if there is no such variable). To refer to the literal symbol, enter or, usually, .
Both Common Lisp and Scheme also support the "backquote" operator (termed "quasiquote" in Scheme), entered with the character (grave accent). This is almost the same as the plain quote, except it allows expressions to be evaluated and their values interpolated into a quoted list with the comma "unquote" and comma-at "splice" operators. If the variable has the value then evaluates to , while evaluates to . The backquote is most often used in defining macro expansions.
Self-evaluating forms and quoted forms are Lisp's equivalent of literals. It may be possible to modify the values of (mutable) literals in program code. For instance, if a function returns a quoted form, and the code that calls the function modifies the form, this may alter the behavior of the function on subsequent iterations.
Modifying a quoted form like this is generally considered bad style, and is defined by ANSI Common Lisp as erroneous (resulting in "undefined" behavior in compiled files, because the file-compiler can coalesce similar constants, put them in write-protected memory, etc.).
Lisp's formalization of quotation has been noted by Douglas Hofstadter (in "Gödel, Escher, Bach") and others as an example of the philosophical idea of self-reference.
The Lisp family splits over the use of dynamic or static (a.k.a. lexical) scope. Clojure, Common Lisp and Scheme make use of static scoping by default, while newLISP, Picolisp and the embedded languages in Emacs and AutoCAD use dynamic scoping. Since version 24.1, Emacs uses both dynamic and lexical scoping.
A fundamental distinction between Lisp and other languages is that in Lisp, the textual representation of a program is simply a human-readable description of the same internal data structures (linked lists, symbols, number, characters, etc.) as would be used by the underlying Lisp system.
Lisp uses this to implement a very powerful macro system. Like other macro languages such as C, a macro returns code that can then be compiled. However, unlike C macros, the macros are Lisp functions and so can exploit the full power of Lisp.
Further, because Lisp code has the same structure as lists, macros can be built with any of the list-processing functions in the language. In short, anything that Lisp can do to a data structure, Lisp macros can do to code. In contrast, in most other languages, the parser's output is purely internal to the language implementation and cannot be manipulated by the programmer.
This feature makes it easy to develop "efficient" languages within languages. For example, the Common Lisp Object System can be implemented cleanly as a language extension using macros. This means that if an application needs a different inheritance mechanism, it can use a different object system. This is in stark contrast to most other languages; for example, Java does not support multiple inheritance and there is no reasonable way to add it.
In simplistic Lisp implementations, this list structure is directly interpreted to run the program; a function is literally a piece of list structure which is traversed by the interpreter in executing it. However, most substantial Lisp systems also include a compiler. The compiler translates list structure into machine code or bytecode for execution. This code can run as fast as code compiled in conventional languages such as C.
Macros expand before the compilation step, and thus offer some interesting options. If a program needs a precomputed table, then a macro might create the table at compile time, so the compiler need only output the table and need not call code to create the table at run time. Some Lisp implementations even have a mechanism, codice_6, that allows code to be present during compile time (when a macro would need it), but not present in the emitted module.
Lisp languages are often used with an interactive command line, which may be combined with an integrated development environment (IDE). The user types in expressions at the command line, or directs the IDE to transmit them to the Lisp system. Lisp "reads" the entered expressions, "evaluates" them, and "prints" the result. For this reason, the Lisp command line is called a "read–eval–print loop" (REPL).
The basic operation of the REPL is as follows. This is a simplistic description which omits many elements of a real Lisp, such as quoting and macros.
The function accepts textual S-expressions as input, and parses them into an internal data structure. For instance, if you type the text at the prompt, translates this into a linked list with three elements: the symbol , the number 1, and the number 2. It so happens that this list is also a valid piece of Lisp code; that is, it can be evaluated. This is because the car of the list names a function—the addition operation.
Note that a will be read as a single symbol. will be read as the number one hundred and twenty-three. will be read as the string "123".
The function evaluates the data, returning zero or more other Lisp data as a result. Evaluation does not have to mean interpretation; some Lisp systems compile every expression to native machine code. It is simple, however, to describe evaluation as interpretation: To evaluate a list whose car names a function, first evaluates each of the arguments given in its cdr, then applies the function to the arguments. In this case, the function is addition, and applying it to the argument list yields the answer . This is the result of the evaluation.
The symbol evaluates to the value of the symbol foo. Data like the string "123" evaluates to the same string. The list evaluates to the list (1 2 3).
It is the job of the function to represent output to the user. For a simple result such as this is trivial. An expression which evaluated to a piece of list structure would require that traverse the list and print it out as an S-expression.
To implement a Lisp REPL, it is necessary only to implement these three functions and an infinite-loop function. (Naturally, the implementation of will be complex, since it must also implement all special operators like or .) This done, a basic REPL is one line of code: .
The Lisp REPL typically also provides input editing, an input history, error handling and an interface to the debugger.
Lisp is usually evaluated eagerly. In Common Lisp, arguments are evaluated in applicative order ('leftmost innermost'), while in Scheme order of arguments is undefined, leaving room for optimization by a compiler.
Lisp originally had very few control structures, but many more were added during the language's evolution. (Lisp's original conditional operator, , is the precursor to later structures.)
Programmers in the Scheme dialect often express loops using tail recursion. Scheme's commonality in academic computer science has led some students to believe that tail recursion is the only, or the most common, way to write iterations in Lisp, but this is incorrect. All oft-seen Lisp dialects have imperative-style iteration constructs, from Scheme's loop to Common Lisp's complex expressions. Moreover, the key issue that makes this an objective rather than subjective matter is that Scheme makes specific requirements for the handling of tail calls, and thus the reason that the use of tail recursion is generally encouraged for Scheme is that the practice is expressly supported by the language definition. By contrast, ANSI Common Lisp does not require the optimization commonly termed a tail call elimination. Thus, the fact that tail recursive style as a casual replacement for the use of more traditional iteration constructs (such as , or ) is discouraged in Common Lisp is not just a matter of stylistic preference, but potentially one of efficiency (since an apparent tail call in Common Lisp may not compile as a simple jump) and program correctness (since tail recursion may increase stack use in Common Lisp, risking stack overflow).
Some Lisp control structures are "special operators", equivalent to other languages' syntactic keywords. Expressions using these operators have the same surface appearance as function calls, but differ in that the arguments are not necessarily evaluated—or, in the case of an iteration expression, may be evaluated more than once.
In contrast to most other major programming languages, Lisp allows implementing control structures using the language. Several control structures are implemented as Lisp macros, and can even be macro-expanded by the programmer who wants to know how they work.
Both Common Lisp and Scheme have operators for non-local control flow. The differences in these operators are some of the deepest differences between the two dialects. Scheme supports "re-entrant continuations" using the procedure, which allows a program to save (and later restore) a particular place in execution. Common Lisp does not support re-entrant continuations, but does support several ways of handling escape continuations.
Often, the same algorithm can be expressed in Lisp in either an imperative or a functional style. As noted above, Scheme tends to favor the functional style, using tail recursion and continuations to express control flow. However, imperative style is still quite possible. The style preferred by many Common Lisp programmers may seem more familiar to programmers used to structured languages such as C, while that preferred by Schemers more closely resembles pure-functional languages such as Haskell.
Because of Lisp's early heritage in list processing, it has a wide array of higher-order functions relating to iteration over sequences. In many cases where an explicit loop would be needed in other languages (like a loop in C) in Lisp the same task can be accomplished with a higher-order function. (The same is true of many functional programming languages.)
A good example is a function which in Scheme is called and in Common Lisp is called . Given a function and one or more lists, applies the function successively to the lists' elements in order, collecting the results in a new list:
This applies the function to each corresponding pair of list elements, yielding the result .
Here are examples of Common Lisp code.
The basic "Hello world" program:
Lisp syntax lends itself naturally to recursion. Mathematical problems such as the enumeration of recursively defined sets are simple to express in this notation.
Evaluate a number's factorial:
An alternative implementation takes less stack space than the previous version if the underlying Lisp system optimizes tail recursion:
Contrast with an iterative version which uses Common Lisp's macro:
The following function reverses a list. (Lisp's built-in "reverse" function does the same thing.)
Various object systems and models have been built on top of, alongside, or into Lisp, including: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18016 |
List of logarithmic identities
In mathematics, there are many logarithmic identities.
Logarithms and exponentials with the same base cancel each other. This is true because logarithms and exponentials are inverse operations (just like multiplication and division or addition and subtraction).
Both of the above are derived from the following two equations that define a logarithm:
Substituting in the left equation gives , and substituting in the right gives . Finally, replace with .
Logarithms can be used to make calculations easier. For example, two numbers can be multiplied just by using a logarithm table and adding. The first three operations below assume , and/or so that and . Derivations also use the log definitions and .
Where formula_4, formula_5, and formula_6 are positive real numbers and formula_7. Both formula_8 and formula_9 are real numbers.
The laws result from canceling exponentials and appropriate law of indices. Starting with the first law:
formula_10
The law for powers exploits another of the laws of indices:
formula_11
The law relating to quotients then follows:
formula_12
formula_13
Similarly, the root law is derived by rewriting the root as a reciprocal power:
formula_14
This identity is useful to evaluate logarithms on calculators. For instance, most calculators have buttons for ln and for , but not all calculators have buttons for the logarithm of an arbitrary base.
This formula has several consequences:
where formula_26 is any permutation of the subscripts 1, ..., "n". For example
The following summation/subtraction rule is especially useful in probability theory when one is dealing with a sum of log-probabilities:
Note that in practice formula_30 and formula_8 have to be switched on the right hand side of the equations if formula_32. Also note that the subtraction identity is not defined if formula_33 since the logarithm of zero is not defined. Many programming languages have a specific codice_1 function that calculates formula_34 without underflow when formula_5 is small.
More generally:
where formula_37 are sorted in descending order.
A useful identity involving exponents:
or more universally:
Based on , and
All are accurate around formula_44, but not for large numbers.
The last limit is often summarized as "logarithms grow more slowly than any power or root of "x"".
Where formula_53, formula_54, and formula_7.
To remember higher integrals, it's convenient to define:
Where formula_59 is the nth Harmonic number.
Then,
The identities of logarithms can be used to approximate large numbers. Note that , where "a", "b", and "c" are arbitrary constants. Suppose that one wants to approximate the 44th Mersenne prime, . To get the base-10 logarithm, we would multiply 32,582,657 by , getting . We can then get .
Similarly, factorials can be approximated by summing the logarithms of the terms.
The complex logarithm is the complex number analogue of the logarithm function. No single valued function on the complex plane can satisfy the normal rules for logarithms. However a multivalued function can be defined which satisfies most of the identities. It is usual to consider this as a function defined on a Riemann surface. A single valued version called the principal value of the logarithm can be defined which is discontinuous on the negative x axis and equals the multivalued version on a single branch cut.
The convention will be used here that a capital first letter is used for the principal value of functions and the lower case version refers to the multivalued function. The single valued version of definitions and identities is always given first followed by a separate section for the multiple valued versions.
The multiple valued version of is a set but it is easier to write it without braces and using it in formulas follows obvious rules.
When "k" is any integer:
Principal value forms:
Multiple value forms, for any "k" an integer:
Principal value forms:
Multiple value forms:
A complex power of a complex number can have many possible values.
Principal value form:
Multiple value forms:
Where , are any integers: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18019 |
Lost city
A lost city is a settlement that fell into terminal decline and became extensively or completely uninhabited, with the consequence that the site's former significance was no longer known to the wider world. The locations of many lost cities have been forgotten, but some have been rediscovered and studied extensively by scientists. Recently abandoned cities or cities whose location was never in question might be referred to as ruins or ghost towns. The search for such lost cities by European explorers and adventurers in Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia from the 15th century onwards eventually led to the development of archaeology.
Lost cities generally fall into two broad categories: those where all knowledge of the city's existence was forgotten before it was rediscovered, and those whose memory was preserved in myth, legend, or historical records but whose location was lost or at least no longer widely recognized.
Cities may become lost for a variety of reasons including natural disasters, economic or social upheaval, or war.
The Incan capital city of Vilcabamba was destroyed and depopulated during the Spanish conquest of Peru in 1572. The Spanish did not rebuild the city, and the location went unrecorded and was forgotten until it was rediscovered through a detailed examination of period letters and documents.
Troy was a city located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey. It is best known for being the focus of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle and especially in the "Iliad", one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, the city slowly declined and was abandoned in the Byzantine era. Buried by time, the city was consigned to the realm of legend until the location was first excavated in the 1860s.
Other settlements are lost with few or no clues to their decline. For example, Malden Island, in the central Pacific, was deserted when first visited by Europeans in 1825, but the unsuspected presence of ruined temples and the remains of other structures found on the island indicate that a population of Polynesians had lived there for perhaps several generations some centuries earlier. Prolonged drought seems the most likely explanation for their demise and the remote nature of the island meant few visitors.
With the development of archaeology and the application of modern techniques, many previously lost cities have been rediscovered.
Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is perhaps the most familiar icon of the Inca World. Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire. It was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, as a belated result of the Spanish Conquest. It is possible that most of its inhabitants died from smallpox introduced by travelers before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the area. In 1911, Melchor Arteaga led the explorer Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley.
Helike was an ancient Greek city that sank at night in the winter of 373 BCE. The city was located in Achaea, Northern Peloponnesos, two kilometres (12 stadia) from the Corinthian Gulf. The city was thought to be legend until 2001, when it was rediscovered in the Helike Delta. In 1988, the Greek archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou launched the Helike Project to locate the site of the lost city. In 1994, in collaboration with the University of Patras, a magnetometer survey was carried out in the midplain of the delta, which revealed the outlines of a buried building. In 1995, this target was excavated (now known as the Klonis site), and a large Roman building with standing walls was brought to light. The city was rediscovered in 2001, buried in an ancient lagoon.
Some cities which are considered lost are (or may be) places of legend.
Other lost cities, having once been considered legendary, are now known to have existed, such as Troy and Bjarmaland.
"Incomplete list – for further information, see Maya civilization" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18020 |
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (; ; May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history. Agassiz grew up in Switzerland. He received doctor of philosophy and medical degrees at Erlangen and Munich, respectively. After studying with Cuvier and Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. He emigrated to the United States in 1847 after visiting Harvard University. He went on to become professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, to head its Lawrence Scientific School, and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Agassiz is known for his regimen of observational data gathering and analysis. He made vast institutional and scientific contributions to zoology, geology, and related areas, including writing multivolume research books running to thousands of pages. He is particularly known for his contributions to ichthyological classification, including of extinct species such as megalodon, and to the study of geological history, including to the founding of glaciology.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Agassiz's resistance to Darwinian evolution, belief in creationism, and the scientific racism implicit in his writings on human polygenism have tarnished his reputation, and led to controversies over his legacy.
Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier (now part of Haut-Vully) in the Swiss canton of Fribourg. The son of a pastor, Agassiz was educated first at home; he then spent four years of secondary school in Bienne, entering in 1818 and completing his elementary studies in Lausanne. Agassiz studied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and Munich; while there, he extended his knowledge of natural history, especially of botany. In 1829, he received the degree of doctor of philosophy at Erlangen, and in 1830, that of doctor of medicine at Munich. Moving to Paris, he came under the tutelage of Alexander von Humboldt (and later his financial benevolence). Humboldt and Georges Cuvier launched him on his careers of geology and zoology, respectively. Ichthyology soon became a focus of his life's work.
In 1819–1820, German biologists Johann Baptist von Spix and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius undertook an expedition to Brazil. They returned home to Europe with many natural objects, including an important collection of the freshwater fish of Brazil, especially of the Amazon River. Spix, who died in 1826, did not live long enough to work out the history of these fish, and Martius selected Agassiz for this project. Agassiz threw himself into the work with an enthusiasm that would go on to characterize the rest of his life's work. The task of describing the Brazilian fish was completed and published in 1829. This was followed by research into the history of fish found in Lake Neuchâtel. Enlarging his plans, in 1830, he issued a prospectus of a "History of the Freshwater Fish of Central Europe". In 1839, however, the first part of this publication appeared, and it was completed in 1842.
In 1832, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. The fossil fish in the rock of the surrounding region, the slates of Glarus and the limestones of Monte Bolca, soon attracted his attention. At the time, very little had been accomplished in their scientific study. Agassiz, as early as 1829, planned the publication of a work, which more than any other, laid the foundation of his worldwide fame. Five volumes of his "Recherches sur les poissons fossiles" ("Research on Fossil Fish") were published from 1833 to 1843. They were magnificently illustrated, chiefly by Joseph Dinkel. In gathering materials for this work, Agassiz visited the principal museums in Europe, and meeting Cuvier in Paris, he received much encouragement and assistance from him. They had known him for seven years at the time.
Agassiz found that his palaeontological analyses required a new ichthyological classification. The fossils he examined rarely showed any traces of the soft tissues of fish, but, instead, consisted chiefly of the teeth, scales, and fins, with the bones being perfectly preserved in comparatively few instances. He, therefore, adopted a classification that divided fish into four groups: ganoids, placoids, cycloids, and ctenoids, based on the nature of the scales and other dermal appendages. This did much to improve fish taxonomy, but Aggasiz's classification has since been superseded.
Agassiz needed financial support to continue his work. The British Association and the Earl of Ellesmere—then Lord Francis Egerton—stepped in to help. The 1,290 original drawings made for the work were purchased by the Earl, and presented by him to the Geological Society of London. In 1836, the Wollaston Medal was awarded to Agassiz by the council of that society for his work on fossil ichthyology; and, in 1838, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society. Meanwhile, invertebrate animals engaged his attention. In 1837, he issued the "Prodrome" of a monograph on the recent and fossil Echinodermata, the first part of which appeared in 1838; in 1839–40, he published two quarto volumes on the fossil echinoderms of Switzerland; and in 1840–45, he issued his "Études critiques sur les mollusques fossiles" ("Critical Studies on Fossil Mollusks").
Before Agassiz's first visit to England in 1834, Hugh Miller and other geologists had brought to light the remarkable fossil fish of the Old Red Sandstone of the northeast of Scotland. The strange forms of "Pterichthys", "Coccosteus" and other genera were then made known to geologists for the first time. They were of intense interest to Agassiz, and formed the subject of a monograph by him published in 1844–45: "Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Grès Rouge, ou Système Dévonien (Old Red Sandstone) des Îles Britanniques et de Russie" ("Monograph on Fossil Fish of the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian System of the British Isles and of Russia"). In the early stages of his career in Neuchatel, Agassiz also made a name for himself as a man who could run a scientific department well. Under his care, the University of Neuchâtel soon became a leading institution for scientific inquiry.
In 1842–1846, Agassiz issued his "Nomenclator Zoologicus", a classification list, with references, of all names used in zoological genera and groups.
In 1837, Agassiz proposed that the Earth had been subjected to a past ice age. He presented the theory to the Helvetic Society that not only had ancient glaciers flowed outward from the Alps, but even larger glaciers had covered the plains and mountains of Europe, Asia, and North America, smothering the entire Northern Hemisphere in a prolonged ice age. In the same year, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Prior to this proposal, Goethe, de Saussure, Venetz, Jean de Charpentier, Karl Friedrich Schimper, and others had studied the glaciers of the Alps, and Goethe, Charpentier, and Schimper had even concluded that the erratic blocks of alpine rocks scattered over the slopes and summits of the Jura Mountains had been moved there by glaciers. These ideas attracted the attention of Agassiz, and he discussed them with Charpentier and Schimper, whom he accompanied on successive trips to the Alps. Agassiz even had a hut constructed upon one of the Aar Glaciers, which for a time he made his home, to investigate the structure and movements of the ice.
In 1840, Agassiz published a two-volume work entitled "Études sur les glaciers" ("Studies on Glaciers"). In this, he discussed the movements of the glaciers, their moraines, and their influence in grooving and rounding the rocks and in producing the striations and "roches moutonnees" seen in Alpine-style landscapes. He accepted Charpentier and Schimper's idea that some of the alpine glaciers had extended across the wide plains and valleys of the Aar and Rhône, but he went further, concluding that, in the recent past, Switzerland had been covered with one vast sheet of ice, originating in the higher Alps and extending over the valley of northwestern Switzerland to southern slopes of the Jura. The publication of this work gave fresh impetus to the study of glacial phenomena in all parts of the world.
Familiar, then, with recent glaciation, Agassiz and English geologist William Buckland visited the mountains of Scotland in 1840. There, they found clear evidence in different locations of glacial action. The discovery was announced to the Geological Society of London in successive communications. The mountainous districts of England, Wales, and Ireland were understood to have been centres for the dispersion of glacial debris. Agassiz remarked, "that great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in Greenland, once covered all the countries in which unstratified gravel (boulder drift) is found; that this gravel was in general produced by the trituration of the sheets of ice upon the subjacent surface, etc."
With the aid of a grant of money from the King of Prussia, Agassiz crossed the Atlantic in the autumn of 1846 to investigate the natural history and geology of North America and to deliver a course of lectures on "The Plan of Creation as shown in the Animal Kingdom," by invitation from J. A. Lowell, at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. The financial offers presented to him in the United States induced him to settle there, where he remained to the end of his life. He was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1846. Agassiz had a cordial relationship with Harvard botanist Asa Gray, but they disagreed on some scientific issues. For example, Agassiz was a member of the Scientific Lazzaroni, a group of mostly physical scientists who wanted American academia to mimic the autocratic academic structures of European universities, whereas Gray was a staunch opponent of that group. Agassiz also felt each human race had different origins, but Gray believed in the unity of all humans.
Agassiz's engagement for the Lowell Institute lectures precipitated the establishment, in 1847, of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University, with Agassiz as its head. Harvard appointed him professor of zoology and geology, and he founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology there in 1859, serving as the museum's first director until his death in 1873. During his tenure at Harvard, Agassiz studied the effect of the last ice age on North America.
Agassiz continued his lectures for the Lowell Institute. In succeeding years, he gave lectures on "Ichthyology" (1847–48 season), "Comparative Embryology" (1848–49), "Functions of Life in Lower Animals" (1850–51), "Natural History" (1853–54), "Methods of Study in Natural History" (1861–62), "Glaciers and the Ice Period" (1864–65), "Brazil" (1866–67), and "Deep Sea Dredging" (1869–70). In 1850, he married an American college teacher, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, who later wrote introductory books about natural history and a lengthy biography of her husband after he died.
Agassiz served as a nonresident lecturer at Cornell University while also being on faculty at Harvard. In 1852, he accepted a medical professorship of comparative anatomy at Charlestown, Massachusetts, but resigned in two years. From this time, Agassiz's, scientific studies dropped off, but he became one of the best-known scientists in the world. By 1857, Agassiz was so well-loved that his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "The fiftieth birthday of Agassiz" in his honor, and read it at a dinner given for Agassiz by the Saturday Club in Cambridge. His own writing continued with four (of a planned 10) volumes of "Natural History of the United States", published from 1857 to 1862. He also published a catalog of papers in his field, "Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae", in four volumes between 1848 and 1854.
Stricken by ill health in the 1860s, Agassiz resolved to return to the field for relaxation and to resume his studies of Brazilian fish. In April 1865, he led a party to Brazil. Following his return in August 1866, an account of this expedition, entitled "A Journey in Brazil", was published in 1868. In December 1871, he made a second eight-month excursion, known as the "Hassler" expedition under the command of Commander Philip Carrigan Johnson (brother of Eastman Johnson), visiting South America on its southern Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. The ship explored the Magellan Strait, drawing the praise of Charles Darwin.
Elizabeth Agassiz wrote, at the Strait: '. ... .the "Hassler" pursued her course, past a seemingly endless panorama of mountains and forests rising into the pale regions of snow and ice, where lay glaciers in which every rift and crevasse, as well as the many cascades flowing down to join the waters beneath, could be counted as she steamed by them. ... These were weeks of exquisite delight to Agassiz. The vessel often skirted the shore so closely that its geology could be studied from the deck.'
From his first marriage to Cecilie Bruan, Agassiz had two daughters in addition to son Alexander.
In 1863, Agassiz's daughter Ida married Henry Lee Higginson, who later founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was a benefactor to Harvard and other schools. On November 30, 1860, Agassiz's daughter Pauline was married to Quincy Adams Shaw (1825–1908), a wealthy Boston merchant and later benefactor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
In the last years of his life, Agassiz worked to establish a permanent school where zoological science could be pursued amid the living subjects of its study. In 1873, a private philanthropist (John Anderson) gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts (south of New Bedford), and presented him with $50,000 to permanently endow it as a practical school of natural science, especially devoted to the study of marine zoology. The John Anderson school collapsed soon after Agassiz's death; it is considered a precursor of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, which is nearby.
Agassiz had a profound influence on the American branches of his two fields, teaching many future scientists who would go on to prominence, including Alpheus Hyatt, David Starr Jordan, Joel Asaph Allen, Joseph Le Conte, Ernest Ingersoll, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathaniel Shaler, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Alpheus Packard, and his son Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, among others. He had a profound impact on paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott and natural scientist Edward S. Morse. Agassiz had a reputation for being a demanding teacher. He would allegedly "lock a student up in a room full of turtle-shells, or lobster-shells, or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained." Two of Agassiz's most prominent students detailed their personal experiences under his tutelage: Scudder, in a short magazine article for" Every Saturday", and Shaler, in his "Autobiography". These and other recollections were collected and published by Lane Cooper in 1917, which Ezra Pound was to draw on for his anecdote of Agassiz and the sunfish.
In the early 1840s, Agassiz named two fossil fish species after Mary Anning —"Acrodus anningiae", and "Belenostomus anningiae"— and another after her friend, Elizabeth Philpot. Anning was a paleontologist known around the world for important finds, but because of her gender, she was often not formally recognized for her work. Agassiz was grateful for the help the women gave him in examining fossil fish specimens during his visit to Lyme Regis in 1834.
Agassiz died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1873 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, joined later by his wife. His monument is a boulder from a glacial moraine of the Aar near the site of the old , not far from the spot where his hut once stood; his grave is sheltered by pine trees from his old home in Switzerland.
The Cambridge elementary school north of Harvard University was named in his honor and the surrounding neighborhood became known as "Agassiz" as a result. The school's name was changed to the Maria L. Baldwin School on May 21, 2002, due to concerns about Agassiz's involvement in scientific racism, and to honor Maria Louise Baldwin the African-American principal of the school, who served from 1889 until 1922. The neighborhood, however, continues to be known as Agassiz. An elementary school called the Agassiz Elementary School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, existed from 1922 to 1981.
An ancient glacial lake that formed in the Great Lakes region of North America, Lake Agassiz, is named after him, as are Mount Agassiz in California's Palisades, Mount Agassiz, in the Uinta Mountains, Agassiz Peak in Arizona, and in his native Switzerland, the Agassizhorn in the Bernese Alps. Agassiz Glacier (Montana) and Agassiz Creek in Glacier National Park and Agassiz Glacier (Alaska) in Saint Elias Mountains, Mount Agassiz in Bethlehem, New Hampshire in the White Mountains also bear his name. A crater on Mars "Crater Agassiz" and a promontorium on the moon are also named in his honor. A headland situated in Palmer Land, Antarctica, is named in his honor, Cape Agassiz. A main-belt asteroid named 2267 Agassiz is also named in association with Louis Agassiz.
Several animal species are named in honor of Louis Agassiz, including "Apistogramma agassizii" (Agassiz's dwarf cichlid); "Isocapnia agassizi" (a stonefly); "Publius agassizi" (a passalid beetle); "Xylocrius agassizi" (a longhorn beetle); "Exoprosopa agassizii" (a bee fly); "Chelonia agassizii" (Galápagos green turtle); "Philodryas agassizii" (a South American snake); and the most well-known, "Gopherus agassizii" (the desert tortoise).. More recently in 2020, a new genus of pycnodont fish (Actinopterygii, Pycnodontiformes) named Agassazilia erfoundina (Cooper and Martill, 2020) from the Moroccan Kem Kem Group was named in honor of Agassiz who first identified the group in the 1830s.
In 2005, the European Geosciences Union Division on Cryospheric Sciences established the Louis Agassiz Medal, awarded to individuals in recognition of their outstanding scientific contribution to the study of the cryosphere on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system.
Agassiz took part in a monthly gathering called the Saturday Club at the Parker House, a meeting of Boston writers and intellectuals. He was, therefore, mentioned in a stanza of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. poem "":
In 1850 Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes, described as "haunting and voyeuristic" of the enslaved Renty Taylor and Taylor's daughter Delia to further his arguments about black inferiority. They are the earliest known photographs of slaves. Agassiz left the images to Harvard and they remained in the Peabody Museum’s attic until 1976 when they were re-discovered by Ellie Reichlin. In 2019 Taylor's descendants sued Harvard for the return of the images and unspecified damages. The lawsuit was supported by forty-three living descendants of Louis Agassiz, they wrote a letter of support that read in part "For Harvard to give the daguerreotypes to Ms. Lanier and her family would begin to make amends for its use of the photos as exhibits for the white supremacist theory Agassiz espoused,” and that everyone must evaluate fully "his role in promoting a pseudoscientific justification for white supremacy."
After Agassiz came to the United States, he wrote prolifically on polygenism, which holds that animals, plants, and humans were all created in "special provinces" with distinct populations of species created in and for each province, and that these populations were endowed with unequal attributes. Agassiz denied that migration and adaptation could account for the geographical age or any of the past. Adaptation takes time; in an example, Agassiz questioned how plants or animals could migrate through regions they were not equipped to handle. According to Agassiz the conditions in which particular creatures live "are the conditions necessary to their maintenance, and what among organized beings is essential to their temporal existence must be at least one of the conditions under which they were created". Agassiz was opposed to monogenism and evolution, believing that the theory of evolution reduced the wisdom of God to an impersonal materialism.
Agassiz was influenced by philosophical idealism and the scientific work of Georges Cuvier. Agassiz believed one species of humans exists, but many different creations of races occurred. These ideas are now included under the rubric of scientific racism. According to Agassiz, genera and species were ideas in the mind of God; their existence in God's mind prior to their physical creation meant that God could create humans as one species, yet in several distinct and geographically separate acts of creation. Agassiz was in modern terms a creationist who believed nature had order because God created it directly. Agassiz viewed his career in science as a search for ideas in the mind of the creator expressed in creation.
Agassiz, like other polygenists, believed the Book of Genesis recounted the origin of the white race only and that the animals and plants in the Bible refer only to those species proximate and familiar to Adam and Eve. Agassiz believed that the writers of the Bible knew only of regional events; for example that Noah's flood was a local event known only to the regions near those populated by ancient Hebrews.
Stephen Jay Gould asserted that Agassiz's observations sprang from racist bias, in particular from his revulsion on first encountering African-Americans in the United States. However, others have asserted that, despite favoring polygenism, Agassiz rejected racism and believed in a spiritualized human unity. Agassiz believed God made all men equal, and that intellectualism and morality, as developed in civilization, make men equal before God. Agassiz never supported slavery and claimed his views on polygenism had nothing to do with politics; however his views on polygenism emboldened proponents of slavery.
Accusations of racism against Agassiz have prompted the renaming of landmarks, schoolhouses, and other institutions (which abound in Massachusetts) that bear his name. Opinions on these events are often mixed, given his extensive scientific legacy in other areas. In 2007, the Swiss government acknowledged his "racist thinking," but declined to rename the Agassizhorn summit. In 2017, the Swiss Alpine Club declined to revoke Agassiz's status as a member of honor, which he received in 1865 for his scientific work, because the club considered this status to have lapsed on Agassiz's death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18023 |
Li Bai
Li Bai ("Chinese:" 李白, pinyin: "Lǐbái", 701–762), also known as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai (太白), was a Chinese poet acclaimed from his own day to the present as a genius and a romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights. He and his friend Du Fu (712–770) were the two most prominent figures in the flourishing of Chinese poetry in the Tang dynasty, which is often called the "Golden Age of Chinese Poetry". The expression "Three Wonders" denote Li Bai's poetry, Pei Min's swordplay, and Zhang Xu's calligraphy.
Around a thousand poems attributed to him are extant. His poems have been collected into the most important Tang dynasty poetry anthology "Heyue yingling ji", compiled in 753 by Yin Fan, and thirty-four of his poems are included in the anthology "Three Hundred Tang Poems", which was first published in the 18th century. In the same century, translations of his poems began to appear in Europe. The poems were models for celebrating the pleasures of friendship, the depth of nature, solitude, and the joys of drinking wine. Among the most famous are "Waking from Drunkenness on a Spring Day", "The Hard Road to Shu", and "Quiet Night Thought", which still appear in school texts in China. In the West, multilingual translations of Li's poems continue to be made. His life has even taken on a legendary aspect, including tales of drunkenness, chivalry, and the well-known fable that Li drowned when he reached from his boat to grasp the moon's reflection in the river while drunk.
Much of Li's life is reflected in his poetry: places which he visited, friends whom he saw off on journeys to distant locations perhaps never to meet again, his own dream-like imaginations embroidered with shamanic overtones, current events of which he had news, descriptions taken from nature in a timeless moment of poetry, and so on. However, of particular importance are the changes in the times through which he lived. His early poetry took place in the context of a "golden age" of internal peace and prosperity in the Chinese empire of the Tang dynasty, under the reign of an emperor who actively promoted and participated in the arts. This all changed suddenly and shockingly, beginning with the rebellion of the general An Lushan, when all of northern China was devastated by war and famine. Li's poetry as well takes on new tones and qualities. Unlike his younger friend Du Fu, Li did not live to see the quelling of these disorders. However, much of Li's poetry has survived, retaining enduring popularity in China and elsewhere.
Li Bai, Li Po, Li Bo, Ri Haku have been all used in the West, but are all written with the same characters. His given name, (白), is romanized by variants such as "Po", "Bo", "Bai", "Pai". In Hanyu Pinyin, reflecting modern Mandarin Chinese, the main, colloquial equivalent for this character is "Bái"; "Bó" is the literary variant and is commonly used. The reconstructed version of how he and others during the Tang dynasty would have pronounced this is "Bhæk". His courtesy name was Taibai (太白), literally "Great White," as the planet Venus was called at the time. Thus, combining the family name with the courtesy name, his name appears in variants such as "Li Taibo", "Li Taibai", "Li Tai-po", among others.
He is also known by his ("hao"), or pen-name "Qīnglián Jūshì" (青蓮居士), meaning "Householder of Azure Lotus" (that is, Qianlian town), or by nicknames "Immortal Poet" (Poet Transcendent; Wine Immortal (), Banished Transcendent (), Poet-Knight-errant (, or "Poet-Hero"). The Japanese pronunciation may be romanized as "Ri Haku"or "Ri Taihaku".
The two "Books of Tang", "The Old Book of Tang" and "The New Book of Tang", remain the primary sources of bibliographical material on Li Bai. Other sources include internal evidence from poems by or about Li Bai, and certain other sources, such the preface to his collected poems by his relative and literary executor, Li Yangbin.
Li Bai is generally considered to have been born in 701, in Suyab (碎葉) of ancient Chinese Central Asia (present-day Kyrgyzstan), where his family had prospered in business at the frontier. Afterwards, the family under the leadership of his father, Li Ke (李客), moved to Jiangyou (江油), near modern Chengdu, in Sichuan, when the youngster was about five years old. There is some mystery or uncertainty about the circumstances of the family relocations, due to a lack of legal authorization which would have generally been required to move out of the border regions, especially if one's family had been assigned (exiled) there.
Two accounts given by contemporaries Li Yangbing (a family relative) and Fan Chuanzheng state that Li's family was originally from what is now southwestern Jingning County, Gansu. Li's ancestry is traditionally traced back to Li Gao, the noble founder of the state of Western Liang. This provides some support for Li's own claim to be related to the Li dynastic royal family of the Tang dynasty: the Tang emperors also claimed descent from the Li rulers of West Liang. This family was known as the Longxi Li lineage (隴西李氏). Evidence suggests that during the Sui dynasty, Li's own ancestors, at that time for some reason classified socially as commoners, were forced into a form of exile from their original home (in what is now Gansu) to some location or locations further west. During their exile in the far west, the Li family lived in the ancient Silk Road city of Suiye (Suyab, now an archeological site in present-day Kyrgyzstan, and perhaps also in Tiaozhi (), a state near modern Ghazni, Afghanistan. These areas were on the ancient Silk Road, and the Li family were likely merchants. Their business was quite prosperous.
In one hagiographic account, while Li Bai's mother was pregnant with him, she had a dream of a great white star falling from heaven. This seems to have contributed to the idea of his being a banished immortal (one of his nicknames). That the Great White Star was synonymous with Venus helps to explain his courtesy name: "Tai Bai", or "Venus".
Li is known to have married four times. His first marriage, in 727, in Anlu, Hubei Province, was to the granddaughter of a former government minister. His wife was from the well-connected Wú (吳) family. Li Bai made this his home for about ten years, living in a home owned by his wife's family on Mt. Bishan (碧山). In 744, he married for the second time in what now is the Liangyuan District of Henan. This marriage was to another poet, surnamed Zong (宗), with whom he both had children and exchanges of poems, including many expressions of love for her and their children. His wife, Zong, was a granddaughter of Zong Chuke (宗楚客, died 710), an important government official during the Tang dynasty and the interegnal period of Wu Zetian.
In 705, when Li Bai was four years old, his father secretly moved his family to Sichuan, near Chengdu, where he spent his childhood. There is currently a monument commemorating this in Zhongba Town, Jiangyou, Sichuan province (the area of the modern province then being known as Shu, after a former independent state which had been annexed by the Sui dynasty and later incorporated into the Tang dynasty lands). The young Li spent most of his growing years in Qinglian (青莲; lit. "Blue [also translated as 'green', 'azure', or 'nature-coloured'] Lotus"), a town in Chang-ming County, Sichuan, China. This now nominally corresponds with Qinglian Town (青蓮鎮) of Jiangyou County-level city, in Sichuan.
The young Li read extensively, including Confucian classics such as "The Classic of Poetry (Shijing)" and the "Classic of History (Shujing)", as well as various astrological and metaphysical materials which Confucians tended to eschew though he disdained to take the literacy exam. Reading the "Hundred Authors" was part of the family literary tradition, and he was also able to compose poetry before he was ten. The young Li also engaged in other activities, such as taming wild birds and fencing. His other activities included riding, hunting, traveling, and aiding the poor or oppressed by means of both money and arms. Eventually, the young Li seems to have become quite skilled in swordsmanship; as this autobiographical quote by Li himself both testifies to and also helps to illustrate the wild life that he led in the Sichuan of his youth:
Before he was twenty, Li had fought and killed several men, apparently for reasons of chivalry, in accordance with the knight-errant tradition ("youxia").
In 720, he was interviewed by Governor Su Ting, who considered him a genius. Though he expressed the wish to become an official, he never took the civil service examination.
In his mid-twenties, about 725, Li Bai left Sichuan, sailing down the Yangzi River through Dongting Lake to Nanjing, beginning his days of wandering. He then went back up-river, to Yunmeng, in what is now Hubei, where his marriage to the granddaughter of a retired prime minister, Xu Yushi, seems to have formed but a brief interlude. During the first year of his trip, he met celebrities and gave away much of his wealth to needy friends.
In 730, Li Bai stayed at Zhongnan Mountain near the capital Chang'an (Xi'an), and tried but failed to secure a position. He sailed down the Yellow River, stopped by Luoyang, and visited Taiyuan before going home. In 735, Li Bai was in Shanxi, where he intervened in a court martial against Guo Ziyi, who was later, after becoming one of the top Tang generals, to repay the favour during the An Shi disturbances. By perhaps 740, he had moved to Shandong. It was in Shandong at this time that he became one of the group known as the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook", an informal group dedicated to literature and wine. He wandered about the area of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, eventually making friends with a famous Daoist priest, Wu Yun. In 742, Wu Yun was summoned by the Emperor to attend the imperial court, where his praise of Li Bai was great.
Wu Yun's praise of Li Bai led Emperor Xuanzong (born Li Longji and also known as Emperor Minghuang) to summon Li to the court in Chang'an. Li's personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike, including another Taoist (and poet), He Zhizhang, who bestowed upon him the nickname the "Immortal Exiled from Heaven". Indeed, after an initial audience, where Li Bai was questioned about his political views, the Emperor was so impressed that he held a big banquet in his honor. At this banquet, the Emperor was said to show his favor, even to the extent of personally seasoning his soup for him.
Emperor Xuanzong employed him as a translator, as Li Bai knew at least one non-Chinese language. Ming Huang eventually gave him a post at the Hanlin Academy, which served to provide scholarly expertise and poetry for the Emperor.
When the emperor ordered Li Bai to the palace, he was often drunk, but quite capable of performing on the spot.
Li Bai wrote several poems about the Emperor's beautiful and beloved Yang Guifei, the favorite royal consort. A story, probably apocryphal, circulates about Li Bai during this period. Once, while drunk, Li Bai had gotten his boots muddy, and Gao Lishi, the most politically powerful eunuch in the palace, was asked to assist in the removal of these, in front of the Emperor. Gao took offense at being asked to perform this menial service, and later managed to persuade Yang Guifei to take offense at Li's poems concerning her. At the persuasion of Yang Guifei and Gao Lishi, Xuanzong reluctantly, but politely, and with large gifts of gold and silver, sent Li Bai away from the royal court. After leaving the court, Li Bai formally became a Taoist, making a home in Shandong, but wandering far and wide for the next ten some years, writing poems. Li Bai lived and wrote poems at Bishan (or Bi Mountain (碧山), today Baizhao Mountain (白兆山)) in Yandian, Hubei. Bi Mountain (碧山) in the poem "Question and Answer Amongst the Mountains" (山中问答 Shanzhong Wenda) refers to this mountain.
He met Du Fu in the autumn of 744, when they shared a single room and various activities together, such as traveling, hunting, wine, and poetry, thus established a close and lasting friendship. They met again the following year. These were the only occasions on which they met, in person, although they continued to maintain a relationship through poetry. This is reflected in the dozen or so Du Fu poems to or about Li Bai, which survive, and the one from Li Bai directed toward Du Fu which remains.
At the end of 755, the disorders instigated by the rebel general An Lushan burst across the land. The Emperor eventually fled to Sichuan and abdicated. During the confusion, the Crown Prince opportunely declared himself Emperor and head of the government. The An Shi disturbances continued (as they were later called, since they lasted beyond the death of their instigator, carried on by Shi Siming, and others). Li Bai became a staff adviser to Prince Yong, one of Ming Huang's (Emperor Xuanzong's) sons, who was far from the top of the primogeniture list, yet named to share the imperial power as a general after Xuanzong had abdicated, in 756.
However, even before the empire's external enemies were defeated, the two brothers fell to fighting each other with their armies. Upon the defeat of the Prince's forces by his brother the new emperor in 757, Li Bai escaped, but was later captured, imprisoned in Jiujiang, and sentenced to death. The famous and powerful army general Guo Ziyi and others intervened; Guo Ziyi was the very person whom Li Bai had saved from court martial a couple of decades before. His wife, the lady Zong, and others (such as Song Ruosi) wrote petitions for clemency. Upon General Guo Ziyi's offering to exchange his official rank for Li Bai's life, Li Bai's death sentence was commuted to exile: he was consigned to Yelang. Yelang (in what is now Guizhou) was in the remote extreme southwestern part of the empire, and was considered to be outside the main sphere of Chinese civilization and culture. Li Bai headed toward Yelang with little sign of hurry, stopping for prolonged social visits (sometimes for months), and writing poetry along the way, leaving detailed descriptions of his journey for posterity. Notice of an imperial pardon recalling Li Bai reached him before he even got near Yelang. He had only gotten as far as Wushan, when news of his pardon caught up with him in 759.
When Li received the news of his imperial reprieve, he returned down the river to Jiangxi, passing on the way through Baidicheng, in Kuizhou Prefecture, still engaging in the pleasures of food, wine, good company, and writing poetry; his poem "" records this stage of his travels, as well as poetically mocking his enemies and detractors, implied in his inclusion of imagery of monkeys. Although Li did not cease his wandering lifestyle, he then generally confined his travels to Nanjing and the two Anhui cities of Xuancheng and Li Yang (in modern Zhao County). His poems of this time include nature poems and poems of socio-political protest. Eventually, in 762, Li's relative Li Yangbing became magistrate of Dangtu, and Li Bai went to stay with him there. In the meantime, Suzong and Xuanzong both died within a short period of time, and China had a new emperor. Also, China was involved in renewed efforts to suppress further military disorders stemming from the Anshi rebellions, and Li volunteered to serve on the general staff of the Chinese commander Li Guangbi. However, at age 61, Li became critically ill, and his health would not allow him to fulfill this plan.
The new Emperor Daizong named Li Bai the Registrar of the Left Commandant's office in 762. However, by the time that the imperial edict arrived in Dangtu, Anhui, Li Bai was already dead.
There is a long and sometimes fanciful tradition regarding his death, from uncertain Chinese sources, that Li Bai drowned after falling from his boat one day he had gotten very drunk as he tried to embrace the reflection of the moon in the Yangtze River, something later believed by Herbert Giles. However, the actual cause appears to have been natural enough, although perhaps related to his hard-living lifestyle. Nevertheless, the legend has a place in Chinese culture.
A memorial of Li Bai lies just west of Ma'anshan.
Li Bai was also a skilled calligrapher, though there is only one surviving piece of his calligraphy work in his own handwriting that exists today. The piece is titled "Shàng yáng tái" ("Going Up To Sun Terrace"), a long scroll (with later addition of a title written by Emperor Huizong of Song and a postscript added by Qianlong Emperor himself); the calligraphy is housed in the Palace Museum in Beijing, China.
Even Li Bai and Du Fu, the two most famous and most comprehensively edited Tang poets, were affected by the destruction of the imperial Tang libraries and the loss of many private collections in the periods of turmoil (An Lushan Rebellion and Huang Chao Rebellion). Although many of Li Bai's poems have survived, even more were lost and there is difficulty regarding variant texts. One of the earliest endeavors at editing Li Bai's work was by his relative Li Yangbing, the magistrate of Dangtu, with whom he stayed in his final years and to whom he entrusted his manuscripts. However, the most reliable texts are not necessarily in the earliest editions. Song dynasty scholars produced various editions of his poetry, but it was not until the Qing dynasty that such collections as the "Quan Tangshi" ("Complete Tang Poems") made the most comprehensive studies of the then surviving texts.
Critics have focused on Li Bai's strong sense of the continuity of poetic tradition, his glorification of alcoholic beverages (and, indeed, frank celebration of drunkenness), his use of persona, the fantastic extremes of some of his imagery, his mastery of formal poetic rules—and his ability to combine all of these with a seemingly effortless virtuosity to produce inimitable poetry. Other themes in Li's poetry, noted especially in the 20th century, are sympathy for the common folks and antipathy towards needless wars (even when conducted by the emperor himself).
Li Bai had a strong sense of himself as being part of a poetic tradition. The "genius" of Li Bai, says one recent account, "lies at once in his total command of the literary tradition before him and his ingenuity in bending (without breaking) it to discover a uniquely personal idiom..." Burton Watson, comparing him to Du Fu, says Li's poetry, "is essentially backward-looking, that it represents more a revival and fulfillment of past promises and glory than a foray into the future." Watson adds, as evidence, that of all the poems attributed to Li Bai, about one sixth are in the form of "yuefu", or, in other words, reworked lyrics from traditional folk ballads. As further evidence, Watson cites the existence of a fifty-nine poem collection by Li Bai entitled "Gu Feng", or "In the Old Manner", which is, in part, tribute to the poetry of the Han and Wei dynasties. His admiration for certain particular poets is also shown through specific allusions, for example to Qu Yuan or Tao Yuanming, and occasionally by name, for example Du Fu.
A more general appreciation for history, is shown on the part of Li Bai in his poems of the "huaigu" genre, or meditations on the past, wherein following "one of the perennial themes of Chinese poetry", "the poet contemplates the ruins of past glory".
John C. H. Wu observed that "while some may have drunk more wine than Li [Bai], no-one has written more poems about wine." Classical Chinese poets were often associated with drinking wine, and Li Bai was part of the group of Chinese scholars in Chang'an his fellow poet Du Fu called the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup." The Chinese generally did not find the moderate use of alcohol to be immoral or unhealthy. James J. Y Liu comments that "zui" in poetry "does not mean quite the same thing as 'drunk', 'intoxicated', or 'inebriated', but rather means being mentally carried away from one's normal preoccupations ..." Liu translates "zui" as "rapt with wine". The "Eight Immortals", however, drank to an unusual degree, though they still were viewed as pleasant eccentrics. Burton Watson concluded that "[n]early all Chinese poets celebrate the joys of wine, but none so tirelessly and with such a note of genuine conviction as Li [Bai]".
One of Li Bai's most famous poems is "Waking From Drunkenness on a Spring Day" (). Arthur Waley translated it as follows:
An important characteristic of Li Bai's poetry "is the fantasy and note of childlike wonder and playfulness that pervade so much of it". Burton Watson attributes this to a fascination with the Taoist priest, Taoist recluses who practiced alchemy and austerities in the mountains, in the aim of becoming xian, or immortal beings. There is a strong element of Taoism in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone, and "many of his poems deal with mountains, often descriptions of ascents that midway modulate into journeys of the imagination, passing from actual mountain scenery to visions of nature deities, immortals, and 'jade maidens' of Taoist lore". Watson sees this as another affirmation of Li Bai's affinity with the past, and a continuity with the traditions of the Chuci and the early fu. Watson finds this "element of fantasy" to be behind Li Bai's use of hyperbole and the "playful personifications" of mountains and celestial objects.
The critic James J.Y. Liu notes "Chinese poets seem to be perpetually bewailing their exile and longing to return home. This may seem sentimental to Western readers, but one should remember the vastness of China, the difficulties of communication... the sharp contrast between the highly cultured life in the main cities and the harsh conditions in the remoter regions of the country, and the importance of family..." It is hardly surprising, he concludes, that nostalgia should have become a "constant, and hence conventional, theme in Chinese poetry."
Liu gives as a prime example Li's poem "A Quiet Night Thought" (also translated as "Contemplating Moonlight"), which is often learned by schoolchildren in China. In a mere 20 words, the poem uses the vivid moonlight and frost imagery to convey the feeling of homesickness. There are several editions of the poem. This is translated from a 17th-century Kangxi edition moonlight poem:
The following version has been translated by Jarek Zawadzki from the Gujin Tushu Jicheng edition:
Li Bai also wrote a number of poems from various viewpoints, including the personae of women. For example, he wrote several poems in the "Zi Ye", or "Lady Midnight" style, as well as Han folk-ballad style poems.
Li Bai is well known for the technical virtuosity of his poetry and the mastery of his verses. In terms of poetic form, "critics generally agree that Li [Bai] produced no significant innovations ... In theme and content also, his poetry is notable less for the new elements it introduces than for the skill with which he brightens the old ones."
Burton Watson comments on Li Bai's famous poem, which he translates "Bring the Wine": "like so much of Li [Bai]'s work, it has a grace and effortless dignity that somehow make it more compelling than earlier treatment of the same."
Li Bai's yuefu poems have been called the greatest of all time by Ming-dynasty scholar and writer Hu Yinglin.
Li Bai especially excelled in the Gushi form, or "old style" poems, a type of poetry allowing a great deal of freedom in terms of the form and content of the work. An example is his poem "蜀道難", translated by Witter Bynner as "Hard Roads in Shu". Shu is a poetic term for Sichuan, the destination of refuge that Emperor Xuanzong considered fleeing to escape the approaching forces of the rebel General An Lushan. Watson comments that, this poem, "employs lines that range in length from four to eleven characters, the form of the lines suggesting by their irregularity the jagged peaks and bumpy mountain roads of Sichuan depicted in the poem."
Li Bai was also noted as a master of the Jueju, or cut-verse. Ming-dynasty poet Li Pan Long thought Li Bai was the greatest jueju master of the Tang dynasty.
Li Bai was noted for his mastery of the Lüshi (poetry), or "regulated verse", the formally most demanding verse form of the times. Watson notes, however, that his poem "Seeing a Friend Off" was "unusual in that it violates the rule that the two middle couplets ... must observe verbal parallelism", adding that Chinese critics excused this kind of violation in the case of a genius like Li.
Li Bai's poetry was immensely influential in his own time, as well as for subsequent generations in China. From early on, he was paired with Du Fu. The recent scholar Paula Varsano observes that "in the literary imagination they were, and remain, the two greatest poets of the Tang—or even of China". Yet she notes the persistence of "what we can rightly call the 'Li-Du debate', the terms of which became so deeply ingrained in the critical discourse surrounding these two poets that almost any characterization of the one implicitly critiqued the other". Li's influence has also been demonstrated in the immediate geographical area of Chinese cultural influence, being known as Ri Haku in Japan. This influence continues even today. Examples range from poetry to painting and to literature.
In his own lifetime, during his many wanderings and while he was attending court in Chang'an, he met and parted from various contemporary poets. These meetings and separations were typical occasions for versification in the tradition of the literate Chinese of the time, a prime example being his relationship with Du Fu.
After his lifetime, his influence continued to grow. Some four centuries later, during the Song dynasty, for example, just in the case of his poem that is sometimes translated "Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon", the poet Yang Wanli wrote a whole poem alluding to it (and to two other Li Bai poems), in the same "gushi", or old-style poetry form.
In the 20th century, Li Bai even influenced the poetry of Mao Zedong.
In China, his poem "Quiet Night Thoughts", reflecting a nostalgia of a traveller away from home, has been widely "memorized by school children and quoted by adults".
There is another musical setting of Li Bai's verse by the American composer Harry Partch, whose "Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po" for intoning voice and Adapted Viola (an instrument of Partch's own invention) are based on the texts in "The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet" translated by Shigeyoshi Obata. In Brazil, the songwriter Beto Furquim included a musical setting of the poem "Jing Ye Si" in his album "Muito Prazer".
Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound's versions of some of his poems in the collection ""Cathay"", (Pound transliterating his name according to the Japanese manner as "Rihaku"). Li Bai's interactions with nature, friendship, his love of wine and his acute observations of life inform his more popular poems. Some, like "Changgan xing" (translated by Ezra Pound as ), record the hardships or emotions of common people. An example of the liberal, but poetically influential, translations, or adaptations, of Japanese versions of his poems made, largely based on the work of Ernest Fenollosa and professors Mori and Ariga.
The ideas underlying Li Bai's poetry had a profound impact in shaping American Imagist and Modernist poetry through the 20th century. Also, Gustav Mahler integrated four of Li Bai's works into his symphonic song cycle "Das Lied von der Erde". These were derived from free German translations by Hans Bethge, published in an anthology called ("The Chinese Flute"), Bethge based his versions on the collection "Chinesische Lyrik" by Hans Heilmann (1905). Heilmann worked from pioneering 19th-century translations into French: three by the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys and one (only distantly related to the Chinese) by Judith Gautier. Mahler freely changed Bethge's text.
Li Bai's poetry can be seen as being an influence to Beat Generation writer Gary Snyder during Snyder's years of studying Asian Culture and Zen. Bai's style of descriptive writing assisted in the diversity within the Beat writing style. As well as D.T. Suzuki being a big influence on Snyder's writing and life.
Li Bai's poetry was introduced to Europe by Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, a Jesuit missionary in Beijing, in his "Portraits des Célèbres Chinois", published in the series "Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c. des Chinois, par les missionnaires de Pekin". (1776–1797). Further translations into French were published by Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys in his 1862 "Poésies de l'Époque des Thang".
Joseph Edkins read a paper, "On Li Tai-po", to the Peking Oriental Society in 1888, which was subsequently published in that society's journal. The early sinologist Herbert Allen Giles included translations of Li Bai in his 1898 publication "Chinese Poetry in English Verse", and again in his "History of Chinese Literature" (1901). The third early translator into English was L. Cranmer-Byng (1872–1945). His "Lute of Jade: Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China" (1909) and "A Feast of Lanterns" (1916) both featured Li's poetry.
Renditions of Li Bai's poetry into modernist English poetry were influential through Ezra Pound in "Cathay" (1915) and Amy Lowell in "Fir-Flower Tablets" (1921). Neither worked directly from the Chinese: Pound relied on more or less literal, word for word, though not terribly accurate, translations of Ernest Fenollosa and what Pound called the "decipherings" of professors Mori and Ariga; Lowell on those of Florence Ayscough. Witter Bynner with the help of Kiang Kang-hu included several of Li's poems in "The Jade Mountain" (1939). Although Li was not his preferred poet, Arthur Waley translated a few of his poems into English for the "Asiatic Review", and included them in his "More Translations from the Chinese". Shigeyoshi Obata, in his 1922 "The Works of Li Po", claimed he had made "the first attempt ever made to deal with any single Chinese poet exclusively in one book for the purpose of introducing him to the English-speaking world. A translation of Li Bai's poem "Green Moss" by poet William Carlos Williams was sent as a letter to Chinese American poet David Rafael Wang where Williams was seen as having a similar tone as Pound.
Li Bai became a favorite among translators for his straightforward and seemingly simple style. Later translations are too numerous to discuss here, but an extensive selection of Li's poems, translated by various translators, is included in John Minford and Joseph S. M. Lau, "Classical Chinese Literature" (2000)
One of Li Bai's best known poems and a good example of his writing is his "Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (, pinyin: Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó), which has been translated into English by various authors, including this translation, by Arthur Waley:
To hear the poem read in Chinese and to see another translation, go to Great Tang Poets: Li Bo (701–762) "Drinking Alone under the Moon" Asia For Educators (Columbia University)
Online translations (some with original Chinese, pronunciation, and literal translation): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18024 |
Longship
Longships were a type of specialised Viking warships that have a long history in Scandinavia, with their existence being archaeologically proven and documented from at least the fourth century BC. Originally invented and used by the Norsemen (commonly known as the Vikings) for commerce, exploration, and warfare during the Viking Age, many of the longship's characteristics were adopted by other cultures, like Anglo-Saxons, and continued to influence shipbuilding for centuries. The longship's design evolved over many centuries, and continuing up until the 6th century with clinker-built ships like Nydam and Kvalsund. The longship appeared in its complete form between the 9th and 13th centuries. The character and appearance of these ships have been reflected in Scandinavian boat-building traditions until today. The particular skills and methods employed in making longships are still used worldwide, often with modern adaptations. They were all made out of wood, with cloth sails (woven wool) and had numerous details and carvings on the hull.
The longships were characterized as a graceful, long, wide and light, with a shallow-draft hull designed for speed. The ship's shallow draft allowed navigation in waters only one meter deep and permitted arbitrary beach landings, while its light weight enabled it to be carried over portages or used bottom-up for shelter in camps. Longships were also double-ended, the symmetrical bow and stern allowing the ship to reverse direction quickly without a turn around; this trait proved particularly useful at northern latitudes, where icebergs and sea ice posed hazards to navigation. Longships were fitted with oars along almost the entire length of the boat itself. Later versions had a rectangular sail on a single mast, which was used to replace or augment the effort of the rowers, particularly during long journeys. The average speed of Viking ships varied from ship to ship, but lay in the range of and the maximum speed of a longship under favourable conditions was around . One longship in particular can be seen in Oslo, Norway in The Viking Ship museum.
The Viking longships were a major type of naval power in their time and were highly valued possessions. Archaeological finds show that the Viking ships were by no means a standard type vessel. It demonstrated true individual designs with its designers' footprints and often had regional characteristics. For example, the choice of material was mostly dictated by the regional forests, that is pine from Norway and Sweden, and oak from Denmark. Moreover, each and every one of these Viking longships had particular features adjusted to the natural conditions, which they were exposed to.
They were often communally owned by coastal farmers and commissioned by kings in times of conflict, in order to quickly assemble a large and powerful naval force. While longships were used by the Norse in warfare, they were mostly used as troop transports, not warships. In the tenth century, longships would sometimes be tied together in offshore battles to form a steady platform for infantry warfare. During the 9th century peak of the Viking expansion, large fleets set out to attack the degrading Frankish empire by attacking up navigable rivers such as the Seine. Rouen was sacked in 841, the year after the death of Louis the Pious, a son of Charlemagne. Quentovic, near modern Etables, was attacked in 842 and 600 Danish ships attacked Hamburg in 845. In the same year, 129 ships returned to attack up the Seine. They were called "dragonships" by enemies such as the English because they had a dragon-shaped bow. The Norse had a strong sense of naval architecture, and during the early medieval period they were advanced for their time.
Longships can be classified into a number of different types, depending on size, construction details, and prestige. The most common way to classify longships is by the number of rowing positions on board.
The Karvi (or "karve") is the smallest vessel that is considered a longship. According to the 10th-century Gulating Law, a ship with 13 rowing benches is the smallest ship suitable for military use. A ship with 6 to 16 benches would be classified as a Karvi. These ships were considered to be "general purpose" ships, mainly used for fishing and trade, but occasionally commissioned for military use. While most longships held a length to width ratio of 7:1, the Karvi ships were closer to 9:2.
The Gokstad Ship is a famous Karvi ship, built around the end of the 9th century, excavated in 1880 by Nicolay Nicolaysen. It was approximately long with 16 rowing positions.
The "" (or "snekke") was typically the smallest longship used in warfare and was classified as a ship with at least 20 rowing benches. A typical snekkja might have a length of , a width of , and a draught of only . It would carry a crew of around 41 men (40 oarsmen and one cox).
Snekkjas were one of the most common types of ship. According to Viking lore, Canute the Great used 1,200 in Norway in 1028.
The Norwegian snekkjas, designed for deep fjords and Atlantic weather, typically had more draught than the Danish model designed for low coasts and beaches. Snekkjas were so light that they had no need of ports — they could simply be beached, and even carried across a portage.
The snekkjas continued to evolve after the end of the Viking age, with later Norwegian examples becoming larger and heavier than Viking age ships. A modern version is still being used in Norway, and are now called "".
"Skeid" ("skeið"), meaning ‘slider’ (referring to a sley, a weavers reed, or to a sheath that a knife slides into) and probably connoting ‘speeder’ (referring to a running race) (Zoega, Old Icelandic Dictionary). These ships were larger warships, consisting of more than 30 rowing benches. Ships of this classification are some of the largest (see Busse) longships ever discovered. A group of these ships were discovered by Danish archaeologists in Roskilde during development in the harbour-area in 1962 and 1996–97. The ship discovered in 1962, "Skuldelev 2" is an oak-built Skeid longship. It is believed to have been built in the Dublin area around 1042. "Skuldelev 2" could carry a crew of some 70–80 and measures just less than in length. They had around 30 rowing chairs. In 1996–97 archaeologists discovered the remains of another ship in the harbour. This ship, called the "Roskilde 6", at is the longest Viking ship ever discovered and has been dated to around 1025. "Skuldelev 2" was replicated as "Seastallion from Glendalough" at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde and launched in 2004. In 2012, a 35-metre long skeid longship named "Draken Harald Hårfagre" was launched in Norway. It was built from scratch by experts, using original Viking and experimental archaeological methods.
"Drakkar", or "dreki" 'dragon', are the type of ship, of thirty rowing benches and upwards that are only known from historical sources, such as the 13th-century "Göngu-Hrólfs saga" . Here, the ships are described as most unusual, elegant, ornately decorated, and used by those who went raiding and plundering. These ships were likely skeids that differed only in the carvings of menacing beasts, such as dragons and snakes, carried on the prow of the ship. These carvings allegedly protected the ship and crew, and warded off the terrible sea monsters of Norse mythology. It is however likely that the carvings, like those on the Oseberg ship, might have had a ritual purpose, or that the purported effect was to frighten enemies and townspeople.
The earliest mentioned Drakkar was possibly the ship of unstated size owned by Harald Fairhair in the tenth century. The first drakkar ship whose size was mentioned in the source was Olav Tryggvason's thirty-room Tranin, built at Nidaros in apex. 995. By far the most famous in this period was his later ship the Ormrinn Langi ('Long Serpent') of thirty-four rooms, built over the winter of 999 to 1000. No true dragon ship, as defined by the sagas, has been found by archaeological excavation.
The visual representation of how the Drakkar ship could have looked can be found on the Bergen seal from 1299 shows a ship with a dragonhead at either end, as do several of the ships on Viking Age.
The first longships can trace their origin back to between 500 and 300 BC, when the Danish Hjortspring boat was built. It was fastened with cord, not nailed, and paddled, not rowed. It had rounded cross sections and although long was only wide. The rounded sections gave maximum displacement for the lowest wetted surface area, similar to a modern narrow rowing skiff, so were very fast but had little carrying capacity. The shape suggests mainly river use. Unlike later boats, it had a low bow and stern. A distinctive feature is the two-prong cutaway bow section.
The first true longship that was rowed was the Nydam ship, built in Denmark around 350 AD. It also had very rounded underwater sections but had more pronounced flare in the topsides, giving it more stability as well as keeping more water out of the boat at speed or in waves. It had no sail. It was of lapstrake construction fastened with iron nails. The bow and stern had slight elevation. The keel was a flattened plank about twice as thick as a normal strake plank but still not strong enough to withstand the downwards thrust of a mast.
The Sutton Hoo longship, sometimes referred to as the ghost ship of the Wulflings, is about maximum beam and built about 625 AD. It is associated with the Saxons. The ship was crushed by the weight of soil when buried but most details have been reconstructed. The ship was similar in hull section to the Nydam ship with flared topsides. Compared to later longships, the oak planks are wide—about including laps, with less taper at bow and stern. Planks were thick. The 26 heavy frames are spaced at in the centre. Each frame tapers from the turn of the bilge to the inwale. This suggests that knees were used to brace the upper two or three topside planks but have rotted away. The hull had a distinctive leaf shape with the bow sections much narrower than the stern quarters. There were nine wide planks per side. The ship had a light keel plank but pronounced stem and stern deadwood. The reconstruction suggests the stern was much lower than the bow. It had a steering oar to starboard braced by an extra frame. The raised prow extended about above the keel and the hull was estimated to draw when lightly laden. Between each futtock the planks were lapped in normal clinker style and fastened with six iron rivets per plank. There is no evidence of a mast, sail, or strengthening of the keel amidships but a half-sized replica, the Soe Wylfing, sailed very well with a modest sail area.
Sails started to be used from possibly the 8th century. The earliest had either plaited or chequered pattern, with narrow strips sewn together.
About 700 AD the Kvalsund ship was built. It is the first with a true keel. Its cross sectional shape was flatter on the bottom with less flare to the topsides. This shape is far more stable and able to handle rougher seas. It had the high prow of the later longships. After several centuries of evolution, the fully developed longship emerged some time in the middle of the ninth century. Its long, graceful, menacing head figure carved in the stern, such as the Oseburg ship, echoed the designs of its predecessors. The mast was now square in section and located toward the middle of the ship, and could be lowered and raised. The hull's sides were fastened together to allow it to flex with the waves, combining lightness and ease of handling on land. The ships were large enough to carry cargo and passengers on long ocean voyages, but still maintained speed and agility, making the longship a versatile warship and cargo carrier.
The Viking shipbuilders had no written diagrams or standard written design plan. The shipbuilder pictured the longship before its construction, based on previous builds, and the ship was then built from the keel up. The keel and stems were made first. The shape of the stem was based on segments of circles of varying sizes. The keel was an inverted T shape to accept the garboard planks. In the longships the keel was made up of several sections spliced together and fastened with treenails. The next step was building the strakes—the lines of planks joined endwise from stern to stern. Nearly all longships were clinker (also known as lapstrake) built, meaning that each hull plank overlapped the next. Each plank was hewn from an oak tree so that the finished plank was about thick and tapered along each edge to a thickness of about . The planks were radially hewn so that the grain is approximately at right angles to the surface of the plank. This provides maximum strength, an even bend and an even rate of expansion and contraction in water. This is called in modern terms quartersawn timber, and has the least natural shrinkage of any cut section of wood. The plank above the turn of the bilge, the "meginhufr", was about thick on very long ships, but narrower to take the strain of the crossbeams. This was also the area subject to collisions. The planks overlapped by about and were joined by iron rivets. Each overlap was stuffed with wool or animal hair or sometimes hemp soaked in pine tar to ensure water tightness. Amidships, where the planks are straight, the rivets are about apart, but they were closer together as the planks sweep up to the curved bow and stern. There is considerable twist and bend in the end planks. This was achieved by use of both thinner (by 50%) and narrower planks. In more sophisticated builds, forward planks were cut from natural curved trees called reaction wood. Planks were installed unseasoned or wet. Partly worked stems and sterns have been located in bogs. It has been suggested that they were stored there over winter to stop the wood from drying and cracking. The moisture in wet planks allowed the builder to force the planks into a more acute bend, if need be; once dry it would stay in the forced position. At the bow and the stern builders were able to create hollow sections, or compound bends, at the waterline, making the entry point very fine. In less sophisticated ships short and nearly straight planks were used at the bow and stern. Where long timber was not available or the ship was very long, the planks were butt-joined, although overlapping scarf joints fixed with nails were also used.
As the planks reached the desired height, the interior frame (futtocks) and cross beams were added. Frames were placed close together, which is an enduring feature of thin planked ships, still used today on some lightweight wooden racing craft such as those designed by Bruce Farr. Viking boat builders used a spacing of about . Part of the reason for this spacing was to achieve the correct distance between rowing stations and to create space for the chests used by Norse sailors as thwarts (seats). The bottom futtocks next to the keel were made from natural L-shaped crooks. The upper futtocks were usually not attached to the lower futtocks to allow some hull twist. The parts were held together with iron rivets, hammered in from the outside of the hull and fastened from the inside with a rove (washers). The surplus rivet was then cut off. A ship normally used about of iron nails in a long ship. In some ships the gap between the lower uneven futtock and the lapstrake planks was filled with a spacer block about long. In later ships spruce stringers were fastened lengthwise to the futtocks roughly parallel to the keel. Longships had about five rivets for each yard () of plank. In many early ships treenails (trenails, trunnels) were used to fasten large timbers. First, a hole about wide hole was drilled through two adjoining timbers, a wooden pegs inserted which was split and a thin wedge inserted to expand the peg. Some treenails have been found with traces of linseed oil suggesting that treenails were soaked before the pegs were inserted. When dried the oil would act as a semi-waterproof weak filler/glue.
The longship's narrow deep keel provided strength beneath the waterline. A typical size keel of a longer ship was amidships, tapering in width at the bow and stern. Sometimes there was a false outer keel to take the wear while being dragged up a beach. These large timbers were shaped with both adze and broadaxe. At the bow the cut water was especially strong, as longboats sailed in ice strewn water in spring. Hulls up to wide gave stability, making the longship less likely to tip when sailed. The greater beam provided more moment of leverage by placing the crew or any other mobile weight on the windward side. Oceangoing longships had higher topsides about a high to keep out water. Higher topsides were supported with knees with the long axis fastened to the top of the crossbeams. The hull was waterproofed with animal hair, wool, hemp or moss drenched in pine tar. The ships would be tarred in the autumn and then left in a boathouse over the winter to allow time for the tar to dry. Evidence of small scale domestic tar production dates from between 100 AD and 400 AD. Larger industrial scale tar pits, estimated to be capable of producing up to 300 litres of tar in a single firing have been dated to between 680 AD and 900 AD. A drain plug hole about was drilled in the garboard plank on one side to allow rain water drainage.
The oars did not use rowlocks or thole pins but holes cut below the gunwale line. To keep seawater out, these oar holes were sealed with wooden disks from the inside, when the oars were not in use. The holes were also used for belaying mooring lines and sail sheets. At the bow the forward upper futtock protruded about above the sheerline and was carved to retain anchor or mooring lines.
Analysis of timber samples from Viking long boats shows that a variety of timbers were used, but there was strong preference for oak, a tree associated with Thor in Viking mythology. Oak is a heavy, durable timber that can be easily worked by adze and axe when green (wet/unseasoned). Generally large and prestigious ships were made from oak. Other timber used were ash, elm, pine, spruce and larch. Spruce is light and seems to have been more common in later designs for internal hull battens (stringers). Although it is used for spars in modern times there is as yet no evidence the Vikings used spruce for masts. All timber was used unseasoned. The bark was removed by a bark spade. This consisted of a wooden handle with a T crossbar at the upper end, fitted with a broad chisel-like cutting edge of iron. The cutting edge was wide and long with a neck where the handle was inserted. It appears that in cold winters wood work stopped and partly completed timber work was buried in mud to prevent it drying out. Timber was worked with iron adzes and axes. Most of the smoothing was done with a side axe. Other tools used in woodwork were hammers, wedges, drawknives, planes and saws. Iron saws were probably very rare. The Domesday Book in England (1086 AD) records only 13 saws. Possibly these were pit saws and it is uncertain if they were used in longship construction.
Even though no longship sail has been found, accounts and depictions verify that longships had square sails. Sails measured perhaps across, and were made of rough wool cloth. Unlike in knarrs, a longship sail was not stitched.
The sail was held in place by the mast which was up to tall. Its base was about . The mast was supported by a large wooden maststep called a "kerling" ("old woman" in Old Norse) that was semicircular in shape. (Trent) The kerling was made of oak, and about wide and up to long in the larger ships. It usually heavily tapered into a joint with the internal keelson, although keelsons were by no means universal. The kerling lay across two strong frames that ran width-wise above the keel in the centre of the boat. The kerling also had a companion: the "mast fish," a wooden timber above the kerling just below deck height that provided extra help in keeping the mast erect. It was a large wooden baulk of timber about long with a slot, facing aft to accommodate the mast as it was raised. This acted as a mechanism to catch and secure the mast before the stays were secured. It was an early form of mast partner but was aligned fore and aft. In later longships there is no mast fish-the mast partner is an athwartwise beam similar to more modern construction. Most masts were about half the length of the ship so that it did not project beyond the hull when unstepped. When lowered the mast foot was kept in the base of the mast step and the top of the mast secured in a natural wooden crook about high, on the port side, so that it did not interfere with steering on the starboard side.
There is a suggestion that the rig was sometimes used in a lateen style with the top cross spar dipped at an angle to aid sailing to windward i.e. the spar became the luff. There is little or no evidence to support this theory. No explanation is offered as to how this could be accomplished with a square sail as the lower reefed portion of the sail would be very bulky and would prevent even an approximation of the laminar flow necessary for windward sailing. There is no evidence of any triangular sails in use. Masts were held erect by side stays and possibly fore and aft stays. Each side stay was fitted at it lower end with a toggle. There were no chain plates. The lower part of the side stay consisted of ropes looped under the end of a knee of upper futtock which had a hole underneath. The lower part of the stay was about long and attached to a combined flat wooden turnblock and multi V jamb cleat called an angel (maiden, virgin). About four turns of rope went between the angel and the toggle to give the mechanical advantage to tighten the side stays. At each turn the v-shape at the bottom of the angels "wings" jambed the stay preventing slippage and movement.
Early long boats used some form of steering oar but by the 10th century the side rudder (called a steerboard, the source for the etymology for the word starboard itself) was well established. It consisted of a length of timber about long. The upper section was rounded to a diameter of about . The lower blade was about . The steerboard on the Gokstad ship in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway, is about wide, completely flat inboard and with about a maximum width at the center of the foil. The head of the rudder shaft had two square holes about apart. When the rudder was in its normal position the tiller was inserted in the upper hole so that the tiller faced athwartwise. The shaft was attached to the gunwale by a U shaped joint. Near the stern, about halfway down the starboard topsides, was a rounded wooden block about in diameter and high, with a central hole for a rope. This corresponded to a hole in the midsection of the rudder blade. From the outside the rope ran through the blade, through the round block and topsides and was fastened inside the hull. The flexibility of the hemp rope allowed the blade to pivot. When beached or in shallow water the tiller was moved to the lower hole, the blade rope was slackened and the rudder head pulled up so the rudder could operate in shallow waters. Modern facsimiles are reported to steer quite well but require a very large amount of physical effort compared to the modern fore and aft tiller.
Longships for the most part used two different kinds of anchors. The most common was a natural wood yoke formed from a tree branch. The weight was supplied by a stone passing laterally through the U of the yoke. The top of the yoke was closed by either a length of hardwood or a curved iron head, which kept the stone in place. One side of the head stuck out so it could dig into mud or sand. In the Ladby ship burial in Denmark, a unique iron anchor has been found, resembling the modern fisherman's anchor but without the crossbar. The cross bar may have rusted away. This anchor—made of Norwegian iron—has a long iron chain to which the hemp warp was attached. This construction has several advantages when anchored in deep waters or in rough seas.
At the height of Viking expansion into Dublin and Jorvik 875–954 AD the longship reached a peak of development such as the Gokstad ship 890. Archaeological discoveries from this period at Coppergate, York, show the shipwright had a large range of sophisticated woodwork tools. As well as the heavy adze, broad axe, wooden mallets and wedges, the craftsman had steel tools such as anvils, files, snips, awls, augers, gouges, draw knife, knives, including folding knives, chisels and small long bow saws with antler handles. Edged tools were kept sharp with sharpening stones from Norway. One of the most sophisticated tools was a diameter twist drill bit, perfect for drilling holes for treenails. Simple mechanical pole wood lathes were used to make cups and bowls.
Since the discovery of the original longships in the 1800s, many boat builders have built Viking ship replicas. However, most have not been able to resist the temptation to use more modern techniques and tools in the construction process. In 1892–93, a full-size near-replica of the Gokstad ship, the Viking, was built by the Norwegian Magnus Andersen in Bergen. It was used to sail the Atlantic. It had a deeper keel with a draught to stiffen the hull, a range of non-authentic triangular sails to help performance, and big fenders on each gunwale filled with reindeer hair to give extra buoyancy in case of swamping. The skipper recorded that the keel bowed upwards as much as and the gunwale flexed inwards as much as in heavy seas. A half-size replica of the Sutton Hoo longship has been equipped with a substantial sail, despite the original having oar power only. They took a year to make.
During the Viking Age (900-1200 AD) Vikings were the dominant seafarers of the North Atlantic. One of the keys to their success was the ability to navigate skillfully across the open waters. The Vikings were experts in judging speed and wind direction, and in knowing the current and when to expect high and low tides. Viking navigational techniques are not well understood, but historians postulate that the Vikings probably had some sort of primitive astrolabe and used the stars to plot their course.
Viking Sundial
During an excavation of a Viking Age farm in southern Greenland part of a circular disk with carvings was recovered. The discovery of the so-called Viking Sundial suggested a hypothesis that it was used as a compass. Archaeologists found a piece of stone and a fragment of wooden disk both featuring straight and hyperbolic carvings. It turned out that the two items had been parts of sundials used by the Vikings as a compass during their sea-crossings along latitude 61 degrees North.
Archaeologists have found two devices which they interpret as navigation instruments. Both appear to be sundials with gnomon curves etched on a flat surface. The devices are small enough to be held flat in the hand at diameter. A wooden version dated to about 1000 AD was found in Greenland. A stone version was also found at Vatnahverfi, Greenland. By looking at the place where the shadow from the rod falls on a carved curve, a navigator is able to sail along a line of latitude. Both gnomon curve devices show the curve for 61° north very prominently. This was the approximate latitude that the Vikings would have sailed along to get to Greenland from Scandinavia. The wooden device also has north marked and had 32 arrow heads around the edge that may be the points of a compass. Other lines are interpreted as the solstice and equinox curves. The device was tested successfully, as a sun compass, during a 1984 reenactment when a longship sailed across the North Atlantic. It was accurate to within ± 5°.
Hypothesis
The Danish archaeologist Thorkild Ramskou suggested in 1967 that the "sun-stones" referred to in some sagas might have been natural crystals capable of polarizing skylight. The mineral cordierite occurring in Norway has the local name "Viking's Compass." Its changes in colour would allow determining the sun's position (azimuth) even through an overcast or foggy horizon. The sunstones are doubly refracting, meaning that objects viewed through them can be seen as double because of positively charged calcium ions and negatively charged carbonate ions. When looking at the sun the stone, it will project two overlapping shadows on the crystal. The opacities of these shadows will vary depending on the sunstone's direction to the sun. When the two projected shapes have exactly the same opacity, it means the stone's long side is facing directly toward the sun. Since the stone uses light polarization, it works the best when the sun is at lower altitudes, or closer to the horizon. It makes sense that Norsemen were able to make use of sunstones, since much of the area they travelled and explored was near polar, where the sun is very close to the horizon for a good amount of the year. For example, in the Vinland sagas we see long voyages to North America, the majority sailed at over 61 degrees north.
An ingenious navigation method is detailed in "Viking Navigation Using the Sunstone, Polarized Light and the Horizon Board" by Leif K. Karlsen. To derive a course to steer relative to the sun direction, he uses a sun-stone (solarsteinn) made of Iceland spar (optical calcite or silfurberg), and a "horizon-board." The author constructed the latter from an Icelandic saga source, and describes an experiment performed to determine its accuracy. Karlsen also discusses why on North Atlantic trips the Vikings might have preferred to navigate by the sun rather than by stars, as at high latitudes in summer the days are long and the nights short.
A Viking named Stjerner Oddi compiled a chart showing the direction of sunrise and sunset, which enabled navigators to sail longships from place to place with ease. Almgren, an earlier Viking, told of another method: "All the measurements of angles were made with what was called a 'half wheel' (a kind of half sun-diameter which corresponds to about sixteen minutes of arc). This was something that was known to every skipper at that time, or to the long-voyage pilot or "kendtmand" ('man who knows the way') who sometimes went along on voyages ... When the sun was in the sky, it was not, therefore, difficult to find the four points of the compass, and determining latitude did not cause any problems either." (Almgrem)
Birds provided a helpful guide to finding land. A Viking legend states that Vikings used to take caged crows aboard ships and let them loose if they got lost. The crows would instinctively head for land, giving the sailors a course to steer.
The longships had two methods of propulsion: oars and sail. At sea, the sail enabled longships to travel faster than by oar and to cover long distances overseas with far less manual effort. Sails could be raised or lowered quickly. In a modern facsimile the mast can be lowered in 90 seconds. Oars were used when near the coast or in a river, to gain speed quickly, and when there was an adverse (or insufficient) wind. In combat, the variability of wind power made rowing the chief means of propulsion. The ship was steered by a vertical flat blade with a short round handle, at right angles, mounted over the starboard side of the aft gunwale.
Longships were not fitted with benches. When rowing, the crew sat on sea chests (chests containing their personal possessions) that would otherwise take up space. The chests were made the same size and were the perfect height for a Viking to sit on and row. Longships had hooks for oars to fit into, but smaller oars were also used, with crooks or bends to be used as oarlocks. If there were no holes then a loop of rope kept the oars in place.
An innovation that improved the sail's performance was the beitass, or stretching pole—a wooden spar stiffening the sail. The windward performance of the ship was poor by modern standards as there was no centreboard, deep keel or leeboard. To assist in tacking the beitass kept the luff taut. Bracing lines were attached to the luff and led through holes on the forward gunwale. Such holes were often reinforced with short sections of timber about long on the outside of the hull.
The Vikings were major contributors to the shipbuilding technology of their day. Their shipbuilding methods spread through extensive contact with other cultures, and ships from the 11th and 12th centuries are known to borrow many of the longships' design features, despite the passing of many centuries. The Lancha Poveira, a boat from Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal is one of the last remnants from the longship, keeping all the longboat features but without a long stern and bow, and with a lateen sail. It was used until the 1950s. Today there is just one boat: "Fé em Deus".
Many historians, archaeologists and adventurers have reconstructed longships in an attempt to understand how they worked. These re-creators have been able to identify many of the advances that the Vikings implemented in order to make the longship a superior vessel.
The longship was a master of all trades. It was wide and stable, yet light, fast, and nimble. With all these qualities combined in one ship, the longship was unrivalled for centuries, until the arrival of the great cog.
In Scandinavia, the longship was the usual vessel for war even with the introduction of cogs in the 12th–13th centuries. Leidang fleet-levy laws remained in place for most of the Middle Ages, demanding that the freemen should build, man and furnish ships for war if demanded by the king—ships with at least 20 or 25 oar-pairs (40–50+ rowers). However, by the late 14th century, these low-boarded vessels were at a disadvantage against newer, taller vessels—when the Victual Brothers, in the employ of the Hansa, attacked Bergen in the autumn of 1393, the "great ships" of the pirates could not be boarded by the Norwegian levy ships called out by Margaret I of Denmark, and the raiders were able to sack the town with impunity. While earlier times had seen larger and taller longships in service, by this time the authorities had also gone over to other types of ships for warfare. The last Viking longship was defeated in 1429.
Several of the original longships built in the Viking Age have been excavated by archaeologists. A selection of vessels that has been particularly important to our understanding of the longships design and construction, comprise the following:
A selection of important longships known only from written sources includes:
There are many replicas of Viking ships - including longships - in existence. Some are just inspired by the longship design in general, while others are intricate works of experimental archaeology, trying to replicate the originals as accurately as possible. Replicas important to our understanding of the original longships design and construction include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18025 |
Luigi Alamanni
Luigi Alamanni (sometimes spelt Alemanni) (6 March 149518 April 1556) was an Italian poet and statesman. He was regarded as a prolific and versatile poet. He was credited with introducing the epigram into Italian poetry.
Alamanni was born in Florence. His father was a devoted adherent of the Medici party, but Luigi, smarting under a supposed injustice, joined with others in an unsuccessful conspiracy against Giulio de' Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII. He was obliged in consequence to take refuge in Venice, and, on the accession of Clement, to flee to France. When Florence shook off the papal yoke in 1527, Alamanni returned, and took a prominent part in the management of the affairs of the republic.
On the restoration of the Medici in 1530, he had again to take refuge in France, where he composed the greater part of his works. He was a favourite with Francis I, who sent him as ambassador to Charles V after the Peace of Crepy in 1544.
As an instance of his tact in this capacity, it is related that when Charles interrupted a complimentary address by quoting from a satirical poem of Alamanni's the words:""l'aquila grifagna, Che per piu devorar, duoi rostri porta"" (""Two crooked bills the ravenous eagle bears, The better to devour""), the latter at once replied that he spoke them as a poet, who was permitted to use fictions, but that he spoke now as an ambassador, who was obliged to tell the truth. The ready reply pleased Charles, who added some complimentary words.
After the death of Francis, Alamanni enjoyed the confidence of his successor Henry II, and in 1551 was sent by him as his ambassador to Genoa. He died at Amboise on 18 April 1556.
He wrote a large number of poems, distinguished by the purity and excellence of their style. The best is a didactic poem, "La Coltivazione" (Paris, 1546; see 1546 in poetry), written in imitation of Virgil's Georgics. His "Opere Toscane" (Lyon, 1532) consists of satirical pieces written in blank verse. His use of Horatian epistolary satire is important and his tenth satire was used as a model by Sir Thomas Wyatt in his poem 'Mine own John Poyntz' which introduced the form into English literature. An unfinished poem, "Avarchide", in imitation of the Iliad, was the work of his old age and has little merit.
It has been said by some that Alamanni was the first to use blank verse in Italian poetry, but that distinction belongs rather to his contemporary Giangiorgio Trissino.
Isabella di Morra dedicated a sonnet to Alamanni called "Non sol il ciel vi fu largo e cortese" (""Not only was heaven generous and courteous to you"").
Alamanni is a minor speaker in Machiavelli's "The Art of War", a book structured as a dialogue between real people known to Machiavelli, and set in the gardens of Cosimo Rucellai. In this book, Alamanni is present as a loyal friend of the host, and is mentioned to be the youngest of Rucellai's friends present. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18026 |
LR parser
In computer science, LR parsers are a type of bottom-up parser that analyses deterministic context-free languages in linear time. There are several variants of LR parsers: SLR parsers, LALR parsers, Canonical LR(1) parsers, Minimal LR(1) parsers, GLR parsers. LR parsers can be generated by a parser generator from a formal grammar defining the syntax of the language to be parsed. They are widely used for the processing of computer languages.
An LR parser (Left-to-right, Rightmost derivation in reverse) reads input text from left to right without backing up (this is true for most parsers), and produces a rightmost derivation in reverse: it does a bottom-up parse – not a top-down LL parse or ad-hoc parse. The name LR is often followed by a numeric qualifier, as in LR(1) or sometimes LR("k"). To avoid backtracking or guessing, the LR parser is allowed to peek ahead at "k" lookahead input symbols before deciding how to parse earlier symbols. Typically "k" is 1 and is not mentioned. The name LR is often preceded by other qualifiers, as in SLR and LALR. The LR("k") condition for a grammar was suggested by Knuth to stand for "translatable from left to right with bound "k"."
LR parsers are deterministic; they produce a single correct parse without guesswork or backtracking, in linear time. This is ideal for computer languages, but LR parsers are not suited for human languages which need more flexible but inevitably slower methods. Some methods which can parse arbitrary context-free languages (e.g., Cocke–Younger–Kasami, Earley, GLR) have worst-case performance of O(3) time. Other methods which backtrack or yield multiple parses may even take exponential time when they guess badly.
The above properties of L, R, and k are actually shared by all shift-reduce parsers, including precedence parsers. But by convention, the LR name stands for the form of parsing invented by Donald Knuth, and excludes the earlier, less powerful precedence methods (for example Operator-precedence parser).
LR parsers can handle a larger range of languages and grammars than precedence parsers or top-down LL parsing. This is because the LR parser waits until it has seen an entire instance of some grammar pattern before committing to what it has found. An LL parser has to decide or guess what it is seeing much sooner, when it has only seen the leftmost input symbol of that pattern.
An LR parser scans and parses the input text in one forward pass over the text. The parser builds up the parse tree incrementally, bottom up, and left to right, without guessing or backtracking. At every point in this pass, the parser has accumulated a list of subtrees or phrases of the input text that have been already parsed. Those subtrees are not yet joined together because the parser has not yet reached the right end of the syntax pattern that will combine them.
At step 6 in an example parse, only "A*2" has been parsed, incompletely. Only the shaded lower-left corner of the parse tree exists. None of the parse tree nodes numbered 7 and above exist yet. Nodes 3, 4, and 6 are the roots of isolated subtrees for variable A, operator *, and number 2, respectively. These three root nodes are temporarily held in a parse stack. The remaining unparsed portion of the input stream is "+ 1".
As with other shift-reduce parsers, an LR parser works by doing some combination of Shift steps and Reduce steps.
If the input has no syntax errors, the parser continues with these steps until all of the input has been consumed and all of the parse trees have been reduced to a single tree representing an entire legal input.
LR parsers differ from other shift-reduce parsers in how they decide when to reduce, and how to pick between rules with similar endings. But the final decisions and the sequence of shift or reduce steps are the same.
Much of the LR parser's efficiency is from being deterministic. To avoid guessing, the LR parser often looks ahead (rightwards) at the next scanned symbol, before deciding what to do with previously scanned symbols. The lexical scanner works one or more symbols ahead of the parser. The lookahead symbols are the 'right-hand context' for the parsing decision.
Like other shift-reduce parsers, an LR parser lazily waits until it has scanned and parsed all parts of some construct before committing to what the combined construct is. The parser then acts immediately on the combination instead of waiting any further. In the parse tree example, the phrase A gets reduced to Value and then to Products in steps 1-3 as soon as lookahead * is seen, rather than waiting any later to organize those parts of the parse tree. The decisions for how to handle A are based only on what the parser and scanner have already seen, without considering things that appear much later to the right.
Reductions reorganize the most recently parsed things, immediately to the left of the lookahead symbol. So the list of already-parsed things acts like a stack. This parse stack grows rightwards. The base or bottom of the stack is on the left and holds the leftmost, oldest parse fragment. Every reduction step acts only on the rightmost, newest parse fragments. (This accumulative parse stack is very unlike the predictive, leftward-growing parse stack used by top-down parsers.)
Step 6 applies a grammar rule with multiple parts:
This matches the stack top holding the parsed phrases "... Products * Value". The reduce step replaces this instance of the rule's right hand side, "Products * Value" by the rule's left hand side symbol, here a larger Products. If the parser builds complete parse trees, the three trees for inner Products, *, and Value are combined by a new tree root for Products. Otherwise, semantic details from the inner Products and Value are output to some later compiler pass, or are combined and saved in the new Products symbol.
In LR parsers, the shift and reduce decisions are potentially based on the entire stack of everything that has been previously parsed, not just on a single, topmost stack symbol. If done in an unclever way, that could lead to very slow parsers that get slower and slower for longer inputs. LR parsers do this with constant speed, by summarizing all the relevant left context information into a single number called the LR(0) parser state. For each grammar and LR analysis method, there is a fixed (finite) number of such states. Besides holding the already-parsed symbols, the parse stack also remembers the state numbers reached by everything up to those points.
At every parse step, the entire input text is divided into a stack of previously parsed phrases, and a current lookahead symbol, and the remaining unscanned text. The parser's next action is determined by its current LR(0) (rightmost on the stack) and the lookahead symbol. In the steps below, all the black details are exactly the same as in other non-LR shift-reduce parsers. LR parser stacks add the state information in purple, summarizing the black phrases to their left on the stack and what syntax possibilities to expect next. Users of an LR parser can usually ignore state information. These states are explained in a later section.
At initial step 0, the input stream "A*2 + 1" is divided into
The parse stack begins by holding only initial state 0. When state 0 sees the lookahead "id", it knows to shift that "id" onto the stack, and scan the next input symbol *, and advance to state 9.
At step 4, the total input stream "A*2 + 1" is currently divided into
The states corresponding to the stacked phrases are 0, 4, and 5. The current, rightmost state on the stack is state 5. When state 5 sees the lookahead "int", it knows to shift that "int" onto the stack as its own phrase, and scan the next input symbol +, and advance to state 8.
At step 12, all of the input stream has been consumed but only partially organized. The current state is 3. When state 3 sees the lookahead "eof", it knows to apply the completed grammar rule
by combining the stack's rightmost three phrases for Sums, +, and Products into one thing. State 3 itself doesn't know what the next state should be. This is found by going back to state 0, just to the left of the phrase being reduced. When state 0 sees this new completed instance of a Sums, it advances to state 1 (again). This consulting of older states is why they are kept on the stack, instead of keeping only the current state.
LR parsers are constructed from a grammar that formally defines the syntax of the input language as a set of patterns. The grammar doesn't cover all language rules, such as the size of numbers, or the consistent use of names and their definitions in the context of the whole program. LR parsers use a context-free grammar that deals just with local patterns of symbols.
The example grammar used here is a tiny subset of the Java or C language:
The grammar's terminal symbols are the multi-character symbols or 'tokens' found in the input stream by a lexical scanner. Here these include + * and "int" for any integer constant, and "id" for any identifier name, and "eof" for end of input file. The grammar doesn't care what the "int" values or "id" spellings are, nor does it care about blanks or line breaks. The grammar uses these terminal symbols but does not define them. They are always leaf nodes (at the bottom bushy end) of the parse tree.
The capitalized terms like Sums are nonterminal symbols. These are names for concepts or patterns in the language. They are defined in the grammar and never occur themselves in the input stream. They are always internal nodes (above the bottom) of the parse tree. They only happen as a result of the parser applying some grammar rule. Some nonterminals are defined with two or more rules; these are alternative patterns. Rules can refer back to themselves, which are called "recursive". This grammar uses recursive rules to handle repeated math operators. Grammars for complete languages use recursive rules to handle lists, parenthesized expressions, and nested statements.
Any given computer language can be described by several different grammars. An LR(1) parser can handle many but not all common grammars. It is usually possible to manually modify a grammar so that it fits the limitations of LR(1) parsing and the generator tool.
The grammar for an LR parser must be unambiguous itself, or must be augmented by tie-breaking precedence rules. This means there is only one correct way to apply the grammar to a given legal example of the language, resulting in a unique parse tree with just one meaning, and a unique sequence of shift/reduce actions for that example. LR parsing is not a useful technique for human languages with ambiguous grammars that depend on the interplay of words. Human languages are better handled by parsers like Generalized LR parser, the Earley parser, or the CYK algorithm that can simultaneously compute all possible parse trees in one pass.
Most LR parsers are table driven. The parser's program code is a simple generic loop that is the same for all grammars and languages. The knowledge of the grammar and its syntactic implications are encoded into unchanging data tables called parse tables (or parsing tables). Entries in a table show whether to shift or reduce (and by which grammar rule), for every legal combination of parser state and lookahead symbol. The parse tables also tell how to compute the next state, given just a current state and a next symbol.
The parse tables are much larger than the grammar. LR tables are hard to accurately compute by hand for big grammars. So they are mechanically derived from the grammar by some parser generator tool like Bison.
Depending on how the states and parsing table are generated, the resulting parser is called either a SLR (simple LR) parser, LALR (look-ahead LR) parser, or canonical LR parser. LALR parsers handle more grammars than SLR parsers. Canonical LR parsers handle even more grammars, but use many more states and much larger tables. The example grammar is SLR.
LR parse tables are two-dimensional. Each current LR(0) parser state has its own row. Each possible next symbol has its own column. Some combinations of state and next symbol are not possible for valid input streams. These blank cells trigger syntax error messages.
The Action left half of the table has columns for lookahead terminal symbols. These cells determine whether the next parser action is shift (to state "n"), or reduce (by grammar rule rn).
The Goto right half of the table has columns for nonterminal symbols. These cells show which state to advance to, after some reduction's Left Hand Side has created an expected new instance of that symbol. This is like a shift action but for nonterminals; the lookahead terminal symbol is unchanged.
The table column "Current Rules" documents the meaning and syntax possibilities for each state, as worked out by the parser generator. It is not included in the actual tables used at parsing time. The (pink dot) marker shows where the parser is now, within some partially recognized grammar rules. The things to the left of have been parsed, and the things to the right are expected soon. A state has several such current rules if the parser has not yet narrowed possibilities down to a single rule.
In state 2 above, the parser has just found and shifted-in the + of grammar rule
The next expected phrase is Products. Products begins with terminal symbols "int" or "id". If the lookahead is either of those, the parser shifts them in and advances to state 8 or 9, respectively. When a Products has been found, the parser advances to state 3 to accumulate the complete list of summands and find the end of rule r0. A Products can also begin with nonterminal Value. For any other lookahead or nonterminal, the parser announces a syntax error.
In state 3, the parser has just found a Products phrase, that could be from two possible grammar rules:
The choice between r1 and r3 can't be decided just from looking backwards at prior phrases. The parser has to check the lookahead symbol to tell what to do. If the lookahead is *, it is in rule 3, so the parser shifts in the * and advances to state 5. If the lookahead is "eof", it is at the end of rule 1 and rule 0, so the parser is done.
In state 9 above, all the non-blank, non-error cells are for the same reduction r6. Some parsers save time and table space by not checking the lookahead symbol in these simple cases. Syntax errors are then detected somewhat later, after some harmless reductions, but still before the next shift action or parser decision.
Individual table cells must not hold multiple, alternative actions, otherwise the parser would be nondeterministic with guesswork and backtracking. If the grammar is not LR(1), some cells will have shift/reduce conflicts between a possible shift action and reduce action, or reduce/reduce conflicts between multiple grammar rules. LR(k) parsers resolve these conflicts (where possible) by checking additional lookahead symbols beyond the first.
The LR parser begins with a nearly empty parse stack containing just the start state 0, and with the lookahead holding the input stream's first scanned symbol. The parser then repeats the following loop step until done, or stuck on a syntax error:
The topmost state on the parse stack is some state "s", and the current lookahead is some terminal symbol "t". Look up the next parser action from row "s" and column "t" of the Lookahead Action table. That action is either Shift, Reduce, Done, or Error:
LR parser stack usually stores just the LR(0) automaton states, as the grammar symbols may be derived from them (in the automaton, all input transitions to some state are marked with the same symbol, which is the symbol associated with this state). Moreover, these symbols are almost never needed as the state is all that matters when making the parsing decision.
This section of the article can be skipped by most users of LR parser generators.
State 2 in the example parse table is for the partially parsed rule
This shows how the parser got here, by seeing Sums then + while looking for a larger Sums. The marker has advanced beyond the beginning of the rule. It also shows how the parser expects to eventually complete the rule, by next finding a complete Products. But more details are needed on how to parse all the parts of that Products.
The partially parsed rules for a state are called its "core LR(0) items". The parser generator adds additional rules or items for all the possible next steps in building up the expected Products:
The marker is at the beginning of each of these added rules; the parser has not yet confirmed and parsed any part of them. These additional items are called the "closure" of the core items. For each nonterminal symbol immediately following a , the generator adds the rules defining that symbol. This adds more markers, and possibly different follower symbols. This closure process continues until all follower symbols have been expanded. The follower nonterminals for state 2 begins with Products. Value is then added by closure. The follower terminals are "int" and "id".
The kernel and closure items together show all possible legal ways to proceed from the current state to future states and complete phrases. If a follower symbol appears in only one item, it leads to a next state containing only one core item with the marker advanced. So "int" leads to next state 8 with core
If the same follower symbol appears in several items, the parser cannot yet tell which rule applies here. So that symbol leads to a next state that shows all remaining possibilities, again with the marker advanced. Products appears in both r1 and r3. So Products leads to next state 3 with core
In words, that means if the parser has seen a single Products, it might be done, or it might still have even more things to multiply together. All the core items have the same symbol preceding the marker; all transitions into this state are always with that same symbol.
Some transitions will be to cores and states that have been enumerated already. Other transitions lead to new states. The generator starts with the grammar's goal rule. From there it keeps exploring known states and transitions until all needed states have been found.
These states are called "LR(0)" states because they use a lookahead of "k"=0, i.e. no lookahead. The only checking of input symbols occurs when the symbol is shifted in. Checking of lookaheads for reductions is done separately by the parse table, not by the enumerated states themselves.
The parse table describes all possible LR(0) states and their transitions. They form a finite state machine (FSM). An FSM is a simple engine for parsing simple unnested languages, without using a stack. In this LR application, the FSM's modified "input language" has both terminal and nonterminal symbols, and covers any partially parsed stack snapshot of the full LR parse.
Recall step 5 of the Parse Steps Example:
The parse stack shows a series of state transitions, from the start state 0, to state 4 and then on to 5 and current state 8. The symbols on the parse stack are the shift or goto symbols for those transitions. Another way to view this, is that the finite state machine can scan the stream "Products * "int" + 1" (without using yet another stack) and find the leftmost complete phrase that should be reduced next. And that is indeed its job!
How can a mere FSM do this when the original unparsed language has nesting and recursion and definitely requires an analyzer with a stack? The trick is that everything to the left of the stack top has already been fully reduced. This eliminates all the loops and nesting from those phrases. The FSM can ignore all the older beginnings of phrases, and track just the newest phrases that might be completed next. The obscure name for this in LR theory is "viable prefix."
The states and transitions give all the needed information for the parse table's shift actions and goto actions. The generator also needs to calculate the expected lookahead sets for each reduce action.
In SLR parsers, these lookahead sets are determined directly from the grammar, without considering the individual states and transitions. For each nonterminal S, the SLR generator works out Follows(S), the set of all the terminal symbols which can immediately follow some occurrence of S. In the parse table, each reduction to S uses Follow(S) as its LR(1) lookahead set. Such follow sets are also used by generators for LL top-down parsers. A grammar that has no shift/reduce or reduce/reduce conflicts when using Follow sets is called an SLR grammar.
LALR parsers have the same states as SLR parsers, but use a more complicated, more precise way of working out the minimum necessary reduction lookaheads for each individual state. Depending on the details of the grammar, this may turn out to be the same as the Follow set computed by SLR parser generators, or it may turn out to be a subset of the SLR lookaheads. Some grammars are okay for LALR parser generators but not for SLR parser generators. This happens when the grammar has spurious shift/reduce or reduce/reduce conflicts using Follow sets, but no conflicts when using the exact sets computed by the LALR generator. The grammar is then called LALR(1) but not SLR.
An SLR or LALR parser avoids having duplicate states. But this minimization is not necessary, and can sometimes create unnecessary lookahead conflicts. Canonical LR parsers use duplicated (or "split") states to better remember the left and right context of a nonterminal's use. Each occurrence of a symbol S in the grammar can be treated independently with its own lookahead set, to help resolve reduction conflicts. This handles a few more grammars. Unfortunately, this greatly magnifies the size of the parse tables if done for all parts of the grammar. This splitting of states can also be done manually and selectively with any SLR or LALR parser, by making two or more named copies of some nonterminals. A grammar that is conflict-free for a canonical LR generator but has conflicts in an LALR generator is called LR(1) but not LALR(1), and not SLR.
SLR, LALR, and canonical LR parsers make exactly the same shift and reduce decisions when the input stream is correct language. When the input has a syntax error, the LALR parser may do some additional (harmless) reductions before detecting the error than would the canonical LR parser. And the SLR parser may do even more. This happens because the SLR and LALR parsers are using a generous superset approximation to the true, minimal lookahead symbols for that particular state.
LR parsers can generate somewhat helpful error messages for the first syntax error in a program, by simply enumerating all the terminal symbols that could have appeared next instead of the unexpected bad lookahead symbol. But this does not help the parser work out how to parse the remainder of the input program to look for further, independent errors. If the parser recovers badly from the first error, it is very likely to mis-parse everything else and produce a cascade of unhelpful spurious error messages.
In the yacc and bison parser generators, the parser has an ad hoc mechanism to abandon the current statement, discard some parsed phrases and lookahead tokens surrounding the error, and resynchronize the parse at some reliable statement-level delimiter like semicolons or braces. This often works well for allowing the parser and compiler to look over the rest of the program.
Many syntactic coding errors are simple typos or omissions of a trivial symbol. Some LR parsers attempt to detect and automatically repair these common cases. The parser enumerates every possible single-symbol insertion, deletion, or substitution at the error point. The compiler does a trial parse with each change to see if it worked okay. (This requires backtracking to snapshots of the parse stack and input stream, normally unneeded by the parser.) Some best repair is picked. This gives a very helpful error message and resynchronizes the parse well. However, the repair is not trustworthy enough to permanently modify the input file. Repair of syntax errors is easiest to do consistently in parsers (like LR) that have parse tables and an explicit data stack.
The LR parser generator decides what should happen for each combination of parser state and lookahead symbol. These decisions are usually turned into read-only data tables that drive a generic parser loop that is grammar- and state-independent. But there are also other ways to turn those decisions into an active parser.
Some LR parser generators create separate tailored program code for each state, rather than a parse table. These parsers can run several times faster than the generic parser loop in table-driven parsers. The fastest parsers use generated assembler code.
In the recursive ascent parser variation, the explicit parse stack structure is also replaced by the implicit stack used by subroutine calls. Reductions terminate several levels of subroutine calls, which is clumsy in most languages. So recursive ascent parsers are generally slower, less obvious, and harder to hand-modify than recursive descent parsers.
Another variation replaces the parse table by pattern-matching rules in non-procedural languages such as Prolog.
GLR Generalized LR parsers use LR bottom-up techniques to find all possible parses of input text, not just one correct parse. This is essential for ambiguous grammars such as used for human languages. The multiple valid parse trees are computed simultaneously, without backtracking. GLR is sometimes helpful for computer languages that are not easily described by a conflict-free LALR(1) grammar.
LC Left corner parsers use LR bottom-up techniques for recognizing the left end of alternative grammar rules. When the alternatives have been narrowed down to a single possible rule, the parser then switches to top-down LL(1) techniques for parsing the rest of that rule. LC parsers have smaller parse tables than LALR parsers and better error diagnostics. There are no widely used generators for deterministic LC parsers. Multiple-parse LC parsers are helpful with human languages with very large grammars.
LR parsers were invented by Donald Knuth in 1965 as an efficient generalization of precedence parsers. Knuth proved that LR parsers were the most general-purpose parsers possible that would still be efficient in the worst cases.
In other words, if a language was reasonable enough to allow an efficient one-pass parser, it could be described by an LR("k") grammar. And that grammar could always be mechanically transformed into an equivalent (but larger) LR(1) grammar. So an LR(1) parsing method was, in theory, powerful enough to handle any reasonable language. In practice, the natural grammars for many programming languages are close to being LR(1).
The canonical LR parsers described by Knuth had too many states and very big parse tables that were impractically large for the limited memory of computers of that era. LR parsing became practical when Frank DeRemer invented SLR and LALR parsers with much fewer states.
For full details on LR theory and how LR parsers are derived from grammars, see "The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and Compiling, Volume 1" (Aho and Ullman).
Earley parsers apply the techniques and notation of LR parsers to the task of generating all possible parses for ambiguous grammars such as for human languages.
While LR("k") grammars have equal generative power for all "k"≥1, the case of LR(0) grammars is slightly different.
A language "L" is said to have the "prefix property" if no word in "L" is a proper prefix of another word in "L".
A language "L" has an LR(0) grammar if and only if "L" is a deterministic context-free language with the prefix property.
As a consequence, a language "L" is deterministic context-free if and only if "L"$ has an LR(0) grammar, where "$" is not a symbol of "L"’s alphabet.
This example of LR parsing uses the following small grammar with goal symbol E:
to parse the following input:
The two LR(0) parsing tables for this grammar look as follows:
The action table is indexed by a state of the parser and a terminal (including a special terminal $ that indicates the end of the input stream) and contains three types of actions:
The goto table is indexed by a state of the parser and a nonterminal and simply indicates what the next state of the parser will be if it has recognized a certain nonterminal. This table is important to find out the next state after every reduction. After a reduction, the next state is found by looking up the goto table entry for top of the stack (i.e. current state) and the reduced rule's LHS (i.e. non-terminal).
The table below illustrates each step in the process. Here the state refers to the element at the top of the stack (the right-most element), and the next action is determined by referring to the action table above. A $ is appended to the input string to denote the end of the stream.
The parser starts out with the stack containing just the initial state ('0'):
The first symbol from the input string that the parser sees is '1'. To find the next action (shift, reduce, accept or error), the action table is indexed with the current state (the "current state" is just whatever is on the top of the stack), which in this case is 0, and the current input symbol, which is '1'. The action table specifies a shift to state 2, and so state 2 is pushed onto the stack (again, all the state information is in the stack, so "shifting to state 2" is the same as pushing 2 onto the stack). The resulting stack is
where the top of the stack is 2. For the sake of explanation the symbol (e.g., '1', B) is shown that caused the transition to the next state, although strictly speaking it is not part of the stack.
In state 2, the action table says to reduce with grammar rule 5 (regardless of what terminal the parser sees on the input stream), which means that the parser has just recognized the right-hand side of rule 5. In this case, the parser writes 5 to the output stream, pops one state from the stack (since the right-hand side of the rule has one symbol), and pushes on the stack the state from the cell in the goto table for state 0 and B, i.e., state 4. The resulting stack is:
However, in state 4, the action table says the parser should now reduce with rule 3. So it writes 3 to the output stream, pops one state from the stack, and finds the new state in the goto table for state 0 and E, which is state 3. The resulting stack:
The next terminal that the parser sees is a '+' and according to the action table it should then go to state 6:
The resulting stack can be interpreted as the history of a finite state automaton that has just read a nonterminal E followed by a terminal '+'. The transition table of this automaton is defined by the shift actions in the action table and the goto actions in the goto table.
The next terminal is now '1' and this means that the parser performs a shift and go to state 2:
Just as the previous '1' this one is reduced to B giving the following stack:
The stack corresponds with a list of states of a finite automaton that has read a nonterminal E, followed by a '+' and then a nonterminal B. In state 8 the parser always performs a reduce with rule 2. The top 3 states on the stack correspond with the 3 symbols in the right-hand side of rule 2. This time we pop 3 elements off of the stack (since the right-hand side of the rule has 3 symbols) and look up the goto state for E and 0, thus pushing state 3 back onto the stack
Finally, the parser reads a '$' (end of input symbol) from the input stream, which means that according to the action table (the current state is 3) the parser accepts the input string. The rule numbers that will then have been written to the output stream will be [5, 3, 5, 2] which is indeed a rightmost derivation of the string "1 + 1" in reverse.
The construction of these parsing tables is based on the notion of "LR(0) items" (simply called "items" here) which are grammar rules with a special dot added somewhere in the right-hand side. For example, the rule E → E + B has the following four corresponding items:
Rules of the form "A" → ε have only a single item "A" → . The item E → E + B, for example, indicates that the parser has recognized a string corresponding with E on the input stream and now expects to read a '+' followed by another string corresponding with B.
It is usually not possible to characterize the state of the parser with a single item because it may not know in advance which rule it is going to use for reduction. For example, if there is also a rule E → E * B then the items E → E + B and E → E * B will both apply after a string corresponding with E has been read. Therefore, it is convenient to characterize the state of the parser by a set of items, in this case the set { E → E + B, E → E * B }.
An item with a dot before a nonterminal, such as E → E + B, indicates that the parser expects to parse the nonterminal B next. To ensure the item set contains all possible rules the parser may be in the midst of parsing, it must include all items describing how B itself will be parsed. This means that if there are rules such as B → 1 and B → 0 then the item set must also include the items B → 1 and B → 0. In general this can be formulated as follows:
Thus, any set of items can be extended by recursively adding all the appropriate items until all nonterminals preceded by dots are accounted for. The minimal extension is called the "closure" of an item set and written as clos("I") where "I" is an item set. It is these closed item sets that are taken as the states of the parser, although only the ones that are actually reachable from the begin state will be included in the tables.
Before the transitions between the different states are determined, the grammar is augmented with an extra rule
where S is a new start symbol and E the old start symbol. The parser will use this rule for reduction exactly when it has accepted the whole input string.
For this example, the same grammar as above is augmented thus:
It is for this augmented grammar that the item sets and the transitions between them will be determined.
The first step of constructing the tables consists of determining the transitions between the closed item sets. These transitions will be determined as if we are considering a finite automaton that can read terminals as well as nonterminals. The begin state of this automaton is always the closure of the first item of the added rule: S → E:
The boldfaced "+" in front of an item indicates the items that were added for the closure (not to be confused with the mathematical '+' operator which is a terminal). The original items without a "+" are called the "kernel" of the item set.
Starting at the begin state (S0), all of the states that can be reached from this state are now determined. The possible transitions for an item set can be found by looking at the symbols (terminals and nonterminals) found following the dots; in the case of item set 0 those symbols are the terminals '0' and '1' and the nonterminals E and B. To find the item set that each symbol formula_1leads to, the following procedure is followed for each of the symbols:
For the terminal '0' (i.e. where x = '0') this results in:
and for the terminal '1' (i.e. where x = '1') this results in:
and for the nonterminal E (i.e. where x = E) this results in:
and for the nonterminal B (i.e. where x = B) this results in:
The closure does not add new items in all cases - in the new sets above, for example, there are no nonterminals following the dot.
Above procedure is continued until no more new item sets are found. For the item sets 1, 2, and 4 there will be no transitions since the dot is not in front of any symbol. For item set 3 though, we have dots in front of terminals '*' and '+'. For symbol formula_2the transition goes to:
and for formula_3the transition goes to:
Now, the third iteration begins.
For item set 5, the terminals '0' and '1' and the nonterminal B must be considered, but the resulting closed item sets are equal to already found item sets 1 and 2, respectively. For the nonterminal B, the transition goes to:
For item set 6, the terminal '0' and '1' and the nonterminal B must be considered, but as before, the resulting item sets for the terminals are equal to the already found item sets 1 and 2. For the nonterminal B the transition goes to:
These final item sets 7 and 8 have no symbols beyond their dots so no more new item sets are added, so the item generating procedure is complete. The finite automaton, with item sets as its states is shown below.
The transition table for the automaton now looks as follows:
From this table and the found item sets, the action and goto table are constructed as follows:
The reader may verify that this results indeed in the action and goto table that were presented earlier on.
Only step 4 of the above procedure produces reduce actions, and so all reduce actions must occupy an entire table row, causing the reduction to occur regardless of the next symbol in the input stream. This is why these are LR(0) parse tables: they don't do any lookahead (that is, they look ahead zero symbols) before deciding which reduction to perform. A grammar that needs lookahead to disambiguate reductions would require a parse table row containing different reduce actions in different columns, and the above procedure is not capable of creating such rows.
Refinements to the LR(0) table construction procedure (such as SLR and LALR) are capable of constructing reduce actions that do not occupy entire rows. Therefore, they are capable of parsing more grammars than LR(0) parsers.
The automaton is constructed in such a way that it is guaranteed to be deterministic. However, when reduce actions are added to the action table it can happen that the same cell is filled with a reduce action and a shift action (a "shift-reduce conflict") or with two different reduce actions (a "reduce-reduce conflict"). However, it can be shown that when this happens the grammar is not an LR(0) grammar. A classic real-world example of a shift-reduce conflict is the dangling else problem.
A small example of a non-LR(0) grammar with a shift-reduce conflict is:
One of the item sets found is:
There is a shift-reduce conflict in this item set: when constructing the action table according to the rules above, the cell for [item set 1, terminal '1'] contains s1 (shift to state 1) and r2 (reduce with grammar rule 2).
A small example of a non-LR(0) grammar with a reduce-reduce conflict is:
In this case the following item set is obtained:
There is a reduce-reduce conflict in this item set because in the cells in the action table for this item set there will be both a reduce action for rule 3 and one for rule 4.
Both examples above can be solved by letting the parser use the follow set (see LL parser) of a nonterminal "A" to decide if it is going to use one of "A"s rules for a reduction; it will only use the rule "A" → "w" for a reduction if the next symbol on the input stream is in the follow set of "A". This solution results in so-called Simple LR parsers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18030 |
Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti (; February 14, 1404 – April 25, 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer; he epitomised the Renaissance Man. Although he is often characterized exclusively as an architect, as James Beck has observed, "to single out one of Leon Battista's 'fields' over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti's extensive explorations in the fine arts." Although Alberti is known mostly for being an artist, he was also a mathematician of many sorts and made great advances to this field during the 15th century. Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects". His two most important buildings are the churches of S. Sebastiano (1460) and S. Andrea, both in Mantua.
Leon Battista Alberti was born in 1404 in Genoa. His mother is not known, and his father was a wealthy Florentine who had been exiled from his own city, allowed to return in 1428. Alberti was sent to boarding school in Padua, then studied Law at Bologna. He lived for a time in Florence, then travelled to Rome in 1431 where he took holy orders and entered the service of the papal court. During this time he studied the ancient ruins, which excited his interest in architecture and strongly influenced the form of the buildings that he designed.
Alberti was gifted in many ways. He was tall, strong and a fine athlete who could ride the wildest horse and jump over a man's head. He distinguished himself as a writer while he was still a child at school, and by the age of twenty had written a play which was successfully passed off as a genuine piece of Classical literature. In 1435, he began his first major written work, "Della pittura," which was inspired by the burgeoning pictorial art in Florence in the early 15th century. In this work he analyses the nature of painting and explores the elements of perspective, composition and colour.
In 1438 he began to focus more on architecture and was encouraged by the Marchese Leonello d'Este of Ferrara, for whom he built a small triumphal arch to support an equestrian statue of Leonello's father. In 1447 he became the architectural advisor to Pope Nicholas V and was involved with several projects at the Vatican.
His first major architectural commission was in 1446 for the facade of the Rucellai Palace in Florence. This was followed in 1450 by a commission from Sigismondo Malatesta to transform the Gothic church of San Francesco in Rimini into a memorial chapel, the Tempio Malatestiano. In Florence, he designed the upper parts of the facade for the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, famously bridging the nave and lower aisles with two ornately inlaid scrolls, solving a visual problem and setting a precedent to be followed by architects of churches for four hundred years. In 1452, he completed "De re aedificatoria", a treatise on architecture, using as its basis the work of Vitruvius and influenced by the archaeological remains of Rome. The work was not published until 1485. It was followed in 1464 by his less influential work, "De statua", in which he examines sculpture. Alberti's only known sculpture is a self-portrait medallion, sometimes attributed to Pisanello.
Alberti was employed to design two churches in Mantua, San Sebastiano, which was never completed, and for which Alberti's intention can only be speculated upon, and the Basilica of Sant'Andrea. The design for the latter church was completed in 1471, a year before Alberti's death, but was brought to completion and is his most significant work.
As an artist, Alberti distinguished himself from the ordinary craftsman, educated in workshops. He was a humanist who followed Aristotle and Plotinus, and part of the rapidly expanding entourage of intellectuals and artisans supported by the courts of the princes and lords of the time. Alberti, as a member of noble family and as part of the Roman curia, had special status. He was a welcomed guest at the Este court in Ferrara, and in Urbino he spent part of the hot-weather season with the soldier-prince Federico III da Montefeltro. The Duke of Urbino was a shrewd military commander, who generously spent money on the patronage of art. Alberti planned to dedicate his treatise on architecture to his friend.
Among Alberti's smaller studies, pioneering in their field, were a treatise in cryptography, "De componendis cifris", and the first Italian grammar. With the Florentine cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli he collaborated in astronomy, a close science to geography at that time, and produced a small Latin work on geography, "Descriptio urbis Romae" ("The Panorama of the City of Rome"). Just a few years before his death, Alberti completed "De iciarchia" ("On Ruling the Household"), a dialogue about Florence during the Medici rule.
Alberti, having taken holy orders, remained unmarried all his life. He loved animals and had a pet dog, a mongrel, for whom he wrote a panegyric, ("Canis"). Vasari describes him as "an admirable citizen, a man of culture... a friend of talented men, open and courteous with everyone. He always lived honourably and like the gentleman he was." Alberti died in Rome on April 25, 1472 at the age of 68.
Alberti regarded mathematics as a starting point for the discussion of art and the sciences. "To make clear my exposition in writing this brief commentary on painting," Alberti began his treatise, "Della Pittura" (On Painting) which he dedicated to Brunelleschi, "I will take first from the mathematicians those things with which my subject is concerned."
"Della pittura" (also known in Latin as "De Pictura") relied in its scientific content on classical optics in determining perspective as a geometric instrument of artistic and architectural representation. Alberti was well-versed in the sciences of his age. His knowledge of optics was connected to the handed-down long-standing tradition of the "Kitab al-manazir" ("The Optics"; "De aspectibus") of the Arab polymath Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham, d. c. 1041), which was mediated by Franciscan optical workshops of the 13th-century "Perspectivae" traditions of scholars such as Roger Bacon, John Peckham and Witelo (similar influences are also traceable in the third commentary of Lorenzo Ghiberti, "Commentario terzo").
In both "Della pittura" and "De statua", Alberti stressed that "all steps of learning should be sought from nature." The ultimate aim of an artist is to imitate nature. Painters and sculptors strive "through by different skills, at the same goal, namely that as nearly as possible the work they have undertaken shall appear to the observer to be similar to the real objects of nature." However, Alberti did not mean that artists should imitate nature objectively, as it is, but the artist should be especially attentive to beauty, "for in painting beauty is as pleasing as it is necessary." The work of art is, according to Alberti, so constructed that it is impossible to take anything away from it or add anything to it, without impairing the beauty of the whole. Beauty was for Alberti "the harmony of all parts in relation to one another," and subsequently "this concord is realized in a particular number, proportion, and arrangement demanded by harmony." Alberti's thoughts on harmony were not new—they could be traced back to Pythagoras—but he set them in a fresh context, which fit in well with the contemporary aesthetic discourse.
In Rome, Alberti had plenty of time to study its ancient sites, ruins, and objects. His detailed observations, included in his "De re aedificatoria" (1452, "On the Art of Building"), were patterned after the "De architectura" by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius (fl. 46–30 BC). The work was the first architectural treatise of the Renaissance. It covered a wide range of subjects, from history to town planning, and engineering to the philosophy of beauty. "De re aedificatoria," a large and expensive book, was not fully published until 1485, after which it became a major reference for architects. However, the book was written "not only for craftsmen but also for anyone interested in the noble arts," as Alberti put it. Originally published in Latin, the first Italian edition came out in 1546. and the standard Italian edition by Cosimo Bartoli was published in 1550. Pope Nicholas V, to whom Alberti dedicated the whole work, dreamed of rebuilding the city of Rome, but he managed to realize only a fragment of his visionary plans. Through his book, Alberti opened up his theories and ideals of the Florentine Renaissance to architects, scholars and others.
Alberti wrote "I Libri della famiglia"—which discussed education, marriage, household management, and money—in the Tuscan dialect. The work was not printed until 1843. Like Erasmus decades later, Alberti stressed the need for a reform in education. He noted that "the care of very young children is women's work, for nurses or the mother," and that at the earliest possible age children should be taught the alphabet. With great hopes, he gave the work to his family to read, but in his autobiography Alberti confesses that "he could hardly avoid feeling rage, moreover, when he saw some of his relatives openly ridiculing both the whole work and the author's futile enterprise along it." "Momus", written between 1443 and 1450, was a misogynist comedy about the Olympian gods. It has been considered as a roman à clef—Jupiter has been identified in some sources as Pope Eugenius IV and Pope Nicholas V. Alberti borrowed many of its characters from Lucian, one of his favorite Greek writers. The name of its hero, Momus, refers to the Greek word for blame or criticism. After being expelled from heaven, Momus, the god of mockery, is eventually castrated. Jupiter and the other gods come down to earth also, but they return to heaven after Jupiter breaks his nose in a great storm.
Alberti did not concern himself with the practicalities of building, and very few of his major works were brought to completion. As a designer and a student of Vitruvius and of ancient Roman remains, he grasped the nature of column and lintel architecture, from the visual rather than structural viewpoint, and correctly employed the Classical orders, unlike his contemporary, Brunelleschi, who utilised the Classical column and pilaster in a free interpretation. Among Alberti's concerns was the social effect of architecture, and to this end he was very well aware of the cityscape. This is demonstrated by his inclusion, at the Rucellai Palace, of a continuous bench for seating at the level of the basement. Alberti anticipated the principle of street hierarchy, with wide main streets connected to secondary streets, and buildings of equal height.
In Rome he was employed by Pope Nicholas V for the restoration of the Roman aqueduct of Acqua Vergine, which debouched into a simple basin designed by Alberti, which was swept away later by the Baroque Trevi Fountain.
Some studies propose that the Villa Medici in Fiesole might owe its design to Alberti, not to Michelozzo, and that it then became the prototype of the Renaissance villa. This hilltop dwelling, commissioned by Giovanni de' Medici, Cosimo il Vecchio's second son, with its view over the city, may be the very first example of a Renaissance villa: that is to say it follows the Albertian criteria for rendering a country dwelling a "villa suburbana". Under this perspective the Villa Medici in Fiesole could therefore be considered the "muse" for numerous other buildings, not only in the Florence area, which from the end of the 15th century onwards find inspiration and creative innovation here.
The Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini (1447, 1453–60) is the rebuilding of a Gothic church. The facade, with its dynamic play of forms, was left incomplete.
The design of the façade of the Palazzo Rucellai (1446–51) was one of several commissions for the Rucellai family. The design overlays a grid of shallow pilasters and cornices in the Classical manner onto rusticated masonry, and is surmounted by a heavy cornice. The inner courtyard has Corinthian columns. The palace set a standard in the use of Classical elements that is original in civic buildings in Florence, and greatly influenced later palazzi. The work was executed by Bernardo Rosselino.
At Santa Maria Novella, Florence, between (1448–70) the upper facade was constructed to the design of Alberti. It was a challenging task, as the lower level already had three doorways and six Gothic niches containing tombs and employing the polychrome marble typical of Florentine churches such as San Miniato al Monte and the Baptistery of Florence. The design also incorporates an ocular window which was already in place. Alberti introduced Classical features around the portico and spread the polychromy over the entire facade in a manner which includes Classical proportions and elements such as pilasters, cornices and a pediment in the Classical style, ornamented with a sunburst in tesserae, rather than sculpture. The best known feature of this typically aisled church is the manner in which Alberti has solved the problem of visually bridging the different levels of the central nave and much lower side aisles. He employed two large scrolls, which were to become a standard feature of Church facades in the later Renaissance, Baroque and Classical Revival buildings.
Alberti is considered to have been the consultant for the design of the Piazza Pio II, Pienza. The village, previously called Corsignano, was redesigned beginning around 1459. It was the birthplace of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II, in whose employ Alberti served. Pius II wanted to use the village as a retreat but needed for it to reflect the dignity of his position.
The piazza is a trapezoid shape defined by four buildings, with a focus on Pienza Cathedral and passages on either side opening onto a landscape view. The principal residence, "Palazzo Piccolomini", is on the west side. It has three stories, articulated by pilasters and entablature courses, with a twin-lighted cross window set within each bay. This structure is similar to Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai in Florence and other later palaces. Noteworthy is the internal court of the palazzo. The back of the palace, to the south, is defined by loggia on all three floors that overlook an enclosed Italian Renaissance garden with "Giardino all'italiana" era modifications, and spectacular views into the distant landscape of the Val d'Orcia and Pope Pius's beloved Mount Amiata beyond. Below this garden is a vaulted stable that had stalls for 100 horses. The design, which radically transformed the center of the town, included a palace for the pope, a church, a town hall and a building for the bishops who would accompany the Pope on his trips. Pienza is considered an early example of Renaissance urban planning.
The Basilica of Sant'Andrea, Mantua was begun in 1471, the year before Alberti's death. It was brought to completion and is his most significant work employing the triumphal arch motif, both for its facade and interior, and influencing many works that were to follow. Alberti perceived the role of architect as designer. Unlike Brunelleschi, he had no interest in the construction, leaving the practicalities to builders and the oversight to others.
Giorgio Vasari, who argued that historical progress in art reached its peak in Michelangelo, emphasized Alberti's scholarly achievements, not his artistic talents: "He spent his time finding out about the world and studying the proportions of antiquities; but above all, following his natural genius, he concentrated on writing rather than on applied work." Leonardo, who ironically called himself "an uneducated person" ("omo senza lettere"), followed Alberti in the view that painting is science. However, as a scientist Leonardo was more empirical than Alberti, who was a theorist and did not have similar interest in practice. Alberti believed in ideal beauty, but Leonardo filled his notebooks with observations on human proportions, page after page, ending with his famous drawing of the Vitruvian man, a human figure related to a square and a circle.
In "On Painting", Alberti uses the expression "We Painters", but as a painter, or sculptor, he was a dilettante. "In painting Alberti achieved nothing of any great importance or beauty," wrote Vasari. "The very few paintings of his that are extant are far from perfect, but this is not surprising since he devoted himself more to his studies than to draughtsmanship." Jacob Burckhardt portrayed Alberti in "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" as a truly universal genius. "And Leonardo Da Vinci was to Alberti as the finisher to the beginner, as the master to the dilettante. Would only that Vasari's work were here supplemented by a description like that of Alberti! The colossal outlines of Leonardo's nature can never be more than dimly and distantly conceived."
Alberti is said to be in Mantegna's great frescoes in the Camera degli Sposi, the older man dressed in dark red clothes, who whispers in the ear of Ludovico Gonzaga, the ruler of Mantua. In Alberti's self-portrait, a large plaquette, he is clothed as a Roman. To the left of his profile is a winged eye. On the reverse side is the question, "Quid tum?" (what then), taken from Virgil's "Eclogues": "So what, if Amyntas is dark? ("quid tum si fuscus Amyntas?") Violets are black, and hyacinths are black."
Alberti made a variety of contributions to several fields:
Borsi states that Alberti's writings on architecture continue to influence modern and contemporary architecture stating: "The organicism and nature-worship of Wright, the neat classicism of van der Mies, the regulatory outlines and anthropomorphic, harmonic, modular systems of Le Corbusier, and Kahn's revival of the 'antique' are all elements that tempt one to trace Alberti's influence on modern architecture."
"Third International Congress on Construction History", Cottbus, May 2009.
LA) Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Argentorati, excudebat M. Iacobus Cammerlander Moguntinus, 1541.
Leon Battista Alberti, Opere volgari. 1, Firenze, Tipografia Galileiana, 1843.
Giovanni Ponte, Leon Battista Alberti: Umanista e scrittore, Tilgher, Genova, 1981;
Luca Boschetto, Leon Battista Alberti e Firenze: Biografia, storia, letteratura, Olschki, Firenze 2000;
D. Mazzini, S. Martini. Villa Medici a Fiesole. Leon Battista Alberti e il prototipo di villa rinascimentale, Centro Di, Firenze 2004;
Leon Battista Alberti architetto, a cura di Giorgio Grassi e Luciano Patetta, testi di Giorgio Grassi et alii, Banca CR, Firenze 2005;
Massimo Bulgarelli, Leon Battista Alberti, 1404-1472: Architettura e storia, Electa, Milano 2008; | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18031 |
Little Nemo
Little Nemo is a fictional character created by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. He originated in an early comic strip by McCay, "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend", before receiving his own spin-off series, Little Nemo in Slumberland. The full-page weekly strip depicted Nemo having fantastic dreams that were interrupted by his awakening in the final panel. The strip is considered McCay's masterpiece for its experiments with the form of the comics page, its use of color, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, perspective, architectural and other detail.
"Little Nemo in Slumberland" ran in the "New York Herald" from October 15, 1906, until July 23, 1911. The strip was renamed In the Land of Wonderful Dreams when McCay brought it to William Randolph Hearst's "New York American", where it ran from September 3, 1911 until July 26, 1914. When McCay returned to the "Herald" in 1924, he revived the strip, and it ran under its original title from August 3, 1924, until January 9, 1927, when McCay returned to Hearst.
A weekly fantasy adventure, "Little Nemo in Slumberland" featured the young Nemo ("No one" in Latin) who dreamed himself into wondrous predicaments from which he awoke in bed in the last panel. The first episode begins with a command from King Morpheus of Slumberland to a minion to collect Nemo. Nemo was to be the playmate of Slumberland's Princess, but it took months of adventures before Nemo finally arrived; a green, cigar-chewing clown named Flip was determined to disturb Nemo's sleep with a top hat emblazoned with the words "Wake Up." Nemo and Flip eventually become companions, and are joined by an African Imp whom Flip finds in the Candy Islands. The group travels far and wide, from shanty towns to Mars, to Jack Frost's palace, to the bizarre architecture and distorted funhouse-mirror illusions of Befuddle Hall.
The strip shows McCay's understanding of dream psychology, particularly of dream fears—falling, drowning, impalement. This dream world has its own moral code, perhaps difficult to understand. Breaking it has terrible consequences, as when Nemo ignores instructions not to touch Queen Crystalette, who inhabits a cave of glass. Overcome with his infatuation, he causes her and her followers to shatter, and awakens with "the groans of the dying guardsmen still ringing in his ears".
Although the strip began October 15, 1905 with Morpheus, ruler of Slumberland, making his first attempt to bring Little Nemo to his realm, Nemo did not get into Slumberland until March 4, 1906 and, due to Flip's interfering, did not get to see the Princess until July 8. His dream quest is always interrupted by either him falling out of bed, or his parents forcibly waking him up.
On July 12, 1908, McCay made a major change of direction: Flip visits Nemo and tells him that he has had his uncle destroy Slumberland. (Slumberland had been dissolved before, into day, but this time it appeared to be permanent.) After this, Nemo's dreams take place in his home town, though Flip—and a curious-looking boy named the Professor—accompany him. These adventures range from the down-to-earth to Rarebit-fiend type fantasy; one very commonplace dream had the Professor pelting people with snowballs. The famous "walking bed" story was in this period. Slumberland continued to make sporadic appearances until it returned for good on December 26, 1909.
Story-arcs included Befuddle Hall, a voyage to Mars (with a well-realized Martian civilization), and a trip around the world (including a tour of New York City).
McCay experimented with the form of the comics page, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, perspective, and architectural and other detail. From the second installment, McCay had the panel sizes and layouts conform to the action in the strip: as a forest of mushrooms grew, so did the panels, and the panels shrank as the mushrooms collapsed on Nemo. In an early Thanksgiving episode, the focal action of a giant turkey gobbling Nemo's house receives an enormous circular panel in the center of the page. McCay also accommodated a sense of proportion with panel size and shape, showing elephants and dragons at a scale the reader could feel in proportion to the regular characters. Narrative pacing McCay controlled through variation or repetition, as with equally-sized panels whose repeated layouts and minute differences in movement conveyed a feeling of buildup to some climactic action.
In his familiar Art Nouveau-influenced style McCay outlined his characters in heavy blacks. Slumberland's ornate architecture was reminiscent of the architecture designed by McKim, Mead & White for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, as well as Luna Park and Dreamland in Coney Island, and the Parisian Luxembourg Palace.
McCay made imaginative use of color, sometimes changing the backgrounds' or characters' colors from panel to panel in a psychedelic imitation of a dream experience. The colors were enhanced by the careful attention and advanced Ben Day lithographic process employed by the "Herald"s printing staff. McCay annotated the "Nemo" pages for the printers with the precise color schemes he wanted.
For the first five months the pages were accompanied with captions beneath them, and at first the captions were numbered. In contrast to the high level of skill in the artwork, the dialogue in the speech balloons is crude, sometimes approaching illegibility, and "disfigur otherwise flawless work", according to critic R. C. Harvey. The level of effort and skill apparent in the title lettering highlights what seems to be the little regard for the dialogue balloons, their content, and their placement in the visual composition. They tend to contain repetitive monologues expressing the increasing distress of the speakers, and showed that McCay's gift was in the visual and not the verbal.
McCay used ethnic stereotypes prominently in "Little Nemo", as in the ill-tempered Irishman Flip, and the nearly-mute African Impie.
Winsor McCay ( – 1934) had worked prolifically as a commercial artist and cartoonist in carnivals and dime museums before he began working for newspapers and magazines in 1898. In 1903, he joined the staff of the "New York Herald" family of newspapers, where he had success with comic strips such as "Little Sammy Sneeze" (1904–06). and "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" (1904–11)
In 1905, McCay got "an idea from the "Rarebit Fiend" to please the little folk". In That October, the full-page Sunday strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" debuted in the "Herald". Considered McCay's masterpiece, its child protagonist, whose appearance was based on McCay's son Robert, had fabulous dreams that would be interrupted with his awakening in the last panel. McCay experimented with the form of the comics page, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, perspective, architectural and other detail. The "Herald" was considered to have the highest quality color printing of any newspaper at the time. Its printing staff used the Ben Day process for color.
"Little Nemo in Slumberland" debuted on the last page of the Sunday comics section of "The New York Herald" on October 15, 1905. The full-page, color comic strip ran until July 23, 1911. In spring 1911, McCay moved to William Randolph Hearst's "New York American" and took "Little Nemo"s characters with him. The "Herald" held the strip's copyright, but McCay won a lawsuit that allowed him to continue using the characters. In the "American", the strip ran under the title "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams". The "Herald" was unsuccessful in finding another cartoonist to continue the original strip.
McCay left Hearst in May 1924 and returned to the "Herald Tribune". He began "Little Nemo in Slumberland" afresh that August 3. The new strip displayed the virtuoso technique of the old, but the panels were laid out in an unvarying grid. Nemo took a more passive role in the stories, and there was no continuity. The strip came to an end in January 1927, as it was not popular with readers. Hearst executives had been trying to convince McCay to return to the "American", and succeeded in 1927. Due to the lack of the 1920s Nemo's success, the "Herald Tribune" signed over all copyrights to the strip to McCay for one dollar.
In 1937, McCay's son Robert attempted to carry on his father's legacy by reviving "Little Nemo". Comic book packager Harry "A" Chesler's syndicate announced a Sunday and daily "Nemo" strip, credited to "Winsor McCay, Jr." Robert also drew a comic-book version for Chesler called "Nemo in Adventureland" featuring grown-up versions of Nemo and the Princess. Neither project lasted long. In 1947, Robert and fabric salesman Irving Mendelsohn organized the McCay Feature Syndicate, Inc. to revive the original "Nemo" strip from McCay's original art, modified to fit the size of modern newspaper pages. This revival also did not last.
In 1966, cartoonist Woody Gelman discovered the original artwork for many "Little Nemo" strips at a cartoon studio where McCay's son Bob had worked. In 1973, Gelman published a collection of "Little Nemo" strips in Italy. His collection of McCay originals is preserved at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University.
Collector Peter Maresca did with his Sunday Press Books self-publish a volume of "Nemo" Sundays as "Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays!". The volume was large enough to reproduce the pages at the size they originally appeared in newspapers. Restoration work took Maresca five to twenty hours per page. A second volume, "Little Nemo in Slumberland: Many More Splendid Sundays!", appeared in 2008.
As early as 1905, several abortive attempts were made to put "Little Nemo" on stage. In summer 1907, Marcus Klaw and A. L. Erlanger announced they would put on an extravagant "Little Nemo" show for an unprecedented $100,000, with a score by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Harry B. Smith. It starred dwarf Gabriel Weigel as Nemo, Joseph Cawthorn as Dr. Pill, and Billy B. Van as Flip. Reviews were positive, and it played to sold-out houses in New York. It went on the road for two seasons. McCay brought his vaudeville act to each city where "Little Nemo" played. When a Keith circuit refused to let McCay perform in Boston without a new act, McCay switched to the William Morris circuit, with a $100-a-week raise. In several cities, McCay brought his son, who sat on a small throne dressed as Nemo as publicity.
As part of an improvised story, Cawthorn introduced a mythical creature he called a "Whiffenpoof". The word stuck with the public, and became the name of a and a singing group. One reviewer of the 1908 operetta gave a paragraph of praise to the comic hunting tales presented in a scene in which three hunters are trying to outdo each other with hunting stories about the "montimanjack", the "peninsula", and the "whiffenpoof". He calls it "one of the funniest yarns ever spun" and compares it favorably to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. One source indicates that the dialogue in fact began as an ad lib by actor Joseph Cawthorn, covering for some kind of backstage problem during a performance. The Word is also referred in one of the Little Nemo comic strips published in 1909 (April 11). After being held down by nine policemen during a hysteria crisis, Nemo’s father tells the doctor: “Just keep those whiffenpoofs away. Will you?”.
Despite the show's success, it failed to make back its investment due to its enormous expenses, and came to an end in December 1910.
In mid-2012 Toronto-based theatre company Frolick performed an adaptation of the strip into "Adventures in Slumberland", a multimedia show featuring puppets large and small and a score that included as a refrain "Wake Up Little Nemo", set to the tune of The Everly Brothers' 1957 hit "Wake Up Little Susie". Talespinner Children's Theatre in Cleveland, OH produced a scaled-down, "colorful and high-energy 45-minute" adaptation in 2013, "Adventures In Slumberland" by David Hansen.
In March 2017, a short, one-act adaptation of the "Little Nemo" adventures was staged at Fordham University in New York City. The play, simply entitled "Little Nemo in Slumberland", was written by Aladdin Lee Grant Rutledge Collar, and directed by student Peter McNally. The six person cast, as well as creative team, consisted of students and alums at the university.
McCay played an important role in the early history of animation. In 1911 he completed his first film, "Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics" (also known as "Little Nemo"), first in theatres and then as part of his vaudeville act. McCay made the 4,000 rice-paper drawings for the animated portion of the film. The animated portion took up about four minutes of the film's total length. Photography was done at the Vitagraph Studios under the supervision of animation pioneer James Stuart Blackton. During the live-action portion of the film, McCay bets his colleagues he can make his drawings move. He wins the bet by animating his "Little Nemo" characters, who shapeshift and transform.
In 1984, Arnaud Sélignac produced and directed a film called "Nemo" or "Dream One", starring Jason Connery, Harvey Keitel and Carole Bouquet. It involves a little boy called Nemo, who wears pajamas and travels to a fantasy world, but otherwise the connection to McCay's strip is a loose one. The fantasy world is a dark and dismal beach, and Nemo encounters characters from other works of fiction rather than those from the original strip. Instead of Flip or the Princess, Nemo meets Zorro, Alice and Jules Verne's Nautilus (which was led by Captain Nemo).
A joint American-Japanese feature-length film "" was released in Japan in 1989 and in the United States in August 1992 from Hemdale Film Corporation, with contributions by Ray Bradbury, Chris Columbus and Moebius, and music by the Sherman Brothers. The story tells of a quest by Nemo and friends to rescue King Morpheus from the Nightmare King. The Princess is given a name, Camille, and Nemo has a pet flying squirrel named Icarus. However, it was box office bomb grossing only $11.4 million domestically and receiving mixed to positive reviews from publications including "The Washington Post", "Variety", the "New York Post", the "Boston Globe", and "The New York Times".
In January 2020, it was announced that a new live action film adaptation will be made exclusively for Netflix. The film will be directed by Francis Lawrence and feature a gender-swapped version of the title character named Nema. Jason Momoa will star as a radically altered version of Flip who is described as a "nine-foot tall creature that is half-man, half-beast, has shaggy fur and long curved tusks". The plot will center on Nema and Flip traveling Slumberland in search of the former's father.
The Sarasota Opera commissioned composer Daron Hagen and librettist J. D. McClatchy to create an opera based on "Little Nemo". Two casts of children alternated performances when it debuted in November 2012. The dreamlike nonlinear story told of Nemo, the Princess, and their comrades trying to prevent the Emperor of Sol and the Guardian of Dawn from bringing daylight to Slumberland. Special effects and shifting backgrounds were produced with projections onto a scaffolding of boxes. The work was first performed on November 10 and 11, 2012, by members of the Sarasota Opera, Sarasota Youth Opera, Sarasota Prep Chorus, The Sailor Circus and students from Booker High school.
In 1990, Capcom produced a video game for the NES, titled "" (known as "Pajama Hero Nemo" in Japan), a licensed game based on the 1989 film. The film would not see a US release until 1992, two years after the game's Japanese release, so the game is often thought to be a standalone adaptation of "Little Nemo", not related to the film. An arcade game called simply "Nemo" was also released in 1990.
Throughout the years, various pieces of Little Nemo merchandise have been produced. In 1941, Rand, McNally & Co. published a Little Nemo children's storybook. "Little Nemo in Slumberland in 3-D" was released by Blackthorne Publishing in 1987; this reprinted Little Nemo issues with 3-D glasses. A set of 30 Little Nemo postcards was available through Stewart Tabori & Chang in 1996. In 1993, as promotion for the 1989 animated film, Hemdale produced a Collector's Set which includes a VHS movie, illustrated storybook, and cassette soundtrack. In 2001, Dark Horse Comics released a Little Nemo statue and tin lunchbox.
Little Nemo itself is influenced by children stories in general, and some French comic pages in particular.
Since its publishing, "Little Nemo" has had an influence on other artists, including Peter Newell ("The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead"), Frank King ("Bobby Make-Believe"), Clare Briggs ("Danny Dreamer") or George McManus ("Nibsy the Newsboy in Funny Fairyland"). Through the Paris edition of the New York Herald, his influence reached France and other European countries.
In children's literature, Maurice Sendak said that this strip inspired his book "In the Night Kitchen", and William Joyce included several elements from Little Nemo in his children's book "Santa Calls", including appearances by Flip and the walking bed. Another tribute to Little Nemo is the comic, then made into a short film, "Little Remo in Pinchmeland", by Ellen Duthie and Daniela Martagón.
The character and themes from the comic strip "Little Nemo" were used in a song "Scenes from a Night's Dream" written by Tony Banks and Phil Collins of the progressive rock group Genesis on their 1978 recording, "...And Then There Were Three...".
Another progressive rock group, from Germany, called Scara Brae also recorded a musical impression of the comic on their rare self-titled disc from 1981 (the track was actually recorded 2 years earlier). Their concept piece was revived on the second album by the Greek band Anger Department, oddly called 'The Strange Dreams of A Rarebit Fiend', again after a McCay-comic. Their 'Little Nemo' was chosen for a theatre play, which was suggested for the cultural program for the Olympic Games in 2004.
In 1984, Italian comic artist Vittorio Giardino started producing a number of stories under the title "Little Ego", a parodic adaptation of "Little Nemo", in the shape of adult-oriented erotic comics. Brian Bolland's early comic strip "Little Nympho in Slumberland" employed a similar technique.
The bar in "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" is called 'Little Nemo's'.
It influenced Alan Moore, in "Miracleman" No. 4, when the Miracleman family end up in a palace called "Sleepy Town", which has imagery similar to Little Nemo's. In Moore (and J.H. Williams III)'s "Promethea", a more direct pastiche – "Little Margie in Misty Magic Land" – showed Moore's inspiration and debt to McCay's landmark 1905 strip. The Sandman series occasionally references "Little Nemo" as well. Examples include "", where an abused child escapes into dreams styled after McCay's comics and using a similar 'wake-up' mechanism, and "" (pub. 1996), which features George Alec Effinger's short "Seven Nights in Slumberland" (where Nemo interacts with Neil Gaiman's characters The Endless).
In 1989, teen comic book Power Pack ran an issue (#47) which paid direct homage to one of McCay's Nemo storylines, featuring a castle that was drawn sideways and Katie Power re-enacting a classic Nemo panel with a sideways-drawn hallway that served as a bottomless pit with the line "Don't fall in, y'hear?"
"Little Nemo in Slumberland" is also the inspiration for the video of the 1989 song "Runnin' Down a Dream" by Tom Petty.
In 1994-1995, French artist Moebius wrote the story to a sequel comic series "Little Nemo", drawn by Bruno Marchand in two albums, 2000-2002, Marchand continued the story with two additional albums.
In 2006, electronic artist Daedelus used Little Nemo artwork for his album "Denies the Day's Demise".
The comic strip "Cul de Sac" includes a strip-within-the-strip, "Little Neuro", a parody of Little Nemo. Neuro is a little boy who hardly ever leaves his bed.
In 2009, the Pittsburgh ToonSeum established its NEMO Award, given to notable individuals "for excellence in the cartoon arts". Recipients to date include veteran comic-book artist Ron Frenz, editorial and comic-strip artist Dick Locher, cartoonist and comics historian Trina Robbins, and comics artist, editorial cartoonist and artists' rights advocate Jerry Robinson.
On October 15, 2012, celebrating the 107th anniversary of the first "Little Nemo" story, Google displayed an interactive animated "Google Doodle" called "Little Nemo in Google-land" on its homepage. The doodle showed a typical Little Nemo adventure through a series of panels, each featuring a letter from the word "Google". The doodle also ends in the same way as the comic strips, with Nemo falling from his bed.
At Universal's Islands of Adventure, at the Toon Lagoon section, Little Nemo can be seen falling out of his bed near a shop.
Eric Shanower and Gabriel Rodriguez revived the characters in 2014 in an IDW comic book series entitled "Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland". That same year, Locust Moon Press released a new anthology and Taschen published the complete series (1905–1926).
Comics historian R. C. Harvey has called McCay "the first original genius of the comic strip medium". Harvey claims that McCay's contemporaries lacked the skill to continue with his innovations, so that they were left for future generations to rediscover and build upon. Cartoonist Robert Crumb called McCay a "genius" and one of his favorite cartoonists. Art Spiegelman's "In the Shadow of No Towers" (2004) appropriated some of McCay's imagery, and included a page of "Little Nemo" in its appendix. Federico Fellini read "Little Nemo" in the children's magazine "Il corriere dei piccoli", and the strip was a "powerful influence" on the filmmaker, according to Fellini biographer Peter Bondanella.
McCay's original artwork has been poorly preserved. McCay insisted on having his originals returned to him, and a large collection survived him, but much of it was destroyed in a fire in the late 1930s. His wife was unsure how to handle the surviving pieces, so his son took on the responsibility and moved the collection into his own house. The family sold off some of the artwork when they were in need of cash. Responsibility for it passed to Mendelsohn, then later to daughter Marion. By the early twenty-first century, most of McCay's surviving artwork remained in family hands. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18033 |
Lydia
Lydia (Assyrian: "Luddu"; , "Lȳdíā"; ) was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian. Its capital was Sardis.
The Kingdom of Lydia existed from about 1200 BC to 546 BC. At its greatest extent, during the 7th century BC, it covered all of western Anatolia. In 546 BC, it became a province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, known as the satrapy of Lydia or "Sparda" in Old Persian. In 133 BC, it became part of the Roman province of Asia.
Coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC.
The endonym "Śfard" (the name the Lydians called themselves) survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire: the satrapy of "Sparda" (Old Persian), Aramaic "Saparda", Babylonian "Sapardu", Elamitic "Išbarda", Hebrew . These in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of King Gyges, constructed during the 7th century BC. Lydia is called "Kisitan" by Hayton of Corycus (in "The Flower of the History of the East"), a name which was corrupted to "Quesiton" in "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville".
The region of the Lydian kingdom was during the 15th-14th centuries BCE part of the Arzawa kingdom. However, the Lydian language is usually not categorized as part of the Luwic subgroup, unlike the other nearby Anatolian languages Luwian, Carian, and Lycian.
The relationship between the Etruscans (of northern Italy) and the Lydians has long been a subject of conjecture. While the Greek historian Herodotus stated that the Etruscans originated in Lydia, he may have meant a people who preceded the Lydians proper. The claim that Lydia was the homeland of the Etruscans was repeated in Virgil's epic poem the "Aeneid".
In modern times, linguists have identified an Etruscan-like language in a set of inscriptions on the island of Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea. Since the Etruscan language was a non-Indo-European language, it was not closely related to Lydian, which was a part of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages.
Research into the genetics of, respectively, ancient human and animal remains from northern Italy and western Anatolia have been somewhat contradictory.
A 2013 study suggested that the maternal lineages – as reflected in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) – of western Anatolians and the modern population of Tuscany had been largely separate for 5,000 to 10,000 years (with a 95% credible interval); the mtDNA of Etruscans was most similar to modern Tuscans and Neolithic populations from Central Europe. This was interpreted as suggesting that the Etruscan population were descended largely from the Villanovan culture. However, mtDNA, by its very nature has never been a reliable indicator of overall, long-term dynamics in human population genetics; that is, mtDNA could be considered limited and reliable only with regard to maternal lineages (i.e. not the historical dynamics of the population as a whole). By comparison, autosomal DNA (aDNA) is a comprehensive indicator of archaeogenetics and its interaction with modern populations.
More recently (2015), genetic studies of livestock have found evidence that proto-Etruscan settlers may have brought with them cattle from Anatolia, which contributed to modern cattle breeds from north-central Italy, such as the Chianina and Romagnola. By comparison, both of these breeds were "less closely related" to some breeds from other parts of northern Italy (Trentino and Liguria), Switzerland, Iberia and North-West Europe.
The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries. It was bounded first by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later, the military power of Alyattes and Croesus expanded Lydia, which, with its capital at Sardis, controlled all Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia. After the Persian conquest the River Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and during imperial Roman times Lydia comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean Sea on the other.
The Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family, related to Luwian and Hittite. Due to its fragmentary attestation, the meanings of many words are unknown but much of the grammar has been determined. Similar to other Anatolian languages, it featured extensive use of prefixes and grammatical particles to chain clauses together. Lydian had also undergone extensive syncope, leading to numerous consonant clusters atypical of Indo-European languages. Lydian finally became extinct during the 1st century BC.
Lydia developed after the decline of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC. In Hittite times, the name for the region had been Arzawa. According to Greek source, the original name of the Lydian kingdom was "Maionia" (Μαιονία), or "Maeonia": Homer ("Iliad" ii. 865; v. 43, xi. 431) refers to the inhabitants of Lydia as "Maiones" (Μαίονες). Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as "Hyde" ("Iliad" xx. 385); Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis was located. Later, Herodotus ("Histories" i. 7) adds that the "Meiones" were renamed Lydians after their king Lydus (Λυδός), son of Atys, during the mythical epoch that preceded the Heracleid dynasty. This etiological eponym served to account for the Greek ethnic name "Lydoi" (Λυδοί). The Hebrew term for Lydians, "Lûḏîm" (לודים), as found in the Book of Jeremiah (46.9), has been similarly considered, beginning with Flavius Josephus, to be derived from Lud son of Shem; however, Hippolytus of Rome (234 AD) offered an alternative opinion that the Lydians were descended from Ludim, son of Mizraim. During Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were famous archers. Some Maeones still existed during historical times in the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town named Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder ("Natural History" book v:30) and Hierocles (author of Synecdemus).
Lydian mythology is virtually unknown, and their literature and rituals have been lost due to the absence of any monuments or archaeological finds with extensive inscriptions; therefore, myths involving Lydia are mainly from Greek mythology.
For the Greeks, Tantalus was a primordial ruler of mythic Lydia, and Niobe his proud daughter; her husband Amphion associated Lydia with Thebes in Greece, and through Pelops the line of Tantalus was part of the founding myths of Mycenae's second dynasty. (In reference to the myth of Bellerophon, Karl Kerenyi remarked, in "The Heroes of The Greeks" 1959, p. 83. "As Lykia was thus connected with Crete, and as the person of Pelops, the hero of Olympia, connected Lydia with the Peloponnesos, so Bellerophontes connected another Asian country, or rather two, Lykia and Karia, with the kingdom of Argos".)
In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the double-axe symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization, the "labrys". Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, whom Heracles was required to serve for a time. His adventures in Lydia are the adventures of a Greek hero in a peripheral and foreign land: during his stay, Heracles enslaved the Itones; killed Syleus, who forced passers-by to hoe his vineyard; slew the serpent of the river Sangarios (which appears in the heavens as the constellation Ophiucus) and captured the simian tricksters, the Cercopes. Accounts tell of at least one son of Heracles who was born to either Omphale or a slave-girl: Herodotus ("Histories" i. 7) says this was Alcaeus who began the line of Lydian Heracleidae which ended with the death of Candaules c. 687 BC. Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid ("Heroides" 9.54) mention a son called Lamos, while pseudo-Apollodorus ("Bibliotheke" 2.7.8) gives the name Agelaus and Pausanias (2.21.3) names Tyrsenus as the son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman". All three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor. Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. He also mentions (1.94) the legend that the Etruscan civilization was founded by colonists from Lydia led by Tyrrhenus, brother of Lydus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was skeptical of this story, indicating that the Etruscan language and customs were known to be totally dissimilar to those of the Lydians. In addition, the story of the "Lydian" origins of the Etruscans was not known to Xanthus of Lydia, an authority on the history of the Lydians.
Later chronologists ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first Heraclid to be a king, and included his immediate forefathers Alcaeus, Belus and Ninus in their list of kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) has Atys, father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus, as a descendant of Heracles and Omphale but that contradicts virtually all other accounts which name Atys, Lydus and Tyrrhenus among the pre-Heraclid kings and princes of Lydia. The gold deposits in the river Pactolus that were the source of the proverbial wealth of Croesus (Lydia's last king) were said to have been left there when the legendary king Midas of Phrygia washed away the "Midas touch" in its waters.
In Euripides' tragedy "The Bacchae", Dionysus, while he is maintaining his human disguise, declares his country to be Lydia.
According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to use gold and silver coins and the first to establish retail shops in permanent locations. It is not known, however, whether Herodotus meant that the Lydians were the first to use coins of pure gold and pure silver or the first precious metal coins in general. Despite this ambiguity, this statement of Herodotus is one of the pieces of evidence most often cited on behalf of the argument that Lydians invented coinage, at least in the West, although the first coins (under Alyattes I, reigned c.591–c.560 BC) were neither gold nor silver but an alloy of the two called electrum.
The dating of these first stamped coins is one of the most frequently debated topics of ancient numismatics, with dates ranging from 700 BC to 550 BC, but the most common opinion is that they were minted at or near the beginning of the reign of King Alyattes (sometimes referred to incorrectly as Alyattes II). The first coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver that occurs naturally but that was further debased by the Lydians with added silver and copper.
The largest of these coins are commonly referred to as a 1/3 stater ("trite") denomination, weighing around 4.7 grams, though no full staters of this type have ever been found, and the 1/3 stater probably should be referred to more correctly as a stater, after a type of a transversely held scale, the weights used in such a scale (from ancient Greek ίστημι=to stand), which also means "standard." These coins were stamped with a lion's head adorned with what is likely a sunburst, which was the king's symbol. The most prolific mint for early electrum coins was Sardis which produced large quantities of the lion head thirds, sixths and twelfths along with lion paw fractions. To complement the largest denomination, fractions were made, including a "hekte" (sixth), "hemihekte" (twelfth), and so forth down to a 96th, with the 1/96 stater weighing only about 0.15 grams. There is disagreement, however, over whether the fractions below the twelfth are actually Lydian.
Alyattes' son was Croesus (Reigned c.560–c.546 BC), who became associated with great wealth. Croesus is credited with issuing the "Croeseid", the first true gold coins with a standardised purity for general circulation, and the world's first bimetallic monetary system circa 550 BCE.
It took some time before ancient coins were used for commerce and trade. Even the smallest-denomination electrum coins, perhaps worth about a day's subsistence, would have been too valuable for buying a loaf of bread. The first coins to be used for retailing on a large-scale basis were likely small silver fractions, Hemiobol, Ancient Greek coinage minted in Cyme (Aeolis) under Hermodike II then by the Ionian Greeks in the late sixth century BC.
Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC, near the beginning of his reign, Croesus paid for the construction of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which became one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was defeated in battle by Cyrus II of Persia in 546 BC, with the Lydian kingdom losing its autonomy and becoming a Persian satrapy.
According to Herodotus, Lydia was ruled by three dynasties from the second millennium BC to 546 BC. The first two dynasties are legendary and the third is historical. Herodotus mentions three early Maeonian kings: Manes, his son Atys and his grandson Lydus. Lydus gave his name to the country and its people. One of his descendants was Iardanus, with whom Heracles was in service at one time. Heracles had an affair with one of Iardanus' slave-girls and their son Alcaeus was the first of the Lydian Heraclids.
The Maeonians relinquished control to the Heracleidae and Herodotus says they ruled through 22 generations for a total of 505 years from c. 1192 BC. The first Heraclid king was Agron, the great-grandson of Alcaeus. He was succeeded by 19 Heraclid kings, names unknown, all succeeding father to son. In the 8th century BC, Meles became the 21st and penultimate Heraclid king and the last was his son Candaules (died c. 687 BC), who was assassinated and succeeded by his former friend Gyges, who began the Mermnad dynasty.
In 547 BC, the Lydian king Croesus besieged and captured the Persian city of Pteria in Cappadocia and enslaved its inhabitants. The Persian king Cyrus The Great marched with his army against the Lydians. The Battle of Pteria resulted in a stalemate, forcing the Lydians to retreat to their capital city of Sardis. Some months later the Persian and Lydian kings met at the Battle of Thymbra. Cyrus won and captured the capital city of Sardis by 546 BC. Lydia became a province (satrapy) of the Persian Empire.
Lydia remained a satrapy after Persia's conquest by the Macedonian king Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon.
When Alexander's empire ended after his death, Lydia was possessed by the major Asian diadoch dynasty, the Seleucids, and when it was unable to maintain its territory in Asia Minor, Lydia was acquired by the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum. Its last king avoided the spoils and ravage of a Roman war of conquest by leaving the realm by testament to the Roman Empire.
When the Romans entered the capital Sardis in 133 BC, Lydia, as the other western parts of the Attalid legacy, became part of the province of Asia, a very rich Roman province, worthy of a governor with the high rank of proconsul. The whole west of Asia Minor had Jewish colonies very early, and Christianity was also soon present there. Acts of the Apostles 16:14-15 mentions the baptism of a merchant woman called "Lydia" from Thyatira, known as Lydia of Thyatira, in what had once been the satrapy of Lydia. Christianity spread rapidly during the 3rd century AD, based on the nearby Exarchate of Ephesus.
Under the tetrarchy reform of Emperor Diocletian in 296 AD, Lydia was revived as the name of a separate Roman province, much smaller than the former satrapy, with its capital at Sardis.
Together with the provinces of Caria, Hellespontus, Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia prima and Phrygia secunda, Pisidia (all in modern Turkey) and the Insulae (Ionian islands, mostly in modern Greece), it formed the diocese (under a "vicarius") of Asiana, which was part of the praetorian prefecture of Oriens, together with the dioceses Pontiana (most of the rest of Asia Minor), Oriens proper (mainly Syria), Aegyptus (Egypt) and Thraciae (on the Balkans, roughly Bulgaria).
Under the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610–641), Lydia became part of Anatolikon, one of the original "themata", and later of Thrakesion. Although the Seljuk Turks conquered most of the rest of Anatolia, forming the Sultanate of Ikonion (Konya), Lydia remained part of the Byzantine Empire. While the Venetians occupied Constantinople and Greece as a result of the Fourth Crusade, Lydia continued as a part of the Byzantine rump state called the Nicene Empire based at Nicaea until 1261.
Lydia was captured finally by Turkish "beyliks", which were all absorbed by the Ottoman state in 1390. The area became part of the Ottoman Aidin Vilayet ("province"), and is now in the modern republic of Turkey.
Lydia had numerous Christian communities and, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, Lydia became one of the provinces of the diocese of Asia in the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The ecclesiastical province of Lydia had a metropolitan diocese at Sardis and suffragan dioceses for Philadelphia, Thyatira, Tripolis, Settae, Gordus, Tralles, Silandus, Maeonia, Apollonos Hierum, Mostene, Apollonias, Attalia, Hyrcania, Bage, Balandus, Hermocapella, Hierocaesarea, Acrassus, Dalda, Stratonicia, Cerasa, Gabala, Satala, Aureliopolis and Hellenopolis. Bishops from the various dioceses of Lydia were well represented at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and at the later ecumenical councils.
Ancient episcopal sees of the late Roman province of Lydia are listed in the "Annuario Pontificio" as titular sees: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18039 |
Land's End
Land's End ( or "Pedn an Wlas") is a headland and holiday complex in western Cornwall, England, situated within the Penwith peninsula about west-south-west of Penzance at the western end of the A30 road. To the east of it is the English Channel, and to the west the Celtic Sea.
Land's End is the most westerly point of mainland Cornwall and England. However, it is not the westernmost point on mainland Great Britain, as this title narrowly goes to Corrachadh Mòr in the Scottish Highlands.
The actual Land’s End, or Peal Point, is a modest headland compared with nearby headlands such as Pedn-men-dhu overlooking Sennen Cove and Pordenack, to the south. The present hotel and tourist complex is at Carn Kez, 200 m south of the actual Land’s End. Land's End has a particular resonance because it is often used to suggest distance. Land's End to John o' Groats in Scotland is a distance of by road and this "Land's End to John o' Groats" distance is often used to define charitable events such as end-to-end walks and races in the UK. Land's End to the northernmost point of England is a distance of by road.
The westernmost promontory at Land's End is known as Dr Syntax's Head. The character Dr Syntax was invented by the writer William Combe in his 1809 comic verse "The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque", which satirised the work of seekers of the "picturesque" such as William Gilpin. A nearby promontory is called Dr Johnson's Head after Samuel Johnson, who referred to a hypothetical Cornish declaration of independence in his 1775 essay "Taxation no Tyranny".
The area around Land's End has been designated part of an Important Plant Area, by the organisation Plantlife, for rare species of flora.
Land's End is a popular venue for rock climbers.
The Longships, a group of rocky islets are just over offshore, and together with the Seven Stones Reef and the Isles of Scilly which lie about southwest — are part of the mythical lost land of Lyonesse, referred to in Arthurian literature.
The cliffs are made of granite, an igneous rock, which means they are resistant to weathering, and have steep cliff faces. There are two varieties of granite represented at Land's End. Adjacent to the hotel the granite is coarse-grained with large phenocrysts of orthoclase, sometimes more than in length. To the north, at the First and Last House, there is a finer-grained granite with fewer and smaller phenocrysts, and the different granites can be seen from a distance by the smoother weathering of the finer variety. The granite dates to 268–275 million years ago of the Permian period. The contact zone between the Land's End granite pluton and the altered ″country rocks″ is nearby and the Longships Lighthouse, offshore, is built on the country rock.
In 1769, the antiquarian William Borlase wrote:
Of this time we are to understand what Edward I. says (Sheringham. p. 129.) that Britain, Wales, and Cornwall, were the portion of Belinus, elder son of Dunwallo, and that that part of the Island, afterwards called England, was divided in three shares, viz. Britain, which reached from the Tweed, Westward, as far as the river Ex; Wales inclosed by the rivers Severn, and Dee; and Cornwall from the river Ex to the Land's-End.
Tourists have been visiting Land’s End for over three hundred years. In 1649, an early visitor was the poet John Taylor, who was hoping to find subscribers for his new book "Wanderings to see the Wonders of the West". In 1878 people left Penzance by horse-drawn vehicles from outside the Queens and Union hotels and travelled via St Buryan and Treen, to see the Logan Rock. There was a short stop to look at Porthcurno and the Eastern Telegraph Company followed by refreshments at the First and Last Inn in Sennen. They then headed for Land’s End, often on foot or horse, because of the uneven and muddy lanes. Over one hundred people could be at Land's End at any one time. At Carn Kez, the First and Last Inn owned a small house which looked after the horses while visitors roamed the cliffs. The house at Carn Kez developed into the present hotel. The earliest part of the house was damaged by the Luftwaffe when a plane returning from a raid on Cardiff jettisoned its remaining bombs. 53 fisherman were injured or killed. In the build-up to D-Day American troops were billeted in the hotel leaving the building in a bad state.
Land's End was owned by a Cornish family until 1982, when it was sold to David Goldstone. In 1987, Peter de Savary outbid the National Trust to purchase Land’s End for almost £7 million from David Goldstone. He had two new buildings erected and much of the present theme park development was instigated by him. He sold both Land's End and John o' Groats to businessman Graham Ferguson Lacey in 1991. The current owners purchased Land's End in 1996 and formed a company named Heritage Great Britain PLC. Attractions at the theme park include children's playgrounds and recorded music. Twice a week in August, Land's End hosts 'Magic in the Skies', a night-time firework spectacular with music by British composer Christopher Bond and narrated by actress Miriam Margolyes. Within the complex is the Land's End Hotel.
In May 2012, Land's End received worldwide publicity as the starting point of the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay.
Land's End is either the start or finishing point of end to end journeys with John o'Groats in Scotland. One of the earliest was by Carlisle who left Land's End on 23 September 1879, went to John O'Groats House and arrived back at Land's End on 15 December; taking 72 days (exclusive of Sundays); covering . To prove his journey, he kept a log book which was stamped at any Post Office he passed. An early end to end on bicycle was completed by Messrs Blackwell and Harman of Canonbury Bicycle Club. Starting at Land's End they covered in thirteen days in July/August 1880. Nearly two years later the Hon I Keith-Falconer travelled . from Land's End, in twelve days, 23¼ hours, on a bicycle.
On the south side of Carn Kez the land slopes away to a shallow valley containing a small stream and the former Greeb Farm. In 1879 a derrick was used for hauling seaweed from the beach 40 feet below for use as a soil improver. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18040 |
Lancelot Andrewes
Lancelot Andrewes (155525 September 1626) was an English bishop and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, of Ely, and of Winchester and oversaw the translation of the "King James Version of the Bible" (or "Authorized Version"). In the Church of England he is commemorated on 25 September with a Lesser Festival.
Andrewes was born in 1555 near All Hallows, Barking, by the Tower of London, of an ancient Suffolk family later domiciled at Chichester Hall, at Rawreth in Essex; his father, Thomas, was master of Trinity House. Andrewes attended the Cooper's free school, in Ratcliff, in the parish of Stepney and then the Merchant Taylors' School under Richard Mulcaster. In 1571 he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, proceeding to a Master of Arts degree in 1578. His academic reputation spread so quickly that on the foundation in 1571 of Jesus College, Oxford he was named in the charter as one of the founding scholars "without his privity" (Isaacson, 1650); his connection with the college seems to have been purely notional, however. In 1576 he was elected fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge; on 11 June 1580 he was ordained a priest by William Chaderton, Bishop of Chester and in 1581 was incorporated Master of Arts (MA) at Oxford. As catechist at his college he read lectures on the Decalogue (published in 1630), which aroused great interest.
Once a year he would spend a month with his parents, and during this vacation, he would find a master from whom he would learn a language of which he had no previous knowledge. In this way, after a few years, he acquired most of the modern languages of Europe.
Andrewes was the elder brother of the scholar and cleric Roger Andrewes, who also served as a translator for the King James Version of the Bible.
In 1588, following a period as chaplain to Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, Lord President of the Council in the North, he became vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate in the City of London, where he delivered striking sermons on the temptation in the wilderness and the Lord's Prayer. In a great sermon (during Easter week) on 10 April 1588, he stoutly vindicated the Reformed character of the Church of England against the claims of Roman Catholicism and adduced John Calvin as a new writer, with lavish praise and affection.
Yet, Andrewes was certainly no Calvinist. It has been said that he developed a proto-Arminian soteriology while at Cambridge and that he maintained this non-Calvinist theology throughout his life. He made it a point to refuse to repeat the common Calvinist slogans of his time. During the first half of the seventeenth century, he claimed that Calvinism was incompatible with civil government, preaching, and ministry. Throughout his sermons, he unashamedly criticized Calvinist doctrine and practice. He has been referred to as an avant-garde conformist, which is understood as an implicitly proto-Arminian precursor to Laudianism and explicit English-Arminianism. He outright decried the translation and Calvinistic notes in the Geneva translation of the Bible. He taught that God condemned Cain for his own freely chosen sin and he denied that God unconditionally predestined any to salvation or that he unconditionally condemned anyone. He argued for soteriological synergism, using Lot's wife as a picture that one's salvation is not secure post-conversion apart from an ongoing and freely chosen cooperation with God's saving grace. John Overall and Andrewes were more sympathetic to the Remonstrants than the Calvinists at the time of the Synod of Dordt. Andrewes, out of fear, denied his support for the Remonstrants when letters sent to him from that party were intercepted. He was not on friendly terms with the delegates to the synod and he made it clear that he did not support the results. He and the Remonstrants attempted to use the ecclesiological similarities between the Contra-Remonstrants and the Puritans to persuade James I not to involve himself in the Synod of Dort or to support the Remonstrant cause if he did.
Through the influence of Francis Walsingham, Andrewes was appointed prebendary of St Pancras in St Paul's, London, in 1589, and subsequently became Master of his own college of Pembroke, as well as a chaplain to John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury. From 1589 to 1609 he was prebendary of Southwell. On 4 March 1590, as a chaplain of Elizabeth I, he preached before her an outspoken sermon and, in October that year, gave his introductory lecture at St Paul's, undertaking to comment on the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis. These were later compiled as "The Orphan Lectures" (1657).
Andrewes liked to move among the people, yet found time to join a society of antiquaries, of which Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Burleigh, Arundel, the Herberts, Saville, John Stow and William Camden were members. Elizabeth I had not advanced him further on account of his opposition to the alienation of ecclesiastical revenues. In 1598 he declined the bishoprics of Ely and Salisbury, because of the conditions attached. On 23 November 1600, he preached at Whitehall a controversial sermon on justification. In July 1601 he was appointed Dean of Westminster and gave much attention to the school there.
On the accession of James I, to whom his somewhat pedantic style of preaching recommended him, Andrewes rose into great favour. He assisted at James's coronation, and in 1604 took part in the Hampton Court Conference.
Andrewes' name is the first on the list of divines appointed to compile the "Authorized Version" of the Bible. He headed the "First Westminster Company" which took charge of the first books of the Old Testament (Genesis to 2 Kings). He acted, furthermore, as a sort of general editor for the project as well.
On 31 October 1605 his election as Bishop of Chichester was confirmed, he was consecrated a bishop on 3 November, installed at Chichester Cathedral on 18 November and made Lord High Almoner (until 1619). Following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot Andrewes was asked to prepare a sermon to be presented to the king in 1606 (Sermons Preached upon the V of November, in Lancelot Andrewes, XCVI Sermons, 3rd. Edition (London,1635) pp. 889,890, 900-1008 ). In this sermon Lancelot Andrewes justified the need to commemorate the deliverance and defined the nature of celebrations. This sermon became the foundation of celebrations which continue 400 years later. In 1609 he published "Tortura Torti", a learned work which grew out of the Gunpowder Plot controversy and was written in answer to Bellarmine's "Matthaeus Tortus", which attacked James I's book on the oath of allegiance. After moving to Ely (his election to that See was confirmed on 22 September), he again controverted Bellarmine in the "Responsio ad Apologiam".
In 1617 he accompanied James I to Scotland with a view to persuading the Scots that Episcopacy was preferable to Presbyterianism. He was made dean of the Chapel Royal and translated (by the confirmation of his election to that See in February 1619) to Winchester, a diocese that he administered with great success. Following his death in 1626 in his Southwark palace, he was mourned alike by leaders in Church and state, and buried beside the high altar in St Saviour's (now Southwark Cathedral, then in the Diocese of Winchester).
Two generations later, Richard Crashaw caught up the universal sentiment, when in his lines "Upon Bishop Andrewes' Picture before his Sermons" he exclaims:
Andrewes was a friend of Hugo Grotius, and one of the foremost contemporary scholars, but is chiefly remembered for his style of preaching. As a churchman he was typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan and the Roman positions. A good summary of his position is found in his "First Answer to Cardinal Perron", who had challenged James I's use of the title "Catholic". His position in regard to the Eucharist is naturally more mature than that of the first reformers.
As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person. There is a real change in the elements—we allow "ut panis iam consecratus non sit panis quem natura formavit; sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam immutavit". ("Responsio", p. 263).
Adoration is permitted, and the use of the terms "sacrifice" and "altar" maintained as being consonant with scripture and antiquity. Christ is "a sacrifice—so, to be slain; a propitiatory sacrifice—so, to be eaten." ("Sermons", vol. ii. p. 296).
By the same rules that the Passover was, by the same may ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of them; for to speak after the exact manner of divinity, there is but one only sacrifice, "veri nominis", that is Christ's death. And that sacrifice but once actually performed at His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the beginning; and ever since repeated in memory to the world's end. That only absolute, all else relative to it, representative of it, operative by it ... Hence it is that what names theirs carried, ours do the like, and the Fathers make no scruple at it—no more need we.("Sermons," vol. ii. p. 300).
Andrewes preached regularly and submissively before James I and his court on the anniversaries of the Gowrie Conspiracy and the Gunpowder Plot. These sermons were used to promulgate the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.
His "Life" was written by Whyte (Edinburgh, 1896), M. Wood (New York, 1898), and Ottley (Boston, 1894). His services to his church have been summed up thus: (1) he has a keen sense of the proportion of the faith and maintains a clear distinction between what is fundamental, needing ecclesiastical commands, and subsidiary, needing only ecclesiastical guidance and suggestion; (2) as distinguished from the earlier protesting standpoint, e.g. of the Thirty-nine Articles, he emphasized a positive and constructive statement of the Anglican position.
His best-known work is the "Preces Privatae or Private Prayers", edited by Alexander Whyte (1896), which has widespread appeal and has remained in print since renewed interest in Andrewes developed in the 19th century. The "Preces Privatae" were first published by R. Drake in 1648; an improved edition by F. E. Brightman appeared in 1903. John Rutter set some of those prayers to music. Andrewes's other works occupy eight volumes in the "Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology" (1841 – 1854). Ninety-six of his sermons were published in 1631 by command of Charles I, have been occasionally reprinted, and are considered among the most rhetorically developed and polished sermons of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Because of these, Andrewes has been commemorated by literary greats such as T. S. Eliot.
Andrewes was considered, next to Ussher, to be the most learned churchman of his day, and enjoyed a great reputation as an eloquent and impassioned preacher, but the stiffness and artificiality of his style render his sermons unsuited to modern taste. Nevertheless, there are passages of extraordinary beauty and profundity. His doctrine was High Church, and in his life he was humble, pious, and charitable. He continues to influence religious thinkers to the present day, and was cited as an influence by T. S. Eliot, among others. Eliot also borrowed, almost word for word and without his usual acknowledgement, a passage from Andrewes' 1622 Christmas Day sermon for the opening of his poem "Journey of the Magi". In his 1997 novel "Timequake", Kurt Vonnegut suggested that Andrewes was "the greatest writer in the English language," citing as proof the first few verses of the 23rd Psalm. His translation work has also led him to appear as a character in three plays dealing with the King James Bible, Howard Brenton's "Anne Boleyn" (2010), Jonathan Holmes' "Into Thy Hands" (2011) and David Edgar's "Written on the Heart" (2011).
He has an academic cap named after him, known as the Bishop Andrewes cap, which is like a mortarboard but made of velvet, floppy and has a tump or tuff instead of a tassel. This was in fact the ancient version of the mortarboard before the top square was stiffened and the tump replaced by a tassel and button. This cap is still used by Cambridge DDs and at certain institutions as part of their academic dress. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18043 |
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, or Tarquin the Elder, was the legendary fifth king of Rome from 616 to 579 BC. His wife was Tanaquil.
According to Livy, Tarquin came from Etruria. Livy claims that his original Etruscan name was "Lucumo", but since lucumo (Etruscan "Lauchume") is the Etruscan word for "king", there is reason to believe that Priscus' name and title have been confused in the official tradition. After inheriting his father's entire fortune, Lucius attempted to gain a political office. Disgruntled with his opportunities in Etruria (he had been prohibited from obtaining political office in Tarquinii because of the ethnicity of his father, Demaratus, who came from the Greek city of Corinth), he migrated to Rome with his wife Tanaquil, at her suggestion. Legend has it that on his arrival in Rome in a chariot, an eagle took his cap, flew away and then returned it back upon his head. Tanaquil, who was skilled in prophecy, interpreted this as an omen of his future greatness. In Rome, he attained respect through his courtesy. The king himself noticed Tarquinius and, by his will, appointed Tarquinius guardian of his own sons.
Although Ancus Marcius, the Roman king, was the grandson of Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, the principle of hereditary monarchy was not yet established at Rome; none of the first three kings had been succeeded by their sons, and each subsequent king had been acclaimed by the people. Upon the death of Marcius, Tarquin addressed the "Comitia Curiata" and convinced them that he should be elected king over Marcius' natural sons, who were still only youths. In one tradition, the sons were away on a hunting expedition at the time of their father's death, and were thus unable to affect the assembly's choice.
According to Livy, Tarquin increased the number of the Senate by adding one hundred men from the leading minor families. Among these was the family of the Octavii, from whom the first emperor, Augustus, was descended.
Tarquin's first war was waged against the Latins. Tarquinius took the Latin town of Apiolae by storm and took great booty from there back to Rome. According to the "Fasti Triumphales", this war must have occurred prior to 588 BC.
His military ability was then tested by an attack from the Sabines, who received auxiliaries from five Etruscan cities. Tarquin doubled the numbers of equites to help the war effort. The Sabines were defeated after difficult street fighting in the city of Rome. In the peace negotiations that followed, Tarquin received the town of Collatia, and appointed his nephew, Arruns Tarquinius, better known as "Egerius", as commander of the garrison there. Tarquin returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph on September 13, 585 BC.
Subsequently, the Latin cities of Corniculum, old Ficulea, Cameria, Crustumerium, Ameriola, Medullia, and Nomentum were subdued and became Roman.
Since Tarquin had kept the captured Etruscan auxiliaries prisoners for meddling in the war with the Sabines, the five Etruscan cities who had taken part declared war on Rome. Seven other Etruscan cities joined forces with them. The Etruscans soon captured the Roman colony at Fidenae, which thereupon became the focal point of the war. After several bloody battles, Tarquin was once again victorious, and he subjugated the Etruscan cities who had taken part in the war. At the successful conclusion of each of his wars, Rome was enriched by Tarquin's plunder.
Tarquin is said to have built the Circus Maximus, the first and largest stadium at Rome, for chariot racing. Raised seating was erected privately by the senators and equites, and other areas were marked out for private citizens. There the king established a series of annual games; according to Livy, the first horses and boxers to participate were brought from Etruria.
After a great flood, Tarquin drained the damp lowlands of Rome by constructing the Cloaca Maxima, Rome's great sewer. He also constructed a stone wall around the city, and began the construction of a temple in honour of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. The latter is said to have been funded in part by the plunder seized from the Sabines.
According to Florus, Tarquin celebrated his triumphs in the Etruscan fashion, riding a golden chariot drawn by four horses, while wearing a gold-embroidered toga and the tunica palmata, a tunic upon which palm-leaves were embroidered. He also introduced other Etruscan insignia of civilian authority and military distinction: the sceptre of the king; the trabea, a purple garment that varied in form, but was perhaps most often used as a mantle; the fasces carried by the lictors; the curule chair; the toga praetexta, later worn by various magistrates and officials; the rings worn by senators; the paludamentum, a cloak associated with military command; and the phalera, a disc of metal worn on a soldier's breastplate during parades, or displayed on the standards of various military units. Strabo reports that Tarquin introduced Etruscan sacrificial and divinitory rites, as well as the tuba, a straight horn used chiefly for military purposes.
Tarquin is said to have reigned for thirty-eight years. According to legend, the sons of his predecessor, Ancus Marcius, believed that the throne should have been theirs. They arranged the king's assassination, disguised as a riot, during which Tarquin received a fatal blow to the head. However, the queen, Tanaquil, gave out that the king was merely wounded, and took advantage of the confusion to establish Servius Tullius as regent; when the death of Tarquin was confirmed, Tullius became king, in place of Marcius' sons, or those of Tarquin.
Tullius, said to have been the son of Servius Tullius, a prince of Corniculum who had fallen in battle against Tarquin, was brought to the palace as a child with his mother, Ocreisia. According to legend, Tanaquil discovered his potential for greatness by means of various omens, and therefore preferred him to her own sons. Tullius married Tarquinia, one of Priscus daughters, thus providing a vital link between the families. Tullius' own daughters were subsequently married to the king's sons (or, in some traditions, grandsons), Lucius and Arruns.
Most ancient writers regarded Tarquin as the father of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last King of Rome, but some stated that the younger Tarquin was his grandson. As the younger Tarquin died about 496 BC, more than eighty years after Tarquinius Priscus, chronology seems to support the latter tradition. An Etruscan legend related by the emperor Claudius equates Servius Tullius with "Macstarna" (apparently the Etruscan equivalent of the Latin "magister"), a companion of the Etruscan heroes Aulus and Caelius Vibenna, who helped free the brothers from captivity, slaying their captors, including a Roman named Gnaeus Tarquinius. This episode is depicted in a fresco at the tomb of the Etruscan Saties family at Vulci, now known as the François Tomb. This tradition suggests that perhaps the sons of the elder Tarquin attempted to seize power, but were defeated by the regent, Servius Tullius, and his companions; Tullius would then have attempted to end the dynastic struggle by marrying his daughters to the grandsons of Tarquinius Priscus. However, this plan ultimately failed, as Tullius was himself assassinated at the instigation of his son-in-law, who succeeded him. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18046 |
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (died 495 BC) was the legendary seventh and final king of Rome, reigning from 535 BC until the popular uprising in 509 BC that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. He is commonly known as Tarquin the Proud, from his cognomen "Superbus" (Latin for "proud, arrogant, lofty").
Ancient accounts of the regal period mingle history and legend. Tarquin was said to have been the son or grandson of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, and to have gained the throne through the murders of both his wife and his elder brother, followed by the assassination of his predecessor, Servius Tullius. His reign is described as a tyranny that justified the abolition of the monarchy.
Tarquin was said to be the son or grandson of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, and Tanaquil. Tanaquil had engineered her husband's succession to the Roman kingdom on the death of Ancus Marcius. When the sons of Marcius subsequently arranged the elder Tarquin's assassination in 579 BC, Tanaquil placed Servius Tullius on the throne, in preference to her own sons.
According to an Etruscan tradition, the hero Macstarna, usually equated with Servius Tullius, defeated and killed a Roman named Gnaeus Tarquinius, and rescued the brothers Caelius and Aulus Vibenna from captivity. This may recollect an otherwise forgotten attempt by the sons of Tarquin the Elder to reclaim the throne.
To forestall further dynastic strife, Servius married his daughters, known to history as Tullia Major and Tullia Minor, to Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the future king, and his brother Arruns. One of Tarquin's sisters, Tarquinia, married Marcus Junius Brutus, and was the mother of Lucius Junius Brutus, one of the men who would later lead the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom.
The elder sister, Tullia Major, was of mild disposition, yet married the ambitious Tarquin. Her younger sister, Tullia Minor, was of fiercer temperament, but her husband Arruns was not. She came to despise him, and conspired with Tarquin to bring about the deaths of Tullia Major and Arruns. After the murder of their spouses, Tarquin and Tullia were married. Together, they had three sons: Titus, Arruns, and Sextus, and a daughter, Tarquinia, who married Octavius Mamilius, the prince of Tusculum.
Tullia encouraged her husband to advance his own position, ultimately persuading him to usurp Servius. Tarquin solicited the support of the patrician senators, especially those from families who had received their senatorial rank under Tarquin the Elder. He bestowed presents upon them, and spread criticism of Servius the king.
In time, Tarquin felt ready to seize the throne. He went to the senate-house with a group of armed men, sat himself on the throne, and summoned the senators to attend upon King Tarquin. He then spoke to the senators, denigrating Servius as a slave born of a slave; for failing to be elected by the senate and the people during an interregnum, as had been the tradition for the election of kings of Rome; for having become king through the machinations of a woman; for favouring the lower classes of Rome over the wealthy, and for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census so that the wealth of the upper classes might be exposed in order to excite popular envy.
When word of this brazen deed reached Servius, he hurried to the curia to confront Tarquin, who leveled the same accusations against his father-in-law, and then in his youth and vigor carried the king outside and flung him down the steps of the senate-house and into the street. The king's retainers fled, and as he made his way, dazed and unattended, toward the palace, the aged Servius was set upon and murdered by Tarquin's assassins, perhaps on the advice of his own daughter.
Tullia, meanwhile, drove in her chariot to the senate-house, where she was the first to hail her husband as king. But Tarquin bade her return home, concerned that the crowd might do her violence. As she drove toward the Urbian Hill, her driver stopped suddenly, horrified at the sight of the king's body, lying in the street. But in a frenzy, Tullia herself seized the reins, and drove the wheels of her chariot over her father's corpse. The king's blood spattered against the chariot and stained Tullia's clothes, so that she brought a gruesome relic of the murder back to her house. The street where Tullia disgraced the dead king afterward became known as the "Vicus Sceleratus," the Street of Crime.
Tarquin commenced his reign by refusing to bury the dead Servius, and then putting to death a number of leading senators, whom he suspected of remaining loyal to Servius. By not replacing the slain senators, and not consulting the senate on matters of government, he diminished both the size and the authority of the senate. In another break with tradition, Tarquin judged capital crimes without the advice of counselors, causing fear amongst those who might think to oppose him. He made a powerful ally when he betrothed his daughter to Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, among the most eminent of the Latin chiefs.
Early in his reign, Tarquin called a meeting of the Latin leaders to discuss the bonds between Rome and the Latin towns. The meeting was held at a grove sacred to the goddess Ferentina. At the meeting, Turnus Herdonius inveighed against Tarquin's arrogance, and warned his countrymen against trusting the Roman king. Tarquin then bribed Turnus' servant to store a large number of swords in his master's lodging. Tarquin called together the Latin leaders, and accused Turnus of plotting his assassination. The Latin leaders accompanied Tarquin to Turnus' lodging and, the swords then being discovered, the Latin's guilt was then speedily inferred. Turnus was condemned to be thrown into a pool of water in the grove, with a wooden frame, or "cratis", placed over his head, into which stones were thrown, drowning him. The meeting of the Latin chiefs then continued, and Tarquin persuaded them to renew their treaty with Rome, becoming her allies rather than her enemies. It was agreed that the soldiers of the Latins would attend at the grove on an appointed day, and form a united military force with the Roman army.
Next, Tarquin instigated a war against the Volsci, taking the wealthy town of Suessa Pometia. He celebrated a triumph, and with the spoils of this conquest, he commenced the erection of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which Tarquin the Elder had vowed. He then engaged in a war with Gabii, one of the Latin cities that had rejected the treaty with Rome. Unable to take the city by force of arms, Tarquin resorted to another stratagem. His son, Sextus, pretending to be ill-treated by his father, and covered with the bloody marks of stripes, fled to Gabii. The infatuated inhabitants entrusted him with the command of their troops, and when he had obtained the unlimited confidence of the citizens, he sent a messenger to his father to inquire how he should deliver the city into his hands. The king, who was walking in his garden when the messenger arrived, made no reply, but kept striking off the heads of the tallest poppies with his stick. Sextus took the hint, and put to death, or banished on false charges, all the leading men of Gabii, after which he had no difficulty in compelling the city to submit.
Tarquin agreed upon a peace with the Aequi, and renewed the treaty of peace between Rome and the Etruscans. According to the Fasti Triumphales, he won a victory over the Sabines, and established Roman colonies at the towns of Signia and Circeii.
At Rome, Tarquin leveled the top of the Tarpeian Rock, overlooking the Forum, and removed a number of ancient Sabine shrines, in order to make way for the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. He constructed tiers of seats in the circus, and ordered the excavation of Rome's great sewer, the "cloaca maxima".
According to one story, Tarquin was approached by the Cumaean Sibyl, who offered him nine books of prophecy at an exorbitant price. Tarquin abruptly refused, and the Sibyl proceeded to burn three of the nine. She then offered him the remaining books, but at the same price. He hesitated, but refused again. The Sibyl then burned three more books before offering him the three remaining books at the original price. At last Tarquin accepted, in this way obtaining the Sibylline Books.
In 509 BC, having angered the Roman populace through the pace and burden of constant building, Tarquin embarked on a campaign against the Rutuli. At that time, the Rutuli were a very wealthy nation, and Tarquin was keen to obtain the spoils that would come with victory, in hopes of assuaging the ire of his subjects. Failing to take their capital of Ardea by storm, the king determined to take the city by siege.
With little prospect of battle, the young noblemen in the king's army fell to drinking and boasting. When the subject turned to the virtue of their wives, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus claimed to have the most dedicated of spouses. With his companions, they secretly visited each other's homes, and discovered all of the wives enjoying themselves, except for Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, who was engaged in domestic activities. Lucretia received the princes graciously, and together her beauty and virtue kindled the flame of desire in Collatinus' cousin, Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son. After a few days, Sextus returned to Collatia, where he implored Lucretia to give herself to him. When she refused, he threatened to kill her, and claim that he had discovered her in the act of adultery with a slave, if she did not yield to him.
To spare her husband the shame threatened by Sextus, Lucretia submitted to his whims. But when he had departed for the camp, she sent for her husband and father, revealing the whole affair, and accusing Sextus. Despite the pleas of her family, Lucretia took her own life out of shame. Collatinus, together with his father-in-law, Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, and his companions, Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius, swore an oath to expel the king and his family from Rome.
As Tribune of the Celeres, Brutus was head of the king's personal bodyguard, and entitled to summon the Roman comitia. This he did, and by recounting the various grievances of the people, the king's abuses of power, and by inflaming public sentiment with the tale of the rape of Lucretia, Brutus persuaded the comitia to revoke the king's imperium and send him into exile. Tullia fled the city in fear of the mob, while Sextus Tarquinius, his deed revealed, fled to Gabii, where he hoped for the protection of the Roman garrison. However, his previous conduct there had made him many enemies, and he was soon assassinated. In place of the king, the "comitia centuriata" resolved to elect two consuls to hold power jointly. Lucretius, the prefect of the city, presided over the election of the first consuls, Brutus and Collatinus.
When word of the uprising reached the king, Tarquin abandoned Ardea, and sought support from his allies in Etruria. The cities of Veii and Tarquinii sent contingents to join the king's army, and he prepared to march upon Rome. Brutus, meanwhile, prepared a force to meet the returning army. In a surprising reversal, Brutus demanded that his colleague, Collatinus, resign the consulship and go into exile, because he bore the hated name of Tarquinius. Stunned by this betrayal, Collatinus complied, and his father-in-law was chosen to succeed him.
Meanwhile, the king sent ambassadors to the senate, ostensibly to request the return of his personal property, but in reality to subvert a number of Rome's leading men. When this plot was discovered, those found guilty were put to death by the consuls. Brutus was forced to condemn to death his two sons, Titus and Tiberius, who had taken part in the conspiracy. Leaving Lucretius in charge of the city, Brutus departed to meet the king upon the field of battle. At the Battle of Silva Arsia, the Romans won a hard-fought victory over the king and his Etruscan allies. Each side sustained painful losses; the consul Brutus and his cousin, Arruns Tarquinius, fell in battle against each other.
After this failure, Tarquin turned to Lars Porsena, the king of Clusium. Porsena's march on Rome and the valiant defense of the Romans achieved legendary status, giving rise to the story of Horatius at the bridge, and the bravery of Gaius Mucius Scaevola. Accounts vary as to whether Porsena finally entered Rome, or was thwarted, but modern scholarship suggests that he was able to occupy the city briefly before withdrawing. In any case, his efforts were of no avail to the exiled Roman king.
Tarquin's final attempt to regain the Roman kingdom came in 498 or 496 BC, when he persuaded his son-in-law, Octavius Mamilius, dictator of Tusculum, to march on Rome at the head of a Latin army. The Roman army was led by the dictator, Albus Postumius Albus, and his Master of the Horse, Titus Aebutius Elva, while the elderly king and his last remaining son, Titus Tarquinius, accompanied by a force of Roman exiles, fought alongside the Latins. Once more the battle was hard fought and narrowly decided, with both sides suffering great losses. Mamilius was slain, the master of the horse grievously injured, and Titus Tarquinius barely escaped with his life. But in the end, the Latins abandoned the field, and Rome retained her independence.
After the Latin defeat and the death of his son-in-law, Tarquin went to the court of Aristodemus at Cumae, where he died in 495.
Tarquin is mentioned by William Shakespeare in his plays, "Titus Andronicus", "Julius Caesar", "Coriolanus", "Macbeth", and "Cymbeline".
In 1765, Patrick Henry gave a speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses, in opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765. Toward the end of his speech, he inserted as a rhetorical flourish, a comparison between King George III and various historical figures who were brought low by their enemies, including Charles I, Caesar, and in some accounts of the speech, Tarquin.
The cultural phenomenon known as "tall poppy syndrome," in which persons of unusual merit are attacked or resented because of their achievements, derives its name from the episode in Livy, in which Tarquin is said to have instructed his son, Sextus, to weaken the city of Gabii by destroying its leading men. The motif of using an unwitting messenger to deliver such a message, through the metaphor of cutting the heads off the tallest poppies, may have been borrowed from Herodotus, whose "Histories" contain a similar story, involving ears of wheat instead of poppies. A passage concerning Livy's version of the story appears in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling".
Benjamin Britten employed the character in his 1946 chamber opera "The Rape of Lucretia".
Tarquin is also shown in the fourth book of "The Trials of Apollo" pentalogy series by Rick Riordan. He is depicted as a zombie king who attacks the demigods just because they were trying to rewrite the Sybilline Books. However Diana kills Tarquin once and for all. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18047 |
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism, also referred to as anarcho-socialism, anarchist socialism, free socialism, stateless socialism, socialist anarchism and socialist libertarianism, is a set of anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarian political philosophies within the socialist movement which rejects the conception of socialism as a form where the state retains centralized control of the economy. Overlapping with anarchism and libertarianism, it criticizes wage labour relationships within the workplace, emphasizing workers' self-management of the workplace and decentralized structures of political organization.
Libertarian socialism often rejects the state itself and asserts that a society based on freedom and justice can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite. Libertarian socialists advocate for decentralized structures based on direct democracy and federal or confederal associations such as citizens'/popular assemblies, cooperatives, libertarian municipalism, trade unions and workers' councils. All of this is generally done within a general call for libertarian and voluntary human relationships through the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life. It seeks to distinguish itself from both authoritarian and vanguardist Bolshevism/Leninism and reformist Fabianism/social democracy.
A form and socialist wing of left-libertarianism, past and present political philosophies and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (especially anarchist schools of thought such as anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism collectivist anarchism, green anarchism, individualist anarchism, mutualism and social anarchism) as well as Communalism, guild socialism, libertarian Marxism (especially autonomism, council communism, left communism and Luxemburgism), participism, revolutionary syndicalism and some versions of utopian socialism.
Libertarian socialism is a Western philosophy with diverse interpretations, although some general commonalities can be found in its many incarnations. It advocates a worker-oriented system of production and organization in the workplace that in some aspects radically departs from neoclassical economics in favor of democratic cooperatives or common ownership of the means of production (socialism). They propose that this economic system be executed in a manner that attempts to maximize the liberty of individuals and minimize concentration of power or authority (libertarianism). Adherents propose achieving this through decentralization of political and economic power, usually involving the socialization of most large-scale private property and enterprise (while retaining respect for personal property). Libertarian socialism tends to deny the legitimacy of most forms of economically significant private property, viewing capitalist property relation as a form of domination that is antagonistic to individual freedom.
The first anarchist journal to use the term "libertarian" was "Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social" and it was published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque. The next recorded use of the term was in Europe, when "libertarian communism" was used at a French regional anarchist Congress at Le Havre (16–22 November 1880). January 1881 saw a French manifesto issued on "Libertarian or Anarchist Communism". Finally, 1895 saw leading anarchists Sébastien Faure and Louise Michel publish "" in France. The term itself stems from the French cognate "libertaire" which was used to evade the French ban on anarchist publications. In this tradition, the term "libertarianism" is generally used as a synonym for anarchism, the original meaning of the term. In the context of the European socialist movement, the term "libertarian" has conventionally been used to describe socialists who opposed authoritarianism and state socialism such as Mikhail Bakunin and largely overlaps with social anarchism, although individualist anarchism is also libertarian socialist. Non-Lockean individualism encompasses socialism.
The association of socialism with libertarianism predates that of capitalism and many anti-authoritarians still decry what they see as a mistaken association of capitalism with libertarianism in the United States. As Noam Chomsky put it, a consistent libertarian "must oppose private ownership of the means of production and wage slavery, which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer". Terms like "anarchist socialism", "anarcho-socialism", "free socialism", "stateless socialism", "socialist anarchism "and "socialist libertarianism" have all been used to refer to the anarchist-wing of libertarian socialism, or vis-à-vis authoritarian forms of socialism.
In a chapter of his "Economic Justice and Democracy" (2005) recounting the history of libertarian socialism, economist Robin Hahnel relates that the period where libertarian socialism has had its greatest impact was at the end of the 19th century through the first four decades of the 20th century. According to Hahnel, "libertarian socialism was as powerful a force as social democracy and communism" in the early 20th century. The Anarchist St. Imier International, referred by Hahnel as the Libertarian International, was founded at the 1872 Congress of St. Imier a few days after the split between Marxist and libertarians at The Hague Congress of the First International, referred by Hahnel as the Socialist International. This Libertarian International "competed successfully against social democrats and communists alike for the loyalty of anticapitalist activists, revolutionaries, workers, unions and political parties for over fifty years". For Hahnel, libertarian socialists "played a major role in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Libertarian socialists played a dominant role in the Mexican Revolution of 1911. Twenty years after World War I was over, libertarian socialists were still strong enough to spearhead the social revolution that swept across Republican Spain in 1936 and 1937". On the other hand, a libertarian trend also developed within Marxism which gained visibility around the late 1910s mainly in reaction against Bolshevism and Leninism rising to power and establishing the Soviet Union.
According to John O'Neil, "[i]t is forgotten that the early defenders of commercial society like [Adam] Smith were as much concerned with criticising the associational blocks to mobile labour represented by guilds as they were to the activities of the state. The history of socialist thought includes a long associational and anti-statist tradition prior to the political victory of the Bolshevism in the east and varieties of Fabianism in the west".
Libertarian socialism is anti-capitalist and can be distinguished from capitalist and right-libertarian principles which concentrate economic power in the hands of those who own the most capital. Libertarian socialism aims to distribute power more widely among members of society. Libertarian socialism and right-libertarian ideologies such as neoliberalism differ in that advocates of the former generally believe that one's degree of freedom is affected by one's economic and social status whereas advocates of the latter believe in the freedom of choice within a capitalist framework, specifically under capitalist private property. This is sometimes characterized as a desire to maximize free creativity in a society in preference to free enterprise.
Within anarchism, there emerged a critique of wage slavery which refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery, where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term "wage slavery" has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops) and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy. Libertarian socialists believe that by valuing freedom society works towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy, voluntary federation and popular autonomy in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use. Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines while later Emma Goldman famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves".
Many libertarian socialists believe that large-scale voluntary associations should manage industrial production while workers retain rights to the individual products of their labor. They see a distinction between concepts of private property and personal possession. Private property grants an individual exclusive control over a thing whether it is in use or not; and regardless of its productive capacity, possession grants no rights to things that are not in use. Furthermore, "the separation of work and life is questioned and alternatives suggested that are underpinned by notions of dignity, self-realization and freedom from domination and exploitation. Here, a freedom that is not restrictively negative (as in neo-liberal conceptions) but is, as well, positive – connected, that is, to views about human flourishing – is important, a profoundly embedded understanding of freedom, which ties freedom to its social, communal conditions and, importantly, refuses to separate questions of freedom from those of equality".
Libertarian philosophy generally regard concentrations of power as sources of oppression that must be continually challenged and justified. Most libertarian socialists believe that when power is exercised as exemplified by the economic, social, or physical dominance of one individual over another, the burden of proof is always on the authoritarian to justify their action as legitimate when taken against its effect of narrowing the scope of human freedom. Libertarian socialists typically oppose rigid and stratified structures of authority, be they political, economic, or social.
In lieu of corporations and states, libertarian socialists seek to organize society into voluntary associations (usually collectives, communes, municipalities, cooperatives, commons, or syndicates) that use direct democracy or consensus for their decision-making process. Some libertarian socialists advocate combining these institutions using rotating, recallable to higher-level federations. Spanish anarchism is a major example of such federations in practice.
Contemporary examples of libertarian socialist organizational and decision-making models in practice include a number of anti-capitalist and global justice movements including Zapatista Councils of Good Government and the global Indymedia network (which covers 45 countries on six continents). There are also many examples of indigenous societies around the world whose political and economic systems can be accurately described as anarchist or libertarian socialist, each of which is uniquely suited to the culture that birthed it. For libertarians, that diversity of practice within a framework of common principles is proof of the vitality of those principles and of their flexibility and strength.
Contrary to popular opinion, libertarian socialism has not traditionally been a utopian movement, tending to avoid dense theoretical analysis or prediction of what a future society would or should look like. The tradition instead has been that such decisions cannot be made now and must be made through struggle and experimentation, so that the best solution can be arrived at democratically and organically; and to base the direction for struggle on established historical example. They point out that the success of the scientific method comes from its adherence to open rational exploration, not its conclusions, in sharp contrast to dogma and predetermined predictions. Noted anarchist Rudolf Rocker once stated: "I am an anarchist not because I believe anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal".
Because libertarian socialism encourages exploration and embraces a diversity of ideas rather than forming a compact movement, there have arisen inevitable controversies over individuals who describe themselves as libertarian socialists yet disagree with some of the core principles of libertarian socialism. For example, Peter Hain interprets libertarian socialism as minarchist rather than anarchist, favoring radical decentralization of power without going as far as the complete abolition of the state and libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky supports dismantling all forms of unjustified social or economic power while also emphasizing that state intervention should be supported as a temporary protection while oppressive structures remain in existence.
Proponents are known for opposing the existence of states or government and refusing to participate in coercive state institutions. In the past, many refused to swear oaths in court or to participate in trials, even when they faced imprisonment or deportation. For Chamsy el-Ojeili, "it is frequently to forms of working-class or popular self-organization that Left communists look in answer to the questions of the struggle for socialism, revolution and post-capitalist social organization. Nevertheless, Left communists have often continued to organize themselves into party-like structures that undertake agitation, propaganda, education and other forms of political intervention. This is a vexed issue across Left communism and has resulted in a number of significant variations – from the absolute rejection of separate parties in favour of mere study or affinity groups, to the critique of the naivety of pure spontaneism and an insistence on the necessary, though often modest, role of disciplined, self-critical and popularly connected communist organizations".
Libertarian socialists have been strong advocates and activists of civil liberties that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom in issues of love and sex (free love) and of thought and conscience (freethought). In this activism, they have clashed with state and religious institutions which have limited such rights. Anarchism has been an important advocate of free love since its birth. A strong tendency of free love later appeared alongside anarcha-feminism and advocacy of LGBT rights. In recent times, anarchism has also voiced opinions and taken action around certain sex related subjects such as pornography, BDSM and the sex industry.
Anarcha-feminism developed as a synthesis of radical feminism and anarchism that views patriarchy (male domination over women) as a fundamental manifestation of compulsory government. It was inspired by the late 19th-century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Virginia Bolten. Like other radical feminists, anarcha-feminists criticise and advocate the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education and gender roles. Council communist Sylvia Pankhurst was also a feminist activist as well as a libertarian Marxist. Anarchists also took a pioneering interest in issues related to LGBTI persons. An important current within anarchism is free love. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to the early anarchist Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.
Libertarian socialists have traditionally been skeptical of and opposed to organized religion. Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic and reason; and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas. The cognitive application of freethought is known as freethinking and practitioners of freethought are known as freethinkers. In the United States, freethought was an anti-Christian and anti-clerical movement, "whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters". A number of contributors to the anarchist journal "Liberty" were prominent figures in both anarchism and freethought. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was co-editor of both "Freethought" and "The Truth Seeker". E. C. Walker was also co-editor of "Lucifer, the Light-Bearer", another free love and freethought journal. "Free Society" (1895–1897 as "The Firebrand"; 1897–1904 as "Free Society") was a major anarchist newspaper in the United States at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The publication staunchly advocated free love and women's rights and critiqued comstockery—censorship of sexual information. In 1901, Catalan anarchist and freethinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established modern or progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church. The schools' stated goal was to "educate the working class in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting". Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in "freedom in education", education free from the authority of church and state.
Later in the 20th century, Austrian Freudo-Marxist Wilhelm Reich, who coined the phrase sexual revolution in one of his books from the 1940s, became a consistent propagandist for sexual freedom, going as far as opening free sex-counseling clinics in Vienna for working-class patients (Sex-Pol stood for the German Society of Proletarian Sexual Politics). According to Elizabeth Danto, Reich offered a mixture of "psychoanalytic counseling, Marxist advice and contraceptives" and "argued for sexual expressiveness for all, including the young and the unmarried, with a permissiveness that unsettled both the political left and the psychoanalysts". The clinics were immediately overcrowded by people seeking help. During the early 1970s, the English anarchist and pacifist Alex Comfort achieved international celebrity for writing the sex manuals "The Joy of Sex" and "More Joy of Sex".
Some libertarian socialists see violent revolution as necessary in the abolition of capitalist society while others advocate non-violent methods. Along with many others, Errico Malatesta argued that the use of violence was necessary. As he put it in "Umanità Nova" (no. 125, September 6, 1921):
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued in favor of a non-violent revolution through a process of dual power in which libertarian socialist institutions would be established and form associations enabling the formation of an expanding network within the existing state capitalist framework with the intention of eventually rendering both the state and the capitalist economy obsolete. The progression towards violence in anarchism stemmed in part from the massacres of some of the communes inspired by the ideas of Proudhon and others. Many anarcho-communists began to see a need for revolutionary violence to counteract the violence inherent in both capitalism and government.
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy. It developed "mostly in , Britain, and the United States, before and during the Second World War". Opposition to the use of violence has not prohibited anarcho-pacifists from accepting the principle of resistance or even revolutionary action, provided it does not result in violence; it was in fact their approval of such forms of opposition to power that lead many anarcho-pacifists to endorse the anarcho-syndicalist concept of the general strike as the great revolutionary weapon. Anarcho-pacifists have also come to endorse to non-violent strategy of dual power.
Other anarchists have believed that violence (especially self-defense) is justified as a way to provoke social upheaval which could lead to a social revolution.
Green anarchism is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book "Walden" as well as Leo Tolstoy and Elisee Reclus. In the late 19th century, there emerged anarcho-naturism as the fusion of anarchism and naturist philosophies within individualist anarchist circles in Cuba France, Portugal and Spain.
Important contemporary currents are anarcho-primitivism and social ecology. An important meeting place for international libertarian socialism in the early 1990s was the journal "Democracy & Nature" in which prominent activists and theorists such as Takis Fotopoulos, Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin and Cornelius Castoriadis wrote.
For Roderick T. Long, libertarian socialists claim the 17th century English Levellers among their ideological forebears. Various libertarian socialist authors have identified the written work of English Protestant social reformer Gerrard Winstanley and the social activism of his group (the Diggers) as anticipating this line of thought. For anarchist historian George Woodcock, although Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first writer to call himself an anarchist, at least two predecessors outlined systems that contain all the basic elements of anarchism. The first was Gerrard Winstanley (1609 – c. 1660), a linen draper who led the small movement of the Diggers during the Commonwealth. Winstanley and his followers protested in the name of a radical Christianity against the economic distress that followed the English Civil War and against the inequality that the grandees of the New Model Army seemed intent on preserving.
In 1649–1650, the Diggers squatted on stretches of common land in southern England and attempted to set up communities based on work on the land and the sharing of goods. The communities failed, but a series of pamphlets by Winstanley survived, of which "The New Law of Righteousness" (1649) was the most important. Advocating a rational Christianity, Winstanley equated Christ with "the universal liberty" and declared the universally corrupting nature of authority. He saw "an equal privilege to share in the blessing of liberty" and detected an intimate link between the institution of property and the lack of freedom.
Murray Bookchin said: "In the modern world, anarchism first appeared as a movement of the peasantry and yeomanry against declining feudal institutions. In Germany its foremost spokesman during the Peasant Wars was Thomas Muenzer. The concepts held by Muenzer and Winstanley were superbly attuned to the needs of their time – a historical period when the majority of the population lived in the countryside and when the most militant revolutionary forces came from an agrarian world. It would be painfully academic to argue whether Muenzer and Winstanley could have achieved their ideals. What is of real importance is that they spoke to their time; their anarchist concepts followed naturally from the rural society that furnished the bands of the peasant armies in Germany and the New Model in England".
For Long, libertarian socialists also often share a view of ancestry in the 18th century French encyclopedists alongside Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. A more often mentioned name is that of English enlightenment thinker William Godwin. For Woodcock, a more elaborate sketch of anarchism—although still without the name—was provided by William Godwin in his "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" (1793). Godwin was a gradualist anarchist rather than a revolutionary anarchist as he differed from most later anarchists in preferring above revolutionary action the gradual and—as it seemed to him—more natural process of discussion among men of good will, by which he hoped truth would eventually triumph through its own power. Godwin, who was influenced by the English tradition of Dissent and the French philosophy of the Enlightenment, put forward in a developed form the basic anarchist criticisms of the state, of accumulated property and of the delegation of authority through democratic procedure.
During the French Revolution, Sylvain Maréchal in his "Manifesto of the Equals" (1796) demanded "the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth" and looked forward to the disappearance of "the revolting distinction of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed". The term anarchist first entered the English language in 1642 during the English Civil War as a term of abuse, used by Royalists against their Roundhead opponents. By the time of the French Revolution, some such as the "Enragés" began to use the term positively in opposition to Jacobin centralisation of power, seeing revolutionary government as oxymoronic. By the turn of the 19th century, the English term anarchism had lost its initial negative connotation.
In his preface to Peter Kropotkin's book "The Conquest of Bread", Kent Bromley considered early French socialist Charles Fourier to be the founder of the libertarian branch of socialist thought as opposed to the authoritarian socialist ideas of François-Noël Babeuf and Philippe Buonarroti. Anarchist Hakim Bey describes Fourier's ideas as follows: "In Fourier's system of Harmony all creative activity including industry, craft, agriculture, etc. will arise from liberated passion – this is the famous theory of "attractive labor." Fourier sexualizes work itself – the life of the Phalanstery is a continual orgy of intense feeling, intellection, & activity, a society of lovers & wild enthusiasts". Fourierism manifested itself in the middle of the 19th century, where hundreds of communes (phalansteries) were founded on Fourierist principles in France, North America, Mexico, South America, Algeria, and Yugoslavia. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Friedrich Engels and Peter Kropotkin all read him with fascination as did André Breton and Roland Barthes. In his influential work "Eros and Civilization", Herbert Marcuse praised Fourier by saying that he "comes closer than any other utopian socialist to elucidating the dependence of freedom on non-repressive sublimation".
Anarchist Peter Sabatini reports that in the United States of early to mid-19th century, "there appeared an array of communal and "utopian" counterculture groups (including the so-called free love movement). William Godwin's anarchism exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren (1798–1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist".
As Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie stated in their book "The Floodgates of Anarchy":
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who is often considered the father of modern anarchism, coined the phrase "Property is theft!" to describe part of his view on the complex nature of ownership in relation to freedom. When he said property is theft, he was referring to the capitalist who he believed stole profit from laborers. For Proudhon, the capitalist's employee was "subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience".
Seventeen years (1857) after Proudhon first called himself an anarchist (1840), anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian. Outside the United States, the term libertarian generally refers to anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist ideologies.
Libertarian socialism has its roots in both classical liberalism and socialism, though it is often in conflict with liberalism (especially neoliberalism and right-libertarianism) and authoritarian state socialism simultaneously. While libertarian socialism has roots in both socialism and liberalism, different forms have different levels of influence from the two traditions. For instance, mutualist anarchism is more influenced by liberalism while communist and syndicalist anarchism are more influenced by socialism. However, mutualist anarchism has its origins in 18th- and 19th-century European socialism (such as Fourierian socialism) while communist and syndicalist anarchism has its earliest origins in early 18th century liberalism (such as the French Revolution).
Anarchism posed an early challenge to the vanguardism and statism it detected in important sectors of the socialist movement. As such: "The consequences of the growth of parliamentary action, ministerialism, and party life, charged the anarchists, would be de-radicalism and embourgeoisiement. Further, state politics would subvert both true individuality and true community. In response, many anarchists refused Marxist-type organisation, seeking to dissolve or undermine power and hierarchy by way of loose political-cultural groupings, or by championing organisation by a single, simultaneously economic and political administrative unit (Ruhle, syndicalism). The power of the intellectual and of science were also rejected by many anarchists: "In conquering the state, in exalting the role of parties, they [intellectuals] reinforce the hierarchical principle embodied in political and administrative institutions". Revolutions could only come through force of circumstances and/or the inherently rebellious instincts of the masses (the "instinct for freedom") (Bakunin, Chomsky), or in Bakunin's words: "All that individuals can do is to clarify, propagate, and work out ideas corresponding to the popular instinct".
Marxism started to develop a libertarian strand of thought after specific circumstances. Chamsy Ojeili said: "One does find early expressions of such perspectives in [William] Morris and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (the SPGB), then again around the events of 1905, with the growing concern at the bureaucratisation and de-radicalisation of international socialism". Morris established the Socialist League in December 1884, which was encouraged by Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx. As the leading figure in the organization, Morris embarked on a relentless series of speeches and talks on street corners in working men's clubs and lecture theatres across England and Scotland. From 1887, anarchists began to outnumber socialists in the Socialist League. The 3rd Annual Conference of the League, held in London on 29 May 1887, marked the change with a majority of the 24 branch delegates voting in favor of an anarchist-sponsored resolution declaring: "This conference endorses the policy of abstention from parliamentary action, hitherto pursued by the League, and sees no sufficient reason for altering it". Morris played peacemaker, but he sided with the anti-Parliamentarians, who won control of the League, which consequently lost the support of Engels and saw the departure of Eleanor Marx and her partner Edward Aveling to form the separate Bloomsbury Socialist Society.
However, "the most important ruptures are to be traced to the insurgency during and after the First World War. Disillusioned with the capitulation of the social democrats, excited by the emergence of workers' councils, and slowly distanced from Leninism, many communists came to reject the claims of socialist parties and to put their faith instead in the masses". For these socialists, "[t]he intuition of the masses in action can have more genius in it than the work of the greatest individual genius". Rosa Luxemburg's workerism and spontaneism are exemplary of positions later taken up by the far-left of the period—Antonie Pannekoek, Roland Holst and Herman Gorter in the Netherlands, Sylvia Pankhurst in Britain, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and György Lukács in Hungary. In these formulations, the dictatorship of the proletariat was to be the dictatorship of a class, "not of a party or of a clique". However, within this line of thought "[t]he tension between anti-vanguardism and vanguardism has frequently resolved itself in two diametrically opposed ways: the first involved a drift towards the party; the second saw a move towards the idea of complete proletarian spontaneity. [...] The first course is exemplified most clearly in Gramsci and Lukacs. [...] The second course is illustrated in the tendency, developing from the Dutch and German far-lefts, which inclined towards the complete eradication of the party form".
In the emerging Soviet Union, there appeared left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks which were a series of rebellions and uprisings against the Bolsheviks led or supported by left-wing groups including Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists. Some were in support of the White Movement while some tried to be an independent force. The uprisings started in 1918 and continued through the Russian Civil War and after until 1922. In response, the Bolsheviks increasingly abandoned attempts to get these groups to join the government and suppressed them with force. "" is a work by Vladimir Lenin himself attacking assorted critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to their left.
For many Marxian libertarian socialists, "the political bankruptcy of socialist orthodoxy necessitated a theoretical break. This break took a number of forms. The Bordigists and the SPGB championed a super-Marxian intransigence in theoretical matters. Other socialists made a return "behind Marx" to the anti-positivist programme of German idealism. Libertarian socialism has frequently linked its anti-authoritarian political aspirations with this theoretical differentiation from orthodoxy. [...] Karl Korsch [...] remained a libertarian socialist for a large part of his life and because of the persistent urge towards theoretical openness in his work. Korsch rejected the eternal and static, and he was obsessed by the essential role of practice in a theory's truth. For Korsch, no theory could escape history, not even Marxism. In this vein, Korsch even credited the stimulus for Marx's Capital to the movement of the oppressed classes".
In rejecting both capitalism and the state, some libertarian Marxists align themselves with anarchists in opposition to both capitalist representative democracy and to authoritarian forms of Marxism. Although anarchists and Marxists share an ultimate goal of a stateless society, anarchists criticise most Marxists for advocating a transitional phase under which the state is used to achieve this aim. Nonetheless, libertarian Marxist tendencies such as autonomist Marxism and council communism have historically been intertwined with the anarchist movement. Anarchist movements have come into conflict with both capitalist and Marxist forces, sometimes at the same time—as in the Spanish Civil War—though as in that war Marxists themselves are often divided in support or opposition to anarchism. Other political persecutions under bureaucratic parties have resulted in a strong historical antagonism between anarchists and libertarian Marxists on the one hand and Leninist Marxists and their derivatives such as Maoists on the other. In recent history, libertarian socialists have repeatedly formed temporary alliances with Marxist–Leninist groups for the purposes of protest against institutions they both reject. Part of this antagonism can be traced to the International Workingmen's Association, the First International, a congress of radical workers, where Mikhail Bakunin, who was fairly representative of anarchist views; and Karl Marx, whom anarchists accused of being an "authoritarian", came into conflict on various issues. Bakunin's viewpoint on the illegitimacy of the state as an institution and the role of electoral politics was starkly counterposed to Marx's views in the First International. Marx and Bakunin's disputes eventually led to Marx taking control of the First International and expelling Bakunin and his followers from the organization. This was the beginning of a long-running feud and schism between libertarian socialists and what they call "authoritarian communists", or alternatively just "authoritarians". Some Marxists have formulated views that closely resemble syndicalism and thus express more affinity with anarchist ideas. Several libertarian socialists, notably Noam Chomsky, believe that anarchism shares much in common with certain variants of Marxism such as the council communism of Marxist Anton Pannekoek. In Chomsky's "Notes on Anarchism", he suggests the possibility "that some form of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the belief that democracy is severely limited when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a 'vanguard' party, or a State bureaucracy".
In the mid-20th century, some libertarian socialist groups emerged from disagreements with Trotskyism which presented itself as Leninist anti-Stalinism. As such, the French group Socialisme ou Barbarie emerged from the Trotskyist Fourth International, where Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort constituted a Chaulieu–Montal tendency in the French Parti Communiste Internationaliste in 1946. In 1948, they experienced their "final disenchantment with Trotskyism", leading them to break away to form Socialisme ou Barbarie, whose journal began appearing in March 1949. Castoriadis later said of this period that "the main audience of the group and of the journal was formed by groups of the old, radical left: Bordigists, council communists, some anarchists and some offspring of the German "left" of the 1920s". Also in the United Kingdom, the group Solidarity was founded in 1960 by a small group of expelled members of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. Almost from the start it was strongly influenced by the French Socialisme ou Barbarie group, in particular by its intellectual leader Cornelius Castoriadis, whose essays were among the many pamphlets Solidarity produced. The intellectual leader of the group was Chris Pallis, who wrote under the name Maurice Brinton.
In the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 1967, the terms ultra-left and left communist refers to political theory and practice self-defined as further left than that of the central Maoist leaders at the height of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). The terms are also used retroactively to describe some early 20th century Chinese anarchist orientations. As a slur, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has used the term "ultra-left" more broadly to denounce any orientation it considers further left than the party line. According to the latter usage, in 1978 the CPC Central Committee denounced as ultra-left the line of Mao Zedong from 1956 until his death in 1976. The term ultra-left refers to those GPCR rebel positions that diverged from the central Maoist line by identifying an antagonistic contradiction between the CPC-PRC party-state itself and the masses of workers and peasants conceived as a single proletarian class divorced from any meaningful control over production or distribution. Whereas the central Maoist line maintained that the masses controlled the means of production through the party's mediation, the ultra-left argued that the objective interests of bureaucrats were structurally determined by the centralist state-form in direct opposition to the objective interests of the masses, regardless of however socialists a given bureaucrat's thought might be. Whereas the central Maoist leaders encouraged the masses to criticize reactionary ideas and habits among the alleged 5% of bad cadres, giving them a chance to "turn over a new leaf" after they had undergone "thought reform", the ultra-left argued that cultural revolution had to give way to political revolution "in which one class overthrows another class".
In 1969, French platformist anarcho-communist Daniel Guerin published an essay called "Libertarian Marxism?" in which he dealt with the debate between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin at the First International and afterwards he suggested that "Libertarian [M]arxism rejects determinism and fatalism, giving the greater place to individual will, intuition, imagination, reflex speeds, and to the deep instincts of the masses, which are more far-seeing in hours of crisis than the reasonings of the 'elites'; libertarian [M]arxism thinks of the effects of surprise, provocation and boldness, refuses to be cluttered and paralysed by a heavy 'scientific' apparatus, doesn't equivocate or bluff, and guards itself from adventurism as much as from fear of the unknown". In the United States, there existed from 1970 to 1981 the publication "Root & Branch" which had as a subtitle "A Libertarian Marxist Journal". In 1974, the journal "Libertarian Communism" was started in the United Kingdom by a group inside the SPGB.
Autonomist Marxism, neo-Marxism and Situationist theory are also regarded as being anti-authoritarian variants of Marxism that are firmly within the libertarian socialist tradition. As such, "[i]n New Zealand, no situationist group was formed, despite the attempts of Grant McDonagh. Instead, McDonagh operated as an individual on the periphery of the anarchist milieu, co-operating with anarchists to publish several magazines, such as Anarchy and KAT. The latter called itself 'an anti-authoritarian spasmodical' of the 'libertarian ultra-left (situationists, anarchists and libertarian socialists)'". For libcom.org: "In the 1980s and 90s, a series of other groups developed, influenced also by much of the above work. The most notable are Kolinko, Kurasje and Wildcat in Germany, "Aufheben" in England, Theorie Communiste in France, TPTG in Greece and Kamunist Kranti in India. They are also connected to other groups in other countries, merging autonomia, operaismo, Hegelian Marxism, the work of the JFT, Open Marxism, the ICO, the Situationist International, anarchism and post-68 German Marxism". Related to this were intellectuals who were influenced by Italian left communist Amadeo Bordiga, but who disagreed with his Leninist positions and so these included the French publication "Invariance" edited by Jacques Camatte, published since 1968 and Gilles Dauve who published "Troploin" with Karl Nesic.
Historically, anarchism and libertarian socialism have been largely synonymous. Principally this regards the currents of classical anarchism, developed in the 19th century, in their commitments to autonomy and freedom, decentralization, opposing hierarchy, and opposing the vanguardism of authoritarian socialism.
Mutualism began as a 19th century socialist movement adopted and developed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon into the first anarchist economic theory. Mutualism is based on a version of the labor theory of value holding that when labor or its product is sold it ought to receive in exchange goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility", and considers anything less to be exploitation, theft of labor, or usury. Mutualists advocate social ownership and believe that a free labor market would allow for conditions of equal income in proportion to exerted labor. As Jonathan Beecher puts it, the mutualist aim was to "emancipate labor from the constraints imposed by capital". Proudhon believed that an individual only had a right to land while he was using or occupying it. If the individual ceases doing so, it reverts to unowned land.
Some individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker were influenced by Proudhon's mutualism, but they did not call for association in large enterprises like him. Mutualist ideas found a fertile ground in the 19th century in Spain. In Spain, Ramón de la Sagra established anarchist journal "El Porvenir" in La Coruña in 1845 which was inspired by Proudhon's ideas. The Catalan politician Francesc Pi i Margall became the principal translator of Proudhon's works into Spanish and later briefly became president of Spain in 1873 while being the leader of the Democratic Republican Federal Party.
According to George Woodcock, "[t]hese translations were to have a profound and lasting effect on the development of Spanish anarchism after 1870, but before that time Proudhonian ideas, as interpreted by Pi, already provided much of the inspiration for the federalist movement which sprang up in the early 1860's". According to the "Encyclopedia Britannica": "During the Spanish revolution of 1873, Pi y Margall attempted to establish a decentralized, or "cantonalist", political system on Proudhonian lines". Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist theorist who is the author of "Studies in Mutualist Political Economy".
Social anarchism is a branch of anarchism emphasizing social ownership, mutual aid and workers' self-management. Social anarchism has been the dominant form of classical anarchism and includes the major collectivist, communist and syndicalist schools of anarchist thought. As a term, social anarchism is used in contrast to individualist anarchism to describe the theory that places an emphasis on the communitarian and cooperative aspects in anarchist theory while also opposing authoritarian forms of communitarianism associated with groupthink and collective conformity, favoring a reconciliation between individuality and sociality.
Social anarchists oppose private ownership of the means of production, seeing it as a source of inequality and instead advocate social ownership be it through collective ownership as with Bakuninists and collectivist anarchists; common ownership as with communist anarchists; and cooperative ownership as with syndicalist anarchists; or other forms. Social anarchism comes in both peaceful and insurrectionary tendencies as well as both platformist and anti-organizationalist tendencies. It has operated heavily within workers' movements, trade unions and labour syndicates, emphasizing the liberation of workers through class struggle.
To date, the best-known examples of social anarchist societies are the Free Territory after the Russian Revolution, the Korean People's Association in Manchuria and the anarchist territories of the Spanish Revolution.
Individualist anarchism is a set of several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems. Anarchists such as Luigi Galleani and Errico Malatesta have seen no contradiction between individualist anarchism and social anarchism, with the latter especially seeing issues not between the two forms of anarchism, but between anarchists and non-anarchists. Anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker argued that it was "not Socialist Anarchism against Individualist Anarchism, but of Communist Socialism against Individualist Socialism". Tucker further noted that "the fact that State Socialism has overshadowed other forms of Socialism gives it no right to a monopoly of the Socialistic idea".
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, "The Peaceful Revolutionist", was the first anarchist periodical published. For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews [...]. William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". Later, the American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker "was against both the state and capitalism, against both oppression and exploitation. While not against the market and property he was firmly against capitalism as it was, in his eyes, a state-supported monopoly of social capital (tools, machinery, etc.) which allows owners to exploit their employees, i.e., to avoid paying workers the full value of their labour. He thought that the "labouring classes are deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms, interest, rent and profit", therefore ""Liberty" will abolish interest; it will abolish profit; it will abolish monopolistic rent; it will abolish taxation; it will abolish the exploitation of labour; it will abolish all means whereby any labourer can be deprived of any of his product". This stance puts him squarely in the libertarian socialist tradition and Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be anarchistic socialism.
French individualist anarchist Émile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralized economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory – fatally refractory – morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single are equally repugnant to him.)". The Spanish individualist anarchist Miguel Gimenez Igualada thought that "capitalism is an effect of government; the disappearance of government means capitalism falls from its pedestal vertiginously...That which we call capitalism is not something else but a product of the State, within which the only thing that is being pushed forward is profit, good or badly acquired. And so to fight against capitalism is a pointless task, since be it State capitalism or Enterprise capitalism, as long as Government exists, exploiting capital will exist. The fight, but of consciousness, is against the State". His view on class division and technocracy are as follows: "Since when no one works for another, the profiteer from wealth disappears, just as government will disappear when no one pays attention to those who learned four things at universities and from that fact they pretend to govern men. Big industrial enterprises will be transformed by men in big associations in which everyone will work and enjoy the product of their work. And from those easy as well as beautiful problems anarchism deals with and he who puts them in practice and lives them are anarchists. [...] The priority which without rest an anarchist must make is that in which no one has to exploit anyone, no man to no man, since that non-exploitation will lead to the limitation of property to individual needs".
The anarchist writer and Bohemian Oscar Wilde wrote in his famous essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism" that "[a]rt is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine". For anarchist historian George Woodcock, "Wilde's aim in "The Soul of Man under Socialism" is to seek the society most favorable to the artist [...] for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated. [...] Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete". In a socialist society, people will have the possibility to realise their talents as "each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society". Wilde added that "upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism" since individuals will no longer need to fear poverty or starvation. This individualism would, in turn, protect against governments "armed with economic power as they are now with political power" over their citizens. However, Wilde advocated non-capitalist individualism, saying that "of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a fine or wonderful type" a critique which is "quite true". In Wilde's imagination, in this way socialism would free men from manual labour and allow them to devote their time to creative pursuits, thus developing their soul. He ended by declaring: "The new individualism is the new hellenism".
Libertarian Marxism is a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism, emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives such as Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism. Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats. Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the "Grundrisse" and "The Civil War in France"; emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.
Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as Luxemburgism, council communism, left communism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Johnson–Forest tendency, world socialism, Lettrism/Situationism and autonomism/workerism and New Left. Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Antonio Negri, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Guy Debord, Daniel Guérin, Ernesto Screpanti and Raoul Vaneigem.
De Leonism is a form of syndicalist Marxism developed by Daniel De Leon. De Leon was an early leader of the first United States socialist political party, the Socialist Labor Party of America. De Leon combined the rising theories of syndicalism in his time with orthodox Marxism. According to De Leonist theory, militant industrial unions (specialized trade unions) are the vehicle of class struggle.
Industrial unions serving the interests of the proletariat will bring about the change needed to establish a socialist system. The only way this differs from some currents in anarcho-syndicalism is that according to De Leonist thinking a revolutionary political party is also necessary to fight for the proletariat on the political field. De Leonism lies outside the Leninist tradition of communism. It predates Leninism as De Leonism's principles developed in the early 1890s with De Leon's assuming leadership of the SLP whereas Leninism and its vanguard party idea took shape after the 1902 publication of Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?"
The highly decentralized and democratic nature of the proposed De Leonist government is in contrast to the democratic centralism of Marxism–Leninism and what they see as the dictatorial nature of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and other communist states. The success of the De Leonist plan depends on achieving majority support among the people both in the workplaces and at the polls in contrast to the Leninist notion that a small vanguard party should lead the working class to carry out the revolution.
Council communism is a radical left-wing movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within Marxism and also within libertarian socialism. In contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist communism, the central argument of council communism is that workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural and legitimate form of working class organisation and government power. This view is opposed to the reformist and Bolshevik stress on vanguard parties, parliaments, or the state. The core principle of council communism is that the state and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run bureaucratic socialism. They also oppose the idea of a revolutionary party since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils.
The Russian term for council is soviet and during the early years of the revolution worker's councils were politically significant in Russia. It was to take advantage of the aura of workplace power that the word became used by Vladimir Lenin for various political organs. The name Supreme Soviet, by which the parliament was called; and that of the Soviet Union itself make use of this terminology, but they do not imply any decentralization. Furthermore, council communists held a critique of the Soviet Union as a capitalist state, believing that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia became a "bourgeois revolution" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old feudal aristocracy. Although most felt the Russian Revolution was working class in character, they believed that since capitalist relations still existed (because the workers had no say in running the economy), the Soviet Union ended up as a state capitalist country, with the state replacing the individual capitalist. Council communists support workers' revolutions, but they oppose one-party dictatorships. Council communists also believed in diminishing the role of the party to one of agitation and propaganda, rejected all participation in elections or parliament and argued that workers should leave the reactionary trade unions and form one big revolutionary union.
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first and during its second congress. Left communists see themselves to the left of Leninists (whom they tend to see as the "left of capital", not socialists), anarchists (some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example, De Leonists, who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances). Although she lived before left communism became a distinct tendency, Rosa Luxemburg has heavily influenced most left communists, both politically and theoretically. Proponents of left communism have included Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Karl Korsch, Sylvia Pankhurst and Paul Mattick.
Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Current and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party. Different factions from the old Bordigist International Communist Party are also considered left communist organizations.
The Johnson–Forest tendency is a radical left tendency in the United States associated with Marxist theorists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, who used the pseudonyms J. R. Johnson and Freddie Forest respectively. They were joined by Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American woman who was considered the third founder. After leaving the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, Johnson–Forest founded their own organization for the first time, called Correspondence. This group changed its name to the Correspondence Publishing Committee the next year. However, tensions that had surfaced earlier presaged a split, which took place in 1955. Through his theoretical and political work of the late 1940s, James had concluded that a vanguard party was no longer necessary because its teachings had been absorbed in the masses. In 1956, James would see the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 as confirmation of this. Those who endorsed the politics of James took the name Facing Reality after the 1958 book by James co-written with Grace Lee Boggs and Pierre Chaulieu (a pseudonym for Cornelius Castoriadis) on the Hungarian working class revolt of 1956.
Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism) was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period (the name comes from a phrase Friedrich Engels used and was cited by Rosa Luxemburg in the 1916 essay "The Junius Pamphlet"). It existed from 1948 until 1965. The animating personality was Cornelius Castoriadis, also known as Pierre Chaulieu or Paul Cardan. Because he explicitly both rejected Leninist vanguardism and criticised spontaneism, for Castoriadis "the emancipation of the mass of people was the task of those people; however, the socialist thinker could not simply fold his or her arms". Castoriadis argued that the special place accorded to the intellectual should belong to each autonomous citizen. However, he rejected "attentisme", maintaining that in the struggle for a new society intellectuals needed to "place themselves at a distance from the everyday and from the real". Political philosopher Claude Lefort was impressed by Cornelius Castoriadis when he first met him. They published "On the Regime and Against the Defence of the USSR", a critique of both the Soviet Union and its Trotskyist supporters. They suggested that the Soviet Union was dominated by a social layer of bureaucrats and that it consisted of a new kind of society as aggressive as Western European societies. Later, he also published in "Socialisme ou Barbarie".
The Situationist International was a restricted group of international revolutionaries founded in 1957 and which had its peak in its influence on the unprecedented general wildcat strikes of May 1968 in France. With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires and the pursuing of a superior passional quality. For this purpose, they suggested and experimented with the "construction of situations", namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism and psychogeography. In this vein, a major theorectical work which emerged from this group was Raoul Vaneigem's "The Revolution of Everyday Life".
They fought against the main obstacle on the fulfillment of such superior passional living, identified by them in advanced capitalism. Their critical theoretical work peaked on the highly influential book "The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow such a system, the Situationist International supported the May 1968 revolts and asked the workers to occupy the factories and to run them with direct democracy through workers' councils composed by instantly revocable delegates.
After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the Situationist International was dissolved in 1972.
Autonomism is a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist ("operaismo") communism. Through translations made available by Danilo Montaldi and others, the Italian autonomists drew upon previous activist research in the United States by the Johnson–Forest tendency and in France by the group Socialisme ou Barbarie. Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of "Potere Operaio" as well as Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno and Franco "Bifo" Berardi.
Unlike other forms of Marxism, autonomist Marxism emphasises the ability of the working class to force changes to the organization of the capitalist system independent of the state, trade unions or political parties. Autonomists are less concerned with party political organization than other Marxists, focusing instead on self-organized action outside of traditional organizational structures. Autonomist Marxism is thus a "bottom up" theory which draws attention to activities that autonomists see as everyday working class resistance to capitalism, for example absenteeism, slow working and socialization in the workplace.
All this influenced the German and Dutch autonomen, the worldwide Social Centre movement and today is influential in Italy, France and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to post-structuralists and anarchists. The autonomist Marxist and autonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English-speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics. Some English-speaking anarchists even describe themselves as autonomists. The Italian "operaismo" movement also influenced Marxist academics such as Harry Cleaver, John Holloway, Steve Wright and Nick Dyer-Witheford. Today, it is associated also with the publication "Multitudes".
This section is dedicated to post-classical anarchist tendencies as well as tendencies which cannot be easily classified within the anarchist/Marxist division presented before.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ran for the French constituent assembly in April 1848, but he was not elected although his name appeared on the ballots in Paris, Lyon, Besançon and Lille. He was successful in the complementary elections of June 4. The Catalan politician Francesc Pi i Margall became the principal translator of Proudhon's works into Spanish and later briefly became president of Spain in 1873 while being the leader of the Federal Democratic Republican Party.
For prominent anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker:
Pi i Margall was a dedicated theorist in his own right, especially through book-length works such as "La reacción y la revolución" ("Reaction and revolution", from 1855), "Las nacionalidades" ("Nationalities", 1877) and "La Federación" ("Federation") from 1880. On the other hand, Fermín Salvochea was a mayor of the city of Cádiz and a president of the province of Cádiz. He was one of the main propagators of anarchist thought in that area in the late 19th century and is considered to be perhaps the most beloved figure in the Spanish anarchist movement of the 19th century. Ideologically, he was influenced by Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Owen and Thomas Paine, whose works he had studied during his stay in England as well as by Peter Kropotkin, whom he read later. In Spain, he had contact with the anarchist thinkers and members of the Bakuninist Alliance, including Anselmo Lorenzo and Francisco Mora.
Libertarian possibilism was a political current within the early 20th-century Spanish anarchist movement which advocated achieving the anarchist ends of ending the state and capitalism with participation inside structures of contemporary parliamentary democracy. The name of this political position appeared for the first time between 1922–1923 within the discourse of catalan anarcho-syndicalist Salvador Segui when he said: "We have to intervene in politics in order to take over the positions of the bourgoise".
During the autumn of 1931, the "Manifesto of the 30" was published by militants of the anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Among those who signed it there was the CNT General Secretary (1922–1923) Joan Peiro, Angel Pestaña (General Secretary in 1929) and Juan Lopez Sanchez. Their current was called "treintismo" and they called for a more moderate political line within the Spanish anarchist movement. In 1932, they established the Syndicalist Party which participated in the 1936 Spanish general election and proceeded to be a part of the leftist coalition of parties known as the Popular Front, obtaining two congressmen (Pestaña and Benito Pabon). In 1938, Horacio Prieto, general secretary of the CNT, proposed that the Iberian Anarchist Federation transform itself into a libertarian socialist party and that it participate in national elections. In November 1936, the Popular Front government appointed the prominent anarcha-feminist Federica Montseny as Minister of Health. In doing so, she became the first woman in Spanish history to be a cabinet minister. When the republican forces lost the Spanish Civil War, the city of Madrid was turned over to the Francoist forces in 1939 by the last non-Francoist mayor of the city, the anarchist Melchor Rodríguez García.
In 1950, a clandestine group formed within the Francophone Anarchist Federation (FA) called Organisation Pensée Bataille (OPB) led by the platformist George Fontenis. The OPB pushed for a move which saw the FA change its name into the Fédération Communiste Libertaire (FCL) after the 1953 Congress in Paris while an article in "Le Libertaire" indicated the end of the cooperation with the French Surrealist Group led by André Breton. The new decision-making process was founded on unanimity as each person had a right of veto on the orientations of the federation. The FCL published the same year the "Manifeste du communisme libertaire". Several groups quit the FCL in December 1955, disagreeing with the decision to present "revolutionary candidates" at the legislative elections. On 15–20 August 1954, the 5th intercontinental plenum of the CNT took place. A group called Entente anarchiste (Anarchist Agreement) appeared, which was formed of militants who did not like the new ideological orientation that the OPB was giving the FCL, considering it authoritarian and almost Marxist. The FCL lasted until 1956 just after it participated in state legislative elections with ten candidates. This move alienated some members of the FCL and thus led to the end of the organization.
There was a strong left-libertarian current in the British labour movement and the term "libertarian socialist" has been applied to a number of democratic socialists, including some prominent members of the British Labour Party. The Socialist League was formed in 1885 by William Morris and others critical of the authoritarian socialism of the Social Democratic Federation. It was involved in the New Unionism, the rank-and-file union militancy of the 1880s–1890s, which anticipated syndicalism in some key ways (Tom Mann, a New Unionist leader, was one of the first British syndicalists). The Socialist League was dominated by anarchists by the 1890s.
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) formed at that time drew more on the nonconformist religious traditions in the British working class than on Marxist theory and had a libertarian socialist strain. Others in the tradition of the ILP and described as libertarian socialists included Michael Foot and most importantly, G. D. H. Cole. Labour Party minister Peter Hain has written in support of libertarian socialism, identifying an axis involving a "bottom-up vision of socialism, with anarchists at the revolutionary end and democratic socialists [such as himself] at its reformist end" as opposed to the axis of state socialism with Marxist–Leninists at the revolutionary end and social democrats at the reformist end. Another recent mainstream Labour politician who has been described as a libertarian socialist is Robin Cook. Defined in this way, libertarian socialism in the contemporary political mainstream is distinguished from modern social democracy and democratic socialism principally by its political decentralism rather than by its economics. The multi-tendency Socialist Party USA also has a strong libertarian socialist current.
Katja Kipping and Julia Bonk in Germany, Femke Halsema in the Netherlands and Ufuk Uras and the Freedom and Solidarity Party in Turkey are examples of a contemporary libertarian socialist politicians and parties operating within mainstream parliamentary democracies. In Chile, the autonomist organization "Izquierda Autónoma" (Autonomous Left) in the Chilean general election, 2013 gained a seat in the Chilean Parliament through Gabriel Boric, ex-leader of the 2011–2013 Chilean student protests. In 2016, Boric, alongside other persons such as Jorge Sharp, left the party in order to establish the Movimiento Autonomista. In the Chilean municipal elections of October 2016, Sharp was elected Mayor of Valparaíso with a vote of 53%.
Currently in the United States, there is a caucus within the larger Democratic Socialists of America called the Libertarian Socialist Caucus: "The LSC promotes a vision of 'libertarian socialism'—a traditional name for anarchism—that goes beyond the confines of traditional social democratic politics".
In the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia, "Jacobin" reports about the contemporary political party Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP) as follows:
Merging aspects of anarchism, ecology, environmentalism, green politics, Marxism and socialism, eco-socialists generally believe that the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, inequality and environmental degradation. Eco-socialists criticise many within the Green movement for not going far enough in their critique of the current world system and for not being overtly anti-capitalist. At the same time, eco-socialists would blame the traditional left for overlooking or not properly addressing ecological problems. Eco-socialists are anti-globalisation. Joel Kovel sees globalisation as a force driven by capitalism. In turn, the rapid economic growth encouraged by globalisation causes acute ecological crises. Agrarian socialism is another variant of eco-socialism. A 17th-century movement called the Diggers based their ideas on agrarian socialism.
Eco-socialism goes beyond a criticism of the actions of large corporations and targets the inherent properties of capitalism. Such an analysis follows Marx's theories about the contradiction between use values and exchange values. Within a market economy, goods are not produced to meet needs but are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods. As we have to keep selling to keep buying, we must persuade others to buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other goods. Eco-socialists like Kovel stress that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities such as caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence are unrewarded while unnecessary economic activities earn certain individuals huge fortunes.
Green anarchism is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American individualist anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book "Walden" as well as Leo Tolstoy and Elisee Reclus. In the late 19th century, there emerged a naturist current within individualist anarchist circles in Cuba France, Portugal and Spain.
Some contemporary green anarchists can be described as anarcho-primitivists, or anti-civilization anarchists, although not all green anarchists are primitivists. Likewise, there is a strong critique of modern technology among green anarchists, although not all reject it entirely. Important contemporary currents are anarcho-primitivism and social ecology. Notable contemporary writers espousing green anarchism include Murray Bookchin, Daniel Chodorkoff, anthropologist Brian Morris and people around Institute for Social Ecology; and those critical of technology such as Layla AbdelRahim, Derrick Jensen, George Draffan and John Zerzan; and others such as Alan Carter.
Social ecologists often criticize the main currents of socialism for their focus and debates about politics and economics instead of a focus on eco-system (human and environmental). This theory promotes libertarian municipalism and green technology. Anarcho-primitivists often criticize mainstream socialism for supporting civilization and modern technology which they believe are inherently based on domination and exploitation. They instead advocate the process of rewilding or reconnecting with the natural environment. Veganarchism is the political philosophy of veganism (more specifically animal liberation) and green anarchism. This encompasses viewing the state as unnecessary and harmful to both human and animals whilst practising a vegan diet.
Georgism is an economic philosophy and ideology which holds that people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly land, belong equally to all. The Georgist philosophy is based on the writings of the economist Henry George (1839–1897) and is usually associated with the idea of a single tax on the value of land. His most famous work is "Progress and Poverty" (1879), a treatise on inequality, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies and the use of the land value tax as a remedy. Georgists argue that a tax on land value is economically efficient, fair and equitable; and that it can generate sufficient revenue so that other taxes (e.g. taxes on profits, sales or income), which are less fair and efficient, can be reduced or eliminated. A tax on land value has been described by many as a progressive tax since it would be paid primarily by the wealthy and would reduce economic inequality.
Georgist ideas heavily influenced the politics of the early 20th century. Political parties that were formed based on Georgist ideas include the Commonwealth Land Party, the Justice Party of Denmark, the Henry George Justice Party and the Single Tax League. Several communities were also initiated with Georgist principles during the height of the philosophy's popularity. Two such communities that still exist are Arden, Delaware, which was founded in 1900 by Frank Stephens and Will Price; and Fairhope, Alabama, which was founded in 1894 by the auspices of the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation. Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy was enthused by the economic thinking of Henry George, incorporating it approvingly into later works such as "Resurrection", the book that played a major factor in his excommunication.
Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public". It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was strongly associated with G. D. H. Cole and influenced by the ideas of William Morris.
Guild socialism was partly inspired by the guilds of craftsmen and other skilled workers which had existed in England during the Middle Ages. In 1906, Arthur Penty published "Restoration of the Gild System" in which he opposed factory production and advocated a return to an earlier period of artisanal production organised through guilds. The following year, the journal "The New Age" became an advocate of guild socialism, although in the context of modern industry rather than the medieval setting favoured by Penty. The guild socialists "stood for state ownership of industry, combined with "workers' control" through delegation of authority to national guilds organized internally on democratic lines. About the state itself they differed, some believing it would remain more or less in its existing form and others that it would be transformed into a federal body representing the workers' guilds, consumers' organizations, local government bodies, and other social structures".
In 1914, Samuel George Hobson, a leading contributor to "The New Age", published "National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out". In this work, guilds were presented as an alternative to state-control of industry or conventional trade union activity. Unlike the existing trade unions, guilds would not confine their demands to matters of wages and conditions, but would seek to obtain control of industry for the workers whom they represented. Ultimately, industrial guilds would serve as the organs through which industry would be organised in a future socialist society. The theory of guild socialism was developed and popularised by G. D. H. Cole who formed the National Guilds League in 1915 and published several books on guild socialism, including "Self-Government in Industry" (1917) and "Guild Socialism Restated" (1920). For scholar Charles Masquerade, "[i]t is by meeting such a twofold requirement that the libertarian socialism of G.D.H. Cole could be said to offer timely and sustainable avenues for the institutionalization of the liberal value of autonomy...By setting out to 'destroy this predominance of economic factors' (Cole 1980, 180) through the re-organization of key spheres of life into forms of associative action and coordination capable of giving the 'fullest development of functional organisation'...Cole effectively sought to turn political representation into a system actually capable of giving direct recognition to the multiplicity of interests making up highly complex and differentiated societies".
Revolutionary syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions. It is a form of socialist economic corporatism that advocates interest aggregation of multiple non-competitive categorised units to negotiate and manage an economy. For adherents, labour unions are the potential means of both overcoming economic aristocracy and running society fairly in the interest of the majority through union democracy. Industry in a syndicalist system would be run through co-operative confederations and mutual aid. Local syndicates would communicate with other syndicates through the Bourse du Travail (labor exchange) which would manage and transfer commodities.
Syndicalism is also used to refer to the tactic of bringing about this social arrangement, typically expounded by anarcho-syndicalism and De Leonism in which a general strike begins and workers seize their means of production and organise in a federation of trade unionism, such as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Throughout its history, the reformist section of syndicalism has been overshadowed by its revolutionary section, typified by the Confédération Générale du Travail in France, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica section of the CNT., the Unione Sindacale Italiana and the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden.
Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. It is the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable, the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus. More than any other Bible source, the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus' call to not resist evil but turn the other cheek, are used as the basis for Christian anarchism.
Christian anarchists are pacifists and oppose the use of violence, such as war. The foundation of Christian anarchism is a rejection of violence, with Leo Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" regarded as a key text. Christian anarchists denounce the state as they claim it is violent, deceitful and when glorified a form of idolatry.
The Tolstoyans were a small Christian anarchist group formed by Tolstoy's companion Vladimir Chertkov (1854–1936) to spread Tolstoy's religious teachings. Prince Peter Kropotkin wrote of Tolstoy in the article on anarchism in the 1911 "Encyclopædia Britannica" while in hundreds of essays over the last twenty years of his life Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to his readers whilst rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means.
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert who advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism. Day "believed all states were inherently totalitarian" and was a self-labeled anarchist. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. The importance of Day within Catholicism goes to the extent that the cause for Day's canonization is open in the Catholic Church and she is thus formally referred to as a Servant of God.
Ammon Hennacy was an Irish American pacifist, Christian, anarchist and social activist member of the Catholic Worker Movement and a Wobbly. He established the Joe Hill House of Hospitality in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Gandhism is the collection of inspirations, principles, beliefs and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, who was a major political leader of India and the Indian independence movement. It is a body of ideas and principles that describes the inspiration, vision and the life work of Gandhi. It is particularly associated with his contributions to the idea and practice of nonviolent resistance, sometimes also called civil resistance. Gandhian economics are the socio-economic principles expounded by Gandhi. It is largely characterised by its affinity to the principles and objectives of nonviolent humanistic socialism, but with a rejection of violent class war and promotion of socio-economic harmony. Gandhi's economic ideas also aim to promote spiritual development and harmony with a rejection of materialism. The term Gandhian economics was coined by J. C. Kumarappa, a close supporter of Gandhi. Gandhian economics places importance to means of achieving the aim of development and this means must be non-violent, ethical and truthful in all economic spheres. In order to achieve this means, he advocated trusteeship, decentralization of economic activities, labour intensive technology and priority to weaker sections. Gandhi also had letter communication with Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy and saw himself as his disciple.
Gandhi challenged future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the modernizers in the late 1930s who called for rapid industrialization on the Soviet model, which Gandhi denounced as dehumanizing and contrary to the needs of the villages where the great majority of the people lived. After Gandhi's death, Nehru led India to large-scale planning that emphasized modernization and heavy industry while modernizing agriculture through irrigation. Historian Kuruvilla Pandikattu says that "it was Nehru's vision, not Gandhi's, that was eventually preferred by the Indian State". Gandhi was a self-described philosophical anarchist and his vision of India meant an India without an underlying government. He once said that "the ideally nonviolent state would be an ordered anarchy". While political systems are largely hierarchical, with each layer of authority from the individual to the central government have increasing levels of authority over the layer below, Gandhi believed that society should be the exact opposite, where nothing is done without the consent of anyone, down to the individual. His idea was that true self-rule in a country means that every person rules his or herself and that there is no state which enforces laws upon the people.
Gandhian activists such as Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan were involved in the "Sarvodaya" movement, which sought to promote self-sufficiency amidst India's rural population by encouraging land redistribution, socio-economic reforms and promoting cottage industries. The movement sought to combat the problems of class conflict, unemployment and poverty while attempting to preserve the lifestyle and values of rural Indians, which were eroding with industrialisation and modernisation. "Sarvodaya" also included "Bhoodan", or the gifting of land and agricultural resources by the landlords (called "zamindars") to their tenant farmers in a bid to end the medieval system of "zamindari". "The Conquest of Violence: An Essay on War and Revolution" is a book written by dutch anarcho-pacifist Bart de Ligt which deals with nonviolent resistance in part inspired by the ideas of Gandhi. Anarchist historian George Woodcock reports that "The Conquest of Violence" "was read widely by British and American pacifists during the 1930s and led many of them to adopt an anarchistic point of view".
Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement based on the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's "Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)".
The emergence of the New Left in the 1950s and 1960s led to a revival of interest in libertarian socialism. The New Left's critique of the Old Left's authoritarianism was associated with a strong interest in personal liberty and autonomy (see the thinking of Cornelius Castoriadis) which led to a rediscovery of older socialist traditions, such as left communism, council communism, and the Industrial Workers of the World. In the United States, this was caused by a renewal of anarchism from the 1950s forward through writers such as Paul Goodman and anarcho-pacifism which became influential in the anti-nuclear movement and anti war movements of the time and which incorporated both the influences of Gandhism and Tolstoyan Christian anarchism.
In Australia, the Sydney Push was a predominantly left-wing intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s which became associated with the label "Sydney libertarianism". The New Left also led to a revival of anarchism in the 1960s in the United States. Journals like "Radical America" and "Black Mask" in the United States and "Solidarity", "Big Flame" and "Democracy & Nature", succeeded by "The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy", in the United Kingdom introduced a range of left-libertarian ideas to a new generation. social ecology, autonomism and more recently participatory economics and Inclusive Democracy emerged from this. The New Left in the United States also included anarchist, countercultural and hippie-related radical groups such as the Yippies who were led by Abbie Hoffman, The Diggers, Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and the White Panther Party. By late 1966, The Diggers opened free stores which simply gave away their stock, provided free food, distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts and performed works of political art. The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley and sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism. On the other hand, the Yippies employed theatrical gestures, such as advancing a pig ("Pigasus the Immortal") as a candidate for President in 1968, to mock the social "status quo". They have been described as a highly theatrical, anti-authoritarian and anarchist youth movement of "symbolic politics". Since they were well known for street theater and politically themed pranks, many of the "old school" political left either ignored or denounced them. According to ABC News: "The group was known for street theater pranks and was once referred to as the 'Groucho Marxists'".
Social ecology is closely related to the work and ideas of Murray Bookchin and influenced by anarchist Peter Kropotkin. Social ecologists assert that the present ecological crisis has its roots in human social problems and that the domination of human-over-nature stems from the domination of human-over-human.
Bookchin later developed a political philosophy to complement social ecology which he called Communalism (spelled with a capital "C" to differentiate it from other forms of communalism). While originally conceived as a form of social anarchism, he later developed Communalism into a separate ideology which incorporates what he saw as the most beneficial elements of anarchism, Marxism, syndicalism and radical ecology.
Politically, Communalists advocate a network of directly democratic citizens' assemblies in individual communities or cities organized in a confederated fashion. The method used to achieve this is called libertarian municipalism and involves the establishment of face-to-face democratic institutions which grow and expand confederally with the goal of eventually replacing the nation-state. Unlike anarchists, Communalists are not opposed to taking part in parliamentary politics—especially municipal elections—as long as candidates are libertarian socialist and anti-statist in outlook.
Democratic confederalism is the proposal of a libertarian socialist political system that "is open towards other political groups and factions. It is flexible, multi-cultural, anti-monopolistic, and consensus-oriented". Abdullah Öcalan, who is the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, founded this ideology while in prison. While originally a Marxist–Leninist organization, the organization modified their views as Öcalan began corresponding with Murray Bookchin and incorporating his ideology. The central pillars of democratic confederalism are social ecology and anarcha-feminism. According to Öcalan, his ideology is rooted in participatory democracy and autonomy at the local level. In his book, he says: "The stronger the participation the more powerful is this kind of democracy. While the nation-state is in contrast to democracy, and even denies it, democratic confederalism constitutes a continuous democratic process".
Participism is a 21st century form of libertarian socialism. It comprises two related economic and political systems called participatory economics or "parecon" and participatory politics or "parpolity".
Parecon is an economic system proposed primarily by activist and political theorist Michael Albert and radical economist Robin Hahnel, among others. It uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the production, consumption and allocation of resources in a given society. Proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalist market economies and also an alternative to centrally planned socialism or coordinatorism, it is described as "an anarchistic economic vision" and it could be considered a form of socialism as under parecon the means of production are owned by the workers. It proposes to attain these ends mainly through the following principles and institutions: workers' and consumers' councils utilizing self-managerial methods for decision making, balanced job complexes, remuneration according to effort and sacrifice and participatory planning. Under parecon, the current monetary system would be replaced with a system of non-transferable "credit" which would cease to exist upon purchase of a commodity.
Parpolity is a theoretical political system proposed by Stephen R. Shalom. It was developed as a political vision to accompany parecon. Participism as a whole is critical of aspects of modern representative democracies and capitalism arguing that the level of political control by the people is not sufficient. To address this problem, parpolity suggests a system of "Nested Councils", which would include every adult member of a given society. Under participism, the state as such would dissolve into a mere coordinating body made up of delegates which would be recallable at any time by the nested council below them.
Inclusive Democracy is a political theory and political project that aim for direct democracy, economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, self-management (democracy in the social realm) and ecological democracy. As distinguished from the political project which is part of the democratic and autonomy traditions, the theoretical project of Inclusive Democracy emerged from the work of political philosopher, former academic and activist Takis Fotopoulos in "Towards An Inclusive Democracy" and was further developed by him and other writers in the journal "Democracy & Nature" and its successor "The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy", an electronic journal freely available and published by the International Network for Inclusive Democracy.
According to Arran Gare, "Towards an Inclusive Democracy" "offers a powerful new interpretation of the history and destructive dynamics of the market and provides an inspiring new vision of the future in place of both neo-liberalism and existing forms of socialism". As David Freeman points out, although Fotopoulos' approach "is not openly anarchism, yet anarchism seems the formal category within which he works, given his commitment to direct democracy, municipalism and abolition of state, money and market economy".
An artificial market is proposed by this tendency as a solution to the problem of maintaining freedom of choice for the consumer within a marketless and moneyless economy, an artificial market operates in much the same way as traditional markets, but uses labour vouchers or personal credit in place of traditional money. According to Takis Fotopoulos, an artificial market "secures real freedom of choice, without incurring the adverse effects associated with real markets".
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate informal organization and small affinity group-based organization. Insurrectionary anarchists put value in attack, permanent class conflict and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class enemies.
Contemporary insurrectionary anarchism inherits the views and tactics of anti-organizational anarcho-communism and illegalism. Between 1880 and 1890, with the "perspective of an immanent revolution", who was "opposed to the official workers' movement", which was then in the process of formation (general social democratisation). They were opposed not only to political and statist struggles, but also to strikes which put forward wage or other claims, or which were organised by trade unions. However, "[w]hile they were not opposed to strikes as such—they were opposed to trade unions and the struggle for the eight-hour day. This anti-reformist tendency was accompanied by an anti-organisational tendency, and its partisans declared themselves in favour of agitation amongst the unemployed for the expropriation of foodstuffs and other articles, for the expropriatory strike and, in some cases, for 'individual recuperation' or acts of terrorism". A resurgence of such ideas happened "in the peculiar conditions of postwar Italy and Greece".
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation ("Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional", EZLN) often referred to as the "zapatistas" is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. Since 1994, the group has been in a declared war "against the Mexican state", though this war has been primarily nonviolent and defensive against military, paramilitary and corporate incursions into Chiapas. Their social base is mostly rural indigenous people, but they have some supporters in urban areas and internationally. Their former spokesperson was Subcomandante Marcos (also known as Delegate Zero in relation to The Other Campaign). Unlike other Zapatist spokespeople, Marcos is not an indigenous Maya. Since December 1994, the Zapatistas had been gradually forming several autonomous municipalities, called Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ). In these municipalities, an assembly of local representatives forms the "Juntas de Buen Gobierno" or Councils of Good Government (JBGs). These are not recognized by the federal or state governments and they oversee local community programs on food, health and education as well as taxation. The EZLN political formations have happened in two phases generally called "Aquascalientes" and "Caracoles".
The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata (the agrarian reformer and commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution) and sees itself as his ideological heir. "Zapatista" originally referred to a member of the revolutionary guerrilla movement founded about 1910 by Zapata. His Liberation Army of the South ("Ejército Libertador del Sur") fought during the Mexican Revolution for the redistribution of agricultural land. Zapata and his army and allies, including Pancho Villa, fought for agrarian reform in Mexico. Specifically, they wanted to establish communal land rights for Mexico's indigenous population, which had mostly lost its land to the wealthy elite of European descent. Zapata was partly influenced by an anarchist from Oaxaca named Ricardo Flores Magón. The influence of Flores Magón on Zapata can be seen in the Zapatist' Plan de Ayala, but even more noticeably in their slogan (this slogan was never used by Zapata) "Tierra y libertad" or "Land and liberty", the title and maxim of Flores Magón's most famous work. Zapata's introduction to anarchism came via a local schoolteacher, Otilio Montaño Sánchez—later a general in Zapata's army, executed on 17 May 1917—who exposed Zapata to the works of Peter Kropotkin and Flores Magón at the same time as Zapata was observing and beginning to participate in the struggles of the peasants for the land.
In reference to inspirational figures, in nearly all EZLN villages exist murals accompanying images of Zapata, Che Guevara and Subcomandante Marcos. The ideology of the Zapatista movement, Zapatism, synthesizes traditional Mayan practices with elements of libertarian socialism, anarchism and Marxism. The historical influence of Mexican anarchists and various Latin American socialists is apparent on Zapatism as with the positions of Subcomandante Marcos also adding a distinct Marxist element to the movement according to "The New York Times". A Zapatist slogan is in harmony with the concept of mutual aid: "For everyone, everything. For us, nothing" ("Para todos, todo. Para nosotros, nada").
Left-wing market anarchism is a left-libertarian and individualist anarchist form of libertarian socialism associated with scholars such as Kevin Carson, Roderick T. Long, Charles W. Johnson, Brad Spangler, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Sheldon Richman, Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Gary Chartier, who stress the value of radically free markets, termed freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these libertarians believe to be riddled with statist and capitalist privileges. Referred to as left-wing market anarchists or market-oriented left-libertarians, proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical, pro-labor positions in economics; anti-imperialism in foreign policy; and thoroughly liberal or radical views regarding cultural and social issues such as gender, sexuality and race.
The genealogy of contemporary market-oriented left-libertarianism, sometimes labeled left-wing market anarchism, overlaps to a significant degree with that of Steiner–Vallentyne left-libertarianism as the roots of that tradition are sketched in the book "The Origins of Left-Libertarianism". Carson–Long-style left-libertarianism is rooted in 19th century mutualism and in the work of figures such as Thomas Hodgskin and the individualist anarchists Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner. While with notable exceptions market-oriented libertarians after Tucker tended to ally with the political right, relationships between such libertarians and the New Left thrived in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for modern left-wing market anarchism. Left-wing market anarchism identifies with left libertarianism (or left-wing libertarianism) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18048 |
Livy
Titus Livius ( , ; 64/59 BC – AD 12/17), known as Livy ( ) in English, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled "", covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional foundation in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and even in friendship with Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history.
Livy was born in Patavium in northern Italy, now modern Padua. There is a debate about the year of his birth – either in 64 BC, or more likely, in 59 BC (see below). At the time of his birth, his home city of Patavium was the second wealthiest on the Italian peninsula, and the largest in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). Cisalpine Gaul was merged in Italy proper during his lifetime and its inhabitants were given Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar. In his works, Livy often expressed his deep affection and pride for Patavium, and the city was well known for its conservative values in morality and politics. "He was by nature a recluse, mild in temperament and averse to violence; the restorative peace of his time gave him the opportunity to turn all his imaginative passion to the legendary and historical past of the country he loved."
Livy's teenage years were during the 40s BC, when a period of numerous civil wars throughout the Roman world occurred. The governor of Cisalpine Gaul at the time, Asinius Pollio, tried to sway Patavium into supporting Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), the leader of one of the warring factions. The wealthy citizens of Patavium refused to contribute money and arms to Asinius Pollio, and went into hiding. Pollio then attempted to bribe the slaves of those wealthy citizens to expose the whereabouts of their masters; his bribery did not work, and the citizens instead pledged their allegiance to the Senate. It is therefore likely that the Roman civil wars prevented Livy from pursuing a higher education in Rome or going on a tour of Greece, which was common for adolescent males of the nobility at the time. Many years later, Asinius Pollio derisively commented on Livy's "patavinity", saying that Livy's Latin showed certain "provincialisms" frowned on at Rome. Pollio's dig may have been the result of bad feelings he harboured toward the city of Patavium from his experiences there during the civil wars.
Livy probably went to Rome in the 30s BC, and it is likely that he spent a large amount of time in the city after this, although it may not have been his primary home. During his time in Rome, he was never a senator nor held a government position. His writings contain elementary mistakes on military matters, indicating that he probably never served in the Roman army. However, he was educated in philosophy and rhetoric. It seems that Livy had the financial resources and means to live an independent life, though the origin of that wealth is unknown. He devoted a large part of his life to his writings, which he was able to do because of his financial freedom.
Livy was known to give recitations to small audiences, but he was not heard of to engage in declamation, then a common pastime. He was familiar with the emperor Augustus and the imperial family. Augustus was considered by later Romans to have been the greatest Roman emperor, benefiting Livy's reputation long after his death. Suetonius described how Livy encouraged the future emperor Claudius, who was born in 10 BC, to write historiographical works during his childhood.
Livy's most famous work was his history of Rome. In it he narrates a complete history of the city of Rome, from its foundation to the death of Augustus. Because he was writing under the reign of Augustus, Livy's history emphasizes the great triumphs of Rome. He wrote his history with embellished accounts of Roman heroism in order to promote the new type of government implemented by Augustus when he became emperor. In Livy's preface to his history, he said that he did not care whether his personal fame remained in darkness, as long as his work helped to "preserve the memory of the deeds of the world’s preeminent nation." Because Livy was mostly writing about events that had occurred hundreds of years earlier, the historical value of his work was questionable, although many Romans came to believe his account to be true.
Livy was married and had at least one daughter and one son. He also produced other works, including an essay in the form of a letter to his son, and numerous dialogues, most likely modelled on similar works by Cicero.
Titus Livius died in his home city of Patavium in either (see below) AD 12 or 17; the latter would have been three years after the death of the emperor Augustus.
Livy's only surviving work is commonly known as ""History of Rome"" (or ""), which was his career from his mid-life, probably 32, until he left Rome for Padua in old age, probably in the reign of Tiberius after the death of Augustus. When he began this work he was already past his youth; presumably, events in his life prior to that time had led to his intense activity as a historian. Seneca the Younger gives brief mention that he was also known as an orator and philosopher and had written some treatises in those fields from a historical point of view.
Livy's "History of Rome" was in high demand from the time it was published and remained so during the early years of the empire. Pliny the Younger reported that Livy's celebrity was so widespread, a man from Cadiz travelled to Rome and back for the sole purpose of meeting him. Livy's work was a source for the later works of Aurelius Victor, Cassiodorus, Eutropius, Festus, Florus, Granius Licinianus and Orosius. Julius Obsequens used Livy, or a source with access to Livy, to compose his "De Prodigiis", an account of supernatural events in Rome from the consulship of Scipio and Laelius to that of Paulus Fabius and Quintus Aelius.
Livy wrote during the reign of Augustus, who came to power after a civil war with generals and consuls claiming to be defending the Roman Republic, such as Pompey. Patavium had been pro-Pompey. To clarify his status, the victor of the civil war, Octavian Caesar, had wanted to take the title "Romulus" (the first king of Rome) but in the end accepted the senate proposal of "Augustus". Rather than abolishing the republic, he adapted it and its institutions to imperial rule.
The historian Tacitus, writing about a century after Livy's time, described the Emperor Augustus as his friend. Describing the trial of Cremutius Cordus, Tacitus represents him as defending himself face-to-face with the frowning Tiberius as follows:
Livy's reasons for returning to Padua after the death of Augustus (if he did) are unclear, but the circumstances of Tiberius' reign certainly allow for speculation.
During the Middle Ages, interest in Livy declined because Western scholars were more focused on religious texts. Due to the length of the work, the literate class was already reading summaries rather than the work itself, which was tedious to copy, expensive, and required a lot of storage space. It must have been during this period, if not before, that manuscripts began to be lost without replacement.
The Renaissance was a time of intense revival; the population discovered that Livy's work was being lost and large amounts of money changed hands in the rush to collect Livian manuscripts. The poet Beccadelli sold a country home for funding to purchase one manuscript copied by Poggio. Petrarch and Pope Nicholas V launched a search for the now missing books. Laurentius Valla published an amended text initiating the field of Livy scholarship. Dante speaks highly of him in his poetry, and Francis I of France commissioned extensive artwork treating Livian themes; Niccolò Machiavelli's work on republics, the "Discourses on Livy" is presented as a commentary on the "History of Rome". Respect for Livy rose to lofty heights. Walter Scott reports in "Waverley" (1814) as an historical fact that a Scotchman involved in the first Jacobite uprising of 1715 was recaptured (and executed) because, having escaped, he yet lingered near the place of his captivity in "the hope of recovering his favourite "Titus Livius"."
Livy was likely born between 64 and 59 BC and died sometime between AD 12 to 17. He started his work sometime between 31 and 25 BC. St. Jerome says that Livy was born the same year as Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus and died the same year as Ovid. Messala, however, was born earlier, in 64 BC, and Ovid's death, usually taken to be the same year as Livy's, is more uncertain. As an alternative view, Ronald Syme argues for 64 BC–12 AD as a range for Livy, setting the death of Ovid at 12. A death date of 12 AD, however, removes Livy from Augustus' best years and makes him depart for Padua without the good reason of the second emperor, Tiberius, being not as tolerant of his republicanism. The contradiction remains.
The authority supplying information from which possible vital data on Livy can be deduced is Eusebius of Caesarea, a bishop of the early Christian Church. One of his works was a summary of world history in ancient Greek, termed the "Chronikon," dating from the early 4th century AD. This work was lost except for fragments (mainly excerpts), but not before it had been translated in whole and in part by various authors such as St. Jerome. The entire work survives in two separate manuscripts, Armenian and Greek (Christesen and Martirosova-Torlone 2006). St. Jerome wrote in Latin. Fragments in Syriac exist.
Eusebius' work consists of two books: the "Chronographia", a summary of history in annalist form, and the "Chronikoi Kanones", tables of years and events. St. Jerome translated the tables into Latin as the "Chronicon", probably adding some information of his own from unknown sources. Livy's dates appear in "Jerome's Chronicon."
The main problem with the information given in the manuscripts is that, between them, they often give different dates for the same events or different events, do not include the same material entirely, and reformat what they do include. A date may be in "Ab Urbe Condita" or in Olympiads or in some other form, such as age. These variations may have occurred through scribal error or scribal license. Some material has been inserted under the aegis of Eusebius.
The topic of manuscript variants is a large and specialized one, on which authors of works on Livy seldom care to linger. As a result, standard information in a standard rendition is used, which gives the impression of a standard set of dates for Livy. There are no such dates. A typical presumption is of a birth in the 2nd year of the 180th Olympiad and a death in the first year of the 199th Olympiad, which are coded 180.2 and 199.1 respectively. All sources use the same first Olympiad, 776/775–773/772 BC by the modern calendar. By a complex formula (made so by the 0 reference point not falling on the border of an Olympiad), these codes correspond to 59 BC for the birth, 17 AD for the death. In another manuscript the birth is in 180.4, or 57 BC. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18049 |
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus (January 24, 1850 – February 26, 1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. He was the father of the neo-Kantian philosopher Julius Ebbinghaus.
Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen, in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, as the son of a wealthy merchant, Carl Ebbinghaus. Little is known about his infancy except that he was brought up in the Lutheran faith and was a pupil at the town Gymnasium. At the age of 17 (1867), he began attending the University of Bonn, where he had planned to study history and philology. However, during his time there he developed an interest in philosophy. In 1870, his studies were interrupted when he served with the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War. Following this short stint in the military, Ebbinghaus finished his dissertation on Eduard von Hartmann's "" (philosophy of the unconscious) and received his doctorate on August 16, 1873, when he was 23 years old. During the next three years, he spent time at Halle and Berlin.
After acquiring his PhD, Ebbinghaus moved around England and France, tutoring students to support himself. In England, he may have taught in two small schools in the south of the country (Gorfein, 1885). In London, in a used bookstore, he came across Gustav Fechner's book "Elemente der Psychophysik" ("Elements of Psychophysics"), which spurred him to conduct his famous memory experiments. After beginning his studies at the University of Berlin, he founded the third psychological testing lab in Germany (third to Wilhelm Wundt and Georg Elias Müller). He began his memory studies here in 1879. In 1885 — the same year that he published his monumental work, "Über das Gedächtnis. Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie", later published in English under the title "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology" — he was made a professor at the University of Berlin, most likely in recognition of this publication. In 1890, along with Arthur König, he founded the psychological journal "Zeitschrift für Physiologie und Psychologie der Sinnesorgane" ("The Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs'").
In 1894, he was passed over for promotion to head of the philosophy department at Berlin, most likely due to his lack of publications. Instead, Carl Stumpf received the promotion. As a result of this, Ebbinghaus left to join the University of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), in a chair left open by Theodor Lipps (who took over Stumpf's position when he moved to Berlin). While in Breslau, he worked on a commission that studied how children's mental ability declined during the school day. While the specifics on how these mental abilities were measured have been lost, the successes achieved by the commission laid the groundwork for future intelligence testing. At Breslau, he again founded a psychological testing laboratory.
In 1902, Ebbinghaus published his next piece of writing entitled "Die Grundzüge der Psychologie" ("Fundamentals of Psychology"). It was an instant success and continued to be long after his death. In 1904, he moved to Halle where he spent the last few years of his life. His last published work, "Abriss der Psychologie" ("Outline of Psychology") was published six years later, in 1908. This, too, continued to be a success, being re-released in eight different editions. Shortly after this publication, on February 26, 1909, Ebbinghaus died from pneumonia at the age of 59.
Ebbinghaus was determined to show that higher mental processes could actually be studied using experimentation, which was in opposition to the popularly held thought of the time. To control for most potentially confounding variables, Ebbinghaus wanted to use simple acoustic encoding and maintenance rehearsal for which a list of words could have been used. As learning would be affected by prior knowledge and understanding, he needed something that could be easily memorized but which had no prior cognitive associations. Easily formable associations with regular words would interfere with his results, so he used items that would later be called "nonsense syllables" (also known as the CVC trigram). A nonsense syllable is a consonant-vowel-consonant combination, where the consonant does not repeat and the syllable does not have prior meaning. BOL (sounds like "Ball") and DOT (already a word) would then not be allowed. However, syllables such as DAX, BOK, and YAT would all be acceptable (though Ebbinghaus left no examples). After eliminating the meaning-laden syllables, Ebbinghaus ended up with 2,300 resultant syllables. Once he had created his collection of syllables, he would pull out a number of random syllables from a box and then write them down in a notebook. Then, to the regular sound of a metronome, and with the same voice inflection, he would read out the syllables, and attempt to recall them at the end of the procedure. One investigation alone required 15,000 recitations.
It was later determined that humans impose meaning even on nonsense syllables to make them more meaningful. The nonsense syllable PED (which is the first three letters of the word "pedal") turns out to be less nonsensical than a syllable such as KOJ; the syllables are said to differ in association value. It appears that Ebbinghaus recognized this, and only referred to the strings of syllables as "nonsense" in that the syllables might be less likely to have a specific meaning and he should make no attempt to make associations with them for easier retrieval.
There are several limitations to his work on memory. The most important one was that Ebbinghaus was the only subject in his study. This limited the study's generalizability to the population. Although he attempted to regulate his daily routine to maintain more control over his results, his decision to avoid the use of participants sacrificed the external validity of the study despite sound internal validity. In addition, although he tried to account for his personal influences, there is an inherent bias when someone serves as researcher as well as participant. Also, Ebbinghaus's memory research halted research in other, more complex matters of memory such as semantic and procedural memory and mnemonics.
In 1885, he published his groundbreaking "Über das Gedächtnis" ("On Memory", later translated to English as "Memory. A Contribution to Experimental Psychology") in which he described experiments he conducted on himself to describe the processes of learning and forgetting.
Ebbinghaus made several findings that are still relevant and supported to this day. First, Ebbinghaus made a set of 2,300 three letter syllables to measure mental associations that helped him find that memory is orderly. Second, and arguably his most famous finding, was the forgetting curve. The forgetting curve describes the exponential loss of information that one has learned. The sharpest decline occurs in the first twenty minutes and the decay is significant through the first hour. The curve levels off after about one day.
The learning curve described by Ebbinghaus refers to how fast one learns information. The sharpest increase occurs after the first try and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each repetition. Like the forgetting curve, the learning curve is exponential. Ebbinghaus had also documented the serial position effect, which describes how the position of an item affects recall. The two main concepts in the serial position effect are recency and primacy. The recency effect describes the increased recall of the most recent information because it is still in the short-term memory. The primacy effect causes better memory of the first items in a list due to increased rehearsal and commitment to long-term memory.
Another important discovery is that of savings. This refers to the amount of information retained in the subconscious even after this information cannot be consciously accessed. Ebbinghaus would memorize a list of items until perfect recall and then would not access the list until he could no longer recall any of its items. He then would relearn the list, and compare the new learning curve to the learning curve of his previous memorization of the list. The second list was generally memorized faster, and this difference between the two learning curves is what Ebbinghaus called "savings". Ebbinghaus also described the difference between involuntary and voluntary memory, the former occurring "with apparent spontaneity and without any act of the will" and the latter being brought "into consciousness by an exertion of the will".
Prior to Ebbinghaus, most contributions to the study of memory were undertaken by philosophers and centered on observational description and speculation. For example, Immanuel Kant used pure description to discuss recognition and its components and Sir Francis Bacon claimed that the simple observation of the rote recollection of a previously learned list was "no use to the art" of memory. This dichotomy between descriptive and experimental study of memory would resonate later in Ebbinghaus's life, particularly in his public argument with former colleague Wilhelm Dilthey. However, more than a century before Ebbinghaus, Johann Andreas Segner invented the "Segner-wheel" to see the length of after-images by seeing how fast a wheel with a hot coal attached had to move for the red ember circle from the coal to appear complete. (see iconic memory)
Ebbinghaus's effect on memory research was almost immediate. With very few works published on memory in the previous two millennia, Ebbinghaus's works spurred memory research in the United States in the 1890s, with 32 papers published in 1894 alone. This research was coupled with the growing development of mechanized mnemometers, or devices that aided in the recording and study of memory.
The reaction to his work in his day was mostly positive. Noted psychologist William James called the studies "heroic" and said that they were "the single most brilliant investigation in the history of psychology". Edward B. Titchener also mentioned that the studies were the greatest undertaking in the topic of memory since Aristotle.
Ebbinghaus can also be credited with pioneering sentence completion exercises, which he developed in studying the abilities of schoolchildren. It was these same exercises that Alfred Binet had borrowed and incorporated into the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. Sentence completion had since then also been used extensively in memory research, especially in tapping into measures of implicit memory, and also has been used in psychotherapy as a tool to help tap into the motivations and drives of the patient. He had also influenced Charlotte Bühler, who along with Lev Vygotsky and others went on to study language meaning and society.
Ebbinghaus is also largely credited with drafting the first standard research report. In his paper on memory, Ebbinghaus arranged his research into four sections: the introduction, the methods, the results, and a discussion section. The clarity and organization of this format was so impressive to contemporaries that it has now become standard in the discipline, and all research reports follow the same standards laid out by Ebbinghaus.
After Ebbinghaus worked on memory, he also had a contribution with color vision. In 1890, Ebbinghaus came up with the double pyramid design where corners were rounded off.
Unlike notable contemporaries like Titchener and James, Ebbinghaus did not promote any specific school of psychology nor was he known for extensive lifetime research, having done only three works. He never attempted to bestow upon himself the title of the pioneer of experimental psychology, did not seek to have any "disciples", and left the exploitation of the new field to others.
In addition to pioneering experimental psychology, Ebbinghaus was also a strong defender of this direction of the new science, as is illustrated by his public dispute with University of Berlin colleague, Wilhelm Dilthey. Shortly after Ebbinghaus left Berlin in 1893, Dilthey published a paper extolling the virtues of descriptive psychology, and condemning experimental psychology as boring, claiming that the mind was too complex, and that introspection was the desired method of studying the mind. The debate at the time had been primarily whether psychology should aim to explain or understand the mind and whether it belonged to the natural or human sciences. Many had seen Dilthey's work as an outright attack on experimental psychology, Ebbinghaus included, and he responded to Dilthey with a personal letter and also a long scathing public article. Amongst his counterarguments against Dilthey he mentioned that it is inevitable for psychology to do hypothetical work and that the kind of psychology that Dilthey was attacking was the one that existed before Ebbinghaus's "experimental revolution". Charlotte Bühler echoed his words some forty years later, stating that people like Ebbinghaus "buried the old psychology in the 1890s". Ebbinghaus explained his scathing review by saying that he could not believe that Dilthey was advocating the status quo of structuralists like Wilhelm Wundt and Titchener and attempting to stifle psychology's progress.
Some contemporary texts still describe Ebbinghaus as a philosopher rather than a psychologist and he had also spent his life as a professor of philosophy. However, Ebbinghaus himself would probably describe himself as a psychologist considering that he fought to have psychology viewed as a separate discipline from philosophy.
There has been some speculation as to what influenced Ebbinghaus in his undertakings. None of his professors seem to have influenced him, nor are there suggestions that his colleagues affected him. Von Hartmann's work, on which Ebbinghaus based his doctorate, did suggest that higher mental processes were hidden from view, which may have spurred Ebbinghaus to attempt to prove otherwise. The one influence that has always been cited as having inspired Ebbinghaus was Gustav Fechner's two-volume "Elemente der Psychophysik." ("Elements of Psychophysics", 1860), a book which he purchased second-hand in England. It is said that the meticulous mathematical procedures impressed Ebbinghaus so much that he wanted to do for psychology what Fechner had done for psychophysics. This inspiration is also evident in that Ebbinghaus dedicated his second work "Principles of Psychology" to Fechner, signing it "I owe everything to you." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13647 |
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