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Meteorology
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences which includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics, with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data. It was not until after the elucidation of the laws of physics and more particularly, the development of the computer, allowing for the automated solution of a great many equations that model the weather, in the latter half of the 20th century that significant breakthroughs in weather forecasting were achieved. An important domain of weather forecasting is marine weather forecasting as it relates to maritime and coastal safety, in which weather effects also include atmospheric interactions with large bodies of water.
Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events that are explained by the science of meteorology. Meteorological phenomena are described and quantified by the variables of Earth's atmosphere: temperature, air pressure, water vapour, mass flow, and the variations and interactions of those variables, and how they change over time. Different spatial scales are used to describe and predict weather on local, regional, and global levels.
Meteorology, climatology, atmospheric physics, and atmospheric chemistry are sub-disciplines of the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology and hydrology compose the interdisciplinary field of hydrometeorology. The interactions between Earth's atmosphere and its oceans are part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Meteorology has application in many diverse fields such as the military, energy production, transport, agriculture, and construction.
The word "meteorology" is from the Ancient Greek μετέωρος "metéōros" ("meteor") and -λογία "-logia" ("-(o)logy"), meaning "the study of things high in the air."
The ability to predict rains and floods based on annual cycles was evidently used by humans at least from the time of agricultural settlement if not earlier. Early approaches to predicting weather were based on astrology and were practiced by priests. Cuneiform inscriptions on Babylonian tablets included associations between thunder and rain. The Chaldeans differentiated the 22° and 46° halos.
Ancient Indian Upanishads contain mentions of clouds and seasons. The Samaveda mentions sacrifices to be performed when certain phenomena were noticed. Varāhamihira's classical work "Brihatsamhita", written about 500 AD, provides evidence of weather observation.
In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote "Meteorology". Aristotle is considered the founder of meteorology. One of the most impressive achievements described in the "Meteorology" is the description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle.
The book De Mundo (composed before 250 BC or between 350 and 200 BC) noted:
The Greek scientist Theophrastus compiled a book on weather forecasting, called the "Book of Signs". The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather and in weather forecasting for nearly 2,000 years. In 25 AD, Pomponius Mela, a geographer for the Roman Empire, formalized the climatic zone system. According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari wrote the "Kitab al-Nabat" ("Book of Plants"), in which he deals with the application of meteorology to agriculture during the Muslim Agricultural Revolution. He describes the meteorological character of the sky, the planets and constellations, the sun and moon, the lunar phases indicating seasons and rain, the "anwa" (heavenly bodies of rain), and atmospheric phenomena such as winds, thunder, lightning, snow, floods, valleys, rivers, lakes.
Early attempts at predicting weather were often related to prophecy and divining, and were sometimes based on astrological ideas. Admiral FitzRoy tried to separate scientific approaches from prophetic ones.
Ptolemy wrote on the atmospheric refraction of light in the context of astronomical observations. In 1021, Alhazen showed that atmospheric refraction is also responsible for twilight; he estimated that twilight begins when the sun is 19 degrees below the horizon, and also used a geometric determination based on this to estimate the maximum possible height of the Earth's atmosphere as 52,000 "passim" (about 49 miles, or 79 km).
St. Albert the Great was the first to propose that each drop of falling rain had the form of a small sphere, and that this form meant that the rainbow was produced by light interacting with each raindrop. Roger Bacon was the first to calculate the angular size of the rainbow. He stated that a rainbow summit can not appear higher than 42 degrees above the horizon. In the late 13th century and early 14th century, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and Theodoric of Freiberg were the first to give the correct explanations for the primary rainbow phenomenon. Theoderic went further and also explained the secondary rainbow. In 1716, Edmund Halley suggested that aurorae are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the Earth's magnetic field lines.
In 1441, King Sejong's son, Prince Munjong of Korea, invented the first standardized rain gauge. These were sent throughout the Joseon dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based upon a farmer's potential harvest. In 1450, Leone Battista Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer, and was known as the first "anemometer". In 1607, Galileo Galilei constructed a thermoscope. In 1611, Johannes Kepler wrote the first scientific treatise on snow crystals: "Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow)." In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli invented the mercury barometer. In 1662, Sir Christopher Wren invented the mechanical, self-emptying, tipping bucket rain gauge. In 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit created a reliable scale for measuring temperature with a mercury-type thermometer. In 1742, Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed the "centigrade" temperature scale, the predecessor of the current Celsius scale. In 1783, the first hair hygrometer was demonstrated by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. In 1802–1803, Luke Howard wrote "On the Modification of Clouds", in which he assigns cloud types Latin names. In 1806, Francis Beaufort introduced his system for classifying wind speeds. Near the end of the 19th century the first cloud atlases were published, including the "International Cloud Atlas", which has remained in print ever since. The April 1960 launch of the first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1, marked the beginning of the age where weather information became available globally.
In 1648, Blaise Pascal rediscovered that atmospheric pressure decreases with height, and deduced that there is a vacuum above the atmosphere. In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli published "Hydrodynamics", initiating the Kinetic theory of gases and established the basic laws for the theory of gases. In 1761, Joseph Black discovered that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting. In 1772, Black's student Daniel Rutherford discovered nitrogen, which he called "phlogisticated air", and together they developed the phlogiston theory. In 1777, Antoine Lavoisier discovered oxygen and developed an explanation for combustion. In 1783, in Lavoisier's essay "Reflexions sur le phlogistique," he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory. In 1804, Sir John Leslie observed that a matte black surface radiates heat more effectively than a polished surface, suggesting the importance of black-body radiation. In 1808, John Dalton defended caloric theory in "A New System of Chemistry" and described how it combines with matter, especially gases; he proposed that the heat capacity of gases varies inversely with atomic weight. In 1824, Sadi Carnot analyzed the efficiency of steam engines using caloric theory; he developed the notion of a reversible process and, in postulating that no such thing exists in nature, laid the foundation for the second law of thermodynamics.
In 1494, Christopher Columbus experienced a tropical cyclone, which led to the first written European account of a hurricane. In 1686, Edmund Halley presented a systematic study of the trade winds and monsoons and identified solar heating as the cause of atmospheric motions. In 1735, an "ideal" explanation of global circulation through study of the trade winds was written by George Hadley. In 1743, when Benjamin Franklin was prevented from seeing a lunar eclipse by a hurricane, he decided that cyclones move in a contrary manner to the winds at their periphery. Understanding the kinematics of how exactly the rotation of the Earth affects airflow was partial at first. Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis published a paper in 1835 on the energy yield of machines with rotating parts, such as waterwheels. In 1856, William Ferrel proposed the existence of a circulation cell in the mid-latitudes, and the air within deflected by the Coriolis force resulting in the prevailing westerly winds. Late in the 19th century, the motion of air masses along isobars was understood to be the result of the large-scale interaction of the pressure gradient force and the deflecting force. By 1912, this deflecting force was named the Coriolis effect. Just after World War I, a group of meteorologists in Norway led by Vilhelm Bjerknes developed the Norwegian cyclone model that explains the generation, intensification and ultimate decay (the life cycle) of mid-latitude cyclones, and introduced the idea of fronts, that is, sharply defined boundaries between air masses. The group included Carl-Gustaf Rossby (who was the first to explain the large scale atmospheric flow in terms of fluid dynamics), Tor Bergeron (who first determined how rain forms) and Jacob Bjerknes.
In the late 16th century and first half of the 17th century a range of meteorological instruments were invented – the thermometer, barometer, hydrometer, as well as wind and rain gauges. In the 1650s natural philosophers started using these instruments to systematically record weather observations. Scientific academies established weather diaries and organised observational networks. In 1654, Ferdinando II de Medici established the first "weather observing" network, that consisted of meteorological stations in Florence, Cutigliano, Vallombrosa, Bologna, Parma, Milan, Innsbruck, Osnabrück, Paris and Warsaw. The collected data were sent to Florence at regular time intervals. In the 1660s Robert Hooke of the Royal Society of London sponsored networks of weather observers. Hippocrates' treatise "Airs, Waters, and Places" had linked weather to disease. Thus early meteorologists attempted to correlate weather patterns with epidemic outbreaks, and the climate with public health.
During the Age of Enlightenment meteorology tried to rationalise traditional weather lore, including astrological meteorology. But there were also attempts to establish a theoretical understanding of weather phenomena. Edmond Halley and George Hadley tried to explain trade winds. They reasoned that the rising mass of heated equator air is replaced by an inflow of cooler air from high latitudes. A flow of warm air at high altitude from equator to poles in turn established an early picture of circulation. Frustration with the lack of discipline among weather observers, and the poor quality of the instruments, led the early modern nation states to organise large observation networks. Thus by the end of the 18th century, meteorologists had access to large quantities of reliable weather data. In 1832, an electromagnetic telegraph was created by Baron Schilling. The arrival of the electrical telegraph in 1837 afforded, for the first time, a practical method for quickly gathering surface weather observations from a wide area.
This data could be used to produce maps of the state of the atmosphere for a region near the Earth's surface and to study how these states evolved through time. To make frequent weather forecasts based on these data required a reliable network of observations, but it was not until 1849 that the Smithsonian Institution began to establish an observation network across the United States under the leadership of Joseph Henry. Similar observation networks were established in Europe at this time. The Reverend William Clement Ley was key in understanding of cirrus clouds and early understandings of Jet Streams. Charles Kenneth Mackinnon Douglas, known as 'CKM' Douglas read Ley's papers after his death and carried on the early study of weather systems.
Nineteenth century researchers in meteorology were drawn from military or medical backgrounds, rather than trained as dedicated scientists. In 1854, the United Kingdom government appointed Robert FitzRoy to the new office of "Meteorological Statist to the Board of Trade" with the task of gathering weather observations at sea. FitzRoy's office became the United Kingdom Meteorological Office in 1854, the second oldest national meteorological service in the world (the Central Institution for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in Austria was founded in 1851 and is the oldest weather service in the world). The first daily weather forecasts made by FitzRoy's Office were published in "The Times" newspaper in 1860. The following year a system was introduced of hoisting storm warning cones at principal ports when a gale was expected.
Over the next 50 years, many countries established national meteorological services. The India Meteorological Department (1875) was established to follow tropical cyclone and monsoon. The Finnish Meteorological Central Office (1881) was formed from part of Magnetic Observatory of Helsinki University. Japan's Tokyo Meteorological Observatory, the forerunner of the Japan Meteorological Agency, began constructing surface weather maps in 1883. The United States Weather Bureau (1890) was established under the United States Department of Agriculture. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (1906) was established by a Meteorology Act to unify existing state meteorological services.
In 1904, Norwegian scientist Vilhelm Bjerknes first argued in his paper "Weather Forecasting as a Problem in Mechanics and Physics" that it should be possible to forecast weather from calculations based upon natural laws.
It was not until later in the 20th century that advances in the understanding of atmospheric physics led to the foundation of modern numerical weather prediction. In 1922, Lewis Fry Richardson published "Weather Prediction By Numerical Process," after finding notes and derivations he worked on as an ambulance driver in World War I. He described how small terms in the prognostic fluid dynamics equations that govern atmospheric flow could be neglected, and a numerical calculation scheme that could be devised to allow predictions. Richardson envisioned a large auditorium of thousands of people performing the calculations. However, the sheer number of calculations required was too large to complete without electronic computers, and the size of the grid and time steps used in the calculations led to unrealistic results. Though numerical analysis later found that this was due to numerical instability.
Starting in the 1950s, numerical forecasts with computers became feasible. The first weather forecasts derived this way used barotropic (single-vertical-level) models, and could successfully predict the large-scale movement of midlatitude Rossby waves, that is, the pattern of atmospheric lows and highs. In 1959, the UK Meteorological Office received its first computer, a Ferranti Mercury.
In the 1960s, the chaotic nature of the atmosphere was first observed and mathematically described by Edward Lorenz, founding the field of chaos theory. These advances have led to the current use of ensemble forecasting in most major forecasting centers, to take into account uncertainty arising from the chaotic nature of the atmosphere. Mathematical models used to predict the long term weather of the Earth (climate models), have been developed that have a resolution today that are as coarse as the older weather prediction models. These climate models are used to investigate long-term climate shifts, such as what effects might be caused by human emission of greenhouse gases.
Meteorologists are scientists who study and work in the field of meteorology. The American Meteorological Society publishes and continually updates an authoritative electronic "Meteorology Glossary". Meteorologists work in government agencies, private consulting and research services, industrial enterprises, utilities, radio and television stations, and in education. In the United States, meteorologists held about 10,000 jobs in 2018.
Although weather forecasts and warnings are the best known products of meteorologists for the public, weather presenters on radio and television are not necessarily professional meteorologists. They are most often reporters with little formal meteorological training, using unregulated titles such as "weather specialist" or "weatherman". The American Meteorological Society and National Weather Association issue "Seals of Approval" to weather broadcasters who meet certain requirements but this is not mandatory to be hired by the medias.
Each science has its own unique sets of laboratory equipment. In the atmosphere, there are many things or qualities of the atmosphere that can be measured. Rain, which can be observed, or seen anywhere and anytime was one of the first atmospheric qualities measured historically. Also, two other accurately measured qualities are wind and humidity. Neither of these can be seen but can be felt. The devices to measure these three sprang up in the mid-15th century and were respectively the rain gauge, the anemometer, and the hygrometer. Many attempts had been made prior to the 15th century to construct adequate equipment to measure the many atmospheric variables. Many were faulty in some way or were simply not reliable. Even Aristotle noted this in some of his work as the difficulty to measure the air.
Sets of surface measurements are important data to meteorologists. They give a snapshot of a variety of weather conditions at one single location and are usually at a weather station, a ship or a weather buoy. The measurements taken at a weather station can include any number of atmospheric observables. Usually, temperature, pressure, wind measurements, and humidity are the variables that are measured by a thermometer, barometer, anemometer, and hygrometer, respectively. Professional stations may also include air quality sensors (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, dust, and smoke), ceilometer (cloud ceiling), falling precipitation sensor, flood sensor, lightning sensor, microphone (explosions, sonic booms, thunder), pyranometer/pyrheliometer/spectroradiometer (IR/Vis/UV photodiodes), rain gauge/snow gauge, scintillation counter (background radiation, fallout, radon), seismometer (earthquakes and tremors), transmissometer (visibility), and a GPS clock for data logging. Upper air data are of crucial importance for weather forecasting. The most widely used technique is launches of radiosondes. Supplementing the radiosondes a network of aircraft collection is organized by the World Meteorological Organization.
Remote sensing, as used in meteorology, is the concept of collecting data from remote weather events and subsequently producing weather information. The common types of remote sensing are Radar, Lidar, and satellites (or photogrammetry). Each collects data about the atmosphere from a remote location and, usually, stores the data where the instrument is located. Radar and Lidar are not passive because both use EM radiation to illuminate a specific portion of the atmosphere. Weather satellites along with more general-purpose Earth-observing satellites circling the earth at various altitudes have become an indispensable tool for studying a wide range of phenomena from forest fires to El Niño.
The study of the atmosphere can be divided into distinct areas that depend on both time and spatial scales. At one extreme of this scale is climatology. In the timescales of hours to days, meteorology separates into micro-, meso-, and synoptic scale meteorology. Respectively, the geospatial size of each of these three scales relates directly with the appropriate timescale.
Other subclassifications are used to describe the unique, local, or broad effects within those subclasses.
Microscale meteorology is the study of atmospheric phenomena on a scale of about or less. Individual thunderstorms, clouds, and local turbulence caused by buildings and other obstacles (such as individual hills) are modeled on this scale.
Mesoscale meteorology is the study of atmospheric phenomena that has horizontal scales ranging from 1 km to 1000 km and a vertical scale that starts at the Earth's surface and includes the atmospheric boundary layer, troposphere, tropopause, and the lower section of the stratosphere. Mesoscale timescales last from less than a day to weeks. The events typically of interest are thunderstorms, squall lines, fronts, precipitation bands in tropical and extratropical cyclones, and topographically generated weather systems such as mountain waves and sea and land breezes.
Synoptic scale meteorology predicts atmospheric changes at scales up to 1000 km and 105 sec (28 days), in time and space. At the synoptic scale, the Coriolis acceleration acting on moving air masses (outside of the tropics) plays a dominant role in predictions. The phenomena typically described by synoptic meteorology include events such as extratropical cyclones, baroclinic troughs and ridges, frontal zones, and to some extent jet streams. All of these are typically given on weather maps for a specific time. The minimum horizontal scale of synoptic phenomena is limited to the spacing between surface observation stations.
Global scale meteorology is the study of weather patterns related to the transport of heat from the tropics to the poles. Very large scale oscillations are of importance at this scale. These oscillations have time periods typically on the order of months, such as the Madden–Julian oscillation, or years, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Pacific decadal oscillation. Global scale meteorology pushes into the range of climatology. The traditional definition of climate is pushed into larger timescales and with the understanding of the longer time scale global oscillations, their effect on climate and weather disturbances can be included in the synoptic and mesoscale timescales predictions.
Numerical Weather Prediction is a main focus in understanding air–sea interaction, tropical meteorology, atmospheric predictability, and tropospheric/stratospheric processes. The Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California, developed a global atmospheric model called Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS). NOGAPS is run operationally at Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center for the United States Military. Many other global atmospheric models are run by national meteorological agencies.
Boundary layer meteorology is the study of processes in the air layer directly above Earth's surface, known as the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The effects of the surface – heating, cooling, and friction – cause turbulent mixing within the air layer. Significant movement of heat, matter, or momentum on time scales of less than a day are caused by turbulent motions. Boundary layer meteorology includes the study of all types of surface–atmosphere boundary, including ocean, lake, urban land and non-urban land for the study of meteorology.
Dynamic meteorology generally focuses on the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere. The idea of air parcel is used to define the smallest element of the atmosphere, while ignoring the discrete molecular and chemical nature of the atmosphere. An air parcel is defined as a point in the fluid continuum of the atmosphere. The fundamental laws of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and motion are used to study the atmosphere. The physical quantities that characterize the state of the atmosphere are temperature, density, pressure, etc. These variables have unique values in the continuum.
Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere at a future time and given location. Humans have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since at least the 19th century. Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will evolve.
Once an all-human endeavor based mainly upon changes in barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky condition, forecast models are now used to determine future conditions. Human input is still required to pick the best possible forecast model to base the forecast upon, which involves pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and knowledge of model biases. The chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as the difference in current time and the time for which the forecast is being made (the "range" of the forecast) increases. The use of ensembles and model consensus help narrow the error and pick the most likely outcome.
There are a variety of end uses to weather forecasts. Weather warnings are important forecasts because they are used to protect life and property. Forecasts based on temperature and precipitation are important to agriculture, and therefore to commodity traders within stock markets. Temperature forecasts are used by utility companies to estimate demand over coming days. On an everyday basis, people use weather forecasts to determine what to wear. Since outdoor activities are severely curtailed by heavy rain, snow, and wind chill, forecasts can be used to plan activities around these events, and to plan ahead and survive them.
Aviation meteorology deals with the impact of weather on air traffic management. It is important for air crews to understand the implications of weather on their flight plan as well as their aircraft, as noted by the Aeronautical Information Manual:
"The effects of ice on aircraft are cumulative—thrust is reduced, drag increases, lift lessens, and weight increases. The results are an increase in stall speed and a deterioration of aircraft performance. In extreme cases, 2 to 3 inches of ice can form on the leading edge of the airfoil in less than 5 minutes. It takes but 1/2 inch of ice to reduce the lifting power of some aircraft by 50 percent and increases the frictional drag by an equal percentage."
Meteorologists, soil scientists, agricultural hydrologists, and agronomists are people concerned with studying the effects of weather and climate on plant distribution, crop yield, water-use efficiency, phenology of plant and animal development, and the energy balance of managed and natural ecosystems. Conversely, they are interested in the role of vegetation on climate and weather.
Hydrometeorology is the branch of meteorology that deals with the hydrologic cycle, the water budget, and the rainfall statistics of storms. A hydrometeorologist prepares and issues forecasts of accumulating (quantitative) precipitation, heavy rain, heavy snow, and highlights areas with the potential for flash flooding. Typically the range of knowledge that is required overlaps with climatology, mesoscale and synoptic meteorology, and other geosciences.
The multidisciplinary nature of the branch can result in technical challenges, since tools and solutions from each of the individual disciplines involved may behave slightly differently, be optimized for different hard- and software platforms and use different data formats. There are some initiatives – such as the DRIHM project – that are trying to address this issue.
Nuclear meteorology investigates the distribution of radioactive aerosols and gases in the atmosphere.
Maritime meteorology deals with air and wave forecasts for ships operating at sea. Organizations such as the Ocean Prediction Center, Honolulu National Weather Service forecast office, United Kingdom Met Office, and JMA prepare high seas forecasts for the world's oceans.
Military meteorology is the research and application of meteorology for military purposes. In the United States, the United States Navy's Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command oversees meteorological efforts for the Navy and Marine Corps while the United States Air Force's Air Force Weather Agency is responsible for the Air Force and Army.
Environmental meteorology mainly analyzes industrial pollution dispersion physically and chemically based on meteorological parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind, and various weather conditions.
Meteorology applications in renewable energy includes basic research, "exploration," and potential mapping of wind power and solar radiation for wind and solar energy.
"Please see weather forecasting for weather forecast sites." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19904 |
Meitnerium
Meitnerium is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Mt and atomic number 109. It is an extremely radioactive synthetic element (an element not found in nature, but can be created in a laboratory). The most stable known isotope, meitnerium-278, has a half-life of 4.5 seconds, although the unconfirmed meitnerium-282 may have a longer half-life of 67 seconds. The GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research near Darmstadt, Germany, first created this element in 1982. It is named after Lise Meitner.
In the periodic table, meitnerium is a d-block transactinide element. It is a member of the 7th period and is placed in the group 9 elements, although no chemical experiments have yet been carried out to confirm that it behaves as the heavier homologue to iridium in group 9 as the seventh member of the 6d series of transition metals. Meitnerium is calculated to have similar properties to its lighter homologues, cobalt, rhodium, and iridium.
Meitnerium was first synthesized on August 29, 1982 by a German research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung) in Darmstadt. The team bombarded a target of bismuth-209 with accelerated nuclei of iron-58 and detected a single atom of the isotope meitnerium-266:
This work was confirmed three years later at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna (then in the Soviet Union).
Using Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, meitnerium should be known as "eka-iridium". In 1979, during the Transfermium Wars (but before the synthesis of meitnerium), IUPAC published recommendations according to which the element was to be called "unnilennium" (with the corresponding symbol of "Une"), a systematic element name as a placeholder, until the element was discovered (and the discovery then confirmed) and a permanent name was decided on. Although widely used in the chemical community on all levels, from chemistry classrooms to advanced textbooks, the recommendations were mostly ignored among scientists in the field, who either called it "element 109", with the symbol of "E109", "(109)" or even simply "109", or used the proposed name "meitnerium".
The naming of meitnerium was discussed in the element naming controversy regarding the names of elements 104 to 109, but "meitnerium" was the only proposal and thus was never disputed. The name "meitnerium" (Mt) was suggested by the GSI team in September 1992 in honor of the Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, a co-discoverer of protactinium (with Otto Hahn), and one of the discoverers of nuclear fission. In 1994 the name was recommended by IUPAC, and was officially adopted in 1997. It is thus the only element named specifically after a non-mythological woman (curium being named for both Pierre and Marie Curie).
Meitnerium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. Eight different isotopes of meitnerium have been reported with atomic masses 266, 268, 270, and 274–278, two of which, meitnerium-268 and meitnerium-270, have known but unconfirmed metastable states. A ninth isotope with atomic mass 282 is unconfirmed. Most of these decay predominantly through alpha decay, although some undergo spontaneous fission.
All meitnerium isotopes are extremely unstable and radioactive; in general, heavier isotopes are more stable than the lighter. The most stable known meitnerium isotope, 278Mt, is also the heaviest known; it has a half-life of 4.5 seconds. The unconfirmed 282Mt is even heavier and appears to have a longer half-life of 67 seconds. The isotopes 276Mt and 274Mt have half-lives of 0.45 and 0.44 seconds respectively. The remaining five isotopes have half-lives between 1 and 20 milliseconds.
The isotope 277Mt, created as the final decay product of 293Ts for the first time in 2012, was observed to undergo spontaneous fission with a half-life of 5 milliseconds. Preliminary data analysis considered the possibility of this fission event instead originating from 277Hs, for it also has a half-life of a few milliseconds, and could be populated following undetected electron capture somewhere along the decay chain. This possibility was later deemed very unlikely based on observed decay energies of 281Ds and 281Rg and the short half-life of 277Mt, although there is still some uncertainty of the assignment. Regardless, the rapid fission of 277Mt and 277Hs is strongly suggestive of a region of instability for superheavy nuclei with "N" = 168–170. The existence of this region, characterized by a decrease in fission barrier height between the deformed shell closure at "N" = 162 and spherical shell closure at "N" = 184, is consistent with theoretical models.
No properties of meitnerium or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that meitnerium and its parents decay very quickly. Properties of meitnerium metal remain unknown and only predictions are available.
Meitnerium is the seventh member of the 6d series of transition metals. Since element 112 (copernicium) has been shown to be a group 12 metal, it is expected that all the elements from 104 to 111 would continue a fourth transition metal series, with meitnerium as part of the platinum group metals. Calculations on its ionization potentials and atomic and ionic radii are similar to that of its lighter homologue iridium, thus implying that meitnerium's basic properties will resemble those of the other group 9 elements, cobalt, rhodium, and iridium.
Prediction of the probable chemical properties of meitnerium has not received much attention recently. Meitnerium is expected to be a noble metal, and about as noble as silver (the standard electrode potential for the Mt3+/Mt couple is expected to be 0.8 V, close to the +0.7993 V value known for the Ag+/Ag couple). Based on the most stable oxidation states of the lighter group 9 elements, the most stable oxidation states of meitnerium are predicted to be the +6, +3, and +1 states, with the +3 state being the most stable in aqueous solutions. In comparison, rhodium and iridium show a maximum oxidation state of +6, while the most stable states are +4 and +3 for iridium and +3 for rhodium. The oxidation state +9, represented only by iridium in [IrO4]+, might be possible for its congener meitnerium in the nonafluoride (MtF9) and the [MtO4]+ cation, although [IrO4]+ is expected to be more stable than these meitnerium compounds. The tetrahalides of meitnerium have also been predicted to have similar stabilities to those of iridium, thus also allowing a stable +4 state. It is further expected that the maximum oxidation states of elements from bohrium (element 107) to darmstadtium (element 110) may be stable in the gas phase but not in aqueous solution.
Meitnerium is expected to be a solid under normal conditions and assume a face-centered cubic crystal structure, similarly to its lighter congener iridium. It should be a very heavy metal with a density of around 37.4 g/cm3, which would be the second-highest of any of the 118 known elements, second only to that predicted for its neighbor hassium (41 g/cm3). In comparison, the densest known element that has had its density measured, osmium, has a density of only 22.61 g/cm3. This results from meitnerium's high atomic weight, the lanthanide and actinide contractions, and relativistic effects, although production of enough meitnerium to measure this quantity would be impractical, and the sample would quickly decay. Meitnerium is also predicted to be paramagnetic.
Theoreticians have predicted the covalent radius of meitnerium to be 6 to 10 pm larger than that of iridium. The atomic radius of meitnerium is expected to be around 128 pm.
Meitnerium is the first element on the periodic table whose chemistry has not yet been investigated. Unambiguous determination of the chemical characteristics of meitnerium has yet to have been established due to the short half-lives of meitnerium isotopes and a limited number of likely volatile compounds that could be studied on a very small scale. One of the few meitnerium compounds that are likely to be sufficiently volatile is meitnerium hexafluoride (), as its lighter homologue iridium hexafluoride () is volatile above 60 °C and therefore the analogous compound of meitnerium might also be sufficiently volatile; a volatile octafluoride () might also be possible. For chemical studies to be carried out on a transactinide, at least four atoms must be produced, the half-life of the isotope used must be at least 1 second, and the rate of production must be at least one atom per week. Even though the half-life of 278Mt, the most stable confirmed meitnerium isotope, is 4.5 seconds, long enough to perform chemical studies, another obstacle is the need to increase the rate of production of meitnerium isotopes and allow experiments to carry on for weeks or months so that statistically significant results can be obtained. Separation and detection must be carried out continuously to separate out the meitnerium isotopes and have automated systems experiment on the gas-phase and solution chemistry of meitnerium, as the yields for heavier elements are predicted to be smaller than those for lighter elements; some of the separation techniques used for bohrium and hassium could be reused. However, the experimental chemistry of meitnerium has not received as much attention as that of the heavier elements from copernicium to livermorium.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory attempted to synthesize the isotope 271Mt in 2002–2003 for a possible chemical investigation of meitnerium because it was expected that it might be more stable than the isotopes around it as it has 162 neutrons, a magic number for deformed nuclei; its half-life was predicted to be a few seconds, long enough for a chemical investigation. However, no atoms of 271Mt were detected, and this isotope of meitnerium is currently unknown.
An experiment determining the chemical properties of a transactinide would need to compare a compound of that transactinide with analogous compounds of some of its lighter homologues: for example, in the chemical characterization of hassium, hassium tetroxide (HsO4) was compared with the analogous osmium compound, osmium tetroxide (OsO4). In a preliminary step towards determining the chemical properties of meitnerium, the GSI attempted sublimation of the rhodium compounds rhodium(III) oxide (Rh2O3) and rhodium(III) chloride (RhCl3). However, macroscopic amounts of the oxide would not sublimate until 1000 °C and the chloride would not until 780 °C, and then only in the presence of carbon aerosol particles: these temperatures are far too high for such procedures to be used on meitnerium, as most of the current methods used for the investigation of the chemistry of superheavy elements do not work above 500 °C.
Following the 2014 successful synthesis of seaborgium hexacarbonyl, Sg(CO)6, studies were conducted with the stable transition metals of groups 7 through 9, suggesting that carbonyl formation could be extended to further probe the chemistries of the early 6d transition metals from rutherfordium to meitnerium inclusive. Nevertheless, the challenges of low half-lives and difficult production reactions make meitnerium difficult to access for radiochemists, though the isotopes 278Mt and 276Mt are long-lived enough for chemical research and may be produced in the decay chains of 294Ts and 288Mc respectively. 276Mt is likely more suitable, since producing tennessine requires a rare and rather short-lived berkelium target. The isotope 270Mt, observed in the decay chain of 278Nh with a half-life of 0.69 seconds, may also be sufficiently long-lived for chemical investigations, though a direct synthesis route leading to this isotope and more precise measurements of its decay properties would be required. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19916 |
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix "mega" is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes of information. This definition has been incorporated into the International System of Quantities.
However, in the computer and information technology fields, several other definitions are used that arose for historical reasons of convenience. A common usage has been to designate one megabyte as (220 B), a measurement that conveniently expresses the binary multiples inherent in digital computer memory architectures. However, most standards bodies have deprecated this usage in favor of a set of binary prefixes, in which this quantity is designated by the unit mebibyte (MiB). Less common is a convention that uses the megabyte to mean 1000×1024 () bytes.
The megabyte is commonly used to measure either 10002 bytes or 10242 bytes. The interpretation of using base 1024 originated as a compromise technical jargon for the byte multiples that needed to be expressed by the powers of 2 but lacked a convenient name. As 1024 (210) approximates 1000 (103), roughly corresponding to the SI prefix kilo-, it was a convenient term to denote the binary multiple. In 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) proposed standards for binary prefixes requiring the use of megabyte to strictly denote 10002 bytes and mebibyte to denote 10242 bytes. By the end of 2009, the IEC Standard had been adopted by the IEEE, EU, ISO and NIST. Nevertheless, the term megabyte continues to be widely used with different meanings:
In this convention, one thousand megabytes (1000 MB) is equal to one gigabyte (1 GB), where 1 GB is one billion bytes.
In this convention, one thousand and twenty-four megabytes (1024 MB) is equal to one gigabyte (1 GB), where 1 GB is 10243 bytes.
Semiconductor memory doubles in size for each address lane added to an integrated circuit package, which favors counts that are powers of two. The capacity of a disk drive is the product of the sector size, number of sectors per track, number of tracks per side, and the number of disk platters in the drive. Changes in any of these factors would not usually double the size. Sector sizes were set as powers of two (most common 512 bytes or 4096 bytes) for convenience in processing. It was a natural extension to give the capacity of a disk drive in multiples of the sector size, giving a mix of decimal and binary multiples when expressing total disk capacity.
Depending on compression methods and file format, a megabyte of data can roughly be:
The human genome consists of DNA representing 800 MB of data. The parts that differentiate one person from another can be compressed to 4 MB. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19918 |
Monosaccharide
Monosaccharides (from Greek "monos": single, "sacchar": sugar), also called simple sugar, are the simplest form of sugar and the most basic units of carbohydrates. They cannot be further hydrolyzed to simpler chemical compounds. The general formula is . They are usually colorless, water-soluble, and crystalline solids. Some monosaccharides have a sweet taste.
Examples of monosaccharides include glucose (dextrose), fructose (levulose), and galactose. Monosaccharides are the building blocks of disaccharides (such as sucrose and lactose) and polysaccharides (such as cellulose and starch). Each carbon atom that supports a hydroxyl group is chiral, except those at the end of the chain. This gives rise to a number of isomeric forms, all with the same chemical formula. For instance, galactose and glucose are both aldohexoses, but have different physical structures and chemical properties.
The monosaccharide glucose plays a pivotal role in metabolism, where the chemical energy is extracted through glycolysis and the citric acid cycle to provide energy to living organisms. Some other monosaccharides can be converted in the living organism to glucose.
With few exceptions (e.g., deoxyribose), monosaccharides have this chemical formula: (CH2O)"x", where conventionally "x" ≥ 3. Monosaccharides can be classified by the number "x" of carbon atoms they contain: triose (3), tetrose (4), pentose (5), hexose (6), heptose (7), and so on.
Glucose, used as an energy source and for the synthesis of starch, glycogen and cellulose, is a hexose. Ribose and deoxyribose (in RNA and DNA respectively) are pentose sugars. Examples of heptoses include the ketoses, mannoheptulose and sedoheptulose. Monosaccharides with eight or more carbons are rarely observed as they are quite unstable. In aqueous solutions monosaccharides exist as rings if they have more than four carbons.
Simple monosaccharides have a linear and unbranched carbon skeleton with one carbonyl (C=O) functional group, and one hydroxyl (OH) group on each of the remaining carbon atoms. Therefore, the molecular structure of a simple monosaccharide can be written as H(CHOH)"n"(C=O)(CHOH)"m"H, where "n" + 1 + "m" = "x"; so that its elemental formula is C"x"H2"x"O"x".
By convention, the carbon atoms are numbered from 1 to "x" along the backbone, starting from the end that is closest to the C=O group. Monosaccharides are the simplest units of carbohydrates and the simplest form of sugar.
If the carbonyl is at position 1 (that is, "n" or "m" is zero), the molecule begins with a formyl group H(C=O)− and is technically an aldehyde. In that case, the compound is termed an aldose. Otherwise, the molecule has a keto group, a carbonyl −(C=O)− between two carbons; then it is formally a ketone, and is termed a ketose. Ketoses of biological interest usually have the carbonyl at position 2.
The various classifications above can be combined, resulting in names such as "aldohexose" and "ketotriose".
A more general nomenclature for open-chain monosaccharides combines a Greek prefix to indicate the number of carbons (tri-, tetr-, pent-, hex-, etc.) with the suffixes "-ose" for aldoses and "-ulose" for ketoses. In the latter case, if the carbonyl is not at position 2, its position is then indicated by a numeric infix. So, for example, H(C=O)(CHOH)4H is pentose, H(CHOH)(C=O)(CHOH)3H is pentulose, and H(CHOH)2(C=O)(CHOH)2H is pent-3-ulose.
Two monosaccharides with equivalent molecular graphs (same chain length and same carbonyl position) may still be distinct stereoisomers, whose molecules differ in spatial orientation. This happens only if the molecule contains a stereogenic center, specifically a carbon atom that is chiral (connected to four distinct molecular sub-structures). Those four bonds can have any of two configurations in space distinguished by their handedness. In a simple open-chain monosaccharide, every carbon is chiral except the first and the last atoms of the chain, and (in ketoses) the carbon with the keto group.
For example, the triketose H(CHOH)(C=O)(CHOH)H (glycerone, dihydroxyacetone) has no stereogenic center, and therefore exists as a single stereoisomer. The other triose, the aldose H(C=O)(CHOH)2H (glyceraldehyde), has one chiral carbon — the central one, number 2 — which is bonded to groups −H, −OH, −C(OH)H2, and −(C=O)H. Therefore, it exists as two stereoisomers whose molecules are mirror images of each other (like a left and a right glove). Monosaccharides with four or more carbons may contain multiple chiral carbons, so they typically have more than two stereoisomers. The number of distinct stereoisomers with the same diagram is bounded by 2"c", where "c" is the total number of chiral carbons.
The Fischer projection is a systematic way of drawing the skeletal formula of an acyclic monosaccharide so that the handedness of each chiral carbon is well specified. Each stereoisomer of a simple open-chain monosaccharide can be identified by the positions (right or left) in the Fischer diagram of the chiral hydroxyls (the hydroxyls attached to the chiral carbons).
Most stereoisomers are themselves chiral (distinct from their mirror images). In the Fischer projection, two mirror-image isomers differ by having the positions of all chiral hydroxyls reversed right-to-left. Mirror-image isomers are chemically identical in non-chiral environments, but usually have very different biochemical properties and occurrences in nature.
While most stereoisomers can be arranged in pairs of mirror-image forms, there are some non-chiral stereoisomers that are identical to their mirror images, in spite of having chiral centers. This happens whenever the molecular graph is symmetrical, as in the 3-ketopentoses H(CHOH)2(CO)(CHOH)2H, and the two halves are mirror images of each other. In that case, mirroring is equivalent to a half-turn rotation. For this reason, there are only three distinct 3-ketopentose stereoisomers, even though the molecule has two chiral carbons.
Distinct stereoisomers that are not mirror-images of each other usually have different chemical properties, even in non-chiral environments. Therefore, each mirror pair and each non-chiral stereoisomer may be given a specific monosaccharide name. For example, there are 16 distinct aldohexose stereoisomers, but the name "glucose" means a specific pair of mirror-image aldohexoses. In the Fischer projection, one of the two glucose isomers has the hydroxyl at left on C3, and at right on C4 and C5; while the other isomer has the reversed pattern. These specific monosaccharide names have conventional three-letter abbreviations, like "Glu" for glucose and "Thr" for threose.
Generally, a monosaccharide with "n" asymmetrical carbons has 2"n" stereoisomers. The number of open chain stereoisomers for an aldose monosaccharide is larger by one than that of a ketose monosaccharide of the same length. Every ketose will have 2("n"−3) stereoisomers where "n" > 2 is the number of carbons. Every aldose will have 2("n"−2) stereoisomers where "n" > 2 is the number of carbons.
These are also referred to as epimers which have the different arrangement of −OH and −H groups at the asymmetric or chiral carbon atoms (this does not apply to those carbons having the carbonyl functional group).
Like many chiral molecules, the two stereoisomers of glyceraldehyde will gradually rotate the polarization direction of linearly polarized light as it passes through it, even in solution. The two stereoisomers are identified with the prefixes - and -, according to the sense of rotation: -glyceraldehyde is dextrorotatory (rotates the polarization axis clockwise), while -glyceraldehyde is levorotatory (rotates it counterclockwise).
The - and - prefixes are also used with other monosaccharides, to distinguish two particular stereoisomers that are mirror-images of each other. For this purpose, one considers the chiral carbon that is furthest removed from the C=O group. Its four bonds must connect to −H, −OH, −C(OH)H, and the rest of the molecule. If the molecule can be rotated in space so that the directions of those four groups match those of the analog groups in -glyceraldehyde's C2, then the isomer receives the - prefix. Otherwise, it receives the - prefix.
In the Fischer projection, the - and - prefixes specifies the configuration at the carbon atom that is second from bottom: - if the hydroxyl is on the right side, and - if it is on the left side.
Note that the - and - prefixes do not indicate the direction of rotation of polarized light, which is a combined effect of the arrangement at all chiral centers. However, the two enantiomers will always rotate the light in opposite directions, by the same amount. See also .
A monosaccharide often switches from the acyclic (open-chain) form to a cyclic form, through a nucleophilic addition reaction between the carbonyl group and one of the hydroxyls of the same molecule. The reaction creates a ring of carbon atoms closed by one bridging oxygen atom. The resulting molecule has a hemiacetal or hemiketal group, depending on whether the linear form was an aldose or a ketose. The reaction is easily reversed, yielding the original open-chain form.
In these cyclic forms, the ring usually has five or six atoms. These forms are called furanoses and pyranoses, respectively — by analogy with furan and pyran, the simplest compounds with the same carbon-oxygen ring (although they lack the double bonds of these two molecules). For example, the aldohexose glucose may form a hemiacetal linkage between the hydroxyl on carbon 1 and the oxygen on carbon 4, yielding a molecule with a 5-membered ring, called glucofuranose. The same reaction can take place between carbons 1 and 5 to form a molecule with a 6-membered ring, called glucopyranose. Cyclic forms with a seven-atom ring (the same of oxepane), rarely encountered, are called heptoses.
For many monosaccharides (including glucose), the cyclic forms predominate, in the solid state and in solutions, and therefore the same name commonly is used for the open- and closed-chain isomers. Thus, for example, the term "glucose" may signify glucofuranose, glucopyranose, the open-chain form, or a mixture of the three.
Cyclization creates a new stereogenic center at the carbonyl-bearing carbon. The −OH group that replaces the carbonyl's oxygen may end up in two distinct positions relative to the ring's midplane. Thus each open-chain monosaccharide yields two cyclic isomers (anomers), denoted by the prefixes α- and β-. The molecule can change between these two forms by a process called mutarotation, that consists in a reversal of the ring-forming reaction followed by another ring formation.
The stereochemical structure of a cyclic monosaccharide can be represented in a Haworth projection. In this diagram, the α-isomer for the pyranose form of a -aldohexose has the −OH of the anomeric carbon below the plane of the carbon atoms, while the β-isomer has the −OH of the anomeric carbon above the plane. Pyranoses typically adopt a chair conformation, similar to that of cyclohexane. In this conformation, the α-isomer has the −OH of the anomeric carbon in an axial position, whereas the β-isomer has the −OH of the anomeric carbon in equatorial position (considering -aldohexose sugars).
A large number of biologically important modified monosaccharides exist: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19919 |
Microscopium
Microscopium ("the Microscope") is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. The name is a Latinised form of the Greek word for microscope. Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere.
The constellation's brightest star is Gamma Microscopii of apparent magnitude 4.68, a yellow giant 2.5 times the Sun's mass located 223 ± 8 light-years distant. It passed within 1.14 and 3.45 light-years of the Sun some 3.9 million years ago, possibly disturbing the outer Solar System. Two star systems—WASP-7 and HD 205739—have been determined to have planets, while two others—the young red dwarf star AU Microscopii and the sunlike HD 202628—have debris disks. AU Microscopii and the binary red dwarf system AT Microscopii are probably a wide triple system and members of the Beta Pictoris moving group. Nicknamed "Speedy Mic", BO Microscopii is a star with an extremely fast rotation period of 9 hours, 7 minutes.
Microscopium is a small constellation bordered by Capricornus to the north, Piscis Austrinus and Grus to the east, Sagittarius to the west, and Indus to the south, touching on Telescopium to the southwest. The recommended three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Mic". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of four segments ("illustrated in infobox"). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −27.45° and −45.09°. The whole constellation is visible to observers south of latitude 45°N. Given that its brightest stars are of fifth magnitude, the constellation is invisible to the naked eye in areas with light polluted skies.
French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille charted and designated ten stars with the Bayer designations Alpha through to Iota in 1756. A star in neighbouring Indus that Lacaille had labelled Nu Indi turned out to be in Microscopium, so Gould renamed it Nu Microscopii. Francis Baily considered Gamma and Epsilon Microscopii to belong to the neighbouring constellation Piscis Austrinus, but subsequent cartographers did not follow this. In his 1725 "Catalogus Britannicus", John Flamsteed labelled the stars 1, 2, 3 and 4 Piscis Austrini, which became Gamma Microscopii, HR 8076, HR 8110 and Epsilon Microscopii respectively. Within the constellation's borders, there are 43 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
Depicting the eyepiece of the microscope is Gamma Microscopii, which—at magnitude of 4.68—is the brightest star in the constellation. Having spent much of its 620-million-year lifespan as a blue-white main sequence star, it has swollen and cooled to become a yellow giant of spectral type G6III, with a diameter ten times that of the Sun. Measurement of its parallax yields a distance of 223 ± 8 light years from Earth. It likely passed within 1.14 and 3.45 light-years of the Sun some 3.9 million years ago, at around 2.5 times the mass of the Sun, it is possibly massive enough and close enough to disturb the Oort cloud. Alpha Microscopii is also an ageing yellow giant star of spectral type G7III with an apparent magnitude of 4.90. Located 400 ± 30 light-years away from Earth, it has swollen to 17.5 times the diameter of the Sun. Alpha has a 10th magnitude companion, visible in 7.5 cm telescopes, though this is a coincidental closeness rather than a true binary system. Epsilon Microscopii lies 166 ± 5 light-years away, and is a white star of apparent magnitude 4.7, and spectral type A1V. Theta1 and Theta2 Microscopii make up a wide double whose components are splittable to the naked eye. Both are white A-class magnetic spectrum variable stars with strong metallic lines, similar to Cor Caroli. They mark the constellation's specimen slide.
Many notable objects are too faint to be seen with the naked eye. AX Microscopii, better known as Lacaille 8760, is a red dwarf which lies only 12.9 light-years from the Solar System. At magnitude 6.68, it is the brightest red dwarf in the sky. BO Microscopii is a rapidly rotating star that has 80% the diameter of the Sun. Nicknamed "Speedy Mic", it has a rotation period of 9 hours 7 minutes. An active star, it has prominent stellar flares that average 100 times stronger than those of the Sun, and are emitting energy mainly in the X-ray and ultraviolet bands of the spectrum. It lies 218 ± 4 light-years away from the Sun. AT Microscopii is a binary star system, both members of which are flare star red dwarfs. The system lies close to and may form a very wide triple system with AU Microscopii, a young star which appears to be a planetary system in the making with a debris disk. The three stars are candidate members of the Beta Pictoris moving group, one of the nearest associations of stars that share a common motion through space.
The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa in 2003 reported that observations of four of the Mira variables in Microscopium were very urgently needed as data on their light curves was incomplete. Two of them—R and S Microscopii—are challenging stars for novice amateur astronomers, and the other two, U and RY Microscopii, are more difficult still. Another red giant, T Microscopii, is a semiregular variable that ranges between magnitudes 7.7 and 9.6 over 344 days. Of apparent magnitude 11, DD Microscopii is a symbiotic star system composed of an orange giant of spectral type K2III and white dwarf in close orbit, with the smaller star ionizing the stellar wind of the larger star. The system has a low metallicity. Combined with its high galactic latitude, this indicates that the star system has its origin in the galactic halo of the Milky Way.
HD 205739 is a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F7V that is around 1.22 times as massive and 2.3 times as luminous as the Sun. It has a Jupiter-sized planet with an orbital period of 280 days that was discovered by the radial velocity method. WASP-7 is a star of spectral type F5V with an apparent magnitude of 9.54, about 1.28 times as massive as the Sun. Its hot Jupiter planet—WASP-7b—was discovered by transit method and found to orbit the star every 4.95 days. HD 202628 is a sunlike star of spectral type G2V with a debris disk that ranges from 158 to 220 AU distant. Its inner edge is sharply defined, indicating a probable planet orbiting between 86 and 158 AU from the star.
Describing Microscopium as "totally unremarkable", astronomer Patrick Moore concluded there was nothing of interest for amateur observers. NGC 6925 is a barred spiral galaxy of apparent magnitude 11.3 which is lens-shaped, as it lies almost edge-on to observers on Earth, 3.7 degrees west-northwest of Alpha Microscopii. SN 2011ei, a Type II Supernova in NGC 6925, was discovered by Stu Parker in New Zealand in July 2011. NGC 6923 lies nearby and is a magnitude fainter still. The Microscopium Void is a roughly rectangular region of relatively empty space, bounded by incomplete sheets of galaxies from other voids. The Microscopium Supercluster is an overdensity of galaxy clusters that was first noticed in the early 1990s. The component Abell clusters 3695 and 3696 are likely to be gravitationally bound, while the relations of Abell clusters 3693 and 3705 in the same field are unclear.
The Microscopids are a minor meteor shower that appear from June to mid-July.
The stars that comprise Microscopium are in a region previously considered the hind feet of Sagittarius, a neighbouring constellation. John Ellard Gore wrote that al-Sufi seems to have reported that Ptolemy had seen the stars but he (Al Sufi) did not pinpoint their positions. Microscopium itself was introduced in 1751–52 by Lacaille with the French name "le Microscope", after he had observed and catalogued 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope. He devised fourteen new constellations in uncharted regions of the Southern Celestial Hemisphere not visible from Europe. All but one honoured instruments that symbolised the Age of Enlightenment. Commemorating the compound microscope, the Microscope's name had been Latinised by Lacaille to "Microscopium" by 1763. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19924 |
IC 342/Maffei Group
The IC 342/Maffei Group (also known as the IC 342 Group or the Maffei 1 Group) is the nearest group of galaxies to the Local Group. The group can be described as a binary group; the member galaxies are mostly concentrated around either IC 342 or Maffei 1, both of which are the brightest galaxies within the group. The group is part of the Virgo Supercluster.
The table below lists galaxies that have been identified as associated with the IC342/Maffei 1 Group by I. D. Karachentsev. Note that Karachentsev divides this group into two subgroups centered around IC 342 and Maffei 1.
Additionally, KKH 37 is listed as possibly being a member of the IC 342 Subgroup, and KKH 6 is listed as possibly being a member of the Maffei 1 Subgroup.
As seen from Earth, the group lies near the plane of the Milky Way (a region sometimes called the Zone of Avoidance). Consequently, the light from many of the galaxies is severely affected by dust obscuration within the Milky Way. This complicates observational studies of the group, as uncertainties in the dust obscuration also affect measurements of the galaxies' luminosities and distances as well as other related quantities.
Moreover, the galaxies within the group have historically been difficult to identify. Many galaxies have only been discovered using late 20th century astronomical instrumentation. For example, while many fainter, more distant galaxies, such as the galaxies in the New General Catalogue, were already identified visually by the end of the nineteenth century, Maffei 1 and Maffei 2 were only discovered in 1968 using infrared photographic images of the region. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine whether some objects near IC 342 or Maffei 1 are galaxies associated with the IC 342/Maffei Group or diffuse foreground objects within the Milky Way that merely look like galaxies. For example, the objects MB 2 and Camelopardalis C were once thought to be dwarf galaxies in the IC 342/Maffei Group but are now known to be objects within the Milky Way.
Since the IC 342/Maffei Group and the Local Group are located physically close to each other, the two groups may have influenced each other's evolution during the early stages of galaxy formation. An analysis of the velocities and distances to the IC 342/Maffei Group as measured by M. J. Valtonen and collaborators suggested that IC 342 and Maffei 1 were moving faster than what could be accounted for in the expansion of the universe. They therefore suggested that IC 342 and Maffei 1 were ejected from the Local Group after a violent gravitational interaction with the Andromeda Galaxy during the early stages of the formation of the two groups.
However, this interpretation is dependent on the distances measured to the galaxies in the group, which in turn is dependent on accurately measuring the degree to which interstellar dust in the Milky Way obscures the group. More recent observations have demonstrated that the dust obscuration may have been previously overestimated, so the distances may have been underestimated. If these new distance measurements are correct, then the galaxies in the IC 342/Maffei Group appear to be moving at the rate expected from the expansion of the universe, and the scenario of a collision between the IC 342/Maffei Group and the Local Group would be implausible. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19925 |
M81 Group
The M81 Group is a galaxy group in the constellations Ursa Major and Camelopardalis that includes the galaxies Messier 81 and Messier 82, as well as several other galaxies with high apparent brightnesses. The approximate center of the group is located at a distance of 3.6 Mpc, making it one of the nearest groups to the Local Group. The group is estimated to have a total mass of (1.03 ± 0.17).
The M81 Group, the Local Group, and other nearby groups all lie within the Virgo Supercluster (i.e. the Local Supercluster).
The table below lists galaxies that have been identified as associated with the M81 Group by I. D. Karachentsev.
Note that the object names used in the above table differ from the names used by Karachentsev. NGC, IC, UGC, and PGC numbers have been used in many cases to allow for easier referencing.
Messier 81, Messier 82, and NGC 3077 are all strongly interacting with each other. Observations of the 21-centimeter hydrogen line indicate how the galaxies are connected.
The gravitational interactions have stripped some hydrogen gas away from all three galaxies, leading to the formation of filamentary gas structures within the group. Bridges of neutral hydrogen have been shown to connect M81 with M82 and NGC 3077. Moreover, the interactions have also caused some interstellar gas to fall into the centers of Messier 82 and NGC 3077, which has led to strong starburst activity (or the formation of many stars) within the centers of these two galaxies. Computer simulations of tidal interactions have been used to show how the current structure of the group could have been created. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19926 |
Metre (poetry)
In poetry, metre (British) or meter (American; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody. (Within linguistics, "prosody" is used in a more general sense that includes not only poetic metre but also the rhythmic aspects of prose, whether formal or informal, that vary from language to language, and sometimes between poetic traditions.)
An assortment of features can be identified when classifying poetry and its metre.
The metre of most poetry of the Western world and elsewhere is based on patterns of syllables of particular types. The familiar type of metre in English-language poetry is called qualitative metre, with stressed syllables coming at regular intervals (e.g. in iambic pentameters, usually every even-numbered syllable). Many Romance languages use a scheme that is somewhat similar but where the position of only one particular stressed syllable (e.g. the last) needs to be fixed. The metre of the old Germanic poetry of languages such as Old Norse and Old English was radically different, but was still based on stress patterns.
Some classical languages, in contrast, used a different scheme known as quantitative metre, where patterns were based on syllable weight rather than stress. In the dactylic hexameters of Classical Latin and Classical Greek, for example, each of the six feet making up the line was either a dactyl (long-short-short) or a spondee (long-long): a "long syllable" was literally one that took longer to pronounce than a short syllable: specifically, a syllable consisting of a long vowel or diphthong or followed by two consonants. The stress pattern of the words made no difference to the metre. A number of other ancient languages also used quantitative metre, such as Sanskrit and Classical Arabic (but not Biblical Hebrew).
Finally, non-stressed languages that have little or no differentiation of syllable length, such as French or Chinese, base their verses on the number of syllables only. The most common form in French is the , with twelve syllables a verse, and in classical Chinese five characters, and thus five syllables. But since each Chinese character is pronounced using one syllable in a certain tone, classical Chinese poetry also had more strictly defined rules, such as thematic parallelism or tonal antithesis between lines.
In many Western classical poetic traditions, the metre of a verse can be described as a sequence of "feet", each foot being a specific sequence of syllable types — such as relatively unstressed/stressed (the norm for English poetry) or long/short (as in most classical Latin and Greek poetry).
Iambic pentameter, a common metre in English poetry, is based on a sequence of five "iambic feet" or "iambs", each consisting of a relatively unstressed syllable (here represented with "-" above the syllable) followed by a relatively stressed one (here represented with "/" above the syllable) — "da-DUM" = "- /" :
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This approach to analyzing and classifying metres originates from Ancient Greek tragedians and poets such as Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, and Sappho.
However some metres have an overall rhythmic pattern to the line that cannot easily be described using feet. This occurs in Sanskrit poetry; see Vedic metre and Sanskrit metre. (Although this poetry is in fact specified using feet, each "foot" is more or less equivalent to an entire line.) It also occurs in some Western metres, such as the hendecasyllable favoured by Catullus and Martial, which can be described as:
x x — ∪ ∪ — ∪ — ∪ — —
If the line has only one foot, it is called a "monometer"; two feet, "dimeter"; three is "trimeter"; four is "tetrameter"; five is "pentameter"; six is "hexameter", seven is "heptameter" and eight is "octameter". For example, if the feet are iambs, and if there are five feet to a line, then it is called an iambic pentameter. If the feet are primarily "dactyls" and there are six to a line, then it is a dactylic hexameter.
Sometimes a natural pause occurs in the middle of a line rather than at a line-break. This is a caesura (cut). A good example is from "The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare; the caesurae are indicated by '/':
In Latin and Greek poetry, a caesura is a break within a foot caused by the end of a word.
Each line of traditional Germanic alliterative verse is divided into two half-lines by a caesura. This can be seen in Piers Plowman:
By contrast with caesura, enjambment is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation. Also from Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale":
Poems with a well-defined overall metric pattern often have a few lines that violate that pattern. A common variation is the "inversion" of a foot, which turns an iamb ("da-DUM") into a trochee ("DUM-da"). A second variation is a "headless" verse, which lacks the first syllable of the first foot. A third variation is catalexis, where the end of a line is shortened by a foot, or two or part thereof – an example of this is at the end of each verse in Keats' 'La Belle Dame sans Merci':
Most English metre is classified according to the same system as Classical metre with an important difference. English is an accentual language, and therefore beats and offbeats (stressed and unstressed syllables) take the place of the long and short syllables of classical systems. In most English verse, the metre can be considered as a sort of back beat, against which natural speech rhythms vary expressively. The most common characteristic feet of English verse are the iamb in two syllables and the anapest in three. (See Foot (prosody) for a complete list of the metrical feet and their names.)
The number of metrical systems in English is not agreed upon. The four major types are: accentual verse, accentual-syllabic verse, syllabic verse and quantitative verse. The alliterative verse of Old English could also be added to this list, or included as a special type of accentual verse. Accentual verse focuses on the number of stresses in a line, while ignoring the number of offbeats and syllables; accentual-syllabic verse focuses on regulating both the number of stresses and the total number of syllables in a line; syllabic verse only counts the number of syllables in a line; quantitative verse regulates the patterns of long and short syllables (this sort of verse is often considered alien to English). The use of foreign metres in English is all but exceptional.
The most frequently encountered metre of English verse is the iambic pentameter, in which the metrical norm is five iambic feet per line, though metrical substitution is common and rhythmic variations practically inexhaustible. John Milton's "Paradise Lost", most sonnets, and much else besides in English are written in iambic pentameter. Lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter are commonly known as blank verse. Blank verse in the English language is most famously represented in the plays of William Shakespeare and the great works of Milton, though Tennyson ("Ulysses", "The Princess") and Wordsworth ("The Prelude") also make notable use of it.
A rhymed pair of lines of iambic pentameter make a heroic couplet, a verse form which was used so often in the 18th century that it is now used mostly for humorous effect (although see Pale Fire for a non-trivial case). The most famous writers of heroic couplets are Dryden and Pope.
Another important metre in English is the ballad metre, also called the "common metre", which is a four-line stanza, with two pairs of a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter; the rhymes usually fall on the lines of trimeter, although in many instances the tetrameter also rhymes. This is the metre of most of the Border and Scots or English ballads. In hymnody it is called the "common metre", as it is the most common of the named hymn metres used to pair many hymn lyrics with melodies, such as "Amazing Grace":
Emily Dickinson is famous for her frequent use of ballad metre:
Versification in Classical Sanskrit poetry is of three kinds.
Standard traditional works on metre are Pingala's and Kedāra's . The most exhaustive compilations, such as the modern ones by Patwardhan and Velankar contain over 600 metres. This is a substantially larger repertoire than in any other metrical tradition.
The metrical "feet" in the classical languages were based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized according to their weight as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables (indicated as "dum" and "di" below). These are also called "heavy" and "light" syllables, respectively, to distinguish from long and short vowels. The foot is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical metre.
The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two morae. A long syllable contains either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants. Various rules of elision sometimes prevent a grammatical syllable from making a full syllable, and certain other lengthening and shortening rules (such as correption) can create long or short syllables in contexts where one would expect the opposite.
The most important Classical metre is the dactylic hexameter, the metre of Homer and Virgil. This form uses verses of six feet. The word "dactyl" comes from the Greek word "daktylos" meaning "finger", since there is one long part followed by two short stretches. The first four feet are dactyls ("daa-duh-duh"), but can be spondees ("daa-daa"). The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee ("daa-duh"). The initial syllable of either foot is called the "ictus", the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a caesura after the ictus of the third foot. The opening line of the "Æneid" is a typical line of dactylic hexameter:
In this example, the first and second feet are dactyls; their first syllables, "Ar" and "rum" respectively, contain short vowels, but count as long because the vowels are both followed by two consonants. The third and fourth feet are spondees, the first of which is divided by the main caesura of the verse. The fifth foot is a dactyl, as is nearly always the case. The final foot is a spondee.
The dactylic hexameter was imitated in English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem "Evangeline":
Notice how the first line:
Follows this pattern:
Also important in Greek and Latin poetry is the dactylic pentameter. This was a line of verse, made up of two equal parts, each of which contains two dactyls followed by a long syllable, which counts as a half foot. In this way, the number of feet amounts to five in total. Spondees can take the place of the dactyls in the first half, but never in the second. The long syllable at the close of the first half of the verse always ends a word, giving rise to a caesura.
Dactylic pentameter is never used in isolation. Rather, a line of dactylic pentameter follows a line of dactylic hexameter in the elegiac distich or elegiac couplet, a form of verse that was used for the composition of elegies and other tragic and solemn verse in the Greek and Latin world, as well as love poetry that was sometimes light and cheerful. An example from Ovid's "Tristia":
The Greeks and Romans also used a number of lyric metres, which were typically used for shorter poems than elegiacs or hexameter. In Aeolic verse, one important line was called the hendecasyllabic, a line of eleven syllables. This metre was used most often in the Sapphic stanza, named after the Greek poet Sappho, who wrote many of her poems in the form. A hendecasyllabic is a line with a never-varying structure: two trochees, followed by a dactyl, then two more trochees. In the Sapphic stanza, three hendecasyllabics are followed by an "Adonic" line, made up of a dactyl and a trochee. This is the form of Catullus 51 (itself an homage to Sappho 31):
The Sapphic stanza was imitated in English by Algernon Charles Swinburne in a poem he simply called "Sapphics":
The metrical system of Classical Arabic poetry, like those of classical Greek and Latin, is based on the weight of syllables classified as either "long" or "short". The basic principles of Arabic poetic metre "Arūḍ" or Arud ( ') Science of Poetry ( '), were put forward by Al-Farahidi (786 - 718 CE) who did so after noticing that poems consisted of repeated syllables in each verse. In his first book, "Al-Ard" ( ""), he described 15 types of verse. Al-Akhfash described one extra, the 16th.
A short syllable contains a short vowel with no following consonants. For example, the word "kataba," which syllabifies as "ka-ta-ba", contains three short vowels and is made up of three short syllables. A long syllable contains either a long vowel or a short vowel followed by a consonant as is the case in the word "maktūbun" which syllabifies as "mak-tū-bun". These are the only syllable types possible in Classical Arabic phonology which, by and large, does not allow a syllable to end in more than one consonant or a consonant to occur in the same syllable after a long vowel. In other words, syllables of the type "-āk-" or "-akr-" are not found in classical Arabic.
Each verse consists of a certain number of metrical feet ("tafāʿīl" or "ʾaǧzāʾ") and a certain combination of possible feet constitutes a metre ("baḥr").
The traditional Arabic practice for writing out a poem's metre is to use a concatenation of various derivations of the verbal root "F-ʿ-L" (فعل). Thus, the following hemistich
قفا نبك من ذكرى حبيبٍ ومنزلِ
Would be traditionally scanned as:
فعولن مفاعيلن فعولن مفاعلن
That is, Romanized and with traditional Western scansion:
Al-Kʰalīl b. ˀAḫmad al-Farāhīdī's contribution to the study of Arabic prosody is undeniably significant: he was the first scholar to subject Arabic poetry to a meticulous, painstaking metrical analysis. Unfortunately, he fell short of producing a coherent theory; instead, he was content to merely gather, classify, and categorize the primary data—a first step which, though insufficient, represents no mean accomplishment. Therefore al-Kʰalīl has left a formulation of utmost complexity and difficulty which requires immense effort to master; even the accomplished scholar cannot utilize and apply it with ease and total confidence. Dr. ˀIbrāhīm ˀAnīs, one of the most distinguished and celebrated pillars of Arabic literature and the Arabic language in the 20th century, states the issue clearly in his book Mūsīqā al-Sʰiˁr:
“I am aware of no [other] branch of Arabic studies which embodies as many [technical] terms as does [al-Kʰalīl’s] prosody, few and distinct as the meters are: al-Kʰalīl’s disciples employed a large number of infrequent items, assigning to those items certain technical denotations which—invariably—require definition and explanation. …. As to the rules of metric variation, they are numerous to the extent that they defy memory and impose a taxing course of study. …. In learning them, a student faces severe hardship which obscures all connection with an artistic genre—indeed, the most artistic of all—namely, poetry. ………. It is in this fashion that [various] authors dealt with the subject under discussion over a period of eleven centuries: none of them attempted to introduce a new approach or to simplify the rules. ………. Is it not time for a new, simple presentation which avoids contrivance, displays close affinity to [the art of] poetry, and perhaps renders the science of prosody palatable as well as manageable?”
In the 20th and the 21st centuries, numerous scholars have endeavored to supplement al-Kʰalīl's contribution.
Classical Arabic has sixteen established metres. Though each of them allows for a certain amount of variation, their basic patterns are as follows, using:
The terminology for metrical system used in classical and classical-style Persian poetry is the same as that of Classical Arabic, even though these are quite different in both origin and structure. This has led to serious confusion among prosodists, both ancient and modern, as to the true source and nature of the Persian metres, the most obvious error being the assumption that they were copied from Arabic.
Persian poetry is quantitative, and the metrical patterns are made of long and short syllables, much as in Classical Greek, Latin and Arabic. "Anceps" positions in the line, however, that is places where either a long or short syllable can be used (marked "x" in the schemes below), are not found in Persian verse except in some metres at the beginning of a line.
Persian poetry is written in couplets, with each half-line (hemistich) being 10-14 syllables long. Except in the ruba'i (quatrain), where either of two very similar metres may be used, the same metre is used for every line in the poem. Rhyme is always used, sometimes with double rhyme or internal rhymes in addition. In some poems, known as masnavi, the two halves of each couplet rhyme, with a scheme "aa", "bb", "cc" and so on. In lyric poetry, the same rhyme is used throughout the poem at the end of each couplet, but except in the opening couplet, the two halves of each couplet do not rhyme; hence the scheme is "aa", "ba", "ca", "da". A "ruba'i" (quatrain) also usually has the rhyme "aa, ba".
A particular feature of classical Persian prosody, not found in Latin, Greek or Arabic, is that instead of two lengths of syllables (long and short), there are three lengths (short, long, and overlong). Overlong syllables can be used anywhere in the line in place of a long + a short, or in the final position in a line or half line. When a metre has a pair of short syllables (⏑ ⏑), it is common for a long syllable to be substituted, especially at the end of a line or half-line.
About 30 different metres are commonly used in Persian. 70% of lyric poems are written in one of the following seven metres:
"Masnavi" poems (that is, long poems in rhyming couplets) are always written in one of the shorter 11 or 10-syllable metres (traditionally seven in number) such as the following:
The two metres used for "ruba'iyat" (quatrains), which are only used for this, are the following, of which the second is a variant of the first:
Classical Chinese poetic metric may be divided into fixed and variable length line types, although the actual scansion of the metre is complicated by various factors, including linguistic changes and variations encountered in dealing with a tradition extending over a geographically extensive regional area for a continuous time period of over some two-and-a-half millennia. Beginning with the earlier recorded forms: the Classic of Poetry tends toward couplets of four-character lines, grouped in rhymed quatrains; and, the Chuci follows this to some extent, but moves toward variations in line length. Han Dynasty poetry tended towards the variable line-length forms of the folk ballads and the Music Bureau yuefu. Jian'an poetry, Six Dynasties poetry, and Tang Dynasty poetry tend towards a poetic metre based on fixed-length lines of five, seven, (or, more rarely six) characters/verbal units tended to predominate, generally in couplet/quatrain-based forms, of various total verse lengths. The Song poetry is specially known for its use of the "ci", using variable line lengths which follow the specific pattern of a certain musical song's lyrics, thus "ci" are sometimes referred to as "fixed-rhythm" forms. Yuan poetry metres continued this practice with their "qu" forms, similarly fixed-rhythm forms based on now obscure or perhaps completely lost original examples (or, ur-types). Not that Classical Chinese poetry ever lost the use of the "shi" forms, with their metrical patterns found in the "old style poetry" ("gushi") and the regulated verse forms of ("lüshi" or "jintishi"). The regulated verse forms also prescribed patterns based upon linguistic tonality. The use of caesura is important in regard to the metrical analysis of Classical Chinese poetry forms.
The metric system of Old English poetry was different from that of modern English, and related more to the verse forms of most of the older Germanic languages such as Old Norse. It used alliterative verse, a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number (usually four) of strong stresses in each line. The unstressed syllables were relatively unimportant, but the caesurae (breaks between the half-lines) played a major role in Old English poetry.
In place of using feet, alliterative verse divided each line into two half-lines. Each half-line had to follow one of five or so patterns, each of which defined a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, typically with two stressed syllables per half line. Unlike typical Western poetry, however, the number of unstressed syllables could vary somewhat. For example, the common pattern "DUM-da-DUM-da" could allow between one and five unstressed syllables between the two stresses.
The following is a famous example, taken from The Battle of Maldon, a poem written shortly after the date of that battle (AD 991):
"Hige sceal þe heardra," || "heorte þe cēnre,"
"mōd sceal þe māre," || "swā ūre mægen lȳtlað"
("Will must be the harder, courage the bolder,
spirit must be the more, as our might lessens.")
In the quoted section, the stressed syllables have been underlined. (Normally, the stressed syllable must be long if followed by another syllable in a word. However, by a rule known as "syllable resolution", two short syllables in a single word are considered equal to a single long syllable. Hence, sometimes two syllables have been underlined, as in "hige" and "mægen".) The German philologist Eduard Sievers (died 1932) identified five different patterns of half-line in Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry. The first three half-lines have the type A pattern "DUM-da-(da-)DUM-da", while the last one has the type C pattern "da-(da-da-)DUM-DUM-da", with parentheses indicating optional unstressed syllables that have been inserted. Note also the pervasive pattern of alliteration, where the first and/or second stressed syllables alliterate with the third, but not with the fourth.
In French poetry, metre is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. A silent 'e' counts as a syllable before a consonant, but is elided before a vowel (where "h aspiré" counts as a consonant). At the end of a line, the "e" remains unelided but is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables, like a feminine ending in English verse), in that case, the rhyme is also called "feminine", whereas it is called "masculine" in the other cases.
The most frequently encountered metre in Classical French poetry is the alexandrine, composed of two hemistiches of six syllables each. Two famous alexandrines are
(the daughter of Minos and of Pasiphaë), and
Classical French poetry also had a complex set of rules for rhymes that goes beyond how words merely sound. These are usually taken into account when describing the metre of a poem.
In Spanish poetry the metre is determined by the number of syllables the verse has. Still it is the phonetic accent in the last word of the verse that decides the final count of the line. If the accent of the final word is at the last syllable, then the poetic rule states that one syllable shall be added to the actual count of syllables in the said line, thus having a higher number of poetic syllables than the number of grammatical syllables. If the accent lies on the second to last syllable of the last word in the verse, then the final count of poetic syllables will be the same as the grammatical number of syllables. Furthermore, if the accent lies on the third to last syllable, then one syllable is subtracted from the actual count, having then less poetic syllables than grammatical syllables.
Spanish poetry uses poetic licenses, unique to Romance languages, to change the number of syllables by manipulating mainly the vowels in the line.
Regarding these poetic licenses one must consider three kinds of phenomena: (1) syneresis, (2) dieresis and (3) hiatus
There are many types of licenses, used either to add or subtract syllables, that may be applied when needed after taking in consideration the poetic rules of the last word. Yet all have in common that they only manipulate vowels that are close to each other and not interrupted by consonants.
Some common metres in Spanish verse are:
In Italian poetry, metre is determined solely by the position of the last accent in a line, the position of the other accents being however important for verse equilibrium. Syllables are enumerated with respect to a verse which ends with a paroxytone, so that a Septenary (having seven syllables) is defined as a verse whose last accent falls on the sixth syllable: it may so contain eight syllables ("Ei fu. Siccome immobile") or just six ("la terra al nunzio sta"). Moreover, when a word ends with a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel, they are considered to be in the same syllable (synalepha): so "Gli anni e i giorni" consists of only four syllables ("Gli an" "ni e i" "gior" "ni"). Even-syllabic verses have a fixed stress pattern. Because of the mostly trochaic nature of the Italian language, verses with an even number of syllables are far easier to compose, and the Novenary is usually regarded as the most difficult verse.
Some common metres in Italian verse are:
Apart from Ottoman poetry, which was heavily influenced by Persian traditions and created a unique Ottoman style, traditional Turkish poetry features a system in which the number of syllables in each verse must be the same, most frequently 7, 8, 11, 14 syllables. These verses are then divided into syllable groups depending on the number of total syllables in a verse: 4+3 for 7 syllables, 4+4 or 5+3 for 8, 4+4+3 or 6+5 for 11 syllables. The end of each group in a verse is called a "durak" (stop), and must coincide with the last syllable of a word.
The following example is by Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel (died 1973), one of the most devoted users of traditional Turkish metre:
In this poem the 6+5 metre is used, so that there is a word-break ("durak" = "stop" or caesura) after the sixth syllable of every line, as well as at the end of each line.
In the Ottoman Turkish language, the structures of the poetic foot (تفعل "tef'ile") and of poetic metre (وزن "vezin") were imitated from Persian poetry. About twelve of the most common Persian metres were used for writing Turkish poetry. As was the case with Persian, no use at all was made of the commonest metres of Arabic poetry (the "tawīl", "basīt", "kāmil", and "wāfir"). However, the terminology used to described the metres was indirectly borrowed from the Arabic poetic tradition through the medium of the Persian language.
As a result, Ottoman poetry, also known as Dîvân poetry, was generally written in quantitative, mora-timed metre. The moras, or syllables, are divided into three basic types:
In writing out a poem's poetic metre, open syllables are symbolized by "." and closed syllables are symbolized by "–". From the different syllable types, a total of sixteen different types of poetic foot—the majority of which are either three or four syllables in length—are constructed, which are named and scanned as follows:
These individual poetic feet are then combined in a number of different ways, most often with four feet per line, so as to give the poetic metre for a line of verse. Some of the most commonly used metres are the following:
Portuguese poetry uses a syllabic metre in which the verse is classified according to the last stressed syllable. The Portuguese system is quite similar to those of Spanish and Italian, as they are closely related languages. The most commonly used verses are:
There is a continuing tradition of strict metre poetry in the Welsh language that can be traced back to at least the sixth century. At the annual National Eisteddfod of Wales a bardic chair is awarded to the best , a long poem that follows the conventions of regarding stress, alliteration and rhyme.
Metrical texts are first attested in early Indo-European languages. The earliest known unambiguously metrical texts, and at the same time the only metrical texts with a claim of dating to the Late Bronze Age, are the hymns of the Rigveda. That the texts of the Ancient Near East (Sumerian, Egyptian or Semitic) should not exhibit metre is surprising, and may be partly due to the nature of Bronze Age writing. There were, in fact, attempts to reconstruct metrical qualities of the poetic portions of the Hebrew Bible, e.g. by Gustav Bickell or Julius Ley, but they remained inconclusive (see Biblical poetry). Early Iron Age metrical poetry is found in the Iranian Avesta and in the Greek works attributed to Homer and Hesiod.
Latin verse survives from the Old Latin period (c. 2nd century BC), in the Saturnian metre. Persian poetry arises in the Sassanid era. Tamil poetry of the early centuries AD may be the earliest known non-Indo-European
Medieval poetry was metrical without exception, spanning traditions as diverse as European Minnesang, Trouvère or Bardic poetry, Classical Persian and Sanskrit poetry, Tang dynasty Chinese poetry or the Japanese Nara period "Man'yōshū". Renaissance and Early Modern poetry in Europe is characterized by a return to templates of Classical Antiquity, a tradition begun by Petrarca's generation and continued into the time of Shakespeare and Milton.
Not all poets accept the idea that metre is a fundamental part of poetry. 20th-century American poets Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams and Robinson Jeffers believed that metre was an artificial construct imposed upon poetry rather than being innate to poetry. In an essay titled "Robinson Jeffers, & The Metric Fallacy" Dan Schneider echoes Jeffers' sentiments: "What if someone actually said to you that all music was composed of just 2 notes? Or if someone claimed that there were just 2 colors in creation? Now, ponder if such a thing were true. Imagine the clunkiness & mechanicality of such music. Think of the visual arts devoid of not just color, but sepia tones, & even shades of gray." Jeffers called his technique "rolling stresses".
Moore went further than Jeffers, openly declaring her poetry was written in syllabic form, and wholly denying metre. These syllabic lines from her famous poem illustrate her contempt for metre and other poetic tools. Even the syllabic pattern of this poem does not remain perfectly consistent:
Williams tried to form poetry whose subject matter was centered on the lives of common people. He came up with the concept of the variable foot. Williams spurned traditional metre in most of his poems, preferring what he called "colloquial idioms." Another poet who turned his back on traditional concepts of metre was Britain's Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins' major innovation was what he called sprung rhythm. He claimed most poetry was written in this older rhythmic structure inherited from the Norman side of the English literary heritage, based on repeating groups of two or three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on each repetition. Sprung rhythm is structured around feet with a variable number of syllables, generally between one and four syllables per foot, with the stress always falling on the first syllable in a foot. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19930 |
Mimeograph
The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The mimeograph process should not be confused with the spirit duplicator process.
Mimeographs, along with spirit duplicators and hectographs, were a common technology in printing small quantities, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins. Early fanzines were printed with this technology, because it was widespread and cheap. In the late 1960s, mimeographs, spirit duplicators, and hectographs began to be gradually displaced by photocopying.
Use of stencils is an ancient art, butthrough chemistry, papers, and pressestechniques advanced rapidly in the late nineteenth century:
A description of the Papyrograph method of duplication was published by David Owen:
A major beneficiary of the invention of synthetic dyes was a document reproduction technique known as stencil duplicating. Its earliest form was invented in 1874 by Eugenio de Zuccato, a young Italian studying law in London, who called his device the Papyrograph. Zuccato’s system involved writing on a sheet of varnished paper with caustic ink, which ate through the varnish and paper fibers, leaving holes where the writing had been. This sheet – which had now become a stencil – was placed on a blank sheet of paper, and ink rolled over it so that the ink oozed through the holes, creating a duplicate on the second sheet.
The process was commercialized and Zuccato applied for a patent in 1895 having stencils prepared by typewriting.
Thomas Edison received US patent 180,857 for Autographic Printing on August 8, 1876. The patent covered the electric pen, used for making the stencil, and the flatbed duplicating press. In 1880 Edison obtained a further patent, US 224,665: "Method of Preparing Autographic Stencils for Printing," which covered the making of stencils using a file plate, a grooved metal plate on which the stencil was placed which perforated the stencil when written on with a blunt metal stylus.
The word mimeograph was first used by Albert Blake Dick when he licensed Edison's patents in 1887.
Dick received Trademark Registration no. 0356815 for the term "Mimeograph" in the US Patent Office. It is currently listed as a dead entry, but shows the A.B. Dick Company of Chicago as the owner of the name.
Over time, the term became generic and is now an example of a genericized trademark. ("Roneograph," also "Roneo machine," was another trademark used for mimeograph machines, the name being a contraction of Rotary Neostyle.)
In 1891, David Gestetner patented his Automatic Cyclostyle. This was one of the first rotary machines that retained the flatbed, which passed back and forth under inked rollers. This invention provided for more automated, faster reproductions since the pages were produced and moved by rollers instead of pressing one single sheet at a time.
By 1900, two primary types of mimeographs had come into use: a single-drum machine and a dual-drum machine. The single-drum machine used a single drum for ink transfer to the stencil, and the dual-drum machine used two drums and silk-screens to transfer the ink to the stencils. The single drum (example Roneo) machine could be easily used for multi-color work by changing the drum - each of which contained ink of a different color. This was spot color for mastheads. Colors could not be mixed.
The mimeograph became popular because it was much cheaper than traditional print - there was neither typesetting nor skilled labor involved. One individual with a typewriter and the necessary equipment became their own printing factory, allowing for greater circulation of printed material.
The image transfer medium was originally a stencil made from waxed mulberry paper. Later this became an immersion-coated long-fibre paper, with the coating being a plasticized nitrocellulose. This flexible waxed or coated sheet is backed by a sheet of stiff card stock, with the two sheets bound at the top.
Once prepared, the stencil is wrapped around the ink-filled drum of the rotary machine. When a blank sheet of paper is drawn between the rotating drum and a pressure roller, ink is forced through the holes on the stencil onto the paper. Early flatbed machines used a kind of squeegee. The ink originally had a lanolin base and later became an oil in water emulsion. This emulsion commonly uses Turkey-Red Oil (Sulfated Castor Oil) which gives it a distinctive and heavy scent.
For printed copy, a stencil assemblage is placed in a typewriter. The part of the mechanism which lifts the ribbon must be disabled so that the bare, sharp type element strikes the stencil directly. The impact of the type element displaces the coating, making the tissue paper permeable to the oil-based ink. This is called "cutting a stencil."
A variety of specialized styluses were used on the stencil to render lettering, illustrations, or other artistic features by hand against a textured plastic backing plate.
Mistakes were corrected by brushing them out with a specially formulated correction fluid, and retyping once it has dried. ("Obliterine" was a popular brand of correction fluid in Australia and the United Kingdom.)
Stencils were also made with a thermal process, an infrared method similar to that used by early photocopiers. The common machine was a Thermofax.
Another device, called an electrostencil machine, sometimes was used to make mimeo stencils from a typed or printed original. It worked by scanning the original on a rotating drum with a moving optical head and burning through the blank stencil with an electric spark in the places where the optical head detected ink. It was slow and produced ozone. Text from electrostencils had lower resolution than that from typed stencils, although the process was good for reproducing illustrations. A skilled mimeo operator using an electrostencil and a very coarse halftone screen could make acceptable printed copies of a photograph.
During the declining years of the mimeograph, some people made stencils with early computers and dot-matrix impact printers.
Unlike spirit duplicators (where the only ink available is depleted from the master image), mimeograph technology works by forcing a replenishable supply of ink through the stencil master. In theory, the mimeography process could be continued indefinitely, especially if a durable stencil master were used (e.g. a thin metal foil). In practice, most low-cost mimeo stencils gradually wear out over the course of producing several hundred copies. Typically the stencil deteriorates gradually, producing a characteristic degraded image quality until the stencil tears, abruptly ending the print run. If further copies are desired at this point, another stencil must be made.
Often, the stencil material covering the interiors of closed letterforms (e.g. "a", "b", "d", "e", "g", etc.) would fall away during continued printing, causing ink-filled letters in the copies. The stencil would gradually stretch, starting near the top where the mechanical forces were greatest, causing a characteristic "mid-line sag" in the textual lines of the copies, that would progress until the stencil failed completely. The Gestetner Company (and others) devised various methods to make mimeo stencils more durable.
Compared to spirit duplication, mimeography produced a darker, more legible image. Spirit duplicated images were usually tinted a light purple or lavender, which gradually became lighter over the course of some dozens of copies. Mimeography was often considered "the next step up" in quality, capable of producing hundreds of copies. Print runs beyond that level were usually produced by professional printers or, as the technology became available, xerographic copiers.
Mimeographed images generally have much better durability than spirit-duplicated images, since the inks are more resistant to ultraviolet light. The primary preservation challenge is the low-quality paper often used, which would yellow and degrade due to residual acid in the treated pulp from which the paper was made. In the worst case, old copies can crumble into small particles when handled. Mimeographed copies have moderate durability when acid-free paper is used.
Gestetner, Risograph, and other companies still make and sell highly automated mimeograph-like machines that are externally similar to photocopiers. The modern version of a mimeograph, called a digital duplicator, or copyprinter, contains a scanner, a thermal head for stencil cutting, and a large roll of stencil material entirely inside the unit. The stencil material consists of a very thin polymer film laminated to a long-fibre non-woven tissue. It makes the stencils and mounts and unmounts them from the print drum automatically, making it almost as easy to operate as a photocopier. The Risograph is the best known of these machines.
Although mimeographs remain more economical and energy-efficient in mid-range quantities, easier-to-use photocopying and offset printing have replaced mimeography almost entirely in developed countries. Mimeograph machines continue to be used in developing countries because it is a simple, cheap, and robust technology. Many mimeographs can be hand-cranked, requiring no electricity.
Mimeographs and the closely related but distinctly different spirit duplicator process were both used extensively in schools to copy homework assignments and tests. They were also commonly used for low-budget amateur publishing, including club newsletters and church bulletins. They were especially popular with science fiction fans, who used them extensively in the production of fanzines in the middle 20th century, before photocopying became inexpensive.
Letters and typographical symbols were sometimes used to create illustrations, in a precursor to ASCII art. Because changing ink color in a mimeograph could be a laborious process, involving extensively cleaning the machine or, on newer models, replacing the drum or rollers, and then running the paper through the machine a second time, some fanzine publishers experimented with techniques for painting several colors on the pad. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19935 |
Meteorite
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting star or falling star; astronomers call the brightest examples "bolides". Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater.
Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they transit the atmosphere and impact the Earth are called meteorite falls. All others are known as meteorite finds. , there were about 1,412 witnessed falls that have specimens in the world's collections. , there are more than 59,200 well-documented meteorite finds.
Meteorites have traditionally been divided into three broad categories: stony meteorites that are rocks, mainly composed of silicate minerals; iron meteorites that are largely composed of metallic iron-nickel; and stony-iron meteorites that contain large amounts of both metallic and rocky material. Modern classification schemes divide meteorites into groups according to their structure, chemical and isotopic composition and mineralogy. Meteorites smaller than 2 mm are classified as micrometeorites. Extraterrestrial meteorites are such objects that have impacted other celestial bodies, whether or not they have passed through an atmosphere. They have been found on the Moon. and Mars.
Meteorites are always named for the places they were found, where practical, usually a nearby town or geographic feature. In cases where many meteorites were found in one place, the name may be followed by a number or letter (e.g., Allan Hills 84001 or Dimmitt (b)). The name designated by the Meteoritical Society is used by scientists, catalogers, and most collectors.
Most meteoroids disintegrate when entering the Earth's atmosphere. Usually, five to ten a year are observed to fall and are subsequently recovered and made known to scientists. Few meteorites are large enough to create large impact craters. Instead, they typically arrive at the surface at their terminal velocity and, at most, create a small pit.
Large meteoroids may strike the earth with a significant fraction of their escape velocity (second cosmic velocity), leaving behind a hypervelocity impact crater. The kind of crater will depend on the size, composition, degree of fragmentation, and incoming angle of the impactor. The force of such collisions has the potential to cause widespread destruction. The most frequent hypervelocity cratering events on the Earth are caused by iron meteoroids, which are most easily able to transit the atmosphere intact. Examples of craters caused by iron meteoroids include Barringer Meteor Crater, Odessa Meteor Crater, Wabar craters, and Wolfe Creek crater; iron meteorites are found in association with all of these craters. In contrast, even relatively large stony or icy bodies like small comets or asteroids, up to millions of tons, are disrupted in the atmosphere, and do not make impact craters. Although such disruption events are uncommon, they can cause a considerable concussion to occur; the famed Tunguska event probably resulted from such an incident. Very large stony objects, hundreds of meters in diameter or more, weighing tens of millions of tons or more, can reach the surface and cause large craters but are very rare. Such events are generally so energetic that the impactor is completely destroyed, leaving no meteorites. (The very first example of a stony meteorite found in association with a large impact crater, the Morokweng crater in South Africa, was reported in May 2006.)
Several phenomena are well documented during witnessed meteorite falls too small to produce hypervelocity craters. The fireball that occurs as the meteoroid passes through the atmosphere can appear to be very bright, rivaling the sun in intensity, although most are far dimmer and may not even be noticed during the daytime. Various colors have been reported, including yellow, green, and red. Flashes and bursts of light can occur as the object breaks up. Explosions, detonations, and rumblings are often heard during meteorite falls, which can be caused by sonic booms as well as shock waves resulting from major fragmentation events. These sounds can be heard over wide areas, with a radius of a hundred or more kilometers. Whistling and hissing sounds are also sometimes heard but are poorly understood. Following the passage of the fireball, it is not unusual for a dust trail to linger in the atmosphere for several minutes.
As meteoroids are heated during atmospheric entry, their surfaces melt and experience ablation. They can be sculpted into various shapes during this process, sometimes resulting in shallow thumbprint-like indentations on their surfaces called regmaglypts. If the meteoroid maintains a fixed orientation for some time, without tumbling, it may develop a conical "nose cone" or "heat shield" shape. As it decelerates, eventually the molten surface layer solidifies into a thin fusion crust, which on most meteorites is black (on some achondrites, the fusion crust may be very light-colored). On stony meteorites, the heat-affected zone is at most a few mm deep; in iron meteorites, which are more thermally conductive, the structure of the metal may be affected by heat up to below the surface. Reports vary; some meteorites are reported to be "burning hot to the touch" upon landing, while others are alleged to have been cold enough to condense water and form a frost.
Meteoroids that experience disruption in the atmosphere may fall as meteorite showers, which can range from only a few up to thousands of separate individuals. The area over which a meteorite shower falls is known as its strewn field. Strewn fields are commonly elliptical in shape, with the major axis parallel to the direction of flight. In most cases, the largest meteorites in a shower are found farthest down-range in the strewn field.
Most meteorites are stony meteorites, classed as chondrites and achondrites. Only about 6% of meteorites are iron meteorites or a blend of rock and metal, the stony-iron meteorites. Modern classification of meteorites is complex. The review paper of Krot et al. (2007) summarizes modern meteorite taxonomy.
About 86% of the meteorites are chondrites, which are named for the small, round particles they contain. These particles, or chondrules, are composed mostly of silicate minerals that appear to have been melted while they were free-floating objects in space. Certain types of chondrites also contain small amounts of organic matter, including amino acids, and presolar grains. Chondrites are typically about 4.55 billion years old and are thought to represent material from the asteroid belt that never coalesced into large bodies. Like comets, chondritic asteroids are some of the oldest and most primitive materials in the solar system. Chondrites are often considered to be "the building blocks of the planets".
About 8% of the meteorites are achondrites (meaning they do not contain chondrules), some of which are similar to terrestrial igneous rocks. Most achondrites are also ancient rocks, and are thought to represent crustal material of differentiated planetesimals. One large family of achondrites (the HED meteorites) may have originated on the parent body of the Vesta Family, although this claim is disputed. Others derive from unidentified asteroids. Two small groups of achondrites are special, as they are younger and do not appear to come from the asteroid belt. One of these groups comes from the Moon, and includes rocks similar to those brought back to Earth by Apollo and Luna programs. The other group is almost certainly from Mars and constitutes the only materials from other planets ever recovered by humans.
About 5% of meteorites that have been seen to fall are iron meteorites composed of iron-nickel alloys, such as kamacite and/or taenite. Most iron meteorites are thought to come from the cores of planetesimals that were once molten. As with the Earth, the denser metal separated from silicate material and sank toward the center of the planetesimal, forming its core. After the planetesimal solidified, it broke up in a collision with another planetesimal. Due to the low abundance of iron meteorites in collection areas such as Antarctica, where most of the meteoric material that has fallen can be recovered, it is possible that the percentage of iron-meteorite falls is lower than 5%. This would be explained by a recovery bias; laypeople are more likely to notice and recover solid masses of metal than most other meteorite types. The abundance of iron meteorites relative to total Antarctic finds is 0.4%.
Stony-iron meteorites constitute the remaining 1%. They are a mixture of iron-nickel metal and silicate minerals. One type, called pallasites, is thought to have originated in the boundary zone above the core regions where iron meteorites originated. The other major type of stony-iron meteorites is the mesosiderites.
Tektites (from Greek "tektos", molten) are not themselves meteorites, but are rather natural glass objects up to a few centimeters in size that were formed—according to most scientists—by the impacts of large meteorites on Earth's surface. A few researchers have favored tektites originating from the Moon as volcanic ejecta, but this theory has lost much of its support over the last few decades.
In March 2015, NASA scientists reported that, for the first time, complex organic compounds found in DNA and RNA, including uracil, cytosine and thymine, have been formed in the laboratory under outer space conditions, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds, according to the scientists.
In January 2018, researchers found that 4.5 billion-year-old meteorites found on Earth contained liquid water along with prebiotic complex organic substances that may be ingredients for life.
In November 2019, scientists reported detecting sugar molecules in meteorites for the first time, including ribose, suggesting that chemical processes on asteroids can produce some organic compounds fundamental to life, and supporting the notion of an RNA world prior to a DNA-based origin of life on Earth.
Most meteorite falls are recovered on the basis of eyewitness accounts of the fireball or the impact of the object on the ground, or both. Therefore, despite the fact that meteorites fall with virtually equal probability everywhere on Earth, verified meteorite falls tend to be concentrated in areas with high human population densities such as Europe, Japan, and northern India.
A small number of meteorite falls have been observed with automated cameras and recovered following calculation of the impact point. The first of these was the Přibram meteorite, which fell in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) in 1959. In this case, two cameras used to photograph meteors captured images of the fireball. The images were used both to determine the location of the stones on the ground and, more significantly, to calculate for the first time an accurate orbit for a recovered meteorite.
Following the Pribram fall, other nations established automated observing programs aimed at studying infalling meteorites. One of these was the "Prairie Network", operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1963 to 1975 in the midwestern US. This program also observed a meteorite fall, the "Lost City" chondrite, allowing its recovery and a calculation of its orbit. Another program in Canada, the Meteorite Observation and Recovery Project, ran from 1971 to 1985. It too recovered a single meteorite, "Innisfree", in 1977. Finally, observations by the European Fireball Network, a descendant of the original Czech program that recovered Pribram, led to the discovery and orbit calculations for the "Neuschwanstein" meteorite in 2002.
NASA has an automated system that detects meteors and calculates the orbit, magnitude, ground track, and other parameters over the southeast USA, which often detects a number of events each night.
Until the twentieth century, only a few hundred meteorite finds had ever been discovered. More than 80% of these were iron and stony-iron meteorites, which are easily distinguished from local rocks. To this day, few stony meteorites are reported each year that can be considered to be "accidental" finds. The reason there are now more than 30,000 meteorite finds in the world's collections started with the discovery by Harvey H. Nininger that meteorites are much more common on the surface of the Earth than was previously thought.
Nininger's strategy was to search for meteorites in the Great Plains of the United States, where the land was largely cultivated and the soil contained few rocks. Between the late 1920s and the 1950s, he traveled across the region, educating local people about what meteorites looked like and what to do if they thought they had found one, for example, in the course of clearing a field. The result was the discovery of over 200 new meteorites, mostly stony types.
In the late 1960s, Roosevelt County, New Mexico in the Great Plains was found to be a particularly good place to find meteorites. After the discovery of a few meteorites in 1967, a public awareness campaign resulted in the finding of nearly 100 new specimens in the next few years, with many being by a single person, Ivan Wilson. In total, nearly 140 meteorites were found in the region since 1967. In the area of the finds, the ground was originally covered by a shallow, loose soil sitting atop a hardpan layer. During the dustbowl era, the loose soil was blown off, leaving any rocks and meteorites that were present stranded on the exposed surface.
A few meteorites were found in Antarctica between 1912 and 1964. In 1969, the 10th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition found nine meteorites on a blue ice field near the Yamato Mountains. With this discovery, came the realization that movement of ice sheets might act to concentrate meteorites in certain areas. After a dozen other specimens were found in the same place in 1973, a Japanese expedition was launched in 1974 dedicated to the search for meteorites. This team recovered nearly 700 meteorites.
Shortly thereafter, the United States began its own program to search for Antarctic meteorites, operating along the Transantarctic Mountains on the other side of the continent: the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program. European teams, starting with a consortium called "EUROMET" in the 1990/91 season, and continuing with a program by the Italian Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide have also conducted systematic searches for Antarctic meteorites.
The Antarctic Scientific Exploration of China has conducted successful meteorite searches since 2000. A Korean program (KOREAMET) was launched in 2007 and has collected a few meteorites. The combined efforts of all of these expeditions have produced more than 23,000 classified meteorite specimens since 1974, with thousands more that have not yet been classified. For more information see the article by Harvey (2003).
At about the same time as meteorite concentrations were being discovered in the cold desert of Antarctica, collectors discovered that many meteorites could also be found in the hot deserts of Australia. Several dozen meteorites had already been found in the Nullarbor region of Western and South Australia. Systematic searches between about 1971 and the present recovered more than 500 others, ~300 of which are currently well characterized. The meteorites can be found in this region because the land presents a flat, featureless, plain covered by limestone. In the extremely arid climate, there has been relatively little weathering or sedimentation on the surface for tens of thousands of years, allowing meteorites to accumulate without being buried or destroyed. The dark colored meteorites can then be recognized among the very different looking limestone pebbles and rocks.
In 1986–87, a German team installing a network of seismic stations while prospecting for oil discovered about 65 meteorites on a flat, desert plain about southeast of Dirj (Daraj), Libya. A few years later, a desert enthusiast saw photographs of meteorites being recovered by scientists in Antarctica, and thought that he had seen similar occurrences in northern Africa. In 1989, he recovered about 100 meteorites from several distinct locations in Libya and Algeria. Over the next several years, he and others who followed found at least 400 more meteorites. The find locations were generally in regions known as regs or hamadas: flat, featureless areas covered only by small pebbles and minor amounts of sand. Dark-colored meteorites can be easily spotted in these places. In the case of several meteorite fields, such as Dar el Gani, Dhofar, and others, favorable light-colored geology consisting of basic rocks (clays, dolomites, and limestones) makes meteorites particularly easy to identify.
Although meteorites had been sold commercially and collected by hobbyists for many decades, up to the time of the Saharan finds of the late 1980s and early 1990s, most meteorites were deposited in or purchased by museums and similar institutions where they were exhibited and made available for scientific research. The sudden availability of large numbers of meteorites that could be found with relative ease in places that were readily accessible (especially compared to Antarctica), led to a rapid rise in commercial collection of meteorites. This process was accelerated when, in 1997, meteorites coming from both the Moon and Mars were found in Libya. By the late 1990s, private meteorite-collecting expeditions had been launched throughout the Sahara. Specimens of the meteorites recovered in this way are still deposited in research collections, but most of the material is sold to private collectors. These expeditions have now brought the total number of well-described meteorites found in Algeria and Libya to more than 500.
Meteorite markets came into existence in the late 1990s, especially in Morocco. This trade was driven by Western commercialization and an increasing number of collectors. The meteorites were supplied by nomads and local people who combed the deserts looking for specimens to sell. Many thousands of meteorites have been distributed in this way, most of which lack any information about how, when, or where they were discovered. These are the so-called "Northwest Africa" meteorites. When they get classified, they are named "Northwest Africa" (abbreviated NWA) followed by a number. It is generally accepted that NWA meteorites originate in Morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara, Mali, and possibly even further afield. Nearly all of these meteorites leave Africa through Morocco. Scores of important meteorites, including Lunar and Martian ones, have been discovered and made available to science via this route. A few of the more notable meteorites recovered include Tissint and Northwest Africa 7034. Tissint was the first witnessed Martian meteorite fall in over fifty years; NWA 7034 is the oldest meteorite known to come from Mars, and is a unique water-bearing regolith breccia.
In 1999, meteorite hunters discovered that the desert in southern and central Oman were also favorable for the collection of many specimens. The gravel plains in the Dhofar and Al Wusta regions of Oman, south of the sandy deserts of the Rub' al Khali, had yielded about 5,000 meteorites as of mid-2009. Included among these are a large number of lunar and Martian meteorites, making Oman a particularly important area both for scientists and collectors. Early expeditions to Oman were mainly done by commercial meteorite dealers, however international teams of Omani and European scientists have also now collected specimens.
The recovery of meteorites from Oman is currently prohibited by national law, but a number of international hunters continue to remove specimens now deemed national treasures. This new law provoked a small international incident, as its implementation preceded any public notification of such a law, resulting in the prolonged imprisonment of a large group of meteorite hunters, primarily from Russia, but whose party also consisted of members from the US as well as several other European countries.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, amateur meteorite hunters began scouring the arid areas of the southwestern United States. To date, thousands of meteorites have been recovered from the Mojave, Sonoran, Great Basin, and Chihuahuan Deserts, with many being recovered on dry lake beds. Significant finds include the three tonne Old Woman meteorite, currently on display at the Desert Discovery Center in Barstow, California, and the Franconia and Gold Basin meteorite strewn fields; hundreds of kilograms of meteorites have been recovered from each.
A number of finds from the American Southwest have been submitted with false find locations, as many finders think it is unwise to publicly share that information for fear of confiscation by the federal government and competition with other hunters at published find sites.
Several of the meteorites found recently are currently on display in the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and at UCLA's Meteorite Gallery.
Meteorite falls may have been the source of cultish worship. The cult in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, possibly originated with the observation and recovery of a meteorite that was understood by contemporaries to have fallen to the earth from Jupiter, the principal Roman deity.
There are reports that a sacred stone was enshrined at the temple that may have been a meteorite. The Black Stone set into the wall of the Kaaba has often been presumed to be a meteorite, but the little available evidence for this is inconclusive. Although the use of the metal found in meteorites is also recorded in myths of many countries and cultures where the celestial source was often acknowledged, scientific documentation only began in the last few centuries.
The oldest known iron artifacts are nine small beads hammered from meteoritic iron. They were found in northern Egypt and have been securely dated to 3200 BC.
In the 1970s, a stone meteorite was uncovered during an archaeological dig at Danebury Iron Age hillfort, Danebury England. It was found deposited part way down in an Iron Age pit (c. 1200 BC). Since it must have been deliberately placed there, this could indicate one of the first (known) human finds of a meteorite in Europe.
Some Native Americans treated meteorites as ceremonial objects. In 1915, a iron meteorite was found in a Sinagua (c. 1100–1200 AD) burial cyst near Camp Verde, Arizona, respectfully wrapped in a feather cloth. A small pallasite was found in a pottery jar in an old burial found at Pojoaque Pueblo, New Mexico. Nininger reports several other such instances, in the Southwest US and elsewhere, such as the discovery of Native American beads of meteoric iron found in Hopewell burial mounds, and the discovery of the Winona meteorite in a Native American stone-walled crypt.
Indigenous peoples often prized iron-nickel meteorites as an easy, if limited, source of iron metal. For example, the Inuit used chips of the Cape York meteorite to form cutting edges for tools and spear tips.
Two of the oldest recorded meteorite falls in Europe are the Elbogen (1400) and Ensisheim (1492) meteorites. The German physicist, Ernst Florens Chladni, was the first to publish (in 1794) the idea that meteorites might be rocks that originated not from Earth, but from space. His booklet was ""On the Origin of the Iron Masses Found by Pallas and Others Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena"". In this he compiled all available data on several meteorite finds and falls concluded that they must have their origins in outer space. The scientific community of the time responded with resistance and mockery. It took nearly ten years before a general acceptance of the origin of meteorites was achieved through the work of the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Biot and the British chemist, Edward Howard. Biot's study, initiated by the French Academy of Sciences, was compelled by a fall of thousands of meteorites on 26 April 1803 from the skies of L'Aigle, France.
One of the leading theories for the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that included the dinosaurs is a large meteorite impact. The Chicxulub Crater has been identified as the site of this impact. There has been a lively scientific debate as to whether other major extinctions, including the ones at the end of the Permian and Triassic periods might also have been the result of large impact events, but the evidence is much less compelling than for the end Cretaceous extinction.
Throughout history, many first- and second-hand reports abound of meteorites falling on and killing both humans and other animals. One example is from 1490 AD in China, which purportedly killed thousands of people. In 1888, a meteorite reportedly killed a man and left another paralyzed in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, according to the Ottoman Empire governor, Sultan Abdul Hamid II.. John Lewis has compiled some of these reports, and summarizes, "No one in recorded history has ever been killed by a meteorite in the presence of a meteoriticist and a medical doctor" and "reviewers who make sweeping negative conclusions usually do not cite any of the primary publications in which the eyewitnesses describe their experiences, and give no evidence of having read them".
The most well-known reported fatality from a meteorite impact is that of a dog killed by the fall of the Nakhla meteorite in Egypt, in 1911. This meteorite fall was identified in the 1980s as Martian in origin. A meteorite known as Valera (Venezuela 1972, see Meteorite fall) reportedly hit and killed a cow upon impact, nearly dividing the animal in two, but the fall was not reported for several decades and no evidence was preserved. There are similar unsubstantiated reports of a horse being struck and killed by a stone of the New Concord fall. Shortly after the 2007 Carancas impact event, there were rumors of a goat and a llama being killed by the impact. Again, these claims could not be verified.
The first known modern case of a human hit by a space rock occurred on 30 November 1954 in Sylacauga, Alabama. A stone chondrite crashed through a roof and hit Ann Hodges in her living room after it bounced off her radio. She was badly bruised. The Hodges meteorite, or Sylacauga meteorite, is currently on exhibit at the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
Another claim was put forth by a young boy who stated that he had been hit by a small (~3-gram) stone of the Mbale meteorite fall from Uganda, and who stood to gain nothing from this assertion. The stone reportedly fell through banana leaves before striking the boy on the head, causing little to no pain, as it was small enough to have been slowed by both friction with the atmosphere as well as that with banana leaves, before striking the boy.
Several persons have since claimed to have been struck by "meteorites" but no verifiable meteorites have resulted.
Most meteorites date from the oldest times in the solar system and are by far the oldest material available on the planet. Despite their age, they are fairly vulnerable to terrestrial environment: water, salt, and oxygen attack the meteorites as soon they reach the ground.
The terrestrial alteration of meteorites is called weathering. In order to quantify the degree of alteration that a meteorite experienced, several qualitative weathering indices have been applied to Antarctic and desertic samples.
The most known weathering scale, used for ordinary chondrites, ranges from W0 (pristine state) to W6 (heavy alteration).
"Fossil" meteorites are sometimes discovered by geologists. They represent the deeply weathered remains of meteorites that fell to Earth in the remote past and were preserved in sedimentary deposits sufficiently well that they can be recognized through mineralogical and geochemical studies. One limestone quarry in Sweden has produced an anomalously large number (more than a hundred) fossil meteorites from the Ordovician, nearly all of which are deeply weathered L-chondrites that still resemble the original meteorite under a petrographic microscope, but which have had their original material almost entirely replaced by terrestrial secondary mineralization. The extraterrestrial provenance was demonstrated in part through isotopic analysis of relict spinel grains, a mineral that is common in meteorites, is insoluble in water, and is able to persist chemically unchanged in the terrestrial weathering environment. One of these fossil meteorites, dubbed Österplana 065, appears to represent a distinct type of meteorite that is "extinct" in the sense that it is no longer falling to Earth, the parent body having already been completely depleted from reservoir of Near Earth Objects.
Acfer 049, a meteorite discovered in Algeria in 1990, was shown in 2019 to have ice fossils inside it – the first direct evidence of water ice in the composition of asteroids.
Apart from meteorites fallen onto the Earth, two tiny fragments of asteroids were found among the samples collected on the Moon; these were the Bench Crater meteorite (Apollo 12, 1969) and the Hadley Rille meteorite (Apollo 15, 1971). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19937 |
Mark Bingham
Mark Kendall Bingham (May 22, 1970 – September 11, 2001) was an American public relations executive who founded his own company, the Bingham Group. During the September 11 attacks in 2001, he was a passenger on board United Airlines Flight 93. Bingham was among the passengers who, along with Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick, formed the plan to retake the plane from the hijackers, and led the effort that resulted in the crash of the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, thwarting the hijackers' plan to crash the plane into a building in Washington, D.C., most likely either the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House.
Both for his presence on United 93, as well as his athletic physique, Bingham has been widely honored posthumously for having "smashed the gay stereotype mold and really opened the door to many others who came after him."
Mark Bingham was born in 1970, the only child of Alice Hoagland and Gerald Bingham. When Mark was two years old, his parents divorced. Raised by his mother and her family, Mark grew up in Miami, Florida, and Southern California before moving to the San Jose area in 1983. Bingham was an aspiring filmmaker, and as a teenager he began using a video camera as a personal diary to document his life and those of his family and friends. He graduated from Los Gatos High School as a two-year captain of his rugby team in 1988. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, Bingham played on two of Coach Jack Clark's national-championship-winning rugby teams in the early 1990s. He also joined the Chi Psi fraternity, eventually becoming its president. Upon graduation at the age of twenty-one, Bingham came out as gay to his family and friends.
A large athlete at and , Bingham also played for the gay-inclusive rugby union team San Francisco Fog RFC. Bingham played No. 8 in their first two friendly matches. He played in their first tournament, and taught his teammates his favorite rugby songs.
Bingham had recently opened a satellite office of his public relations firm in New York City and was spending more time on the East Coast. He discussed plans with his friend Scott Glaessgen to form a New York City rugby team, the Gotham Knights.
On the morning of September 11, Bingham overslept and nearly missed his flight, on his way to San Francisco to be an usher in his fraternity brother Joseph Salama's wedding. He arrived at the Terminal A at 7:40am, ran to Gate 17, and was the last passenger to board United Airlines Flight 93, taking seat 4D, next to passenger Tom Burnett.
United Flight 93 was scheduled to depart at 8:00am, but the Boeing 757 did not depart until 42 minutes later due to runway traffic delays. Four minutes later, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. Fifteen minutes later, at 9:03 am, as United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower, United 93 was climbing to cruising altitude, heading west over New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. At 9:25 am, Flight 93 was above eastern Ohio, and pilots Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer received an alert, "beware of cockpit intrusion," on the cockpit computer device ACARS (Aircraft Communications and Reporting System). Three minutes later, Cleveland controllers could hear screams over the cockpit's open microphone. Moments later, the hijackers, led by the Lebanese Ziad Samir Jarrah, took over the plane's controls and told passengers, "Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board". Bingham and the other passengers were herded into the back of the plane. Within six minutes, the plane changed course and was heading for Washington, D.C. Several of the passengers made phone calls to loved ones, who informed them about the two planes that had crashed into the World Trade Center.
After the hijackers veered the plane sharply south, the passengers decided to act. Bingham, along with Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick, formed a plan to take the plane back from the hijackers. They relayed this to their loved ones and the authorities via telephone. Bingham got through to his aunt's home in California. Bingham stated, "This is Mark. I want to let you guys know that I love you, in case I don't see you again...I'm on United Airlines, Flight 93. It's being hijacked." According to "The Week", Hoagland formed the impression that her son was talking "confidentially" with a fellow passenger, to form a plan to retake the plane. According to ABC News, the call was cut off after about three minutes. Hoagland, after seeing news reports of the plane's hijacking, called him back and left two messages for him, calmly saying, "Mark, this is your mom. The news is that it's been hijacked by terrorists. They are planning to probably use the plane as a target to hit some site on the ground. I would say go ahead and do everything you can to overpower them, because they are hellbent. Try to call me back if you can." Bingham, Burnett, and Glick were each more than 6 feet tall, well-built and fit. As they made their decision to retake the plane, Glick related this over the phone to his wife, Lyz. Fellow passenger Todd Beamer, speaking to GTE-Verizon Lisa Jefferson and the FBI, related that he too was part of this group. They were joined by other passengers, including Lou Nacke, Rich Guadagno, Alan Beaven, Honor Elizabeth Wainio, Linda Gronlund, and William Cashman, along with flight attendants Sandra Bradshaw and Cee Cee Ross-Lyles, in discussing their options and voting on a course of action, ultimately deciding to storm the cockpit and take over the plane.
According to the "9/11 Commission Report", after the plane's voice data recorder was recovered, it revealed pounding and crashing sounds against the cockpit door and shouts and screams in English. "Let's get them!" a passenger cries. A hijacker shouts, "Allah akbar!" ("God is great"). Jarrah repeatedly pitched the plane to knock passengers off their feet, but the passengers apparently managed to invade the cockpit, where one was heard shouting, "In the cockpit. If we don't, we'll die." At 10:02 am, a hijacker ordered, "Pull it down! Pull it down!" The 9/11 Commission later reported that the plane's control wheel was turned hard to the right, causing it to roll on its back and plow into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 580 miles an hour, killing everyone on board. The plane was twenty minutes of flying time away from its suspected target, the White House or the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. According to Vice President Dick Cheney, President George W. Bush had given the order to shoot the plane down.
Bingham is survived by his parents and the Hoagland family members who played a part in his upbringing, by his stepmother and various stepsiblings, and by his former partner of six years, Paul Holm. Holm described Bingham as a brave, competitive man, saying, "He hated to lose—at anything." He was known to proudly display a scar he received after being gored at the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. He is buried at Madronia Cemetery, Saratoga, California.
U.S. Senators John McCain and Barbara Boxer honored Bingham on September 17, 2001, in a ceremony for San Francisco Bay Area victims of the attacks, presenting a folded American flag to Paul Holm.
The Mark Kendall Bingham Memorial Tournament (referred to as the Bingham Cup), a biennial international rugby union competition predominantly for gay and bisexual men, was established in 2002 in his memory.
Bingham, along with the other passengers on Flight 93, was posthumously awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2002.
The Eureka Valley Recreation Center's Gymnasium in San Francisco was renamed the Mark Bingham Gymnasium in August 2002.
Singer Melissa Etheridge dedicated the song "Tuesday Morning" in 2004 to his memory.
Beginning in 2005, the Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement has been awarded by the California Alumni Association of the University of California, Berkeley to a young alumnus or alumna at its annual Charter Gala.
At the National 9/11 Memorial, Bingham and other passengers from Flight 93 are memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-67.
At the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, Bingham's name is located on one of the 40 8-foot-tall panels of polished, 3-inch thick granite that comprise the Memorial's Wall of Names.
The 2013 feature-length documentary "The Rugby Player" focuses on Bingham and the bond he had with his mother, Alice Hoagland, a former United Airlines flight attendant who, following his death, became an authority on airline safety and a champion of LGBT rights. Directed by Scott Gracheff, the film relies on the vast amount of video footage Bingham himself shot beginning in his teens until weeks before his death. The film's alternate title, "With You", is a popular rugby term, and one of Bingham's favorite expressions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19941 |
Manner of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is "stricture," that is, how closely the speech organs approach one another. Others include those involved in the r-like sounds (taps and trills), and the sibilancy of fricatives.
The concept of manner is mainly used in the discussion of consonants, although the movement of the articulators will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the vocal tract, thereby changing the formant structure of speech sounds that is crucial for the identification of vowels. For consonants, the place of articulation and the degree of phonation of voicing are considered separately from manner, as being independent parameters. Homorganic consonants, which have the same place of articulation, may have different manners of articulation. Often nasality and laterality are included in manner, but some phoneticians, such as Peter Ladefoged, consider them to be independent.
Manners of articulation with substantial obstruction of the airflow (stops, fricatives, affricates) are called obstruents. These are prototypically voiceless, but voiced obstruents are extremely common as well. Manners without such obstruction (nasals, liquids, approximants, and also vowels) are called sonorants because they are nearly always voiced. Voiceless sonorants are uncommon, but are found in Welsh and Classical Greek (the spelling "rh"), in Standard Tibetan (the "lh" of Lhasa), and the "wh" in those dialects of English that distinguish "which" from "witch".
Sonorants may also be called resonants, and some linguists prefer that term, restricting the word 'sonorant' to non-vocoid resonants (that is, nasals and liquids, but not vowels or semi-vowels). Another common distinction is between occlusives (stops, nasals and affricates) and continuants (all else).
From greatest to least stricture, speech sounds may be classified along a cline as stop consonants (with "occlusion", or blocked airflow), fricative consonants (with partially blocked and therefore strongly turbulent airflow), approximants (with only slight turbulence), and vowels (with full unimpeded airflow). Affricates often behave as if they were intermediate between stops and fricatives, but phonetically they are sequences of a stop and fricative.
Over time, sounds in a language may move along the cline toward less stricture in a process called lenition or towards more stricture in a process called fortition.
Sibilants are distinguished from other fricatives by the shape of the tongue and how the airflow is directed over the teeth. Fricatives at coronal places of articulation may be sibilant or non-sibilant, sibilants being the more common.
Flaps (also called taps) are similar to very brief stops. However, their articulation and behavior are distinct enough to be considered a separate manner, rather than just length. The main articulatory difference between flaps and stops is that, due to the greater length of stops compared to flaps, a build-up of air pressure occurs behind a stop which does not occur behind a flap. This means that when the stop is released, there is a burst of air as the pressure is relieved, while for flaps there is no such burst.
Trills involve the vibration of one of the speech organs. Since trilling is a separate parameter from stricture, the two may be combined. Increasing the stricture of a typical trill results in a trilled fricative. Trilled affricates are also known.
Nasal airflow may be added as an independent parameter to any speech sound. It is most commonly found in nasal occlusives and nasal vowels, but nasalized fricatives, taps, and approximants are also found. When a sound is not nasal, it is called "oral."
Laterality is the release of airflow at the side of the tongue. This can be combined with other manners, resulting in lateral approximants (such as the pronunciation of the letter L in the English word "let"), lateral flaps, and lateral fricatives and affricates.
All of these manners of articulation are pronounced with an airstream mechanism called pulmonic egressive, meaning that the air flows outward, and is powered by the lungs (actually the ribs and diaphragm). Other airstream mechanisms are possible. Sounds that rely on some of these include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19942 |
Motherboard
A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, system board, baseboard, planar board, logic board, and mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds, and allows communication between, many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems, such as the central processor, the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for general use.
"Motherboard" means specifically a PCB with expansion capabilities. As the name suggests, this board is often referred to as the "mother" of all components attached to it, which often include peripherals, interface cards, and daughtercards: sound cards, video cards, network cards, hard drives, and other forms of persistent storage; TV tuner cards, cards providing extra USB or FireWire slots; and a variety of other custom components.
Similarly, the term "mainboard" describes a device with a single board and no additional expansions or capability, such as controlling boards in laser printers, television sets, washing machines, mobile phones, and other embedded systems with limited expansion abilities.
The term "Logic board" is brand specific, coined by Apple in the early 1980s for the motherboards in Macintosh computers.
Prior to the invention of the microprocessor, the digital computer consisted of multiple printed circuit boards in a card-cage case with components connected by a backplane, a set of interconnected sockets. In very old designs, copper wires were the discrete connections between card connector pins, but printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice. The Central Processing Unit (CPU), memory, and peripherals were housed on individual printed circuit boards, which were plugged into the backplane. The ubiquitous S-100 bus of the 1970s is an example of this type of backplane system.
The most popular computers of the 1990s such as the Apple II and IBM PC had published schematic diagrams and other documentation which permitted rapid reverse-engineering and third-party replacement motherboards. Usually intended for building new computers compatible with the exemplars, many motherboards offered additional performance or other features and were used to upgrade the manufacturer's original equipment.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became economical to move an increasing number of peripheral functions onto the motherboard. In the late 1980s, personal computer motherboards began to include single ICs (also called Super I/O chips) capable of supporting a set of low-speed peripherals: keyboard, mouse, floppy disk drive, serial ports, and parallel ports. By the late 1970s, many personal computer motherboards included consumer-grade embedded audio, video, storage, and networking functions without the need for any expansion cards at all; higher-end systems for 4D gaming and computer graphics typically retained only the graphics card as a separate component. Business PCs, workstations, and servers were more likely to need expansion cards, either for more robust functions, or for higher speeds; those systems often had fewer embedded components.
Laptop and notebook computers that were developed in the 1990s integrated the most common peripherals. This even included motherboards with no upgradeable components, a trend that would continue as smaller systems were introduced after the turn of the century (like the tablet computer and the netbook). Memory, processors, network controllers, power source, and storage would be integrated into some systems.
A motherboard provides the electrical connections by which the other components of the system communicate. Unlike a backplane, it also contains the central processing unit and hosts other subsystems and devices.
A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main memory, and other essential components connected to the motherboard. Other components such as external storage, controllers for video display and sound, and peripheral devices may be attached to the motherboard as plug-in cards or via cables; in modern microcomputers it is increasingly common to integrate some of these peripherals into the motherboard itself.
An important component of a motherboard is the microprocessor's supporting chipset, which provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components. This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard.
Modern motherboards include:
Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly used input devices, such as USB for mouse devices and keyboards. Early personal computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard. Occasionally video interface hardware was also integrated into the motherboard; for example, on the Apple II and rarely on IBM-compatible computers such as the IBM PC Jr. Additional peripherals such as disk controllers and serial ports were provided as expansion cards.
Given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components, modern motherboards nearly always include heat sinks and mounting points for fans to dissipate excess heat.
Motherboards are produced in a variety of sizes and shape called computer form factor, some of which are specific to individual computer manufacturers. However, the motherboards used in IBM-compatible systems are designed to fit various case sizes. , most desktop computer motherboards use the ATX standard form factor — even those found in Macintosh and Sun computers, which have not been built from commodity components. A case's motherboard and power supply unit (PSU) form factor must all match, though some smaller form factor motherboards of the same family will fit larger cases. For example, an ATX case will usually accommodate a microATX motherboard. Computers generally use highly integrated, miniaturized and customized motherboards. This is one of the reasons that laptop computers are difficult to upgrade and expensive to repair. Often the failure of one laptop component requires the replacement of the entire motherboard, which is usually more expensive than a desktop motherboard
A CPU socket (central processing unit) or slot is an electrical component that attaches to a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and is designed to house a CPU (also called a microprocessor). It is a special type of integrated circuit socket designed for very high pin counts. A CPU socket provides many functions, including a physical structure to support the CPU, support for a heat sink, facilitating replacement (as well as reducing cost), and most importantly, forming an electrical interface both with the CPU and the PCB. CPU sockets on the motherboard can most often be found in most desktop and server computers (laptops typically use surface mount CPUs), particularly those based on the Intel x86 architecture. A CPU socket type and motherboard chipset must support the CPU series and speed.
With the steadily declining costs and size of integrated circuits, it is now possible to include support for many peripherals on the motherboard. By combining many functions on one PCB, the physical size and total cost of the system may be reduced; highly integrated motherboards are thus especially popular in small form factor and budget computers.
A typical motherboard will have a different number of connections depending on its standard and form factor.
A standard, modern ATX motherboard will typically have two or three PCI-Express 16x connection for a graphics card, one or two legacy PCI slots for various expansion cards, and one or two PCI-E 1x (which has superseded PCI). A standard EATX motherboard will have two to four PCI-E 16x connection for graphics cards, and a varying number of PCI and PCI-E 1x slots. It can sometimes also have a PCI-E 4x slot (will vary between brands and models).
Some motherboards have two or more PCI-E 16x slots, to allow more than 2 monitors without special hardware, or use a special graphics technology called SLI (for Nvidia) and Crossfire (for AMD). These allow 2 to 4 graphics cards to be linked together, to allow better performance in intensive graphical computing tasks, such as gaming, video editing, etc.
Motherboards are generally air cooled with heat sinks often mounted on larger chips in modern motherboards. Insufficient or improper cooling can cause damage to the internal components of the computer, or cause it to crash. Passive cooling, or a single fan mounted on the power supply, was sufficient for many desktop computer CPU's until the late 1990s; since then, most have required CPU fans mounted on their heat sinks, due to rising clock speeds and power consumption. Most motherboards have connectors for additional computer fans and integrated temperature sensors to detect motherboard and CPU temperatures and controllable fan connectors which the BIOS or operating system can use to regulate fan speed. Alternatively computers can use a water cooling system instead of many fans.
Some small form factor computers and home theater PCs designed for quiet and energy-efficient operation boast fan-less designs. This typically requires the use of a low-power CPU, as well as a careful layout of the motherboard and other components to allow for heat sink placement.
A 2003 study found that some spurious computer crashes and general reliability issues, ranging from screen image distortions to I/O read/write errors, can be attributed not to software or peripheral hardware but to aging capacitors on PC motherboards. Ultimately this was shown to be the result of a faulty electrolyte formulation, an issue termed capacitor plague.
Standard motherboards use electrolytic capacitors to filter the DC power distributed around the board. These capacitors age at a temperature-dependent rate, as their water based electrolytes slowly evaporate. This can lead to loss of capacitance and subsequent motherboard malfunctions due to voltage instabilities. While most capacitors are rated for 2000 hours of operation at , their expected design life roughly doubles for every below this. At a lifetime of 3 to 4 years can be expected. However, many manufacturers deliver substandard capacitors, which significantly reduce life expectancy. Inadequate case cooling and elevated temperatures around the CPU socket exacerbate this problem. With top blowers, the motherboard components can be kept under , effectively doubling the motherboard lifetime.
Mid-range and high-end motherboards, on the other hand, use solid capacitors exclusively. For every 10 °C less, their average lifespan is multiplied approximately by three, resulting in a 6-times higher lifetime expectancy at . These capacitors may be rated for 5000, 10000 or 12000 hours of operation at , extending the projected lifetime in comparison with standard solid capacitors.
Motherboards contain some non-volatile memory to initialize the system and load some startup software, usually an operating system, from some external peripheral device. Microcomputers such as the Apple II and IBM PC used ROM chips mounted in sockets on the motherboard. At power-up, the central processor would load its program counter with the address of the boot ROM and start executing instructions from the ROM. These instructions initialized and tested the system hardware displayed system information on the screen, performed RAM checks, and then loaded an initial program from a peripheral device. If none was available, then the computer would perform tasks from other memory stores or display an error message, depending on the model and design of the computer and the ROM version. For example, both the Apple II and the original IBM PC had Microsoft Cassette BASIC in ROM and would start that if no program could be loaded from disk.
Most modern motherboard designs use a BIOS, stored in an EEPROM chip soldered to or socketed on the motherboard, to boot an operating system. Non-operating system boot programs are still supported on modern IBM PC-descended machines, but nowadays it is assumed that the boot program will be a complex operating system such as Microsoft Windows or Linux. When power is first supplied to the motherboard, the BIOS firmware tests and configures memory, circuitry, and peripherals. This Power-On Self Test (POST) may include testing some of the following things:
On recent motherboards, the BIOS may also patch the central processor microcode if the BIOS detects that the installed CPU is one for which errata have been published.
Many motherboards now use an update to BIOS called UEFI. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19945 |
Mannerism
Mannerism, also known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it. Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century.
Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo. Where High Renaissance art emphasizes proportion, balance, and ideal beauty, Mannerism exaggerates such qualities, often resulting in compositions that are asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant. The style is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities. This artistic style privileges compositional tension and instability rather than the balance and clarity of earlier Renaissance painting. Mannerism in literature and music is notable for its highly florid style and intellectual sophistication.
The definition of Mannerism and the phases within it continues to be a subject of debate among art historians. For example, some scholars have applied the label to certain early modern forms of literature (especially poetry) and music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The term is also used to refer to some late Gothic painters working in northern Europe from about 1500 to 1530, especially the Antwerp Mannerists—a group unrelated to the Italian movement. Mannerism has also been applied by analogy to the Silver Age of Latin literature.
The word, "Mannerism" derives from the Italian "maniera", meaning "style" or "manner". Like the English word "style", "maniera" can either indicate a specific type of style (a beautiful style, an abrasive style) or indicate an absolute that needs no qualification (someone "has style"). In the second edition of his "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects" (1568), Giorgio Vasari used "maniera" in three different contexts: to discuss an artist's manner or method of working; to describe a personal or group style, such as the term "maniera greca" to refer to the Byzantine style or simply to the "maniera" of Michelangelo; and to affirm a positive judgment of artistic quality. Vasari was also a Mannerist artist, and he described the period in which he worked as "la maniera moderna", or the "modern style". James V. Mirollo describes how "bella maniera" poets attempted to surpass in virtuosity the sonnets of Petrarch. This notion of "bella maniera" suggests that artists who were thus inspired looked to copying and bettering their predecessors, rather than confronting nature directly. In essence, "bella maniera" utilized the best from a number of source materials, synthesizing it into something new.
As a stylistic label, "Mannerism" is not easily defined. It was used by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt and popularized by German art historians in the early 20th century to categorize the seemingly uncategorizable art of the Italian 16th century – art that was no longer found to exhibit the harmonious and rational approaches associated with the High Renaissance. "High Renaissance" connoted a period distinguished by harmony, grandeur and the revival of classical antiquity. The term "Mannerist" was redefined in 1967 by John Shearman following the exhibition of Mannerist paintings organised by Fritz Grossmann at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1965. The label "Mannerism" was used during the 16th century to comment on social behaviour and to convey a refined virtuoso quality or to signify a certain technique. However, for later writers, such as the 17th-century Gian Pietro Bellori, "la maniera" was a derogatory term for the perceived decline of art after Raphael, especially in the 1530s and 1540s. From the late 19th century on, art historians have commonly used the term to describe art that follows Renaissance classicism and precedes the Baroque.
Yet historians differ as to whether Mannerism is a style, a movement, or a period; and while the term remains controversial it is still commonly used to identify European art and culture of the 16th century.
By the end of the High Renaissance, young artists experienced a crisis: it seemed that everything that could be achieved was already achieved. No more difficulties, technical or otherwise, remained to be solved. The detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, the innovative use of the human form in figurative composition, the use of the subtle gradation of tone, all had reached near perfection. The young artists needed to find a new goal, and they sought new approaches. At this point Mannerism started to emerge. The new style developed between 1510 and 1520 either in Florence, or in Rome, or in both cities simultaneously.
This period has been described as a "natural extension" of the art of Andrea del Sarto, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Michelangelo developed his own style at an early age, a deeply original one which was greatly admired at first, then often copied and imitated by other artists of the era. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his "terribilità", a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and subsequent artists attempted to imitate it. Other artists learned Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style by copying the works of the master, a standard way that students learned to paint and sculpt. His Sistine Chapel ceiling provided examples for them to follow, in particular his representation of collected figures often called "ignudi" and of the Libyan Sibyl, his vestibule to the Laurentian Library, the figures on his Medici tombs, and above all his "Last Judgment". The later Michelangelo was one of the great role models of Mannerism. Young artists broke into his house and stole drawings from him. In his book "Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects", Giorgio Vasari noted that Michelangelo stated once: "Those who are followers can never pass by whom they follow".
The competitive spirit was cultivated by patrons who encouraged sponsored artists to emphasize virtuosic technique and to compete with one another for commissions. It drove artists to look for new approaches and dramatically illuminated scenes, elaborate clothes and compositions, elongated proportions, highly stylized poses, and a lack of clear perspective. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were each given a commission by Gonfaloniere Piero Soderini to decorate a wall in the Hall of Five Hundred in Florence. These two artists were set to paint side by side and compete against each other, fueling the incentive to be as innovative as possible.
The early Mannerists in Florence—especially the students of Andrea del Sarto such as Jacopo da Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino who are notable for elongated forms, precariously balanced poses, a collapsed perspective, irrational settings, and theatrical lighting. Parmigianino (a student of Correggio) and Giulio Romano (Raphael's head assistant) were moving in similarly stylized aesthetic directions in Rome. These artists had matured under the influence of the High Renaissance, and their style has been characterized as a reaction to or exaggerated extension of it. Instead of studying nature directly, younger artists began studying Hellenistic sculpture and paintings of masters past. Therefore, this style is often identified as "anti-classical", yet at the time it was considered a natural progression from the High Renaissance. The earliest experimental phase of Mannerism, known for its "anti-classical" forms, lasted until about 1540 or 1550. Marcia B. Hall, professor of art history at Temple University, notes in her book "After Raphael" that Raphael's premature death marked the beginning of Mannerism in Rome.
In past analyses, it has been noted that mannerism arose in the early 16th century contemporaneously with a number of other social, scientific, religious and political movements such as the Copernican heliocentrism, the Sack of Rome in 1527, and the Protestant Reformation's increasing challenge to the power of the Catholic Church. Because of this, the style's elongated forms and distorted forms were once interpreted as a reaction to the idealized compositions prevalent in High Renaissance art. This explanation for the radical stylistic shift c. 1520 has fallen out of scholarly favor, though early Mannerist art is still sharply contrasted with High Renaissance conventions; the accessibility and balance achieved by Raphael's "School of Athens" no longer seemed to interest young artists.
The second period of Mannerism is commonly differentiated from the earlier, so-called "anti-classical" phase.
Subsequent mannerists stressed intellectual conceits and artistic virtuosity, features that have led later critics to accuse them of working in an unnatural and affected "manner" ("maniera"). Maniera artists looked to their older contemporary Michelangelo as their principal model; theirs was an art imitating art, rather than an art imitating nature. Art historian Sydney Joseph Freedberg argues that the intellectualizing aspect of maniera art involves expecting its audience to notice and appreciate this visual reference—a familiar figure in an unfamiliar setting enclosed between "unseen, but felt, quotation marks". The height of artifice is the Maniera painter's penchant for deliberately misappropriating a quotation. Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari exemplify this strain of Maniera that lasted from about 1530 to 1580. Based largely at courts and in intellectual circles around Europe, Maniera art couples exaggerated elegance with exquisite attention to surface and detail: porcelain-skinned figures recline in an even, tempered light, acknowledging the viewer with a cool glance, if they make eye contact at all. The Maniera subject rarely displays much emotion, and for this reason works exemplifying this trend are often called 'cold' or 'aloof.' This is typical of the so-called "stylish style" or "Maniera" in its maturity.
The cities Rome, Florence, and Mantua were Mannerist centers in Italy. Venetian painting pursued a different course, represented by Titian in his long career. A number of the earliest Mannerist artists who had been working in Rome during the 1520s fled the city after the Sack of Rome in 1527. As they spread out across the continent in search of employment, their style was disseminated throughout Italy and Northern Europe. The result was the first international artistic style since the Gothic. Other parts of Northern Europe did not have the advantage of such direct contact with Italian artists, but the Mannerist style made its presence felt through prints and illustrated books. European rulers, among others, purchased Italian works, while northern European artists continued to travel to Italy, helping to spread the Mannerist style. Individual Italian artists working in the North gave birth to a movement known as the Northern Mannerism. Francis I of France, for example, was presented with Bronzino's "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time". The style waned in Italy after 1580, as a new generation of artists, including the Carracci brothers, Caravaggio and Cigoli, revived naturalism. Walter Friedlaender identified this period as "anti-mannerism", just as the early Mannerists were "anti-classical" in their reaction away from the aesthetic values of the High Renaissance and today the Carracci brothers and Caravaggio are agreed to have begun the transition to Baroque-style painting which was dominant by 1600.
Outside of Italy, however, Mannerism continued into the 17th century. In France, where Rosso traveled to work for the court at Fontainebleau, it is known as the "Henry II style" and had a particular impact on architecture. Other important continental centers of Northern Mannerism include the court of Rudolf II in Prague, as well as Haarlem and Antwerp. Mannerism as a stylistic category is less frequently applied to English visual and decorative arts, where native labels such as "Elizabethan" and "Jacobean" are more commonly applied. Seventeenth-century Artisan Mannerism is one exception, applied to architecture that relies on pattern books rather than on existing precedents in Continental Europe.
Of particular note is the Flemish influence at Fontainebleau that combined the eroticism of the French style with an early version of the vanitas tradition that would dominate seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting. Prevalent at this time was the "pittore vago", a description of painters from the north who entered the workshops in France and Italy to create a truly international style.
As in painting, early Italian Mannerist sculpture was very largely an attempt to find an original style that would top the achievement of the High Renaissance, which in sculpture essentially meant Michelangelo, and much of the struggle to achieve this was played out in commissions to fill other places in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, next to Michelangelo's "David". Baccio Bandinelli took over the project of "Hercules and Cacus" from the master himself, but it was little more popular then than it is now, and maliciously compared by Benvenuto Cellini to "a sack of melons", though it had a long-lasting effect in apparently introducing relief panels on the pedestal of statues. Like other works of his and other Mannerists, it removes far more of the original block than Michelangelo would have done. Cellini's bronze "Perseus with the head of Medusa" is certainly a masterpiece, designed with eight angles of view, another Mannerist characteristic, and artificially stylized in comparison with the "David"s of Michelangelo and Donatello. Originally a goldsmith, his famous gold and enamel Salt Cellar (1543) was his first sculpture, and shows his talent at its best.
Small bronze figures for collector's cabinets, often mythological subjects with nudes, were a popular Renaissance form at which Giambologna, originally Flemish but based in Florence, excelled in the later part of the century. He also created life-size sculptures, of which two entered the collection in the Piazza della Signoria. He and his followers devised elegant elongated examples of the "figura serpentinata", often of two intertwined figures, that were interesting from all angles.
Giorgio Vasari's opinions about the art of painting emerge in the praise he bestows on fellow artists in his multi-volume "Lives of the Artists": he believed that excellence in painting demanded refinement, richness of invention ("invenzione"), expressed through virtuoso technique ("maniera"), and wit and study that appeared in the finished work, all criteria that emphasized the artist's intellect and the patron's sensibility. The artist was now no longer just a trained member of a local Guild of St Luke. Now he took his place at court alongside scholars, poets, and humanists, in a climate that fostered an appreciation for elegance and complexity. The coat-of-arms of Vasari's Medici patrons appears at the top of his portrait, quite as if it were the artist's own. The framing of the woodcut image of Vasari's "Lives of the Artists" would be called "Jacobean" in an English-speaking milieu. In it, Michelangelo's Medici tombs inspire the anti-architectural "architectural" features at the top, the papery pierced frame, the satyr nudes at the base. As a mere frame it is extravagant: Mannerist, in short.
Another literary figure from the period is Gian Paolo Lomazzo, who produced two works—one practical and one metaphysical—that helped define the Mannerist artist's self-conscious relation to his art. His "Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura" (Milan, 1584) is in part a guide to contemporary concepts of decorum, which the Renaissance inherited in part from Antiquity but Mannerism elaborated upon. Lomazzo's systematic codification of aesthetics, which typifies the more formalized and academic approaches typical of the later 16th century, emphasized a consonance between the functions of interiors and the kinds of painted and sculpted decors that would be suitable. Iconography, often convoluted and abstruse, is a more prominent element in the Mannerist styles. His less practical and more metaphysical "Idea del tempio della pittura" ("The ideal temple of painting", Milan, 1590) offers a description along the lines of the "four temperaments" theory of human nature and personality, defining the role of individuality in judgment and artistic invention.
Mannerism was an anti-classical movement which differed greatly from the aesthetic ideologies of the Renaissance. Though Mannerism was initially accepted with positivity based on the writings of Vasari, it was later regarded in a negative light because it solely view as, "an alteration of natural truth and a trite repetition of natural formulas." As an artistic moment, Mannerism involves many characteristics that are unique and specific to experimentation of how art is perceived. Below is a list of many specific characteristics that Mannerist artists would employ in their artworks.
Jacopo da Pontormo's work has been known as some of the most important contributions to Mannerism. Much of his subject matter drew upon religious narratives as well as the influence of the works of Michelangelo and referencing sculpture for composing human forms. A well-known element of his work is the rendering of gazes by various figures which often pierce out at the viewer in various directions. Dedicated to his work, Pontormo, often expressed anxiety about the quality of his work and was known to work slow and methodically. His legacy is highly regarded, as he influenced artists such as Agnolo Bronzino and the aesthetic ideals of late Mannerism.
Pontomoro's "Joseph in Egypt", painted in 1517, portrays a running narrative of four Biblical scenes in which Joseph reconnects with his family. On the left side of the composition, Pontomoro depicts a scene of Joseph introducing his family to the Pharaoh of Egypt. On the right, Joseph is riding on a rolling bench, as cherubs fill the composition around him in addition to other figures and large rocks on a path in the distance. Above these scenes, is a spiral staircase which Joseph guides one his sons to their mother at the top. The final scene, on the right, is the final stage of Jacob's death as his sons watch nearby.
Pontormo's "Joseph in Egypt" features many Mannerist elements. One element is utilization of incongruous colors such as various shades of pinks and blues which make up a majority of the canvas. An additional element of Mannerism is the incoherent handling of time about the story of Joseph through various scenes and use of space. Through the inclusion of the four different narratives, Ponotormo creates a cluttered composition and overall sense of busyness.
Rosso Fiorentino, who had been a fellow pupil of Pontormo in the studio of Andrea del Sarto, in 1530 brought Florentine Mannerism to Fontainebleau, where he became one of the founders of French 16th-century Mannerism, popularly known as the School of Fontainebleau.
The examples of a rich and hectic decorative style at Fontainebleau further disseminated the Italian style through the medium of engravings to Antwerp, and from there throughout Northern Europe, from London to Poland. Mannerist design was extended to luxury goods like silver and carved furniture. A sense of tense, controlled emotion expressed in elaborate symbolism and allegory, and an ideal of female beauty characterized by elongated proportions are features of this style.
Agnolo Bronzino was a pupil of Pontormo, whose style was very influential and often confusing in terms of figuring out the attribution of many artworks. During his career, Bronzino also collaborated with Vasari as a set designer for the production "Comedy of Magicians", where he painted many portraits. Bronzino's work was sought after, and he enjoyed great success when he became a court painter for the Medici family in 1539. A unique Mannerist characteristic of Bronzino's work was the rendering of milky complexions.
In the painting, "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time", Bronzino portrays an erotic scene that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. In the foreground, Cupid and Venus are nearly engaged in a kiss, but pause as if caught in the act. Above the pair are mythological figures, Father Time on the right, who pulls a curtain to reveal the pair and the representation of the goddess of the night on the left. The composition also involves a grouping of masks, a hybrid creature composed of features of a girl and a serpent, and a man depicted in agonizing pain. Many theories are available for the painting, such as it conveying the dangers of syphilis, or that the painting functioned as a court game.
Mannerist portraits by Bronzino are distinguished by a serene elegance and meticulous attention to detail. As a result, Bronzino's sitters have been said to project an aloofness and marked emotional distance from the viewer. There is also a virtuosic concentration on capturing the precise pattern and sheen of rich textiles. Specifically, within the "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time", Bronzino utilizes the tactics of Mannerist movement, attention to detail, color, and sculptural forms. Evidence of Mannerist movement is apparent in the awkward movements of Cupid and Venus, as they contort their bodies to partly embrace. Particularly, Bronzino paints the complexion with the many forms as a perfect porcelain white with a smooth effacement of their muscles which provides a reference to the smoothness of sculpture.
Alessandro Allori's (1535–1607) "Susanna and the Elders" ("below") is distinguished by latent eroticism and consciously brilliant still life detail, in a crowded, contorted composition.
Jacopo Tintoretto has been known for his vastly different contributions to Venetian painting after the legacy of Titian. His work, which differed greatly from his predecessors, had been criticized by Vasari for its, "fantastical, extravagant, bizarre style." Within his work, Tinitoretto adopted Mannerist elements that have distanced him from the classical notion of Venetian painting, as he often created artworks which contained elements of fantasy and retained naturalism. Other unique elements of Tintoretto's work include his attention to color through the regular utilization of rough brushstrokes and experimentation with pigment to create illusion.
An artwork that is associated with Mannerist characteristics is the "Last Supper"; it was commissioned by Michele Alabardi for the San Giorgio Maggiore in 1591. In Tintoretto's "Last Supper", the scene is portrayed from the angle of group of people along the right side of the composition. On the left side of the painting, Christ and the Apostles occupy one side of the table and single out Judas. Within the dark space, there are few sources of light; one source is emitted by Christ's halo and hanging torch above the table.
In its distinct composition, the "Last Supper" portrays Mannerist characteristics. One characteristic that Tintoretto utilizes is a black background. Though the painting gives some indication of an interior space through the use of perspective, the edges of the composition are mostly shrouded in shadow which provides drama for the central scene of the "Last Supper". Additionally, Tintoretto utilizes the spotlight effects with light, especially with the halo of Christ and the hanging torch above the table. A third Mannerist characteristic that Tintoretto employs are the atmospheric effects of figures shaped in smoke and float about the composition.
El Greco attempted to express religious emotion with exaggerated traits. After the realistic depiction of the human form and the mastery of perspective achieved in High Renaissance, some artists started to deliberately distort proportions in disjointed, irrational space for emotional and artistic effect. El Greco still is a deeply original artist. He has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. Key aspects of Mannerism in El Greco include the jarring "acid" palette, elongated and tortured anatomy, irrational perspective and light, and obscure and troubling iconography. El Greco's style was a culmination of unique developments based on his Greek heritage and travels to Spain and Italy.
El Greco's work reflects a multitude of styles including Byzantine elements as well as the influence of Caravaggio and Parmigianino in addition to Venetian coloring. An important element is his attention to color as he regarded it to be one of the most important aspects of his painting. Over the course of his career, El Greco's work remained in high demand as he completed important commissions in locations such as the Colegio de la Encarnación de Madrid.
El Greco's unique painting style and connection to Mannerist characteristics is especially prevalent in the work "Laocoön". Painted in 1610, it depicts the mythological tale of Laocoön, who warned the Trojans about the danger of the wooden horse which was presented by the Greeks as peace offering to the goddess Minerva. As a result, Minerva retaliated in revenge by summoning serpents to kill Laocoön and his two sons. Instead of being set against the backdrop of Troy, El Greco situated the scene near Toledo, Spain in order to "universalize the story by drawing out its relevance for the contemporary world."
El Greco's unique style in "Laocoön" exemplifies many Mannerist characteristics. One that they are prevalent is the elongation of many of the human forms throughout the composition in conjunction with their serpentine movement, which provides a sense of elegance. An additional element of Mannerist style is the atmospheric effects in which El Greco creates a hazy sky and blurring of landscape in the background.
Benvenuto Cellini created the "Cellini Salt Cellar" of gold and enamel in 1540 featuring Poseidon and Amphitrite (water and earth) placed in uncomfortable positions and with elongated proportions. It is considered a masterpiece of Mannerist sculpture.
Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) was a Mannerist portraitist often acknowledged to be the first female career artist in Western Europe. She was appointed to be the Portraitist in Ordinary at the Vatican. Her style is characterized as being influenced by the Carracci family of painters by the colors of the Venetian School. She is known for her portraits of noblewomen, and for her depiction of nude figures, which was unusual for a woman of her time.
Taddeo Zuccaro was born in Sant'Angelo in Vado, near Urbino, the son of Ottaviano Zuccari, an almost unknown painter. His brother Federico, born around 1540, was also a painter and architect.
Federico Zuccaro’s documented career as a painter began in 1550, when he moved to Rome to work under Taddeo, his elder brother. He went on to complete decorations for Pius IV, and help complete the fresco decorations at the Villa Farnese at Caprarola. Between 1563 and 1565, he was active in Venice with the Grimani family of Santa Maria Formosa. During his Venetian period, he traveled alongside Palladio in Friuli.
Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) continued to paint in a Northern Mannerist style until the end of his life, ignoring the arrival of the Baroque art, and making him perhaps the last significant Mannerist artist still to be working. His subjects included large scenes with still life in the manner of Pieter Aertsen, and mythological scenes, many small cabinet paintings beautifully executed on copper, and most featuring nudity.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo is most readily known for his artworks that incorporate still life and portraiture. His style is viewed as Mannerist with the assemblage style of fruits and vegetables in which its composition can be depicted in various ways—right side up and upside down. Arcimboldo's artworks have also applied to Mannerism in terms of humor that it conveys to viewers, because it does not hold the same degree of seriousness as Renaissance works. Stylistically, Arcimboldo's paintings are known for their attention to nature and concept of a "monstrous appearance."
One of Arcimboldo's paintings which contains various Mannerist characteristics is, "Vertumnus". Painted against a black background is a portrait of Rudolf II, whose body is composed of various vegetables, flowers, and fruits. The painting is viewed as various levels as a joke and conveying a serious message. The joke of the painting communicates the humor of power which is that Emperor Rudolf II is hiding a dark inner self behind his public image. On the other hand, the serious tone of the painting foreshadows the good fortune that would be prevalent during his reign.
"Vertumnus" contains various Mannerist elements in terms of its composition and message. One element is the flat, black background which Arcimboldo utilizes to emphasize the status and identity of the Emperor, as well as highlighting the fantasy of his reign. In the portrait of Rudolf II, Arcimboldo also strays away from the naturalistic representation of the Renaissance, and explores the construction of composition by rendering him from a jumble of fruits, vegetables, plants and flowers. Another element of Mannerism which the painting portrays is the dual narrative of a joke and serious message; humor wasn't normally utilized in Renaissance artworks.
Mannerist architecture was characterized by visual trickery and unexpected elements that challenged the Renaissance norms. Flemish artists, many of whom had traveled to Italy and were influenced by Mannerist developments there, were responsible for the spread of Mannerist trends into Europe north of the Alps, including into the realm of architecture. During the period, architects experimented with using architectural forms to emphasize solid and spatial relationships. The Renaissance ideal of harmony gave way to freer and more imaginative rhythms. The best known architect associated with the Mannerist style, and a pioneer at the Laurentian Library, was Michelangelo (1475–1564). He is credited with inventing the giant order, a large pilaster that stretches from the bottom to the top of a façade. He used this in his design for the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome.
Prior to the 20th century, the term "Mannerism" had negative connotations, but it is now used to describe the historical period in more general, non-judgmental terms. Mannerist architecture has also been used to describe a trend in the 1960s and 1970s that involved breaking the norms of modernist architecture while at the same time recognizing their existence. Defining Mannerism in this context, architect and author Robert Venturi wrote "Mannerism for architecture of our time that acknowledges conventional order rather than original expression but breaks the conventional order to accommodate complexity and contradiction and thereby engages ambiguity unambiguously."
An example of Mannerist architecture is the Villa Farnese at Caprarola, in the rugged country side outside of Rome. The proliferation of engravers during the 16th century spread Mannerist styles more quickly than any previous styles.
Dense with ornament of "Roman" detailing, the display doorway at Colditz Castle exemplifies the northern style, characteristically applied as an isolated "set piece" against unpretentious vernacular walling.
From the late 1560s onwards, many buildings in Valletta, the new capital city of Malta, were designed by the architect Girolamo Cassar in the Mannerist style. Such buildings include St. John's Co-Cathedral, the Grandmaster's Palace and the seven original auberges. Many of Cassar's buildings were modified over the years, especially in the Baroque period. However, a few buildings, such as Auberge d'Aragon and the exterior of St. John's Co-Cathedral, still retain most of Cassar's original Mannerist design.
In English literature, Mannerism is commonly identified with the qualities of the "Metaphysical" poets of whom the most famous is John Donne. The witty sally of a Baroque writer, John Dryden, against the verse of Donne in the previous generation, affords a concise contrast between Baroque and Mannerist aims in the arts:
The rich musical possibilities in the poetry of the late 16th and early 17th centuries provided an attractive basis for the madrigal, which quickly rose to prominence as the pre-eminent musical form in Italian musical culture, as discussed by Tim Carter:
The word Mannerism has also been used to describe the style of highly florid and contrapuntally complex polyphonic music made in France in the late 14th century. This period is now usually referred to as the "ars subtilior".
"The Early Commedia dell'Arte (1550–1621): The Mannerist Context" by Paul Castagno discusses Mannerism's effect on the contemporary professional theatre. Castagno's was the first study to define a theatrical form as Mannerist, employing the vocabulary of Mannerism and maniera to discuss the typification, exaggerated, and "effetto meraviglioso" of the "comici dell'arte". See Part II of the above book for a full discussion of Mannerist characteristics in the commedia dell'arte. The study is largely iconographic, presenting a pictorial evidence that many of the artists who painted or printed commedia images were in fact, coming from the workshops of the day, heavily ensconced in the maniera tradition.
The preciosity in Jacques Callot's minute engravings seem to belie a much larger scale of action. Callot's "Balli di Sfessania" (literally, dance of the buttocks) celebrates the commedia's blatant eroticism, with protruding phalli, spears posed with the anticipation of a comic ream, and grossly exaggerated masks that mix the bestial with human. The eroticism of the "innamorate" (lovers) including the baring of breasts, or excessive veiling, was quite in vogue in the paintings and engravings from the second School of Fontainebleau, particularly those that detect a Franco-Flemish influence. Castagno demonstrates iconographic linkages between genre painting and the figures of the commedia dell'arte that demonstrate how this theatrical form was embedded within the cultural traditions of the late cinquecento.
Important corollaries exist between the "disegno interno", which substituted for the "disegno esterno" (external design) in Mannerist painting. This notion of projecting a deeply subjective view as superseding nature or established principles (perspective, for example), in essence, the emphasis away from the object to its subject, now emphasizing execution, displays of virtuosity, or unique techniques. This inner vision is at the heart of commedia performance. For example, in the moment of improvisation the actor expresses his virtuosity without heed to formal boundaries, decorum, unity, or text. Arlecchino became emblematic of the mannerist "discordia concors" (the union of opposites), at one moment he would be gentle and kind, then, on a dime, become a thief violently acting out with his battle. Arlecchino could be graceful in movement, only in the next beat, to clumsily trip over his feet. Freed from the external rules, the actor celebrated the evanescence of the moment; much the way Benvenuto Cellini would dazzle his patrons by draping his sculptures, unveiling them with lighting effects and a sense of the marvelous. The presentation of the object became as important as the object itself.
According to art critic Jerry Saltz, "Neo-Mannerism" (new Mannerism) is among several clichés that are "squeezing the life out of the art world". Neo-Mannerism describes art of the 21st century that is turned out by students whose academic teachers "have scared [them] into being pleasingly meek, imitative, and ordinary".
Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin. (cased) (pbk) [Reprinted with corrections, 1986; 8th edition, Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1991.] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19947 |
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American activist, television personality, fashion designer, and former White House intern. President Bill Clinton admitted to having had what he called an "inappropriate relationship" with Lewinsky while she worked at the White House in 1995–1996. The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment) became known later as the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.
As a result of the public coverage of the political scandal, Lewinsky gained international celebrity status. She subsequently engaged in a variety of ventures that included designing a line of handbags under her name, being an advertising spokesperson for a diet plan, and working as a television personality. Lewinsky later decided to leave the public spotlight to pursue a master's degree in psychology in London. In 2014, she returned to public view as a social activist speaking out against cyberbullying.
Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in an affluent family in Southern California in the Westside Brentwood area of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills. Her father is Bernard Lewinsky, an oncologist, who is the son of German Jews who escaped from Nazi Germany and moved to El Salvador and then to the United States when he was 14. Her mother, born Marcia Kay Vilensky, is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis. In 1996, she wrote her only book, the gossip biography, "The Private Lives of the Three Tenors". During the Lewinsky scandal, the press compared Lewis' unproven "hints" that she had an affair with opera star Plácido Domingo to her daughter's sexual relationship with Clinton. Monica's maternal grandfather, Samuel M. Vilensky, was a Lithuanian Jew, and Monica's maternal grandmother, Bronia Poleshuk, was born in the British Concession of Tianjin, China, to a Russian Jewish family. Monica's parents' acrimonious separation and divorce during 1987 and 1988 had a significant effect on her. Her father later married his current wife, Barbara; her mother later married R. Peter Straus, a media executive and former director of the Voice of America under President Jimmy Carter.
The family attended Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and Monica attended Sinai Akiba Academy, its religious school. For her primary education she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air. She then attended Beverly Hills High School, but for her senior year transferred to, and graduated from, Bel Air Prep (later known as Pacific Hills School) in 1991.
Following high school graduation, Lewinsky attended Santa Monica College, a two-year community college, and worked for the drama department at Beverly Hills High School and at a tie shop. In 1992, she allegedly began a five-year affair with Andy Bleiler, her married former high school drama instructor. In 1993, she enrolled at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1995.
With the assistance of a family connection, Lewinsky got an unpaid summer White House internship in the office of White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C. and took up the position in July 1995. She moved to a paid position in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs in December 1995.
Lewinsky stated that she had nine sexual encounters in the Oval Office with President Bill Clinton between November 1995 and March 1997. According to her testimony, these involved fellatio and other sexual acts, but not sexual intercourse.
Clinton had previously been confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as Governor of Arkansas. Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed a civil lawsuit against him alleging that he had sexually harassed her. Lewinsky's name surfaced during the discovery phase of Jones' case, when Jones' lawyers sought to show a pattern of behavior by Clinton which involved inappropriate sexual relationships with other government employees.
In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors transferred her from the White House to the Pentagon because they felt that she was spending too much time around Clinton. At the Pentagon, she worked as an assistant to chief Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. Lewinsky told co-worker Linda Tripp about her relationship with Clinton, and Tripp began secretly recording their telephone conversations beginning in September 1997. Lewinsky left the Pentagon position in December 1997. Lewinsky submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones case in January 1998 denying any physical relationship with Clinton, and she attempted to persuade Tripp to lie under oath in that case. Tripp gave the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, adding to his on-going investigation into the Whitewater controversy. Starr then broadened his investigation beyond the Arkansas land use deal to include Lewinsky, Clinton, and others for possible perjury and subornation of perjury in the Jones case. Tripp reported the taped conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg. She also convinced Lewinsky to save the gifts that Clinton had given her during their relationship and not to dry clean a blue dress that was stained with Clinton's semen. Under oath, Clinton denied having had "a sexual affair", "sexual relations", or "a sexual relationship" with Lewinsky.
News of the Clinton–Lewinsky relationship broke in January 1998. On January 26, 1998, Clinton stated, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" in a nationally televised White House news conference. The matter instantly occupied the news media, and Lewinsky spent the next weeks hiding from public attention in her mother's residence at the Watergate complex. News of Lewinsky's affair with Andy Bleiler, her former high school drama instructor, also came to light, and he turned over to Starr various souvenirs, photographs, and documents that Lewinsky had sent him and his wife during the time that she was in the White House.
Clinton had also said, "There is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship" which he defended as truthful on August 17, 1998 because of his use of the present tense, arguing "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is". Starr obtained a blue dress from Lewinsky with Clinton's semen stained on it, as well as testimony from her that the President had inserted a cigar into her vagina. Clinton stated, "I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate", but he denied committing perjury because, according to Clinton, the legal definition of oral sex was not encompassed by "sex" "per se". In addition, he relied on the definition of "sexual relations" as proposed by the prosecution and agreed by the defense and by Judge Susan Webber Wright, who was hearing the Paula Jones case. Clinton claimed that certain acts were performed "on" him, not "by" him, and therefore he did not engage in sexual relations. Lewinsky's testimony to the Starr Commission, however, contradicted Clinton's claim of being totally passive in their encounters.
Clinton and Lewinsky were both called before a grand jury; he testified via closed-circuit television, she in person. She was granted transactional immunity by the Office of the Independent Counsel in exchange for her testimony.
The affair led to pop culture celebrity for Lewinsky, as she had become the focus of a political storm. Her immunity agreement restricted what she could talk about publicly, but she was able to cooperate with Andrew Morton in his writing of "Monica's Story", her biography which included her side of the Clinton affair. The book was published in March 1999; it was also excerpted as a cover story in "Time" magazine. On March 3, 1999, Barbara Walters interviewed Lewinsky on ABC's "20/20". The program was watched by 70 million Americans, which ABC said was a record for a news show. Lewinsky made about $500,000 from her participation in the book and another $1 million from international rights to the Walters interview, but was still beset by high legal bills and living costs.
In June 1999, "Ms." magazine published a series of articles by writer Susan Jane Gilman, sexologist Susie Bright, and author-host Abiola Abrams arguing from three generations of women whether Lewinsky's behavior had any meaning for feminism. Also in 1999, Lewinsky declined to sign an autograph in an airport, saying, "I'm kind of known for something that's not so great to be known for." She made a cameo appearance as herself in two sketches during the May 8, 1999, episode of NBC's "Saturday Night Live", a program that had lampooned her relationship with Clinton over the prior 16 months.
By her own account, Lewinsky had survived the intense media attention during the scandal period by knitting. In September 1999, she took this interest further by beginning to sell a line of handbags bearing her name, under the company name The Real Monica, Inc. They were sold online as well as at Henri Bendel in New York, Fred Segal in California, and The Cross in London. Lewinsky designed the bags—described by "New York" magazine as "hippie-ish, reversible totes"—and traveled frequently to supervise their manufacture in Louisiana.
At the start of 2000, Lewinsky began appearing in television commercials for the diet company Jenny Craig, Inc. The $1 million endorsement deal, which required Lewinsky to lose 40 or more pounds in six months, gained considerable publicity at the time. Lewinsky said that despite her desire to return to a more private life, she needed the money to pay off legal fees, and she believed in the product. A Jenny Craig spokesperson said of Lewinsky, "She represents a busy active woman of today with a hectic lifestyle. And she has had weight issues and weight struggles for a long time. That represents a lot of women in America." The choice of Lewinsky as a role model proved controversial for Jenny Craig, and some of its private franchises switched to an older advertising campaign. The company stopped running the Lewinsky ads in February 2000, concluded her campaign entirely in April 2000, and paid her only $300,000 of the $1 million contracted for her involvement.
Also at the start of 2000, Lewinsky moved to New York City, lived in the West Village, and became an A-list guest in the Manhattan social scene. In February 2000, she appeared on MTV's "The Tom Green Show", in an episode in which the host took her to his parents' home in Ottawa in search of fabric for her new handbag business. Later in 2000, Lewinsky worked as a correspondent for Channel 5 in the UK, on the show "Monica's Postcards", reporting on U.S. culture and trends from a variety of locations.
In March 2002, Lewinsky, no longer bound by the terms of her immunity agreement, appeared in the HBO special, "Monica in Black and White", part of the "America Undercover" series. In it she answered a studio audience's questions about her life and the Clinton affair.
Lewinsky hosted the reality television dating program, "Mr. Personality", on Fox Television Network in 2003, where she advised young women contestants who were picking men hidden by masks. Some Americans tried to organize a boycott of advertisers on the show, to protest Lewinsky's capitalizing on her notoriety. Nevertheless, the show debuted to very high ratings, and Alessandra Stanley wrote in "The New York Times": "after years of trying to cash in on her fame by designing handbags and other self-marketing schemes, Ms. Lewinsky has finally found a fitting niche on television." The ratings, however, slid downward each successive week, and after the show completed its initial limited run, it did not reappear. The same year she appeared as a guest on the programs "V Graham Norton" in the UK, "High Chaparall" in Sweden, and "The View" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in the U.S.
After Clinton's autobiography, "My Life", appeared in 2004, Lewinsky said in an interview with the British tabloid "Daily Mail":
By 2005, Lewinsky found that she could not escape the spotlight in the U.S., which made both her professional and personal life difficult. She stopped selling her handbag line and moved to London to study social psychology at the London School of Economics. In December 2006, Lewinsky graduated with a Master of Science degree. Her thesis was titled, "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third-Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity." For the next decade she tried to avoid publicity.
Lewinsky did correspond in 2009 with scholar Ken Gormley, who was writing an in-depth study of the Clinton scandals, maintaining that Clinton had lied under oath when asked detailed and specific questions about his relationship with her. In 2013, the items associated with Lewinsky that Bleiler had turned over to Starr were put up for auction by Bleiler's ex-wife, who had come into possession of them.
During her decade out of the public eye, Lewinsky lived in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Portland but, due to her notoriety, had trouble finding employment in the communications and marketing jobs for nonprofit organizations where she had been interviewed.
In May 2014, Lewinsky wrote an essay for "Vanity Fair" magazine titled "Shame and Survival", wherein she discussed her life and the scandal. She continued to maintain that the relationship was mutual and wrote that while Clinton took advantage of her, it was a consensual relationship. She added: "I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened." However, she said it was now time to "stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past." The magazine later announced her as a "Vanity Fair" contributor, stating she would "contribute to their website on an ongoing basis, on the lookout for relevant topics of interest".
In July 2014, Lewinsky was interviewed in a three-part television special for the National Geographic Channel, titled "The 90s: The Last Great Decade". The series looked at various events of the 1990s, including the scandal that brought Lewinsky into the national spotlight. This was Lewinsky's first such interview in more than ten years.
In October 2014, she took a public stand against cyberbullying, calling herself "patient zero" of online harassment. Speaking at a "Forbes" magazine "30 Under 30" summit about her experiences in the aftermath of the scandal, she said, "Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame game survive, too." She said she was influenced by reading about the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University freshman, involving cyberbullying and joined Twitter to facilitate her efforts. In March 2015, Lewinsky continued to speak out publicly against cyberbullying, delivering a TED talk calling for a more compassionate Internet. In June 2015, she became an ambassador and strategic advisor for anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution. The same month, she gave an anti-cyberbullying speech at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. In September 2015, Lewinsky was interviewed by Amy Robach on "Good Morning America", about Bystander Revolution's Month of Action campaign for National Bullying Prevention Month. Lewinsky wrote the foreword to an October 2017 book by Sue Scheff and Melissa Schorr, "Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate".
In October 2017, Lewinsky tweeted the #MeToo hashtag to indicate that she was a victim of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault, but did not provide details. She wrote an essay in the March 2018 issue of "Vanity Fair" in which she did not directly explain why she used the #MeToo hashtag in October. She did write that looking back at her relationship with Bill Clinton, although it was consensual, because he was 27 years older than her and in a position with a lot more power than she had, in her opinion the relationship constituted an "abuse of power" on Clinton's part. She added that she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to the experiences involved after the relationship was disclosed. In May 2018, Lewinsky was disinvited from an event hosted by "Town & Country" when Bill Clinton accepted an invitation to the event.
In September 2018, Lewinsky spoke at a conference in Jerusalem. Following her speech, she sat for a Q&A session with the host, journalist Yonit Levi. The first question Levi asked was whether Lewinsky thinks that Clinton owes her a private apology. Lewinsky refused to answer the question, and walked off the stage. She later tweeted that the question was posed in a pre-event meeting with Levi, and Lewinsky told her that such a question was off limits. A spokesman for the Israel Television News Company, which hosted the conference and is Levi's employer, responded that Levi had kept all the agreements she made with Lewinsky and honored her requests.
In 2019, she was interviewed by John Oliver on his HBO show, where they discussed the importance of solving the problem of public shaming and how her situation may have been different if social media had existed at the time that the scandal broke in the late 1990s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19948 |
Pressure measurement
Pressure measurement is the analysis of an applied force by a fluid (liquid or gas) on a surface. Pressure is typically measured in units of force per unit of surface area. Many techniques have been developed for the measurement of pressure and vacuum. Instruments used to measure and display pressure in an integral unit are called pressure meters or pressure gauges or vacuum gauges. A manometer is a good example, as it uses the surface area and weight of a column of liquid to both measure and indicate pressure. Likewise the widely used Bourdon gauge is a mechanical device, which both measures and indicates and is probably the best known type of gauge.
A vacuum gauge is a pressure gauge used to measure pressures lower than the ambient atmospheric pressure, which is set as the zero point, in negative values (e.g.: −15 psig or −760 mmHg equals total vacuum). Most gauges measure pressure relative to atmospheric pressure as the zero point, so this form of reading is simply referred to as "gauge pressure". However, anything greater than total vacuum is technically a form of pressure. For very accurate readings, especially at very low pressures, a gauge that uses total vacuum as the zero point may be used, giving pressure readings in an absolute scale.
Other methods of pressure measurement involve sensors that can transmit the pressure reading to a remote indicator or control system (telemetry).
Everyday pressure measurements, such as for vehicle tire pressure, are usually made relative to ambient air pressure. In other cases measurements are made relative to a vacuum or to some other specific reference. When distinguishing between these zero references, the following terms are used:
The zero reference in use is usually implied by context, and these words are added only when clarification is needed. Tire pressure and blood pressure are gauge pressures by convention, while atmospheric pressures, deep vacuum pressures, and altimeter pressures must be absolute.
For most working fluids where a fluid exists in a closed system, gauge pressure measurement prevails. Pressure instruments connected to the system will indicate pressures relative to the current atmospheric pressure. The situation changes when extreme vacuum pressures are measured, then absolute pressures are typically used instead.
Differential pressures are commonly used in industrial process systems. Differential pressure gauges have two inlet ports, each connected to one of the volumes whose pressure is to be monitored. In effect, such a gauge performs the mathematical operation of subtraction through mechanical means, obviating the need for an operator or control system to watch two separate gauges and determine the difference in readings.
Moderate vacuum pressure readings can be ambiguous without the proper context, as they may represent absolute pressure or gauge pressure without a negative sign. Thus a vacuum of 26 inHg gauge is equivalent to an absolute pressure of 30 inHg (typical atmospheric pressure) − 26 inHg = 4 inHg.
Atmospheric pressure is typically about 100 kPa at sea level, but is variable with altitude and weather. If the absolute pressure of a fluid stays constant, the gauge pressure of the same fluid will vary as atmospheric pressure changes. For example, when a car drives up a mountain, the (gauge) tire pressure goes up because atmospheric pressure goes down. The absolute pressure in the tire is essentially unchanged.
Using atmospheric pressure as reference is usually signified by a "g" for gauge after the pressure unit, e.g. 70 psig, which means that the pressure measured is the total pressure minus atmospheric pressure. There are two types of gauge reference pressure: vented gauge (vg) and sealed gauge (sg).
A vented-gauge pressure transmitter, for example, allows the outside air pressure to be exposed to the negative side of the pressure-sensing diaphragm, through a vented cable or a hole on the side of the device, so that it always measures the pressure referred to ambient barometric pressure. Thus a vented-gauge reference pressure sensor should always read zero pressure when the process pressure connection is held open to the air.
A sealed gauge reference is very similar, except that atmospheric pressure is sealed on the negative side of the diaphragm. This is usually adopted on high pressure ranges, such as hydraulics, where atmospheric pressure changes will have a negligible effect on the accuracy of the reading, so venting is not necessary. This also allows some manufacturers to provide secondary pressure containment as an extra precaution for pressure equipment safety if the burst pressure of the primary pressure sensing diaphragm is exceeded.
There is another way of creating a sealed gauge reference, and this is to seal a high vacuum on the reverse side of the sensing diaphragm. Then the output signal is offset, so the pressure sensor reads close to zero when measuring atmospheric pressure.
A sealed gauge reference pressure transducer will never read exactly zero because atmospheric pressure is always changing and the reference in this case is fixed at 1 bar.
To produce an absolute pressure sensor, the manufacturer seals a high vacuum behind the sensing diaphragm. If the process-pressure connection of an absolute-pressure transmitter is open to the air, it will read the actual barometric pressure.
The SI unit for pressure is the pascal (Pa), equal to one newton per square metre (N·m−2 or kg·m−1·s−2). This special name for the unit was added in 1971; before that, pressure in SI was expressed in units such as N·m−2. When indicated, the zero reference is stated in parenthesis following the unit, for example 101 kPa (abs). The pound per square inch (psi) is still in widespread use in the US and Canada, for measuring, for instance, tire pressure. A letter is often appended to the psi unit to indicate the measurement's zero reference; psia for absolute, psig for gauge, psid for differential, although this practice is discouraged by the NIST.
Because pressure was once commonly measured by its ability to displace a column of liquid in a manometer, pressures are often expressed as a depth of a particular fluid ("e.g.," inches of water). Manometric measurement is the subject of pressure head calculations. The most common choices for a manometer's fluid are mercury (Hg) and water; water is nontoxic and readily available, while mercury's density allows for a shorter column (and so a smaller manometer) to measure a given pressure. The abbreviation "W.C." or the words "water column" are often printed on gauges and measurements that use water for the manometer.
Fluid density and local gravity can vary from one reading to another depending on local factors, so the height of a fluid column does not define pressure precisely. So measurements in "millimetres of mercury" or "inches of mercury" can be converted to SI units as long as attention is paid to the local factors of fluid density and gravity. Temperature fluctuations change the value of fluid density, while location can affect gravity.
Although no longer preferred, these manometric units are still encountered in many fields. Blood pressure is measured in millimetres of mercury (see torr) in most of the world, central venous pressure and lung pressures in centimeters of water are still common, as in settings for CPAP machines. Natural gas pipeline pressures are measured in inches of water, expressed as "inches W.C."
Underwater divers use manometric units: the ambient pressure is measured in units of metres sea water (msw) which is defined as equal to one tenth of a bar. The unit used in the US is the foot sea water (fsw), based on standard gravity and a sea-water density of 64 lb/ft3. According to the US Navy Diving Manual, one fsw equals 0.30643 msw, , or , though elsewhere it states that 33 fsw is (one atmosphere), which gives one fsw equal to about 0.445 psi. The msw and fsw are the conventional units for measurement of diver pressure exposure used in decompression tables and the unit of calibration for pneumofathometers and hyperbaric chamber pressure gauges. Both msw and fsw are measured relative to normal atmospheric pressure.
In vacuum systems, the units torr (millimeter of mercury), micron (micrometer of mercury), and inch of mercury (inHg) are most commonly used. Torr and micron usually indicates an absolute pressure, while inHg usually indicates a gauge pressure.
Atmospheric pressures are usually stated using hectopascal (hPa), kilopascal (kPa), millibar (mbar) or atmospheres (atm). In American and Canadian engineering, stress is often measured in kip. Note that stress is not a true pressure since it is not scalar. In the cgs system the unit of pressure was the barye (ba), equal to 1 dyn·cm−2. In the mts system, the unit of pressure was the pieze, equal to 1 sthene per square metre.
Many other hybrid units are used such as mmHg/cm2 or grams-force/cm2 (sometimes as kg/cm2 without properly identifying the force units). Using the names kilogram, gram, kilogram-force, or gram-force (or their symbols) as a unit of force is prohibited in SI; the unit of force in SI is the newton (N).
Static pressure is uniform in all directions, so pressure measurements are independent of direction in an immovable (static) fluid. Flow, however, applies additional pressure on surfaces perpendicular to the flow direction, while having little impact on surfaces parallel to the flow direction. This directional component of pressure in a moving (dynamic) fluid is called dynamic pressure. An instrument facing the flow direction measures the sum of the static and dynamic pressures; this measurement is called the total pressure or stagnation pressure. Since dynamic pressure is referenced to static pressure, it is neither gauge nor absolute; it is a differential pressure.
While static gauge pressure is of primary importance to determining net loads on pipe walls, dynamic pressure is used to measure flow rates and airspeed. Dynamic pressure can be measured by taking the differential pressure between instruments parallel and perpendicular to the flow. Pitot-static tubes, for example perform this measurement on airplanes to determine airspeed. The presence of the measuring instrument inevitably acts to divert flow and create turbulence, so its shape is critical to accuracy and the calibration curves are often non-linear.
Many instruments have been invented to measure pressure, with different advantages and disadvantages. Pressure range, sensitivity, dynamic response and cost all vary by several orders of magnitude from one instrument design to the next. The oldest type is the liquid column (a vertical tube filled with mercury) manometer invented by Evangelista Torricelli in 1643. The U-Tube was invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1661.
Hydrostatic gauges (such as the mercury column manometer) compare pressure to the hydrostatic force per unit area at the base of a column of fluid. Hydrostatic gauge measurements are independent of the type of gas being measured, and can be designed to have a very linear calibration. They have poor dynamic response.
Piston-type gauges counterbalance the pressure of a fluid with a spring (for example tire-pressure gauges of comparatively low accuracy) or a solid weight, in which case it is known as a deadweight tester and may be used for calibration of other gauges.
Liquid-column gauges consist of a column of liquid in a tube whose ends are exposed to different pressures. The column will rise or fall until its weight (a force applied due to gravity) is in equilibrium with the pressure differential between the two ends of the tube (a force applied due to fluid pressure). A very simple version is a U-shaped tube half-full of liquid, one side of which is connected to the region of interest while the reference pressure (which might be the atmospheric pressure or a vacuum) is applied to the other. The difference in liquid levels represents the applied pressure. The pressure exerted by a column of fluid of height "h" and density "ρ" is given by the hydrostatic pressure equation, "P" = "hgρ". Therefore, the pressure difference between the applied pressure "Pa" and the reference pressure "P"0 in a U-tube manometer can be found by solving . In other words, the pressure on either end of the liquid (shown in blue in the figure) must be balanced (since the liquid is static), and so .
In most liquid-column measurements, the result of the measurement is the height "h", expressed typically in mm, cm, or inches. The "h" is also known as the pressure head. When expressed as a pressure head, pressure is specified in units of length and the measurement fluid must be specified. When accuracy is critical, the temperature of the measurement fluid must likewise be specified, because liquid density is a function of temperature. So, for example, pressure head might be written "742.2 mmHg" or "4.2 inH2O at 59 °F" for measurements taken with mercury or water as the manometric fluid respectively. The word "gauge" or "vacuum" may be added to such a measurement to distinguish between a pressure above or below the atmospheric pressure. Both mm of mercury and inches of water are common pressure heads, which can be converted to S.I. units of pressure using unit conversion and the above formulas.
If the fluid being measured is significantly dense, hydrostatic corrections may have to be made for the height between the moving surface of the manometer working fluid and the location where the pressure measurement is desired, except when measuring differential pressure of a fluid (for example, across an orifice plate or venturi), in which case the density ρ should be corrected by subtracting the density of the fluid being measured.
Although any fluid can be used, mercury is preferred for its high density (13.534 g/cm3) and low vapour pressure. For low pressure differences, light oil or water are commonly used (the latter giving rise to units of measurement such as inches water gauge and millimetres H2O). Liquid-column pressure gauges have a highly linear calibration. They have poor dynamic response because the fluid in the column may react slowly to a pressure change.
When measuring vacuum, the working liquid may evaporate and contaminate the vacuum if its vapor pressure is too high. When measuring liquid pressure, a loop filled with gas or a light fluid can isolate the liquids to prevent them from mixing, but this can be unnecessary, for example, when mercury is used as the manometer fluid to measure differential pressure of a fluid such as water. Simple hydrostatic gauges can measure pressures ranging from a few torrs (a few 100 Pa) to a few atmospheres (approximately ).
A single-limb liquid-column manometer has a larger reservoir instead of one side of the U-tube and has a scale beside the narrower column. The column may be inclined to further amplify the liquid movement. Based on the use and structure, following types of manometers are used
A McLeod gauge isolates a sample of gas and compresses it in a modified mercury manometer until the pressure is a few millimetres of mercury. The technique is very slow and unsuited to continual monitoring, but is capable of good accuracy. Unlike other manometer gauges, the McLeod gauge reading is dependent on the composition of the gas, since the interpretation relies on the sample compressing as an ideal gas. Due to the compression process, the McLeod gauge completely ignores partial pressures from non-ideal vapors that condense, such as pump oils, mercury, and even water if compressed enough.
0.1 mPa is the lowest direct measurement of pressure that is possible with current technology. Other vacuum gauges can measure lower pressures, but only indirectly by measurement of other pressure-dependent properties. These indirect measurements must be calibrated to SI units by a direct measurement, most commonly a McLeod gauge.
Aneroid gauges are based on a metallic pressure-sensing element that flexes elastically under the effect of a pressure difference across the element. "Aneroid" means "without fluid", and the term originally distinguished these gauges from the hydrostatic gauges described above. However, aneroid gauges can be used to measure the pressure of a liquid as well as a gas, and they are not the only type of gauge that can operate without fluid. For this reason, they are often called mechanical gauges in modern language. Aneroid gauges are not dependent on the type of gas being measured, unlike thermal and ionization gauges, and are less likely to contaminate the system than hydrostatic gauges. The pressure sensing element may be a Bourdon tube, a diaphragm, a capsule, or a set of bellows, which will change shape in response to the pressure of the region in question. The deflection of the pressure sensing element may be read by a linkage connected to a needle, or it may be read by a secondary transducer. The most common secondary transducers in modern vacuum gauges measure a change in capacitance due to the mechanical deflection. Gauges that rely on a change in capacitance are often referred to as capacitance manometers.
The Bourdon pressure gauge uses the principle that a flattened tube tends to straighten or regain its circular form in cross-section when pressurized. This change in cross-section may be hardly noticeable, involving moderate stresses within the elastic range of easily workable materials. The strain of the material of the tube is magnified by forming the tube into a C shape or even a helix, such that the entire tube tends to straighten out or uncoil elastically as it is pressurized. Eugène Bourdon patented his gauge in France in 1849, and it was widely adopted because of its superior sensitivity, linearity, and accuracy; Edward Ashcroft purchased Bourdon's American patent rights in 1852 and became a major manufacturer of gauges. Also in 1849, Bernard Schaeffer in Magdeburg, Germany patented a successful diaphragm (see below) pressure gauge, which, together with the Bourdon gauge, revolutionized pressure measurement in industry. But in 1875 after Bourdon's patents expired, his company Schaeffer and Budenberg also manufactured Bourdon tube gauges.
In practice, a flattened thin-wall, closed-end tube is connected at the hollow end to a fixed pipe containing the fluid pressure to be measured. As the pressure increases, the closed end moves in an arc, and this motion is converted into the rotation of a (segment of a) gear by a connecting link that is usually adjustable. A small-diameter pinion gear is on the pointer shaft, so the motion is magnified further by the gear ratio. The positioning of the indicator card behind the pointer, the initial pointer shaft position, the linkage length and initial position, all provide means to calibrate the pointer to indicate the desired range of pressure for variations in the behavior of the Bourdon tube itself. Differential pressure can be measured by gauges containing two different Bourdon tubes, with connecting linkages.
Bourdon tubes measure gauge pressure, relative to ambient atmospheric pressure, as opposed to absolute pressure; vacuum is sensed as a reverse motion. Some aneroid barometers use Bourdon tubes closed at both ends (but most use diaphragms or capsules, see below). When the measured pressure is rapidly pulsing, such as when the gauge is near a reciprocating pump, an orifice restriction in the connecting pipe is frequently used to avoid unnecessary wear on the gears and provide an average reading; when the whole gauge is subject to mechanical vibration, the entire case including the pointer and indicator card can be filled with an oil or glycerin. Tapping on the face of the gauge is not recommended as it will tend to falsify actual readings initially presented by the gauge. The Bourdon tube is separate from the face of the gauge and thus has no effect on the actual reading of pressure. Typical high-quality modern gauges provide an accuracy of ±2% of span, and a special high-precision gauge can be as accurate as 0.1% of full scale.
Force-balanced fused quartz bourdon tube sensors work on the same principle but uses the reflection of a beam of light from a mirror to sense the angular displacement and current is applied to electromagnets to balance the force of the tube and bring the angular displacement back to zero, the current that is applied to the coils is used as the measurement. Due to the extremely stable and repeatable mechanical and thermal properties of quartz and the force balancing which eliminates nearly all physical movement these sensors can be accurate to around 1 PPM of full scale. Due to the extremely fine fused quartz structures which must be made by hand these sensors are generally limited to scientific and calibration purposes.
In the following illustrations the transparent cover face of the pictured combination pressure and vacuum gauge has been removed and the mechanism removed from the case. This particular gauge is a combination vacuum and pressure gauge used for automotive diagnosis:
Stationary parts:
Moving parts:
A second type of aneroid gauge uses deflection of a flexible membrane that separates regions of different pressure. The amount of deflection is repeatable for known pressures so the pressure can be determined by using calibration. The deformation of a thin diaphragm is dependent on the difference in pressure between its two faces. The reference face can be open to atmosphere to measure gauge pressure, open to a second port to measure differential pressure, or can be sealed against a vacuum or other fixed reference pressure to measure absolute pressure. The deformation can be measured using mechanical, optical or capacitive techniques. Ceramic and metallic diaphragms are used.
For absolute measurements, welded pressure capsules with diaphragms on either side are often used.
shape:
In gauges intended to sense small pressures or pressure differences, or require that an absolute pressure be measured, the gear train and needle may be driven by an enclosed and sealed bellows chamber, called an aneroid, which means "without liquid". (Early barometers used a column of liquid such as water or the liquid metal mercury suspended by a vacuum.) This bellows configuration is used in aneroid barometers (barometers with an indicating needle and dial card), altimeters, altitude recording barographs, and the altitude telemetry instruments used in weather balloon radiosondes. These devices use the sealed chamber as a reference pressure and are driven by the external pressure. Other sensitive aircraft instruments such as air speed indicators and rate of climb indicators (variometers) have connections both to the internal part of the aneroid chamber and to an external enclosing chamber.
These gauges use the attraction of two magnets to translate differential pressure into motion of a dial pointer. As differential pressure increases, a magnet attached to either a piston or rubber diaphragm moves. A rotary magnet that is attached to a pointer then moves in unison. To create different pressure ranges, the spring rate can be increased or decreased.
The spinning-rotor gauge works by measuring the amount a rotating ball is slowed by the viscosity of the gas being measured. The ball is made of steel and is magnetically levitated inside a steel tube closed at one end and exposed to the gas to be measured at the other. The ball is brought up to speed (about 2500 rad/s), and the speed measured after switching off the drive, by electromagnetic transducers. The range of the instrument is 10−5 to 102 Pa (103 Pa with less accuracy). It is accurate and stable enough to be used as a secondary standard. The instrument requires some skill and knowledge to use correctly. Various corrections must be applied and the ball must be spun at a pressure well below the intended measurement pressure for five hours before using. It is most useful in calibration and research laboratories where high accuracy is required and qualified technicians are available.
This is an over simplified diagram, but you can see fundamental design of the internal ports in the sensor. The important item here to note is the “Diaphragm” as this is the sensor itself. Please note that is it slightly convex in shape (highly exaggerated in the drawing), this is important as it effects the accuracy of the sensor in use.
The shape of the sensor is important because it is calibrated to work in the direction of Air flow as shown by the RED Arrows. This is normal operation for the pressure sensor, providing a positive reading on the display of the digital pressure meter. Applying pressure in the reverse direction can induce errors in the results as the movement of the air pressure is trying to force the diaphragm to move in the opposite direction. The errors induced by this are small but, can be significant and therefore it is always preferable to ensure that the more positive pressure is always applied to the positive (+ve) port and the lower pressure is applied to the negative (-ve) port, for normal 'Gauge Pressure' application. The same applies to measuring the difference between two vacuums, the larger vacuum should always be applied to the negative (-ve) port.
The measurement of pressure via the Wheatstone Bridge looks something like this...
The effective electrical model of the transducer, together with a basic signal conditioning circuit, is shown in the application schematic. The pressure sensor is a fully active Wheatstone bridge which has been temperature compensated and offset adjusted by means of thick film, laser trimmed resistors. The excitation to the bridge is applied via a constant current. The low-level bridge output is at +O and -O, and the amplified span is set by the gain programming resistor (r). The electrical design is microprocessor controlled, which allows for calibration, the additional functions for the user, such as Scale Selection, Data Hold, Zero and Filter functions, the Record function that stores/displays MAX/MIN.
Generally, as a real gas increases in density -which may indicate an increase in pressure- its ability to conduct heat increases. In this type of gauge, a wire filament is heated by running current through it. A thermocouple or resistance thermometer (RTD) can then be used to measure the temperature of the filament. This temperature is dependent on the rate at which the filament loses heat to the surrounding gas, and therefore on the thermal conductivity. A common variant is the Pirani gauge, which uses a single platinum filament as both the heated element and RTD. These gauges are accurate from 10−3 Torr to 10 Torr, but their calibration is sensitive to the chemical composition of the gases being measured.
A Pirani gauge consists of a metal wire open to the pressure being measured. The wire is heated by a current flowing through it and cooled by the gas surrounding it. If the gas pressure is reduced, the cooling effect will decrease, hence the equilibrium temperature of the wire will increase. The resistance of the wire is a function of its temperature: by measuring the voltage across the wire and the current flowing through it, the resistance (and so the gas pressure) can be determined. This type of gauge was invented by Marcello Pirani.
In two-wire gauges, one wire coil is used as a heater, and the other is used to measure temperature due to convection. Thermocouple gauges and thermistor gauges work in this manner using thermocouple or thermistor, respectively, to measure the temperature of the heated wire.
Ionization gauges are the most sensitive gauges for very low pressures (also referred to as hard or high vacuum). They sense pressure indirectly by measuring the electrical ions produced when the gas is bombarded with electrons. Fewer ions will be produced by lower density gases. The calibration of an ion gauge is unstable and dependent on the nature of the gases being measured, which is not always known. They can be calibrated against a McLeod gauge which is much more stable and independent of gas chemistry.
Thermionic emission generates electrons, which collide with gas atoms and generate positive ions. The ions are attracted to a suitably biased electrode known as the collector. The current in the collector is proportional to the rate of ionization, which is a function of the pressure in the system. Hence, measuring the collector current gives the gas pressure. There are several sub-types of ionization gauge.
Most ion gauges come in two types: hot cathode and cold cathode. In the hot cathode version, an electrically heated filament produces an electron beam. The electrons travel through the gauge and ionize gas molecules around them. The resulting ions are collected at a negative electrode. The current depends on the number of ions, which depends on the pressure in the gauge. Hot cathode gauges are accurate from 10−3 Torr to 10−10 Torr. The principle behind cold cathode version is the same, except that electrons are produced in the discharge of a high voltage. Cold cathode gauges are accurate from 10−2 Torr to 10−9 Torr. Ionization gauge calibration is very sensitive to construction geometry, chemical composition of gases being measured, corrosion and surface deposits. Their calibration can be invalidated by activation at atmospheric pressure or low vacuum. The composition of gases at high vacuums will usually be unpredictable, so a mass spectrometer must be used in conjunction with the ionization gauge for accurate measurement.
A hot-cathode ionization gauge is composed mainly of three electrodes acting together as a triode, wherein the cathode is the filament. The three electrodes are a collector or plate, a filament, and a grid. The collector current is measured in picoamperes by an electrometer. The filament voltage to ground is usually at a potential of 30 volts, while the grid voltage at 180–210 volts DC, unless there is an optional electron bombardment feature, by heating the grid, which may have a high potential of approximately 565 volts.
The most common ion gauge is the hot-cathode Bayard–Alpert gauge, with a small ion collector inside the grid. A glass envelope with an opening to the vacuum can surround the electrodes, but usually the nude gauge is inserted in the vacuum chamber directly, the pins being fed through a ceramic plate in the wall of the chamber. Hot-cathode gauges can be damaged or lose their calibration if they are exposed to atmospheric pressure or even low vacuum while hot. The measurements of a hot-cathode ionization gauge are always logarithmic.
Electrons emitted from the filament move several times in back-and-forth movements around the grid before finally entering the grid. During these movements, some electrons collide with a gaseous molecule to form a pair of an ion and an electron (electron ionization). The number of these ions is proportional to the gaseous molecule density multiplied by the electron current emitted from the filament, and these ions pour into the collector to form an ion current. Since the gaseous molecule density is proportional to the pressure, the pressure is estimated by measuring the ion current.
The low-pressure sensitivity of hot-cathode gauges is limited by the photoelectric effect. Electrons hitting the grid produce x-rays that produce photoelectric noise in the ion collector. This limits the range of older hot-cathode gauges to 10−8 Torr and the Bayard–Alpert to about 10−10 Torr. Additional wires at cathode potential in the line of sight between the ion collector and the grid prevent this effect. In the extraction type the ions are not attracted by a wire, but by an open cone. As the ions cannot decide which part of the cone to hit, they pass through the hole and form an ion beam. This ion beam can be passed on to a:
There are two subtypes of cold-cathode ionization gauges: the Penning gauge (invented by Frans Michel Penning), and the inverted magnetron, also called a Redhead gauge. The major difference between the two is the position of the anode with respect to the cathode. Neither has a filament, and each may require a DC potential of about 4 kV for operation. Inverted magnetrons can measure down to 1 Torr.
Likewise, cold-cathode gauges may be reluctant to start at very low pressures, in that the near-absence of a gas makes it difficult to establish an electrode current - in particular in Penning gauges, which use an axially symmetric magnetic field to create path lengths for electrons that are of the order of metres. In ambient air, suitable ion-pairs are ubiquitously formed by cosmic radiation; in a Penning gauge, design features are used to ease the set-up of a discharge path. For example, the electrode of a Penning gauge is usually finely tapered to facilitate the field emission of electrons.
Maintenance cycles of cold cathode gauges are, in general, measured in years, depending on the gas type and pressure that they are operated in. Using a cold cathode gauge in gases with substantial organic components, such as pump oil fractions, can result in the growth of delicate carbon films and shards within the gauge that eventually either short-circuit the electrodes of the gauge or impede the generation of a discharge path.
When fluid flows are not in equilibrium, local pressures may be higher or lower than the average pressure in a medium. These disturbances propagate from their source as longitudinal pressure variations along the path of propagation. This is also called sound. Sound pressure is the instantaneous local pressure deviation from the average pressure caused by a sound wave. Sound pressure can be measured using a microphone in air and a hydrophone in water. The effective sound pressure is the root mean square of the instantaneous sound pressure over a given interval of time. Sound pressures are normally small and are often expressed in units of microbar.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has developed two separate and distinct standards on pressure measurement, B40.100 and PTC 19.2. B40.100 provides guidelines on Pressure Indicated Dial Type and Pressure Digital Indicating Gauges, Diaphragm Seals, Snubbers, and Pressure Limiter Valves. PTC 19.2 provides instructions and guidance for the accurate determination of pressure values in support of the ASME Performance Test Codes. The choice of method, instruments, required calculations, and corrections to be applied depends on the purpose of the measurement, the allowable uncertainty, and the characteristics of the equipment being tested.
The methods for pressure measurement and the protocols used for data transmission are also provided. Guidance is given for setting up the instrumentation and determining the uncertainty of the measurement. Information regarding the instrument type, design, applicable pressure range, accuracy, output, and relative cost is provided. Information is also provided on pressure-measuring devices that are used in field environments i.e., piston gauges, manometers, and low-absolute-pressure (vacuum) instruments.
These methods are designed to assist in the evaluation of measurement uncertainty based on current technology and engineering knowledge, taking into account published instrumentation specifications and measurement and application techniques. This Supplement provides guidance in the use of methods to establish the pressure-measurement uncertainty. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19951 |
Medieval dance
Sources for an understanding of dance in Europe in the Middle Ages are limited and fragmentary, being composed of some interesting depictions in paintings and illuminations, a few musical examples of what may be dances, and scattered allusions in literary texts. The first detailed descriptions of dancing only date from 1451 in Italy, which is after the start of the Renaissance in Western Europe.
By the end of the Middle Ages, some characteristics that were to remain for centuries can be seen to be established. Court dance largely involved mixed couples but dancing in a larger formation. The basse danse (low dance) type is seen in most illustrations, where the dancers process in a dignified fashion without raising their feet far from the floor. Perhaps this is because it was easier for artists to depict. Popular dance styles, some no doubt related to modern folk dance, British country dance and other styles, tended to be more energetic and were often performed by a single gender, as circle dances, line dances, or in other formations.They might involve singing by the dancers, which court dances apparently did not.
The most documented form of dance during the Middle Ages is the carol also called the "carole" or "carola" and known from the 12th and 13th centuries in Western Europe in rural and court settings. It consisted of a group of dancers holding hands usually in a circle, with the dancers singing in a leader and refrain style while dancing. No surviving lyrics or music for the carol have been identified. In northern France, other terms for this type of dance included "ronde" and its diminutives "rondet", "rondel", and "rondelet" from which the more modern music term "rondeau" derives. In the German-speaking areas, this same type of choral dance was known as "reigen".
Mullally in his book on the carole makes the case that the dance, at least in France, was done in a closed circle with the dancers, usually men and women interspersed, holding hands. He adduces evidence that the general progression of the dance was to the left (clockwise) and that the steps probably were very simple consisting of a step to the left with the left foot followed by a step on the right foot closing to the left foot.
Some of the earliest mentions of the carol occur in the works of the French poet Chretien de Troyes in his series of Arthurian romances. In the wedding scene in Erec and Enide (about 1170)
In The Knight of the Cart, (probably late 1170s) at a meadow where there are knights and ladies, various games are played while:
In what is probably Chretien's last work, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, probably written 1181–1191, we find:
and later at a court setting:
Dante (1265-1321) has a few minor references to dance in his works but a more substantive description of the round dance with song from Bologna comes from Giovanni del Virgilio (floruit 1319–1327).
Later in the 14th century Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) shows us the "carola" in Florence in the "Decameron" (about 1350–1353) which has several passages describing men and women dancing to their own singing or accompanied by musicians. Boccaccio also uses two other terms for contemporary dances, "ridda" and "ballonchio", both of which refer to round dances with singing.
Approximately contemporary with the "Decameron" are a series of frescos in Siena by Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted about 1338–40, one of which shows a group of women doing a "bridge" figure while accompanied by another woman playing the tambourine.
In a life of Saint Dunstan composed about 1000, the author tells how Dunstan, going into a church, found maidens dancing in a ring and singing a hymn. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary" (1933) the term "carol" was first used in England for this type of circle dance accompanied by singing in manuscripts dating to as early as 1300. The word was used as both a noun and a verb and the usage of carol for a dance form persisted well into the 16th century. One of the earliest references is in Robert of Brunne's early 14th century "Handlyng Synne" (Handling Sin) where it occurs as a verb.
Circle or line dances also existed in other parts of Europe outside England, France and Italy where the term carol was best known. These dances were of the same type with dancers hand-in-hand and a leader who sang the ballad.
In Denmark, old ballads mention a closed Ring dance which can open into a Chain dance. A fresco in Ørslev church in Zealand from about 1400 shows nine people, men and women, dancing in a line. The leader and some others in the chain carry bouquets of flowers. Dances could be for men and women, or for men alone, or women alone. In the case of women's dances, however, there may have been a man who acted as the leader. Two dances specifically named in the Danish ballads which appear to be line dances of this type are "The Beggar Dance", and "The Lucky Dance" which may have been a dance for women. A modern version of these medieval chains is seen in the Faroese chain dance, the earliest account of which goes back only to the 17th century.
In Sweden too, medieval songs often mentioned dancing. A long chain was formed, with the leader singing the verses and setting the time while the other dancers joined in the chorus. These "Long Dances" have lasted into modern times in Sweden.
A similar type of song dance may have existed in Norway in the Middle Ages as well, but no historical accounts have been found.
The same dance in Germany was called "Reigen" and may have originated from devotional dances at early Christian festivals. Dancing around the church or a fire was frequently denounced by church authorities which only underscores how popular it was. There are records of church and civic officials in various German towns forbidding dancing and singing from the 8th to the 10th centuries. Once again, in singing processions, the leader provided the verse and the other dancers supplied the chorus. The minnesinger Neidhart von Reuental, who lived in the first half of the 13th century wrote several songs for dancing, some of which use the term "reigen".
In southern Tyrol, at Runkelstein Castle, a series of frescos was executed in the last years of the 14th century. One of the frescos depicts Elisabeth of Poland, Queen of Hungary leading a chain dance.
Circle dances were also found in the area that is today the Czech Republic. Descriptions and illustrations of dancing can be found in church registers, chronicles and the 15th century writings of Bohuslav Hasištejnský z Lobkovic. Dancing was primarily done around trees on the village green but special houses for dancing appear from the 14th century. In Poland as well the earliest village dances were in circles or lines accompanied by the singing or clapping of the participants.
The present-day folk dances in the Balkans consist of dancers linked together in a hand or shoulder hold in an open or closed circle or a line. The basic round dance goes by many names in the various countries of the region: "choros", "kolo", "oro", "horo" or "hora". The modern couple dance so common in western and northern Europe has only made a few inroads into the Balkan dance repertory.
Chain dances of a similar type to these modern dance forms have been documented from the medieval Balkans. Tens of thousands of medieval tombstones called "Stećci" are found in Bosnia and Hercegovina and neighboring areas in Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia. They date from the end of the 12th century to the 16th century. Many of the stones bear inscription and figures, several of which have been interpreted as dancers in a ring or line dance. These mostly date to the 14th and 15th centuries. Usually men and women are portrayed dancing together holding hands at shoulder level but occasionally the groups consist of only one sex.
Further south in Macedonia, near the town of Zletovo, Lesnovo monastery, originally built in the 11th century, was renovated in the middle of the 14th century and a series of murals were painted. One of these shows a group of young men linking arms in a round dance. They are accompanied by two musicians, one playing the kanun while the other beats on a long drum.
There is also some documentary evidence from the Dalmatian coast area of what is now Croatia. An anonymous chronicle from 1344 exhorts the people of the city of Zadar to sing and dance circle dances for a festival while in the 14th and 15th centuries, authorities in Dubrovnik forbid circle dances and secular songs on the cathedral grounds. Another early reference comes from the area of present-day Bulgaria in a manuscript of a 14th-century sermon which calls chain dances "devilish and damned."
At a later period there are the accounts of two western European travelers to Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Salomon Schweigger (1551–1622) was a German preacher who traveled in the entourage of Jochim von Sinzendorf, Ambassador to Constantinople for Rudolf II in 1577. He describes the events at a Greek wedding:
Another traveler, the German pharmacist Reinhold Lubenau, was in Constantinople in November 1588 and reports on a Greek wedding in these terms:
If the story is true that troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (about 1150–1207) wrote the famous Provençal song "Kalenda Maya" to fit the tune of an estampie that he heard two jongleurs play, then the history of the estampie extends back to the 12th century. The only musical examples actually identified as "estampie" or "istanpita" occur in two 14th-century manuscripts. The same manuscripts also contain other pieces named "danse real" or other dance names. These are similar in musical structure to the estampies but consensus is divided as to whether these should be considered the same.
In addition to these instrumental music compositions, there are also mentions of the estampie in various literary sources from the 13th and 14th centuries. One of these as "stampenie" is found in Gottfried von Strassburg's "Tristan" from 1210 in a catalog of Tristan's accomplishments:
Later, in a description of Isolde:
A century and a half later in the poem "La Prison amoreuse" (1372–73) by French chronicler and poet Jean Froissart (c. 1337–1405), we find:
Opinion is divided as to whether the Estampie was actually a dance or simply early instrumental music. Sachs believes the strong rhythm of the music, a derivation of the name from a term meaning "to stamp" and the quotation from the Froissart poem above definitely label the estampie as a dance. However, others stress the complex music in some examples as being uncharacteristic of dance melodies and interpret Froissart's poem to mean that the dancing begins with the carol. There is also debate on the derivation of the word "estampie". In any case, no description of dance steps or figures for the estampie are known.
According to German dance historian Aenne Goldschmidt, the oldest notice of a couple dance comes from the southern German Latin romance Ruodlieb probably composed in the early to mid-11th century. The dance is done at a wedding feast and is described in the translation by Edwin Zeydel as follows:
Another literary mention comes from a later period in Germany with a description of couple dancing in Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic poem "Parzival", usually dated to the beginning of the 13th century. The scene occurs on manuscript page 639, the host is Gawain, the tables from the meal have been removed and musicians have been recruited:
Eschenbach also remarks that while many of the noblemen present were good fiddlers, they knew only the old style dances, not the many new dances from Thuringia.
The early 14th century Codex Manesse from Heidelberg has miniatures of many Minnesang poets of the period. The portrait of Heinrich von Stretelingen shows him engaged in a "courtly pair dance" while the miniature of Hiltbolt von Schwangau depicts him in a trio dance with two ladies, one in each hand, with a fiddler providing the music. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19953 |
Megatokyo
Set in a fictional version of Tokyo, "Megatokyo" portrays the adventures of Piro, a young fan of anime and manga, and his friend Largo, an American video game enthusiast. The comic often parodies and comments on the archetypes and clichés of anime, manga, dating sims, arcade and video games, occasionally making direct references to real-world works. "Megatokyo" originally emphasized humor, with continuity of the story a subsidiary concern. Over time, it focused more on developing a complex plot and the personalities of its characters. This transition was due primarily to Gallagher's increasing control over the comic, which led to Caston choosing to leave the project. "Megatokyo" has received praise from such sources as "The New York Times", while Gallagher's changes to the comic have been criticized by sources including Websnark.
"Megatokyo" began publication as a joint project between Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston, along with a few internet acquaintances. Gallagher and Caston later became business partners, as well. According to Gallagher, the comic's first two strips were drawn in reaction to Caston being "convinced that he and I could do [a webcomic] ... [and] bothering me incessantly about it", without any planning or pre-determined storyline. The comic's title was derived from an Internet domain owned by Caston, which had hosted a short-lived gaming news site maintained by Caston before the comic's creation. With Caston co-writing the comic's scripts and Gallagher supplying its artwork, the comic's popularity quickly increased, eventually reaching levels comparable to those of such popular webcomics as "Penny Arcade" and "PvP". According to Gallagher, "Megatokyo"'s popularity was not intended, as the project was originally an experiment to help him improve his writing and illustrating skills for his future project, "Warmth".
In May 2002, Caston sold his ownership of the title to Gallagher, who has managed the comic on his own since then. In October of the same year, after Gallagher was laid off from his day job as an architect, he took up producing the comic as a full time profession. Caston's departure from "Megatokyo" was not fully explained at the time. Initially, Gallagher and Caston only briefly mentioned the split, with Gallagher publicly announcing Caston's departure on June 17, 2002. On January 15, 2005, Gallagher explained his view of the reasoning behind the split in response to a comment made by Scott Kurtz of "PvP", in which he suggested that Gallagher had stolen ownership of "Megatokyo" from Caston. Calling Kurtz's claim "mean spirited", Gallagher responded:
"While things were good at first, over time we found that we were not working well together creatively. There is no fault in this, it happens. I've never blamed Rodney for this creative 'falling out' nor do I blame myself. Not all creative relationships click, ours didn't in the long run."
Four days later, Caston posted his view of the development on his website:
"After this he approached me and said either I would sell him my ownership of MegaTokyo or he would simply stop doing it entirely, and we'd divide up the company's assets and end it all.
This was right before the MT was to go into print form, and I really wanted to see it make it into print, rather [than] die on the vine."
In May 2011, it was announced that "Endgames" (a gameworld existing within "Megatokyo") was being revamped in a light novel format, with a story written by webfiction author Thomas Knapp, with four light novels planned. A short story "Behind the Masque" was also announced, and released on Amazon's Kindle Store on June 10, 2011.
"Megatokyo" is usually hand-drawn in pencil by Fred Gallagher, without any digital or physical "inking". Inking was originally planned, but dropped as Gallagher decided it was unfeasible. "Megatokyo"'s first strips were created by roughly sketching on large sheets of paper, followed by tracing, scanning, digital clean-up of the traced comics with Adobe Photoshop, and final touches in Adobe Illustrator to achieve a finished product. Gallagher has stated that tracing was necessary because his sketches were not neat enough to use before tracing. Because of the tracing necessary, these comics regularly took six to eight hours to complete. As the comic progressed, Gallagher became able to draw "cleaner" comics without rough lines and tracing lines, and was able to abandon the tracing step. Gallagher believes "that this eventually led to better looking and more expressive comics".
"Megatokyo"'s early strips were laid out in four square panels per strip, in a two-by-two square array – a formatting choice made as a compromise between the horizontal layout of American comic strips and the vertical layout of Japanese comic strips. The limitations of this format became apparent during the first year of "Megatokyo"'s publication, and in the spring of 2001, the comic switched to a manga-style, free-form panel layout. This format allowed for both large, detailed drawings and small, abstract progressions, as based on the needs of the script. Gallagher has commented that his drawing speed had increased since the comic's beginning, and with four panel comics taking much less time to produce, it "made sense in some sort of twisted, masochistic way, that [he] could use that extra time to draw more for each comic".
"Megatokyo"'s earliest strips were drawn entirely on single sheets of paper. Following these, Gallagher began drawing the comic's panels separately and assembling them in Adobe Illustrator, allowing him to draw more detailed frames. This changed during "Megatokyo"'s eighth chapter, with Gallagher returning to drawing entire comics on single sheets of paper. Gallagher stated that this change allowed for more differentiated layouts, in addition to allowing him a better sense of momentum during comic creation.
The strip is currently drawn on inkjet paper in pencil, the text and speech being added later with Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. In March 2009 he began Fredarting, a streaming live video feed of the comic being drawn.
Gallagher occasionally has guest artists participate in the production of the comic, including Mohammad F. Haque of "Applegeeks".
"Megatokyo" has had several sources of funding during its production. In its early years, it was largely funded by Gallagher and Caston's full time jobs, with the additional support of banner advertisements. A store connected to ThinkGeek was launched during October 2000 in order to sell "Megatokyo" merchandise, and, in turn, help fund the comic. On August 1, 2004, this store was replaced by "Megagear", an independent online store created by Fred Gallagher and his wife, Sarah, to be used solely by "Megatokyo", although it now also offers "Applegeeks" and "Angerdog" merchandise.
Gallagher has emphasized that "Megatokyo" will continue to remain on the Internet free of charge, and that releasing it in book form is simply another way for the comic to reach readers, as opposed to replacing its webcomic counterpart entirely. Additionally, he has stated that he is against micropayments, as he believes that word of mouth and public attention are powerful property builders, and that a "pay-per-click" system would only dampen their effectiveness. He has claimed that such systems are a "superior" option to direct monetary compensation, and that human nature is opposed to micropayments.
Much of "Megatokyo"'s early humor consists of jokes related to the video game subculture, as well as culture-clash issues. In these early strips, the comic progressed at a pace which Gallagher has called "haphazard", often interrupted by purely punchline-driven installments. As Gallagher gradually gained more control over "Megatokyo"'s production, the comic began to gain more similarities to the Japanese shōjo manga that Gallagher enjoys. Following Gallagher's complete takeover of "Megatokyo", the comic's thematic relation to Japanese manga continued to grow.
The comic features characteristics borrowed from anime and manga archetypes, often parodying the medium's clichés. Examples include Junpei, a ninja who becomes Largo's apprentice; Rent-a-zillas, giant monsters based on Godzilla; the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division, which fights the monsters with giant robots and supervises the systematic destruction and reconstruction of predesignated areas of the city; fan service; a Japanese school girl, Yuki, who has also started being a magical girl in recent comics; and Ping, a robot girl. In addition, Dom and Ed, hitmen employed by Sega and Sony, respectively, are associated with a Japanese stereotype that all Americans are heavily armed.
Characters in "Megatokyo" usually speak Japanese, although some speak English, or English-based l33t. Typically, when a character is speaking Japanese, it is signified by enclosing English text between angle brackets (<>). Not every character speaks every language, so occasionally characters are unable to understand one another. In several scenes (such as this one), a character's speech is written entirely in rōmaji Japanese to emphasize this.
"Megatokyo" is divided into chapters. Chapter 0, which contains all of the comic's early phase, covers a time span in the comic of about six weeks. Each of the subsequent chapters chronicles the events of a single day. Chapter 0 was originally not given a title, although the book version retroactively dubbed it "Relax, we understand j00." Between the chapters, and occasionally referenced in the main comic, are a number of omake.
Piro, the protagonist, is an author surrogate of Fred Gallagher. Gallagher has stated that Piro is an idealized version of himself when he was in college. As a character, he is socially inept and frequently depressed. His design was originally conceived as a visual parody of the character Ruri Hoshino, from the "Martian Successor Nadesico" anime series. His name is derived from Gallagher's online nickname, which was in turn taken from Makoto Sawatari's cat in the Japanese visual novel "Kanon".
In the story, Piro has extreme difficulty understanding "Megatokyo"'s female characters, making him for the most part ignorant of the feelings that the character Nanasawa Kimiko has for him, though he has become much more aware of her attraction as the series progressed. Gallagher has commented that Piro is the focal point of emotional damage, while his friend, Largo, takes the physical damage in the comic.
Largo is the comic's secondary protagonist, and the comic version of co-creator Rodney Caston. An impulsive alcoholic whose speech is rendered in L33t frequently, he serves as one of the primary sources of comic relief. A technologically gifted character, he is obsessed with altering devices, often with hazardous results. Gallagher designed Largo to be the major recipient of the comic's physical damage. Largo's name comes from Caston's online nickname, which refers to the villain from "Bubblegum Crisis". For various reasons (including fire and battle damage) he often ends up wearing very little clothing. Largo seems to have awkwardly blundered into a relatively successful relationship with Hayasaka Erika at the current time in the comic.
is a strong-willed, cynical, and sometimes violent character. At the time of the story, she is a former popular Japanese idol (singer) and voice actress who has been out of the spotlight for three years, though she still possesses a considerable fanbase. Erika's past relationship troubles, combined with exposure to swarms of fanboys, have caused her to adopt a negative outlook on life. Gallagher has implied that her personality was loosely based on the "tsundere" (tough girl) stereotype often seen in anime and manga.
is a Japanese girl who previously worked as a waitress at an Anna Miller's restaurant, and is Piro's romantic interest. At the current point in the story, she is a voice actress for the possibly-failing Lockart game "Sight", playing the main heroine, Kannazuki Kotone. Kimiko is a kind and soft-spoken character, though she is prone to mood-swings, and often causes herself embarrassment by saying things she does not mean. Gallagher has commented that Kimiko was the only female character not based entirely on anime stereotypes.
is an enigmatic and manipulative young goth girl. She is drawn to resemble a "Gothic Lolita", and is often described as "darkly cute," with Gallagher occasionally describing her as a "perkigoth." Miho often acts strangely compared to the comic's other characters, and regularly accomplishes abnormal feats, such as leaping inhuman distances or perching herself atop telephone poles. Despite these displays of ability, it is hinted at that Miho has problems with her health. Little is revealed in the comic about Miho's past or motivations, although Gallagher states that these will eventually be explained. Largo believes that she (Miho) is the queen of the undead, and is the cause of the zombie invasion of Tokyo. It has been hinted that she is a magical girl who may have some past connection with the zombies. She is apparently killed in a robotic beam attack by Ed, but nine days later is found in the hospital reading and eating with no obvious signs of physical damage. More possibilities exist that she is some type of game prototype or archetype.
"Megatokyo"'s story begins when Piro and Largo fly to Tokyo after an incident at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Piro has the proper paperwork; Largo must beat the ninja Junpei at a video game to enter. After a spending spree, the pair are stranded without enough money to buy plane tickets home, forcing them to live with Tsubasa, a Japanese friend of Piro's. When Tsubasa suddenly departs for America to seek his "first true love", the protagonists are forced out of the apartment. Tsubasa leaves Ping, a robot girl PlayStation 2 accessory, in their care. This leads to old friends of Piro and Largo showing up later. The two are shadow operatives for video game companies, Ed (Sony) and Dom (SEGA).
At one point, Piro, confronted with girl troubles, visits the local bookstore to "research"—look in the vast shelves of shoujo manga for a solution to his problem. A spunky schoolgirl, Sonoda Yuki, and her friends, Asako and Mami, see him sitting amidst piles of read manga, and ask him what he is doing. Piro, flustered, runs away, accidentally leaving behind his bookbag and sketchbook.
After their eviction, Piro begins work at "Megagamers", a store specializing in anime, manga, and video games. His employer allows him and Largo to live in the apartment above the store. Largo is mistaken for the new English teacher at a local school, where he takes on the alias "Great Teacher Largo" and instructs his students in L33t, video games, and about computers. Yuki's father, Inspector Sonada Masamichi of the "Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division" (TPCD) hires Largo after Largo manipulates Ping into stopping a rampaging monster, the drunken turtle Gameru.
As Largo is working at the local high school, Piro encounters Yuki again while working at Megagamers, when she returns his bookbag and sketchbook, scribbled all over with comments about his drawings. She then, to his consternation, asks if he would give her drawing lessons. Piro, flustered, agrees, and promptly forgets about them.
Earlier in the story, Piro had seen Nanasawa Kimiko at an Anna Miller's restaurant, where she is a waitress, after Tsubasa brought him and Largo there. Later on, Piro encounters Kimiko outside a train station, where she is worrying aloud that she will miss an audition because she has forgotten her money and railcard. Piro hands her his own railcard and walks off before she can refuse his offer. This event causes Kimiko to develop an idealized vision of her benefactor, an image which is shattered the next time they meet. Despite this, she gradually develops feelings for Piro, though she is too shy to admit them. Later on in the story, Kimiko's outburst on a radio talk show causes her to suddenly rise to idol status. Angered by the hosts' derisive comments about fanboys, she comes to the defense of her audience, immediately and unintentionally securing their obsessive adoration. Later, her new horde of fanboys find out where she works and flock to the restaurant, obsessively trying to get pictures up her skirt. Piro works undercover as a busboy to get rid of all cameras. The scene eventually builds to a climax, in which Kimiko shouts at the fanboys and lifts her skirt in defiance, and they take photographs. Piro, provoked by her outburst into actively defending her, threatens the fanboy crowd, and collects all of their memory cards with the photos. On the way back from the restaurant, Kimiko is suffering from the aftermath of the scene and lashes out at Piro on the subway, which causes him to walk off.
Meanwhile, Largo develops a relationship with Hayasaka Erika, Piro's coworker at Megagamers. She and Kimiko share a house. As with Piro and Kimiko, Largo and Erika meet by coincidence early in the story. Later, it is revealed that Erika is a former pop idol, who caused a big scene then disappeared from the public eye after her fiancé left her. When she is rediscovered by her fans, Largo helps thwart a fanboy horde, but not well enough to escape being dismissed by the TPCD for it. He then offers to help Erika to deal with her "vulnerabilities in the digital plane". Erika insists on protecting herself, so Largo instructs her in computer-building. This leads into a little more relationship than Largo can handle, partly because he insists all computer building be done in the nude or as close to it as possible, to avoid static electrical discharge ruining components, and partly because his behavior, crude though it may appear, impresses Erika in many ways.
The enigmatic Tohya Miho frequently meddles in the lives of the protagonists. Miho knows Piro and Largo from the "Endgames" MMORPG previous to "Megatokyo"'s plot. She abused a hidden statistic in the game to gain control of nearly all of the game's player characters, but was ultimately defeated by Piro and Largo. In the comic, Miho becomes close friends with Ping, influencing Ping's relationship with Piro and pitting Ping against Largo in video game battles. Miho is also involved in Erika's backstory; Miho manipulated Erika's fans after Erika's disappearance. This effort ended badly, leaving Miho hospitalized, and the TPCD cleaning up the aftermath. Most of the exact details of what happened are left to the readers' imagination, as are her current motivations and ultimate goal. Miho and many of the events surrounding her involve a club in Harajuku, the Cave of Evil (CoE).
After getting yelled at for retaining her waitress job, Kimiko quits her voice acting job and goes home to find Erika assembling a new computer in her undergarments. Not long after Erika tells Kimiko to strip, Piro comes by, who she tells to get undressed as well. While Erika and Piro talk about her, Kimiko, who hid when Piro showed up, runs out of the apartment. Kimiko runs into Ping, who wanted to talk to Piro about why, after an explosion at school, she had started to cry uncontrollably. They encounter Largo at the store, who explains what went wrong, although no one knows what he means until Piro comes in and translates. Ping is relieved to know that she won't shut down and Kimiko hugs Piro and apologizes for her actions. Largo leaves for Erika's apartment after she calls looking for help. That night, while Piro and Kimiko fall asleep watching TV, Erika, who finished the computer with Largo's help, tries to seduce Largo, but it freaks him out and he runs out for home. The next morning, after Kimiko departs, Piro finds out she quit her voice acting job and tries to find her.
Kimiko and Miho are in the same diner, to which Ed has sent an attack robot (Kill-Bot) against Miho, since she has disrupted his attempts to destroy Ping. Miho is in the diner trying to contact Piro, Kimiko is talking with Erika. Dom is also there to talk with Kimiko. After rescuing both herself and Kimiko from the Kill-Bot and chaos at the diner, the two talk about things. Miho talks to Piro on her phone, argues with him, and then Piro and Kimiko have a conversation about that as the two females are leaving the area. Dom follows and tries to coerce Kimiko into joining SEGA for protection from fans, but she refuses. Drained, she has Miho finish talking to Piro on the phone. Piro then encounters a group who found Kimiko's cell phone and other belongings after she and Miho escaped the diner. The group wants to help Piro get together with Kimiko, partially due to feeling bad for trying to snap a picture up Kimiko's skirt. Piro and the group set out for a press conference Kimiko is going to for the voice acting project, "Sight". Besides all of the other fans going to the event, a planned zombie outbreak occurs in the area. Miho, who helped Kimiko get ready for the event and accompanied her to it, later calls the zombies off for unexplained reasons through an unexplained mechanism.
Largo and Yuki, who has since been revealed along the way to be a magical girl like her mother Meimi (likewise revealed), steal a Rent-a-Zilla to fight the zombie outbreak. Largo leaves Yuki to help Piro get to Kimiko. Unfortunately, the Rent-a-Zilla gets bitten by zombies and turns into one itself, resulting in the TPCD capturing it. Yuki protects it from the TPCD, teleports it out of the area, and adopts it as a pet in a miniaturized form, all much to her father's chagrin.
After the event, Erika, Largo, Kimiko and Piro are reunited, and they talk a bit with Miho, who has shown up again after storming out following an argument with Kenji earlier. Miho declines an offer to eat with the group and wanders off thinking about games and Largo and Piro. She is shown walking amongst the zombies and then in Ed's gun-sights, and in the center of an attack by a number of Ed's Kill-Bots.
During the next nine days, Piro and Kimiko have made up and Kimiko returned to both of her jobs, with them seeing little of each other. Largo and Erika are shown to likewise be involved but more often, including going to dinner with the Sonoda family, as the inspector's brother was Erika's fiancé. Kimiko is attempting to get Piro working as an artist on "Sight", which unbeknownst to them is now being funded by Dom. Ping is concerned about the whereabouts of Miho, who hasn't been seen during the time, but Piro is still upset about all that has happened and somewhat evasively refuses direct assistance. Ping and Junko, another one of Largo's students, who used to be a friend of Miho, work towards finding Miho. Yuki and Kobayashi Yutaka then also become involved with the attempt because of this. That night, Piro and Kimiko discuss Miho and "Endgames", which Yuki overhears, they unaware she is there. This leads Yuki to appropriate Piro's powerless laptop and leave, believing him to still be in love with Miho and that the device might hold clues to finding her. Kimiko and Piro work on his portfolio for "Sight" and then they say goodnight and leave. He returns to his apartment, but Kimiko goes to the CoE club using a pass Miho gave her long ago in the beginning. Once at the club, Dom mockingly advises her, Yuki unknowingly whisps past her, and she unexpectedly meets up with an old friend Komugiko. During all this, Piro has left his apartment after looking at his sketchbook and a drawing of Miho. His current location is unknown.
Aside from Kimiko, concurrent overlapping events have led to almost every main character converging upon the club for various reasons involving Miho, or in support of others involved. Ed, attempting to destroy Ping, fights with Largo, as the staff of the club have maneuvered Ed and Ping into the protective radius of ex-Idol Erika. Yuki and Yutaka get Piro's laptop powered on, she reads the old chat logs between Piro and Miho, and follows instructions from her to him. Going to a "hidden-in-plain-sight" hospital room, she finds Miho alive and well, although seemingly in a weakened state. During a heated argument and Miho's goading, Yuki then forcibly moves Miho to the club. Shortly after the arrival of the two in the center of everyone, the bulk of the denizens go into trance-like states while others are fighting or confused about what to do next. Miho appears to be collapsing. Upon instructions from Erika, Largo finds then uses his Largo-Phone and the club's sound system to knock out power in the immediate area of the club. During this event, Piro has gone to visit Miho at the "hospital" room, where he discovers that she is missing. Following the blackout, Largo, Erika, and Miho board a train, where Miho decides to return home. However, a large crowd has blocked her path home, apparently waiting for someone's return.
The next morning, Piro has been brought to jail, where he has been interrogated by police about Miho's disappearance. He is able to leave jail by paying a suspiciously set low bail of about $100 US, which is obtained through a 10,000 yen bill that has been shaped into an origami 'zilla and left in the cell. Piro walks back home, where he finds Miho sleeping on a beanbag in the apartment. Piro and Miho then work out some of the confusion between them, which reveals several background events. She explains the Analogue Support Facility as a sort of safehouse, where she was able to come and go when she wanted. Since Ping in her extreme attempt to find Miho had posted tons of pictures, videos, and information on the internet, people are now using that to "build a 'real' me", as Miho explains it. During the process, at one point Kimiko calls from the studio, updating Piro on his artwork and telling him some of how last night she and others found Miho and how crazy it was. Largo and Erika, who are riding on the roof of a train in the Miyagi prefecture also call during the conversation. After a short conversation with both Largo and Erika on the phone, and a bit more conversation with Miho, Piro instructs her to stay in the apartment until they can figure out what to do. Junko and Ping are shown leaving for school, with Junko seeming taking Ed's shotguns from last night with her.
After receiving a phone call from Yutaka, whom Masamichi initially disapproves of, Yuki, who has not changed clothing from the events of the previous chapter, leaves her house, grabs him, and takes him to a rooftop, where they try to explain things after Yutaka was being questioned by Asako and Mami. She goes over everything, even why she referred to herself as a "monster", which Yuki's friends previously overheard and misunderstood. Realizing that Miho is the cause of this mess, Yutaka indirectly vows revenge, but Yuki stops him. Yutaka goes anyway and meets his brother in front of Megagamers, who has tracked Miho to the store since the previous night. Yutaka's brother is a member of a group of Nanasawa fans who plan to intervene and remind Piro who his true love is to get rid of Miho. However, Dom's van is blocking the store's entrance. Though Yuki protests against intervention to the group, Dom, who is unknown to them, performs his own method of intervention anyway and forces Piro to choose between Nanasawa and Miho. It is currently unknown if Dom knows who Miho is, but Miho, in a disguise, overhears the conversation and forces Piro to briefly wear a hat. At the same time, Yuki, deciding that she can wait no longer, steals Dom's van and guns, and rushes into the store with Yutaka in tow. Seeing this, Miho grabs Piro and rushes upstairs, discarding the hat in the process. Yuki subsequently collides with the hat and a presumed explosion occurs, stalling Yuki and Yutaka. Miho and Piro don cosplay outfits as a disguise, escape, and make their way to the local bath house. Just before Yuki grabs Yutaka again, Dom, now trapped under a pile of rubble, expresses his condolences to Yutaka, to which he does not understand. The pair quickly follow Miho and Piro and await for them to leave the bath house.
"Megatokyo" was first published in print by Studio Ironcat, a partnership announced in September 2002. Following this, the first book, a compilation of "Megatokyo" strips under the title "Megatokyo Volume One: Chapter Zero", was released by Studio Ironcat in January 2003. According to Gallagher, Studio Ironcat was unable to meet demand for the book, due to problems the company was facing at the time. On July 7, 2003, Gallagher announced that Ironcat would not continue to publish "Megatokyo" in book form. This was followed by an announcement on August 27, 2003 that Dark Horse Comics would publish "Megatokyo Volume 2" and future collected volumes, including a revised edition of "Megatokyo Volume 1". The comic once more changed publishers in February 2006, moving from Dark Horse Comics to the CMX Manga imprint of DC Comics. The comic then transferred to CMX's parent Wildstorm, with its last volume published in July 2010.
CMX, along with Wildstorm closed down in 2010. Former publisher Dark Horse regained the rights to the series and planned to release it in omnibus format in January 2013, but didn't.
, six volumes are available for purchase: volumes 1 through 3 from Dark Horse, volumes 4 and 5 by CMX/DC, and volume 6 by Wildstorm. The books have also been translated into German, Italian, French, and Polish. In July 2004, "Megatokyo" was the tenth best-selling manga property in the United States, and during the week ending February 20, 2005, volume 3 ranked third in the Nielsen BookScan figures, which was not only its highest ranking to date (), but also made it the highest monthly rank for an original English-language manga title.
In July 2007, Kodansha announced that in 2008 it intends to publish "Megatokyo" in a Japanese-language edition, (in a silver slipcased box as part of Kodansha Box editions, a new manga line started in November 2006). Depending on reader response, Kodansha hoped to subsequently publish the entire "Megatokyo" book series. The first volume was released in Japan on May 7, 2009.
The artwork and characterizations of "Megatokyo" have received praise from such publications as "The New York Times" and Comics Bulletin. Many critics praise "Megatokyo"s character designs and pencil work, rendered entirely in grayscale; conversely, it has been criticized for perceived uniformity and simplicity in the designs of its peripheral characters, which have been regarded as confusing and difficult to tell apart due to their similar appearances.
Some critics, such as Eric Burns of Websnark, have found the comic to suffer from "incredibly slow pacing" (, only about 2 months of in-universe time have elapsed), unclear direction or resolutions for plot threads, a lack of official character profiles and plot summaries for the uninitiated, and an erratic update schedule. Burns also harshly criticized the often uncanonical filler material Gallagher employs to prevent the comic's front page content from becoming stagnant, such as "Shirt Guy Dom", a punchline-driven stick figure comic strip written and illustrated by "Megatokyo" editor Dominic Nguyen. Following Gallagher taking on "Megatokyo" as a full-time occupation, some critics have complained that updates should be more frequent than when he worked on the comic part time. Update schedule issues prompted Gallagher to install an update progress bar for readers awaiting the next installment of the comic; however, it has since been removed as it itself often wasn't updated.
IGN called "Megatokyo"'s fans "some of the most patient and forgiving in the webcomic world." During an interview, Gallagher stated that "Megatokyo" fans "always [tell him] they are patient and find that the final comics are always worth the wait," but he feels as though he "[has] a commitment to [his] readers and to [himself] to deliver the best comics [he] can, and to do it on schedule," finally saying that nothing would make him happier than "[getting] a better handle on the time it takes to create each page." Upon missing deadlines, Gallagher often makes self-disparaging comments. Poking fun at this, Jerry "Tycho" Holkins of "Penny Arcade" has claimed to have "gotten on famously" with Gallagher, ever since he "figured out that [Gallagher] legitimately detests himself and is not hoisting some kind of "glamour"."
While "Megatokyo" was originally presented as a slapstick comedy, it began focusing more on the romantic relationships between its characters after Caston's departure from the project. As a result, some fans, preferring the comic's gag-a-day format, have claimed its quality was superior when Caston was writing it. Additionally, it has been said that, without Caston's input, Largo's antics appear contrived. Comics Bulletin regards "Megatokyo"'s characters as convincingly portrayed, commenting that "the reader truly feels connected to the characters, their romantic hijinks, and their wacky misadventures with the personal touches supplied by the author." Likewise, Anime News Network has praised the personal tone in which the comic is written, stating that much of its appeal is a result of the "friendly and casual feeling of a fan-made production."
Gallagher states early in "Megatokyo Volume 1" that he and Caston "didn't want the humor ... to rely too heavily on what might be considered 'obscure knowledge.'" An article in "The New York Times" insists that such scenarios were unavoidable, commenting that the comic "sits at the intersection of several streams of obscure knowledge," including "gaming and hacking; manga ... the boom in Web comics over the past few years; and comics themselves." The article also held that "Gallagher doesn't mean to be exclusive ... he graciously offers translation of the strip's later occasional lapses into l33t ... [and] explains why the characters are occasionally dressed in knickers or as rabbits." The newspaper went on to argue that "The pleasure of a story like "Megatokyo" comes not in its novelistic coherence, but in its loose ranginess."
"Megatokyo" was nominated in at least one category of the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards every year from 2001 through 2007. It won Best Comic in 2002, as well as Best Writing, Best Serial Comic, and Best Dramatic Comic. The largest number of nominations it has received in one year is 14 in 2003, when it won Outstanding Environment Design. The series tied with Svetlana Chmakova's "Dramacon" for the 2007 Best Continuing OEL Manga. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19955 |
Medieval music
Medieval music consists of songs, instrumental pieces, and liturgical music from about 500 A.D. to 1400. Medieval music was an era of Western music, including liturgical music (also known as sacred) used for the church, and secular music, non-religious music. Medieval music includes solely vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music (music for a group of singers), solely instrumental music, and music that uses both voices and instruments (typically with the instruments accompanying the voices). Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass. The Mass is a reenactment of Christ's Last Supper, intended to provide a spiritual connection between man and God. Part of this connection was established through music.
This era begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance music era is difficult, since the trends started at different times in different regions. The date range in this article is the one usually adopted by musicologists.
During the Medieval period the foundation was laid for the music notation and music theory practices that would shape Western music into the norms that developed during the common-practice era, a period of shared music writing practices which encompassed the Baroque music composers from 1600–1750, such as J.S. Bach and Classical music period composers from the 1700s such as W.A. Mozart and Romantic music era composers from the 1800s such as Wagner. The most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned "by ear", from one person who knew a song to another person. This greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how wide music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music notation made it easier to disseminate (spread) songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people and to a wider geographic area. However the theoretical advances, particularly in regard to rhythm—the timing of notes—and polyphony—using multiple, interweaving melodies at the same time—are equally important to the development of Western music.
Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st century, but in different and typically more technologically developed forms. The flute was made of wood in the medieval era rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. While modern orchestral flutes are usually made of metal and have complex key mechanisms and airtight pads, medieval flutes had holes that the performer had to cover with the fingers (as with the recorder). The recorder was made of wood during the Medieval era, and despite the fact that in the 2000s, it may be made of synthetic materials, it has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder as it has finger holes on its front, though it is actually a member of the ocarina family. One of the flute's predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times, and is possibly of Hellenic origin. This instrument's pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches.
Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the modern guitar. Other plucked stringed instruments included the mandore, gittern, citole and psaltery. The dulcimers, similar in structure to the psaltery and zither, were originally plucked, but musicians began to strike the dulcimer with hammers in the 14th century after the arrival of new metal technology that made metal strings possible.
The bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument. Like the modern violin, a performer produced sound by moving a bow with tensioned hair over tensioned strings. The Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih of the 9th century (d. 911) cited the Byzantine lyra, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments as a bowed instrument equivalent to the Arab rabāb and typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the "urghun" (organ), "shilyani" (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the "salandj" (probably a bagpipe). The hurdy-gurdy was (and still is) a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to "bow" its strings. Instruments without sound boxes like the jew's harp were also popular. Early versions of the pipe organ, fiddle (or vielle), and a precursor to the modern trombone (called the sackbut) were used.
Medieval music was composed and, for some vocal and instrumental music, improvised for many different music genres (styles of music). Medieval music created for sacred (church use) and secular (non-religious use) was typically written by composers, except for some sacred vocal and secular instrumental music which was improvised (made up on-the-spot). During the earlier medieval period, the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant done by monks, was monophonic ("monophonic" means a single melodic line, without a harmony part or instrumental accompaniment). Polyphonic genres, in which multiple independent melodic lines are performed simultaneously, began to develop during the high medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later 13th and early 14th century. The development of polyphonic forms, with different voices interweaving, is often associated with the late Medieval Ars nova style which flourished in the 1300s. The Ars Nova, which means "new art" was an innovative style of writing music that served as a key transition from the medieval music style to the more expressive styles of the post-1400s Renaissance music era.
The earliest innovations upon monophonic plainchant were heterophonic. "Heterophony" is the performance of the same melody by two different performers at the same time, in which each performer slightly alters the ornaments she or he is using. Another simple form of heterophony is for singers to sing the same shape of melody, but with one person singing the melody and a second person singing the melody at a higher or lower pitch. Organum, for example, expanded upon plainchant melody using an accompanying line, sung at a fixed interval (often a perfect fifth or perfect fourth away from the main melody), with a resulting alternation between a simple form of polyphony and monophony. The principles of organum date back to an anonymous 9th century tract, the "Musica enchiriadis", which established the tradition of duplicating a preexisting plainchant in parallel motion at the interval of an octave, a fifth or a fourth.
Of greater sophistication was the motet, which developed from the clausula genre of medieval plainchant. The motet would become the most popular form of medieval polyphony. While early motets were liturgical or sacred (designed for use in a church service), by the end of the thirteenth century the genre had expanded to include secular topics, such as courtly love. Courtly love was the respectful veneration of a lady from afar by an amorous, noble man. Many popular motets had lyrics about a man's love and adoration of beautiful, noble and much-admired woman.
The Medieval motet developed during the Renaissance music era (after 1400). During the Renaissance, the Italian secular genre of the Madrigal became popular. Similar to the polyphonic character of the motet, madrigals featured greater fluidity and motion in the leading melody line. The madrigal form also gave rise to polyphonic canons (songs in which multiple singers sing the same melody, but starting at different times), especially in Italy where they were called "caccie." These were three-part secular pieces, which featured the two higher voices in canon, with an underlying instrumental long-note accompaniment.
Finally, purely instrumental music also developed during this period, both in the context of a growing theatrical tradition and for court performances for the aristocracy. Dance music, often improvised around familiar tropes, was the largest purely instrumental genre. The secular Ballata, which became very popular in Trecento Italy, had its origins, for instance, in medieval instrumental dance music.
During the Medieval period the foundation was laid for the notational and theoretical practices that would shape Western music into the norms that developed during the common practice era. The most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system; however the theoretical advances, particularly in regard to rhythm and polyphony, are equally important to the development of Western music.
The earliest Medieval music did not have any kind of notational system. The tunes were primarily monophonic (a single melody without accompaniment) and transmitted by oral tradition. As Rome tried to centralize the various liturgies and establish the Roman rite as the primary church tradition the need to transmit these chant melodies across vast distances effectively was equally glaring. So long as music could only be taught to people "by ear," it limited the ability of the church to get different regions to sing the same melodies, since each new person would have to spend time with a person who already knew a song and learn it "by ear." The first step to fix this problem came with the introduction of various signs written above the chant texts to indicate direction of pitch movement, called "neumes".
The origin of "neumes" is unclear and subject to some debate; however, most scholars agree that their closest ancestors are the classic Greek and Roman grammatical signs that indicated important points of declamation by recording the rise and fall of the voice. The two basic signs of the classical grammarians were the "acutus", /, indicating a raising of the voice, and the "gravis", \, indicating a lowering of the voice. A singer reading a chant text with neume markings would be able to get a general sense of whether the melody line went up in pitch, stayed the same, or went down in pitch. For a singer who already knew a song, seeing the written neume markings above the text could help to jog his or her memory about how the melody went. However, a singer reading a chant text with neume markings would not be able to sight read a song which he or she had never heard sung before.
These neumes eventually evolved into the basic symbols for "neumatic" notation, the "virga" (or "rod") which indicates a higher note and still looked like the "acutus" from which it came; and the "punctum" (or "dot") which indicates a lower note and, as the name suggests, reduced the "gravis" symbol to a point. Thus the "acutus" and the "gravis" could be combined to represent graphical vocal inflections on the syllable. This kind of notation seems to have developed no earlier than the eighth century, but by the ninth it was firmly established as the primary method of musical notation. The basic notation of the "virga" and the "punctum" remained the symbols for individual notes, but other "neumes" soon developed which showed several notes joined together. These new "neumes"—called ligatures—are essentially combinations of the two original signs.
The first music notation was the use of dots over the lyrics to a chant, with some dots being higher or lower, giving the reader a general sense of the direction of the melody. However, this form of notation only served as a memory aid for a singer who already knew the melody. This basic "neumatic" notation could only specify the number of notes and whether they moved up or down. There was no way to indicate exact pitch, any rhythm, or even the starting note. These limitations are further indication that the "neumes" were developed as tools to support the practice of oral tradition, rather than to supplant it. However, even though it started as a mere memory aid, the worth of having more specific notation soon became evident.
The next development in musical notation was "heighted "neumes"", in which "neumes" were carefully placed at different heights in relation to each other. This allowed the "neumes" to give a rough indication of the size of a given interval as well as the direction. This quickly led to one or two lines, each representing a particular note, being placed on the music with all of the "neumes" relating to the earlier ones. At first, these lines had no particular meaning and instead had a letter placed at the beginning indicating which note was represented. However, the lines indicating middle C and the F a fifth below slowly became most common. Having been at first merely scratched on the parchment, the lines now were drawn in two different colored inks: usually red for F, and yellow or green for C. This was the beginning of the musical staff. The completion of the four-line staff is usually credited to Guido d’ Arezzo (c. 1000–1050), one of the most important musical theorists of the Middle Ages. While older sources attribute the development of the staff to Guido, some modern scholars suggest that he acted more as a codifier of a system that was already being developed. Either way, this new notation allowed a singer to learn pieces completely unknown to him in a much shorter amount of time. However, even though chant notation had progressed in many ways, one fundamental problem remained: rhythm. The "neumatic" notational system, even in its fully developed state, did not clearly define any kind of rhythm for the singing of notes.
The music theory of the Medieval period saw several advances over previous practice both in regard to tonal material, texture, and rhythm.
Concerning rhythm, this period had several dramatic changes in both its conception and notation. During the early Medieval period there was no method to notate rhythm, and thus the rhythmical practice of this early music is subject to heated debate among scholars. The first kind of written rhythmic system developed during the 13th century and was based on a series of modes. This rhythmic plan was codified by the music theorist Johannes de Garlandia, author of the "De Mensurabili Musica" (c.1250), the treatise which defined and most completely elucidated these rhythmic modes. In his treatise Johannes de Garlandia describes six "species" of mode, or six different ways in which longs and breves can be arranged. Each mode establishes a rhythmic pattern in beats (or "tempora") within a common unit of three "tempora" (a "perfectio") that is repeated again and again. Furthermore, notation without text is based on chains of "ligature"s (the characteristic notations by which groups of notes are bound to one another).
The rhythmic mode can generally be determined by the patterns of ligatures used. Once a rhythmic mode had been assigned to a melodic line, there was generally little deviation from that mode, although rhythmic adjustments could be indicated by changes in the expected pattern of ligatures, even to the extent of changing to another rhythmic mode. The next step forward concerning rhythm came from the German theorist Franco of Cologne. In his treatise "Ars cantus mensurabilis" ("The Art of Mensurable Music"), written around 1280, he describes a system of notation in which differently shaped notes have entirely different rhythmic values. This is a striking change from the earlier system of de Garlandia. Whereas before the length of the individual note could only be gathered from the mode itself, this new inverted relationship made the mode dependent upon—and determined by—the individual notes or "figurae" that have incontrovertible durational values, an innovation which had a massive impact on the subsequent history of European music. Most of the surviving notated music of the 13th century uses the rhythmic modes as defined by Garlandia. The step in the evolution of rhythm came after the turn of the 13th century with the development of the "Ars Nova" style.
The theorist who is most well recognized in regard to this new style is Philippe de Vitry, famous for writing the "Ars Nova" ("New Art") treatise around 1320. This treatise on music gave its name to the style of this entire era. In some ways the modern system of rhythmic notation began with Vitry, who completely broke free from the older idea of the rhythmic modes. The notational predecessors of modern time meters also originate in the "Ars Nova". This new style was clearly built upon the work of Franco of Cologne. In Franco's system, the relationship between a breve and a semibreves (that is, half breves) was equivalent to that between a breve and a long: and, since for him "modus" was always perfect (grouped in threes), the "tempus" or beat was also inherently perfect and therefore contained three semibreves. Sometimes the context of the mode would require a group of only two semibreves, however, these two semibreves would always be one of normal length and one of double length, thereby taking the same space of time, and thus preserving the perfect subdivision of the "tempus". This ternary division held for all note values. In contrast, the "Ars Nova" period introduced two important changes: the first was an even smaller subdivision of notes (semibreves, could now be divided into "minim"), and the second was the development of "mensuration."
Mensurations could be combined in various manners to produce metrical groupings. These groupings of mensurations are the precursors of simple and compound meter. By the time of "Ars Nova", the perfect division of the "tempus" was not the only option as duple divisions became more accepted. For Vitry the breve could be divided, for an entire composition, or section of one, into groups of two or three smaller semibreves. This way, the "tempus" (the term that came to denote the division of the breve) could be either "perfect" ("tempus perfectum"), with ternary subdivision, or "imperfect" ("tempus imperfectum"), with binary subdivision. In a similar fashion, the semibreve's division (termed "prolation") could be divided into three "minima" ("prolatio perfectus" or major prolation) or two "minima" ("prolatio imperfectus" or minor prolation) and, at the higher level, the longs division (called "modus") could be three or two breves ("modus perfectus" or perfect mode, or "modus imperfectus" or imperfect mode respectively). Vitry took this a step further by indicating the proper division of a given piece at the beginning through the use of a "mensuration sign", equivalent to our modern "time signature".
"Tempus perfectum" was indicated by a circle, while "tempus imperfectum" was denoted by a half-circle (the current symbol , used as an alternative for the time signature, is actually a holdover of this symbol, not a letter "C" as an abbreviation for "common time", as popularly believed). While many of these innovations are ascribed to Vitry, and somewhat present in the "Ars Nova" treatise, it was a contemporary—and personal acquaintance—of de Vitry, named Johannes de Muris (Jehan des Mars) who offered the most comprehensive and systematic treatment of the new mensural innovations of the "Ars Nova" (for a brief explanation of the mensural notation in general, see the article Renaissance music). Many scholars, citing a lack of positive attributory evidence, now consider "Vitry's" treatise to be anonymous, but this does not diminish its importance for the history of rhythmic notation. However, this makes the first definitely identifiable scholar to accept and explain the mensural system to be de Muris, who can be said to have done for it what Garlandia did for the rhythmic modes.
For the duration of the medieval period, most music would be composed primarily in perfect tempus, with special effects created by sections of imperfect tempus; there is a great current controversy among musicologists as to whether such sections were performed with a breve of equal length or whether it changed, and if so, at what proportion. This "Ars Nova" style remained the primary rhythmical system until the highly syncopated works of the "Ars subtilior" at the end of the 14th century, characterized by extremes of notational and rhythmic complexity. This sub-genera pushed the rhythmic freedom provided by "Ars Nova" to its limits, with some compositions having different voices written in different mensurations simultaneously. The rhythmic complexity that was realized in this music is comparable to that in the 20th century.
Of equal importance to the overall history of western music theory were the textural changes that came with the advent of polyphony. This practice shaped western music into the harmonically dominated music that we know today. The first accounts of this textural development were found in two anonymous yet widely circulated treatises on music, the "Musica" and the "Scolica enchiriadis". These texts are dated to sometime within the last half of the ninth century. The treatises describe a technique that seemed already to be well established in practice. This early polyphony is based on three simple and three compound intervals. The first group comprises fourths, fifths, and octaves; while the second group has octave-plus-fourths, octave-plus-fifths, and double octaves. This new practice is given the name "organum" by the author of the treatises. "Organum" can further be classified depending on the time period in which it was written. The early "organum" as described in the "enchiriadis" can be termed "strict "organum"" Strict "organum" can, in turn, be subdivided into two types: "diapente" (organum at the interval of a fifth) and "diatesseron" (organum at the interval of a fourth). However, both of these kinds of strict "organum" had problems with the musical rules of the time. If either of them paralleled an original chant for too long (depending on the mode) a tritone would result.
This problem was somewhat overcome with the use of a second type of "organum". This second style of "organum" was called "free "organum"". Its distinguishing factor is that the parts did not have to move only in parallel motion, but could also move in oblique, or contrary motion. This made it much easier to avoid the dreaded tritone. The final style of "organum" that developed was known as "melismatic "organum"", which was a rather dramatic departure from the rest of the polyphonic music up to this point. This new style was not note against note, but was rather one sustained line accompanied by a florid melismatic line. This final kind of "organum" was also incorporated by the most famous polyphonic composer of this time—Léonin. He united this style with measured discant passages, which used the rhythmic modes to create the pinnacle of "organum" composition. This final stage of "organum" is sometimes referred to as Notre Dame school of polyphony, since that was where Léonin (and his student Pérotin) were stationed. Furthermore, this kind of polyphony influenced all subsequent styles, with the later polyphonic genera of motets starting as a trope of existing Notre Dame "organums".
Another important element of Medieval music theory was the system by which pitches were arranged and understood. During the Middle Ages, this systematic arrangement of a series of whole steps and half steps, what we now call a scale, was known as a mode. The modal system worked like the scales of today, insomuch that it provided the rules and material for melodic writing. The eight church modes are: "Dorian", "Hypodorian", "Phrygian", "Hypophrygian", "Lydian", "Hypolydian", "Mixolydian", and "Hypomixolydian". Much of the information concerning these modes, as well as the practical application of them, was codified in the 11th century by the theorist Johannes Afflighemensis. In his work he describes three defining elements to each mode: the final (or "finalis)", the reciting tone ("tenor" or "confinalis"), and the range (or "ambitus"). The "finalis" is the tone that serves as the focal point for the mode and, as the name suggests, is almost always used as the final tone. The reciting tone is the tone that serves as the primary focal point in the melody (particularly internally). It is generally also the tone most often repeated in the piece, and finally the range delimits the upper and lower tones for a given mode. The eight modes can be further divided into four categories based on their final ("finalis").
Medieval theorists called these pairs "maneriae" and labeled them according to the Greek ordinal numbers. Those modes that have d, e, f, and g as their final are put into the groups "protus", "deuterus", "tritus", and "tetrardus" respectively. These can then be divided further based on whether the mode is "authentic" or "plagal." These distinctions deal with the range of the mode in relation to the final. The authentic modes have a range that is about an octave (one tone above or below is allowed) and start on the final, whereas the plagal modes, while still covering about an octave, start a perfect fourth below the authentic. Another interesting aspect of the modal system is the universal allowance for altering B to B no matter what the mode. The inclusion of this tone has several uses, but one that seems particularly common is in order to avoid melodic difficulties caused, once again, by the tritone.
These ecclesiastical modes, although they have Greek names, have little relationship to the modes as set out by Greek theorists. Rather, most of the terminology seems to be a misappropriation on the part of the medieval theorists Although the church modes have no relation to the ancient Greek modes, the overabundance of Greek terminology does point to an interesting possible origin in the liturgical melodies of the Byzantine tradition. This system is called "octoechos" and is also divided into eight categories, called "echoi".
For specific medieval music theorists, see also: Isidore of Seville, Aurelian of Réôme, Odo of Cluny, Guido of Arezzo, Hermannus Contractus, Johannes Cotto (Johannes Afflighemensis), Johannes de Muris, Franco of Cologne, Johannes de Garlandia (Johannes Gallicus), Anonymous IV, Marchetto da Padova (Marchettus of Padua), Jacques of Liège, Johannes de Grocheo, Petrus de Cruce (Pierre de la Croix), and Philippe de Vitry.
Chant (or plainsong) is a monophonic sacred (single, unaccompanied melody) form which represents the earliest known music of the Christian church. Chant developed separately in several European centres. Although the most important were Rome, Hispania, Gaul, Milan, and Ireland, there were others as well. These styles were all developed to support the regional liturgies used when celebrating the Mass there. Each area developed its own chant and rules for celebration. In Spain and Portugal, Mozarabic chant was used and shows the influence of North African music. The Mozarabic liturgy even survived through Muslim rule, though this was an isolated strand and this music was later suppressed in an attempt to enforce conformity on the entire liturgy. In Milan, Ambrosian chant, named after St. Ambrose, was the standard, while Beneventan chant developed around Benevento, another Italian liturgical center. Gallican chant was used in Gaul, and Celtic chant in Ireland and Great Britain.
Around AD 1011, the Roman Catholic Church wanted to standardize the Mass and chant across its empire. At this time, Rome was the religious centre of western Europe, and Paris was the political centre. The standardization effort consisted mainly of combining these two (Roman and Gallican) regional liturgies. Pope Gregory I (540–604) and Charlemagne (742–814) sent trained singers throughout the Holy Roman Empire (800|962–1806) to teach this new form of chant. This body of chant became known as Gregorian Chant, named after Pope Gregory I. By the 12th and 13th centuries, Gregorian chant had superseded all the other Western chant traditions, with the exception of the Ambrosian chant in Milan and the Mozarabic chant in a few specially designated Spanish chapels. Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) was the earliest known female composer. She wrote many monophonic works for the Catholic Church, almost all of them for female voices.
Around the end of the 9th century, singers in monasteries such as St. Gall in Switzerland began experimenting with adding another part to the chant, generally a voice in parallel motion, singing mostly in perfect fourths or fifths above the original tune (see interval). This development is called organum and represents the beginnings of counterpoint and, ultimately, harmony. Over the next several centuries, organum developed in several ways.
The most significant of these developments was the creation of "florid organum" around 1100, sometimes known as the school of St. Martial (named after a monastery in south-central France, which contains the best-preserved manuscript of this repertory). In "florid organum" the original tune would be sung in long notes while an accompanying voice would sing many notes to each one of the original, often in a highly elaborate fashion, all the while emphasizing the perfect consonances (fourths, fifths and octaves), as in the earlier organa. Later developments of organum occurred in England, where the interval of the third was particularly favoured, and where organa were likely improvised against an existing chant melody, and at Notre Dame in Paris, which was to be the centre of musical creative activity throughout the thirteenth century.
Much of the music from the early medieval period is anonymous. Some of the names may have been poets and lyric writers, and the tunes for which they wrote words may have been composed by others. Attribution of monophonic music of the medieval period is not always reliable. Surviving manuscripts from this period include the Musica Enchiriadis, Codex Calixtinus of Santiago de Compostela, the Magnus Liber, and the Winchester Troper. For information about specific composers or poets writing during the early medieval period, see Pope Gregory I, St. Godric, Hildegard of Bingen, Hucbald, Notker Balbulus, Odo of Arezzo, Odo of Cluny, and Tutilo.
Another musical tradition of Europe originating during the early Middle Ages was the liturgical drama.
Liturgical drama developed possibly in the 10th century from the tropes—poetic embellishments of the liturgical texts. One of the tropes, the so-called Quem Quaeritis, belonging to the liturgy of Easter morning, developed into a short play around the year 950. The oldest surviving written source is the Winchester Troper. Around the year 1000 it was sung widely in Northern Europe.
Shortly, a similar Christmas play was developed, musically and textually following the Easter one, and other plays followed.
There is a controversy among musicologists as to the instrumental accompaniment of such plays, given that the stage directions, very elaborate and precise in other respects, do not request any participation of instruments. These dramas were performed by monks, nuns and priests. In contrast to secular plays, which were spoken, the liturgical drama was always sung. Many have been preserved sufficiently to allow modern reconstruction and performance (for example the "Play of Daniel", which has been recently recorded at least ten times).
The Goliards were itinerant poet-musicians of Europe from the tenth to the middle of the thirteenth century. Most were scholars or ecclesiastics, and they wrote and sang in Latin. Although many of the poems have survived, very little of the music has. They were possibly influential—even decisively so—on the troubadour-trouvère tradition which was to follow. Most of their poetry is secular and, while some of the songs celebrate religious ideals, others are frankly profane, dealing with drunkenness, debauchery and lechery. One of the most important extant sources of Goliards chansons is the Carmina Burana.
The flowering of the Notre Dame school of polyphony from around 1150 to 1250 corresponded to the equally impressive achievements in Gothic architecture: indeed the centre of activity was at the cathedral of Notre Dame itself. Sometimes the music of this period is called the Parisian school, or Parisian organum, and represents the beginning of what is conventionally known as "Ars antiqua". This was the period in which rhythmic notation first appeared in western music, mainly a context-based method of rhythmic notation known as the rhythmic modes.
This was also the period in which concepts of formal structure developed which were attentive to proportion, texture, and architectural effect. Composers of the period alternated florid and discant organum (more note-against-note, as opposed to the succession of many-note melismas against long-held notes found in the florid type), and created several new musical forms: clausulae, which were melismatic sections of organa extracted and fitted with new words and further musical elaboration; conductus, which were songs for one or more voices to be sung rhythmically, most likely in a procession of some sort; and tropes, which were additions of new words and sometimes new music to sections of older chant. All of these genres save one were based upon chant; that is, one of the voices, (usually three, though sometimes four) nearly always the lowest (the tenor at this point) sang a chant melody, though with freely composed note-lengths, over which the other voices sang organum. The exception to this method was the conductus, a two-voice composition that was freely composed in its entirety.
The motet, one of the most important musical forms of the high Middle Ages and Renaissance, developed initially during the Notre Dame period out of the clausula, especially the form using multiple voices as elaborated by Pérotin, who paved the way for this particularly by replacing many of his predecessor (as canon of the cathedral) Léonin's lengthy florid clausulae with substitutes in a discant style. Gradually, there came to be entire books of these substitutes, available to be fitted in and out of the various chants. Since, in fact, there were more than can possibly have been used in context, it is probable that the clausulae came to be performed independently, either in other parts of the mass, or in private devotions. The clausula, thus practised, became the motet when troped with non-liturgical words, and this further developed into a form of great elaboration, sophistication and subtlety in the fourteenth century, the period of "Ars nova". Surviving manuscripts from this era include the Montpellier Codex, Bamberg Codex, and Las Huelgas Codex.
Composers of this time include Léonin, Pérotin, W. de Wycombe, Adam de St. Victor, and Petrus de Cruce (Pierre de la Croix). Petrus is credited with the innovation of writing more than three semibreves to fit the length of a breve. Coming before the innovation of imperfect tempus, this practice inaugurated the era of what are now called "Petronian" motets. These late 13th-century works are in three to four parts and have multiple texts sung simultaneously. Originally, the tenor line (from the Latin "tenere", "to hold") held a preexisting liturgical chant line in the original Latin, while the text of the one, two, or even three voices above, called the "voces organales", provided commentary on the liturgical subject either in Latin or in the vernacular French. The rhythmic values of the "voces organales" decreased as the parts multiplied, with the "duplum" (the part above the tenor) having smaller rhythmic values than the tenor, the "triplum" (the line above the "duplum") having smaller rhythmic values than the "duplum", and so on. As time went by, the texts of the "voces organales" became increasingly secular in nature and had less and less overt connection to the liturgical text in the tenor line.
The Petronian motet is a highly complex genre, given its mixture of several semibreve breves with rhythmic modes and sometimes (with increasing frequency) substitution of secular songs for chant in the tenor. Indeed, ever-increasing rhythmic complexity would be a fundamental characteristic of the 14th century, though music in France, Italy, and England would take quite different paths during that time.
The Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Canticles of St. Mary") are 420 poems with musical notation, written in Galician-Portuguese during the reign of Alfonso X "El Sabio" (1221–1284) and often attributed to him. It is one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the Middle Ages and is characterized by the mention of the Virgin Mary in every song, while every tenth song is a hymn. The manuscripts have survived in four codices: two at El Escorial, one at Madrid's National Library, and one in Florence, Italy. Some have colored miniatures showing pairs of musicians playing a wide variety of instruments.
The music of the troubadours and trouvères was a vernacular tradition of monophonic secular song, probably accompanied by instruments, sung by professional, occasionally itinerant, musicians who were as skilled as poets as they were singers and instrumentalists. The language of the troubadours was Occitan (also known as the langue d'oc, or Provençal); the language of the trouvères was Old French (also known as langue d'oil). The period of the troubadours corresponded to the flowering of cultural life in Provence which lasted through the twelfth century and into the first decade of the thirteenth. Typical subjects of troubadour song were war, chivalry and courtly love—the love of an idealized woman from afar. The period of the troubadours wound down after the Albigensian Crusade, the fierce campaign by Pope Innocent III to eliminate the Cathar heresy (and northern barons' desire to appropriate the wealth of the south). Surviving troubadours went either to Portugal, Spain, northern Italy or northern France (where the trouvère tradition lived on), where their skills and techniques contributed to the later developments of secular musical culture in those places.
The trouvères and troubadours shared similar musical styes, but the trouvères were generally noblemen. The music of the trouvères was similar to that of the troubadours, but was able to survive into the thirteenth century unaffected by the Albigensian Crusade. Most of the more than two thousand surviving trouvère songs include music, and show a sophistication as great as that of the poetry it accompanies.
The Minnesinger tradition was the Germanic counterpart to the activity of the troubadours and trouvères to the west. Unfortunately, few sources survive from the time; the sources of Minnesang are mostly from two or three centuries after the peak of the movement, leading to some controversy over the accuracy of these sources. Among the Minnesingers with surviving music are Wolfram von Eschenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Niedhart von Reuenthal.
In the Middle Ages, Galician-Portuguese was the language used in nearly all of Iberia for lyric poetry. From this language derive both modern Galician and Portuguese. The Galician-Portuguese school, which was influenced to some extent (mainly in certain formal aspects) by the Occitan troubadours, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth.
The earliest extant composition in this school is usually agreed to be Ora faz ost' o senhor de Navarra by the Portuguese João Soares de Paiva, usually dated just before or after 1200. The troubadours of the movement, not to be confused with the Occitan troubadours (who frequented courts in nearby León and Castile), wrote almost entirely cantigas. Beginning probably around the middle of the thirteenth century, these songs, known also as cantares or trovas, began to be compiled in collections known as cancioneiros (songbooks). Three such anthologies are known: the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, the Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti (or Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa), and the Cancioneiro da Vaticana. In addition to these there is the priceless collection of over 400 Galician-Portuguese cantigas in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which tradition attributes to Alfonso X.
The Galician-Portuguese cantigas can be divided into three basic genres: male-voiced love poetry, called cantigas de amor (or cantigas d'amor) female-voiced love poetry, called cantigas de amigo (cantigas d'amigo); and poetry of insult and mockery called cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer. All three are lyric genres in the technical sense that they were strophic songs with either musical accompaniment or introduction on a stringed instrument. But all three genres also have dramatic elements, leading early scholars to characterize them as lyric-dramatic.
The origins of the cantigas d'amor are usually traced to Provençal and Old French lyric poetry, but formally and rhetorically they are quite different. The cantigas d'amigo are probably rooted in a native song tradition (; ), though this view has been contested. The cantigas d'escarnho e maldizer may also (according to Lang) have deep local roots. The latter two genres (totalling around 900 texts) make the Galician-Portuguese lyric unique in the entire panorama of medieval Romance poetry.
The beginning of the "Ars nova" is one of the few clear chronological divisions in medieval music, since it corresponds to the publication of the "Roman de Fauvel", a huge compilation of poetry and music, in 1310 and 1314. The "Roman de Fauvel" is a satire on abuses in the medieval church, and is filled with medieval motets, lais, rondeaux and other new secular forms. While most of the music is anonymous, it contains several pieces by Philippe de Vitry, one of the first composers of the isorhythmic motet, a development which distinguishes the fourteenth century. The isorhythmic motet was perfected by Guillaume de Machaut, the finest composer of the time.
During the "Ars nova" era, secular music acquired a polyphonic sophistication formerly found only in sacred music, a development not surprising considering the secular character of the early Renaissance (while this music is typically considered "medieval", the social forces that produced it were responsible for the beginning of the literary and artistic Renaissance in Italy—the distinction between Middle Ages and Renaissance is a blurry one, especially considering arts as different as music and painting). The term ""Ars nova"" (new art, or new technique) was coined by Philippe de Vitry in his treatise of that name (probably written in 1322), in order to distinguish the practice from the music of the immediately preceding age.
The dominant secular genre of the Ars Nova was the "chanson", as it would continue to be in France for another two centuries. These chansons were composed in musical forms corresponding to the poetry they set, which were in the so-called "formes fixes" of "rondeau", "ballade", and "virelai". These forms significantly affected the development of musical structure in ways that are felt even today; for example, the "ouvert-clos" rhyme-scheme shared by all three demanded a musical realization which contributed directly to the modern notion of antecedent and consequent phrases. It was in this period, too, in which began the long tradition of setting the mass ordinary. This tradition started around mid-century with isolated or paired settings of Kyries, Glorias, etc., but Machaut composed what is thought to be the first complete mass conceived as one composition. The sound world of Ars Nova music is very much one of linear primacy and rhythmic complexity. "Resting" intervals are the fifth and octave, with thirds and sixths considered dissonances. Leaps of more than a sixth in individual voices are not uncommon, leading to speculation of instrumental participation at least in secular performance. Surviving French manuscripts include the Ivrea Codex and the Apt Codex.
For information about specific French composers writing in late medieval era, see Jehan de Lescurel, Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, Borlet, Solage, and François Andrieu.
Most of the music of "Ars nova" was French in origin; however, the term is often loosely applied to all of the music of the fourteenth century, especially to include the secular music in Italy. There this period was often referred to as "Trecento". Italian music has always been known for its lyrical or melodic character, and this goes back to the 14th century in many respects. Italian secular music of this time (what little surviving liturgical music there is, is similar to the French except for somewhat different notation) featured what has been called the "cantalina" style, with a florid top voice supported by two (or even one; a fair amount of Italian Trecento music is for only two voices) that are more regular and slower moving. This type of texture remained a feature of Italian music in the popular 15th and 16th century secular genres as well, and was an important influence on the eventual development of the trio texture that revolutionized music in the 17th.
There were three main forms for secular works in the Trecento. One was the madrigal, not the same as that of 150–250 years later, but with a verse/refrain-like form. Three-line stanzas, each with different words, alternated with a two-line "ritornello", with the same text at each appearance. Perhaps we can see the seeds of the subsequent late-Renaissance and Baroque ritornello in this device; it too returns again and again, recognizable each time, in contrast with its surrounding disparate sections. Another form, the "caccia" ("chase,") was written for two voices in a canon at the unison. Sometimes, this form also featured a ritornello, which was occasionally also in a canonic style. Usually, the name of this genre provided a double meaning, since the texts of caccia were primarily about hunts and related outdoor activities, or at least action-filled scenes. The third main form was the "ballata", which was roughly equivalent to the French "virelai".
Surviving Italian manuscripts include the Squarcialupi Codex and the Rossi Codex. For information about specific Italian composers writing in the late medieval era, see Francesco Landini, Gherardello da Firenze, Andrea da Firenze, Lorenzo da Firenze, Giovanni da Firenze (aka Giovanni da Cascia), Bartolino da Padova, Jacopo da Bologna, Donato da Cascia, Lorenzo Masini, Niccolò da Perugia, and Maestro Piero.
The Geisslerlieder were the songs of wandering bands of flagellants, who sought to appease the wrath of an angry God by penitential music accompanied by mortification of their bodies. There were two separate periods of activity of Geisslerlied: one around the middle of the thirteenth century, from which, unfortunately, no music survives (although numerous lyrics do); and another from 1349, for which both words and music survive intact due to the attention of a single priest who wrote about the movement and recorded its music. This second period corresponds to the spread of the Black Death in Europe, and documents one of the most terrible events in European history. Both periods of Geisslerlied activity were mainly in Germany.
As often seen at the end of any musical era, the end of the medieval era is marked by a highly manneristic style known as "Ars subtilior". In some ways, this was an attempt to meld the French and Italian styles. This music was highly stylized, with a rhythmic complexity that was not matched until the 20th century. In fact, not only was the rhythmic complexity of this repertoire largely unmatched for five and a half centuries, with extreme syncopations, mensural trickery, and even examples of "augenmusik" (such as a chanson by Baude Cordier written out in manuscript in the shape of a heart), but also its melodic material was quite complex as well, particularly in its interaction with the rhythmic structures. Already discussed under Ars Nova has been the practice of isorhythm, which continued to develop through late-century and in fact did not achieve its highest degree of sophistication until early in the 15th century. Instead of using isorhythmic techniques in one or two voices, or trading them among voices, some works came to feature a pervading isorhythmic texture which rivals the integral serialism of the 20th century in its systematic ordering of rhythmic and tonal elements. The term "mannerism" was applied by later scholars, as it often is, in response to an impression of sophistication being practised for its own sake, a malady which some authors have felt infected the "Ars subtilior".
One of the most important extant sources of Ars Subtilior chansons is the Chantilly Codex. For information about specific composers writing music in "Ars subtilior" style, see Anthonello de Caserta, Philippus de Caserta (aka Philipoctus de Caserta), Johannes Ciconia, Matteo da Perugia, Lorenzo da Firenze, Grimace, Jacob Senleches, and Baude Cordier.
Demarcating the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance era, with regard to the composition of music, is difficult. While the music of the fourteenth century is fairly obviously medieval in conception, the music of the early fifteenth century is often conceived as belonging to a transitional period, not only retaining some of the ideals of the end of the Middle Ages (such as a type of polyphonic writing in which the parts differ widely from each other in character, as each has its specific textural function), but also showing some of the characteristic traits of the Renaissance (such as the increasingly international style developing through the diffusion of Franco-Flemish musicians throughout Europe, and in terms of texture an increasing equality of parts). Music historians do not agree on when the Renaissance era began, but most historians agree that England was still a medieval society in the early fifteenth century (see periodization issues of the Middle Ages). While there is no consensus, 1400 is a useful marker, because it was around that time that the Renaissance came into full swing in Italy.
The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of transition into the Renaissance. Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century. With John Dunstaple and other English composers, partly through the local technique of faburden (an improvisatory process in which a chant melody and a written part predominantly in parallel sixths above it are ornamented by one sung in perfect fourths below the latter, and which later took hold on the continent as "fauxbordon"), the interval of the third emerges as an important musical development; because of this "Contenance Angloise" ("English countenance"), English composers' music is often regarded as the first to sound less truly bizarre to 2000s-era audiences who are not trained in music history.
English stylistic tendencies in this regard had come to fruition and began to influence continental composers as early as the 1420s, as can be seen in works of the young Dufay, among others. While the Hundred Years' War continued, English nobles, armies, their chapels and retinues, and therefore some of their composers, travelled in France and performed their music there; it must also of course be remembered that the English controlled portions of northern France at this time. English manuscripts include the Worcester Fragments, the Old St. Andrews Music Book, the Old Hall Manuscript, and Egerton Manuscript. For information about specific composers who are considered transitional between the medieval and the Renaissance, see Zacara da Teramo, Paolo da Firenze, Giovanni Mazzuoli, Antonio da Cividale, Antonius Romanus, Bartolomeo da Bologna, Roy Henry, Arnold de Lantins, Leonel Power, and John Dunstaple.
An early composer from the Franco-Flemish School of the Renaissance was Johannes Ockeghem (1410/1425 –1497). He was the most famous member of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most influential composer between Dufay and Josquin des Prez. Ockeghem probably studied with Gilles Binchois, and at least was closely associated with him at the Burgundian court. Antoine Busnois wrote a motet in honor of Ockeghem. Ockeghem is a direct link from the Burgundian style to the next generation of Netherlanders, such as Obrecht and Josquin. A strong influence on Josquin des Prez and the subsequent generation of Netherlanders, Ockeghem was famous throughout Europe Charles VII for his expressive music, although he was equally renowned for his technical prowess.
The Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, university for old music in Basel, Switzerland, provides a full-time practical study course for the music of the Middle Ages.
A two-year vocational training for musicians is offered at the academy Burg Fürsteneck in Germany.
Kees Boeke coordinates a new Master of Music- Musik des Mittelalters und des Renaissance for both singers and instrumentalists in the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen, also in Germany.
The musical styles of Léonin and Pérotin influenced 20th century minimalist composers such as Steve Reich. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19956 |
Maser
A maser (, an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. The first maser was built by Charles H. Townes, James P. Gordon, and Herbert J. Zeiger at Columbia University in 1953. Townes, Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical work leading to the maser. Masers are used as the timekeeping device in atomic clocks, and as extremely low-noise microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes and deep space spacecraft communication ground stations.
Modern masers can be designed to generate electromagnetic waves at not only microwave frequencies but also radio and infrared frequencies. For this reason Charles Townes suggested replacing "microwave" with the word "molecular" as the first word in the acronym "maser".
The laser works by the same principle as the maser, but produces higher frequency coherent radiation at visible wavelengths. The maser was the forerunner of the laser, inspiring theoretical work by Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow that led to the invention of the laser in 1960 by Theodore Maiman. When the coherent optical oscillator was first imagined in 1957, it was originally called the "optical maser". This was ultimately changed to laser for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Gordon Gould is credited with creating this acronym in 1957.
The theoretical principles governing the operation of a maser were first described by Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland, College Park at the Electron Tube Research Conference in 1952 in Ottawa, with a summary published in the June 1953 Transactions of the Institute of Radio Engineers Professional Group on Electron Devices, and simultaneously by Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov from Lebedev Institute of Physics at an "All-Union Conference on Radio-Spectroscopy" held by the USSR Academy of Sciences in May 1952, subsequently published in October 1954.
Independently, Charles Hard Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger built the first ammonia maser at Columbia University in 1953. This device used stimulated emission in a stream of energized ammonia molecules to produce amplification of microwaves at a frequency of about 24.0 gigahertz. Townes later worked with Arthur L. Schawlow to describe the principle of the "optical maser", or "laser", of which Theodore H. Maiman created the first working model in 1960.
For their research in the field of stimulated emission, Townes, Basov and Prokhorov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964.
The maser is based on the principle of stimulated emission proposed by Albert Einstein in 1917. When atoms have been induced into an excited energy state, they can amplify radiation at a frequency particular to the element or molecule used as the masing medium (similar to what occurs in the lasing medium in a laser).
By putting such an amplifying medium in a resonant cavity, feedback is created that can produce coherent radiation.
In 2012, a research team from the National Physical Laboratory and Imperial College London developed a solid-state maser that operated at room temperature by using optically pumped, pentacene-doped p-Terphenyl as the amplifier medium. It produced pulses of maser emission lasting for a few hundred microseconds.
In 2018, a research team from Imperial College London and University College London demonstrated continuous-wave maser oscillation using synthetic diamonds containing Nitrogen-Vacancy defects.
Masers serve as high precision frequency references. These "atomic frequency standards" are one of the many forms of atomic clocks. Masers were also used as low-noise microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes, though these have largely been replaced by amplifiers based on FETs.
During the early 1960s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a maser to provide ultra-low-noise amplification of S-band microwave signals received from deep space probes. This maser used deeply refrigerated helium to chill the amplifier down to a temperature of four kelvin. Amplification was achieved by exciting a ruby comb with a 12.0 gigahertz klystron. In the early years, it took days to chill and remove the impurities from the hydrogen lines. Refrigeration was a two-stage process with a large Linde unit on the ground, and a crosshead compressor within the antenna. The final injection was at through a micrometer-adjustable entry to the chamber. The whole system noise temperature looking at cold sky (2.7 kelvins in the microwave band) was 17 kelvins. This gave such a low noise figure that the Mariner IV space probe could send still pictures from Mars back to the Earth even though the output power of its radio transmitter was only 15 watts, and hence the total signal power received was only -169 decibels with respect to a milliwatt (dBm).
The hydrogen maser is used as an atomic frequency standard. Together with other kinds of atomic clocks, these help make up the International Atomic Time standard ("Temps Atomique International" or "TAI" in French). This is the international time scale coordinated by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Norman Ramsey and his colleagues first conceived of the maser as a timing standard. More recent masers are practically identical to their original design. Maser oscillations rely on the stimulated emission between two hyperfine energy levels of atomic hydrogen. Here is a brief description of how they work:
Maser-like stimulated emission has also been observed in nature from interstellar space, and it is frequently called "superradiant emission" to distinguish it from laboratory masers. Such emission is observed from molecules such as water (H2O), hydroxyl radicals (•OH), methanol (CH3OH), formaldehyde (HCHO), and silicon monoxide (SiO). Water molecules in star-forming regions can undergo a population inversion and emit radiation at about 22.0 GHz, creating the brightest spectral line in the radio universe. Some water masers also emit radiation from a rotational transition at a frequency of 96 GHz.
Extremely powerful masers, associated with active galactic nuclei, are known as megamasers and are up to a million times more powerful than stellar masers.
The meaning of the term "maser" has changed slightly since its introduction. Initially the acronym was universally given as "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation", which described devices which emitted in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The principle and concept of stimulated emission has since been extended to more devices and frequencies. Thus, the original acronym is sometimes modified, as suggested by Charles H. Townes, to ""molecular" amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." Some have asserted that Townes's efforts to extend the acronym in this way were primarily motivated by the desire to increase the importance of his invention, and his reputation in the scientific community.
When the laser was developed, Townes and Schawlow and their colleagues at Bell Labs pushed the use of the term "optical maser", but this was largely abandoned in favor of "laser", coined by their rival Gordon Gould. In modern usage, devices that emit in the X-ray through infrared portions of the spectrum are typically called lasers, and devices that emit in the microwave region and below are commonly called "masers", regardless of whether they emit microwaves or other frequencies.
Gould originally proposed distinct names for devices that emit in each portion of the spectrum, including "grasers" (gamma ray lasers), "xasers" (x-ray lasers), "uvasers" (ultraviolet lasers), " lasers" (visible lasers), "irasers" (infrared lasers), "masers" (microwave masers), and "rasers" (RF masers). Most of these terms never caught on, however, and all have now become (apart from in science fiction) obsolete except for "maser" and "laser". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19957 |
Mario Botta
Mario Botta is a Swiss architect.
Botta was graduated from Università Iuav di Venezia (1969), he designed his first buildings at age 16, a two-family house at Morbio Superiore in Ticino. While the arrangements of spaces in this structure is inconsistent, its relationship to its site, separation of living from service spaces, and deep window recesses echo of what would become his stark, strong, towering style. His designs tend to include a strong sense of geometry, often being based on very simple shapes, yet creating unique volumes of space. His buildings are often made of brick, yet his use of material is wide, varied, and often unique.
His trademark style can be seen widely in Switzerland particularly the Ticino region and also in the Mediatheque in Villeurbanne (1988), a cathedral in Évry (1995), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or SFMOMA (1994). He also designed the Europa-Park Dome, which houses many major events at the Europa-Park theme park resort in Germany. Religious works by Botta, including the Cymbalista Synagogue and Jewish Heritage Center were shown in London at the Royal Institute of British Architects in an exhibition entitled, "Architetture del Sacro: Prayers in Stone." “A church is the place, par excellence, of architecture,” he said in an interview with architectural historian Judith Dupré. “When you enter a church, you already are part of what has transpired and will transpire there. The church is a house that puts a believer in a dimension where he or she is the protagonist. The sacred directly lives in the collective. Man becomes a participant in a church, even if he never says anything.”
In 1998, he designed the new bus station for Vimercate (near Milan), a red brick building linked to many facilities, underlining the city's recent development.
He worked at La Scala's theatre renovation, which proved controversial as preservationists feared that historic details would be lost.
In 2004, he designed Museum One of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea. On January 1, 2006 he received the Grand Officer award from President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. In 2006 he designed his first ever spa, the Bergoase Spa in Arosa, Switzerland. The spa opened in December 2006 and cost an estimated CHF 35 million. Mario Botta participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007. He was a member of the Jury of the Global Holcim Awards in 2012. In 2014 he was awarded with the Prize Javier Carvajal by the Universidad de Navarra. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19958 |
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur (; colloquially shortened to ) is a federal territory and the capital city of Malaysia. It is the largest city in Malaysia, covering an area of with an estimated population of 1.73 million . Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.564 million people . It is among the fastest growing metropolitan regions in Southeast Asia, in both population and economic development.
Kuala Lumpur is the cultural, financial and economic centre of Malaysia. It is also home to the Parliament of Malaysia and the official residence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Istana Negara. The city was once the seat of the executive and judicial branches of the federal government, but these were relocated to Putrajaya in early 1999. However, some sections of the political bodies still remain in Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur is one of the three federal territories of Malaysia, enclaved within the state of Selangor, on the central west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Since the 1990s, the city has played host to many international sporting, political and cultural events including the 1998 Commonwealth Games and the 2017 Southeast Asian Games. Kuala Lumpur has undergone rapid development in recent decades and is home to the tallest twin buildings in the world, the Petronas Towers, which have since become an iconic symbol of Malaysian development.
Kuala Lumpur has a comprehensive road system supported by an extensive range of public transport networks, such as mass rapid transit (MRT), light rapid transit (LRT), monorail, commuter rail, public buses, hop on & hop off buses (free of charge) and airport rail links. Kuala Lumpur is one of the leading cities in the world for tourism and shopping, being the 6th most-visited city in the world in 2019. The city houses three of the world's 10 largest shopping malls.
Kuala Lumpur has been ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Ranking at No. 70 in the world, and No. 2 in Southeast Asia after Singapore. Kuala Lumpur was named as one of the New7Wonders Cities, and has been named as World Book Capital 2020 by UNESCO.
Kuala Lumpur means "muddy confluence" in Malay; "kuala" is the point where two rivers join together or an estuary, and "lumpur" means "mud". One suggestion is that it was named after Sungai Lumpur ("muddy river"); it was recorded in the 1820s that Sungei Lumpoor was the most important tin-producing settlement up the Klang River. Doubts however have been raised on such a derivation as Kuala Lumpur lies at the confluence of Gombak River and Klang River, therefore should rightly be named Kuala Gombak as the point where one river joins a larger one or the sea is its "kuala". It has been argued by some that Sungai Lumpur in fact extended down to the confluence (therefore the point where it joined the Klang River would be Kuala Lumpur), although Sungai Lumpur is said to be another river joining the Klang River a mile upstream from the Gombak confluence, or perhaps located to the north of the Batu Caves area.
It has also been proposed that Kuala Lumpur was originally named Pengkalan Lumpur ("muddy landing place") in the same way that Klang was once called Pengkalan Batu ("stone landing place"), but became corrupted into Kuala Lumpur. Another suggestion is that it was initially a Cantonese word "lam-pa" meaning 'flooded jungle' or 'decayed jungle'. There is no firm contemporary evidence for these suggestions other than anecdotes. It is also possible that the name is a corrupted form of an earlier but now unidentifiable forgotten name.
It is unknown who founded or named the settlement Kuala Lumpur. Chinese miners were involved in tin mining up the Selangor River in the 1840s about ten miles north of present-day Kuala Lumpur, and Mandailing Sumatrans led by Raja Asal and Sutan Puasa were also involved in tin mining and trade in the Ulu Klang region before 1860, and Sumatrans may have settled in the upper reaches of Klang River in the first quarter of the 19th century, possibly earlier. Kuala Lumpur was originally a small hamlet of just a few houses and shops at the confluence of Sungai Gombak and Sungai Klang (Klang River) before it grew into a town. It is generally accepted that Kuala Lumpur become established as a town circa 1857, when the Malay Chief of Klang, Raja Abdullah bin Raja Jaafar, aided by his brother Raja Juma'at of Lukut, raised funds from Malaccan Chinese businessmen to hire some Chinese miners from Lukut to open new tin mines here. The miners landed at Kuala Lumpur and continued their journey on foot to Ampang where the first mine was opened. Kuala Lumpur was the furthest point up the Klang River to which supplies could conveniently be brought by boat; it therefore became a collection and dispersal point serving the tin mines.
Although the early miners suffered a high death toll due to the malarial conditions of the jungle, the Ampang mines were successful, and the first tin from these mines was exported in 1859. At that time Sutan Puasa was already trading near Ampang, two traders from Lukut, Hiu Siew and Yap Ah Sze, then arrived in Kuala Lumpur where they set up shops to sell provisions to miners in exchange for tin. The town, spurred on by tin-mining, started to develop centred on Old Market Square (Medan Pasar), with roads radiating out towards Ampang as well as Pudu and Batu (the destinations became the names of these roads) where miners also started to settled in, and Petaling and Damansara. The miners formed gangs among themselves; and fights between different gangs were frequent in this period, particularly between factions of Kuala Lumpur and Kanching, mainly to gain control of the best tin mines. Leaders of the Chinese community were conferred the title of Kapitan Cina (Chinese headman) by the Malay chief, and Hiu Siew the early Chinese trader was chosen as the first Kapitan of Kuala Lumpur. The third Chinese Kapitan of Kuala Lumpur, Yap Ah Loy, was appointed in 1868.
Important Malay figures of early Kuala lumpur also include Haji Mohamed Tahir who became the Dato Dagang ("chief of traders"). The Minangkabaus from Sumatra became another important group of peoples who traded and established tobacco plantations in the area. Notable Minangkabaus include their headman Dato' Sati, Utsman Abdullah, and Haji Mohamed Taib who was involved in the early development of Kampung Baru. The Minangkabaus were also significant socio-religious figures, for example Utsman bin Abdullah was the first kadi of Kuala Lumpur as well as Muhammad Nur bin Ismail.
Early Kuala Lumpur was a small town that suffered from many social and political problems – the buildings were made of wood and "atap" (palm frond thatching) that were prone to fire, lack of proper sanitation plagued the town with diseases, and it suffered from a constant threat of flooding. The town became embroiled in the Selangor Civil War due in part to the fight for control of revenues from the tin mines. The Chinese Kapitan Yap Ah Loy aligned himself with Tengku Kudin, and the rival Chinese gang allied themselves with Raja Mahdi. Raja Asal and Sutan Puasa also switched side to Raja Mahdi, and Kuala Lumpur was captured in 1872 and burnt to the ground. Yap escaped to Klang where he reassembled a fighting force. Kuala Lumpur was recaptured by Yap in March 1873 when Raja Mahdi forces were defeated with the help of fighters from Pahang. The war and other setbacks, such as a drop in tin prices, led to a slump, furthermore a major outbreak of cholera caused many to flee the town. The slump lasted until late 1879, when a rise in the price of tin allowed the town to recover. In late 1881, the town was severely flooded, following a fire that had destroyed the entire town in January that year. That the town was rebuilt a few times and thrived was due in large part to the tenacity and persistence of Yap Ah Loy. Yap, together with Frank Swettenham who was appointed the Resident in 1882, were the two most important figures of early Kuala Lumpur with Swettenham credited with its rapid growth and development and its transformation into a major urban centre.
The early Chinese and Malay settlements were along the east bank of the Klang River – the Chinese mainly settled around the commercial centre of Market Square; the Malays, later Indian Chettiars and Indian Muslims resided in the Java Street (now Jalan Tun Perak) area. In 1880, the state capital of Selangor was moved from Klang to the more strategically advantageous Kuala Lumpur by the colonial administration, and the British Resident William Bloomfield Douglas then decided that the government buildings and living quarters should be located to the west of the river. Government offices and a new police headquarters was built on Bukit Aman, and the Padang was created initially for police training. The Padang, now known as Merdeka Square, would later become the centre of the British administrative offices when the colonial government offices were moved to the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in 1897.
Frank Swettenham, on becoming the British Resident, began improving the town by cleaning up the streets. He also stipulated in 1884 that buildings should be constructed of brick and tile so that they would be less flammable, and that the town be rebuilt with wider streets to reduce fire risk. Kapitan Yap Ah Loy bought a sprawling piece of real estate to set up a brick industry for the rebuilding of Kuala Lumpur; this place is the eponymous Brickfields. Destroyed "atap" buildings were replaced with brick and tiled ones, and many of the new brick buildings are characterised by the "five-foot ways" as well as Chinese carpentry work. This resulted in a distinct eclectic shop house architecture typical to this region. Kapitan Yap Ah Loy expanded road access in the city significantly, linking up tin mines with the city; these roads include the main arterial routes of the present Ampang Road, Pudu Road and Petaling Street. As "Chinese Kapitan", he was vested with wide powers on a par with Malay community leaders. Law reforms were implemented and new legal measures introduced to the assembly. Yap also presided over a small claims court. With a police force of six, he was able to uphold the rule of law, constructing a prison that could accommodate 60 prisoners at any time. Kapitan Yap Ah Loy also built Kuala Lumpur's first school and a major tapioca mill in Petaling Street of which the Selangor's Sultan Abdul Samad held an interest.
A railway line between Kuala Lumpur and Klang, initiated by Swettenham and completed in 1886, increased accessibility which resulted in the rapid growth of the town. The population grew from 4,500 in 1884 to 20,000 in 1890. As development intensified in the 1880s, it also put pressure on sanitation, waste disposal and other health issues. A Sanitary Board was created on 14 May 1890 which was responsible for sanitation, upkeep of roads, lighting of street and other functions. This would eventually become the Kuala Lumpur Municipal Council. In 1896, Kuala Lumpur was chosen as the capital of the newly formed Federated Malay States.
The area that is defined as Kuala Lumpur expanded considerably in the 20th century. It was only 0.65 km2 in 1895, but was extended to encompass 20 km2 in 1903. By the time it became a municipality in 1948 it had expanded to 93 km2, and then to 243 km2 in 1974 as a Federal Territory.
The development of rubber industry in Selangor fueled by the demand for car tyre in the early 20th century led to a boom of the town, with the population of Kuala Lumpur increasing from 30,000 in 1900 to 80,000 in 1920. Previously the commercial activities of Kuala Lumpur were run to a large extent by Chinese businessmen such as Loke Yew who was then the richest and most influential Chinese of Kuala Lumpur. The growth of the rubber industry led to an influx of foreign capital and planters, with new companies and industries becoming established in Kuala Lumpur, and other companies previously based elsewhere also found a presence here.
During World War II, Kuala Lumpur was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army on 11 January 1942. Despite suffering little damage during the course of the battle, the wartime occupation of the city resulted in significant loss of lives; at least 5,000 Chinese were killed in Kuala Lumpur in just a few weeks of the occupation by Japanese forces, and thousands of Indians were sent as forced labour to work on the Burma Railway where a large number died. They occupied the city until 15 August 1945, when the commander in chief of the Japanese Seventh Area Army in Singapore and Malaysia, Seishirō Itagaki, surrendered to the British administration following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kuala Lumpur grew through the war, and continued after the war during the Malayan Emergency, during which Malaya was preoccupied with the communist insurgency and New Villages were established on the outskirts of the city in an attempt to control community contacts with the insurgents.
The first municipal election in Kuala Lumpur was held on 16 February 1952. An "ad hoc" alliance between the Malay UMNO and Chinese MCA party candidates won a majority of the seats contested, and their success led to the formation of the Alliance Party (later the Barisan Nasional). On 31 August 1957, the Federation of Malaya gained its independence from British rule. The British flag was lowered and the Malayan flag was raised for the first time at the Padang on the midnight of 30 August 1957, and in the morning of 31 August, the ceremony for the Declaration of Independence was held at the Merdeka Stadium by the first Prime Minister of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Kuala Lumpur remained the capital after the formation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. The Malaysian Houses of Parliament was completed at the edge of the Lake Gardens in 1963.
Kuala Lumpur had seen a number of civil disturbances over the years. A riot in 1897 was a relatively minor affair that began with the confiscation of faulty "dacing" (a scale used by traders), and in 1912, a more serious disturbance called the "tauchang" riot began during the Chinese New Year with the cutting of pigtails and ended with rioting and factional fighting lasting a number of days. The worst rioting on record in Malaysia however occurred on 13 May 1969, when race riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur. The so-called 13 May Incident refers to the violent conflicts that took place between members of the Malay and the Chinese communities. The violence was the result of Malaysian Malays being dissatisfied with their socio-political status. The riots caused the deaths of 196 people according to official figures, and led to major changes in the country's economic policy to promote and prioritise Malay economic development over that of the other ethnicities.
Kuala Lumpur achieved city status on 1 February 1972, becoming the first settlement in Malaysia to be granted the status after independence. Later, on 1 February 1974, Kuala Lumpur became a federal territory. Kuala Lumpur ceased to be the capital of Selangor in 1978 after the city of Shah Alam was declared the new state capital. On 14 May 1990, Kuala Lumpur celebrated 100 years of local council. The new federal territory Kuala Lumpur flag and anthem were introduced. On 1 February 2001, Putrajaya was declared a Federal Territory, as well as the seat of the federal government. The administrative and judicial functions of the government were shifted from Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya. Kuala Lumpur however still retained its legislative function, and remained the home of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Constitutional King).
From the 1990s onwards, major urban developments in the Klang Valley have resulted in an extended Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area. This area, known as Greater Kuala Lumpur, extends from the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur westward to Port Klang, east to the edge of the Titiwangsa Mountains as well as to the north and south. The area covers other administratively separate towns and cities such as Klang, Shah Alam, Putrajaya and others, and it is served by the Klang Valley Integrated Transit System. Notable projects undertaken within Kuala Lumpur itself include the development of a new Kuala Lumpur City Centre around Jalan Ampang and the Petronas Towers.
The geography of Kuala Lumpur is characterised by the huge Klang Valley. The valley is bordered by the Titiwangsa Mountains in the east, several minor ranges in the north and the south and the Strait of Malacca in the west. Kuala Lumpur is a Malay term that translates to "muddy confluence" as it is located at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers.
Located in the centre of Selangor state, Kuala Lumpur was a territory of Selangor State Government. In 1974, Kuala Lumpur was separated from Selangor to form the first Federal Territory governed directly by the Malaysian Federal Government. Its location within the most developed state on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, which has wider flat land than the east coast, has contributed to its faster development relative to other cities in Malaysia. The municipality of the city covers an area of , with an average elevation of .
Protected by the Titiwangsa Range in the east and Indonesia's Sumatra Island in the west, Kuala Lumpur is safe from strong winds and has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen climate classification "Af"), which is warm and sunny, along with abundant rainfall, especially during the northeast monsoon season from October to March. Temperatures tend to remain constant. Maximums hover between and sometimes hit , while minimums hover between and have never fallen below . Kuala Lumpur typically receives minimum of rain annually; June and July are relatively dry, but even then rainfall typically exceeds per month.
Flood is a frequent occurrence in Kuala Lumpur after heavy downpours, especially in the city centre, because the structural irrigation lags behind the intensive development within the city. Smoke from forest fires in nearby Sumatra sometimes casts a haze over the region. It is a major source of pollution in the city together with open burning, emission from motor vehicles and construction work.
Kuala Lumpur was administered by a corporation sole called the Federal Capital Commissioner from 1 April 1961, until it was awarded city status in 1972, after which executive power transferred to the Lord Mayor ("Datuk Bandar"). Nine mayors have been appointed since then. The current mayor is Nor Hisham Ahmad Dahlan, who has been in office since 18 July 2015.
The local administration is carried out by the Kuala Lumpur City Hall, an agency under the Federal Territories Ministry of Malaysia. It is responsible for public health and sanitation, waste removal and management, town planning, environmental protection and building control, social and economic development, and general maintenance functions of urban infrastructure. Executive power lies with the mayor in the city hall, who is appointed for three years by the Federal Territories Minister. This system of appointing the mayor has been in place ever since the local government elections were suspended in 1970.
Kuala Lumpur's eleven districts, with estimated population and percentage of the total, serve as administrative subdivisions under the authority of the Kuala Lumpur City Hall authority.
Kuala Lumpur is home to the Parliament of Malaysia. The hierarchy of authority in Malaysia, in accordance with the Federal Constitution, has stipulated the three branches, of the Malaysian government as consisting of the Executive, Judiciary and Legislative branches. The Parliament consists of the Dewan Negara (Upper House / House of Senate) and Dewan Rakyat (Lower House / House of Representatives).
Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding urban areas form the most industrialised and economically, the fastest growing region in Malaysia. Despite the relocation of federal government administration to Putrajaya, certain government institutions such as Bank Negara Malaysia ("National Bank of Malaysia"), Companies Commission of Malaysia and Securities Commission as well as most embassies and diplomatic missions have remained in the city.
The city remains as the economic and business hub in the country. Kuala Lumpur is a centre for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur is rated as an alpha world city, and is the only global city in Malaysia, according to the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC). The infrastructure development in the surrounding areas such as the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at Sepang, the creation of the Multimedia Super Corridor and the expansion of Port Klang further reinforce the economic significance of the city.
Bursa Malaysia or the Malaysia Exchange is based in the city and forms one of its core economic activities. , the market capitalisation stood at US$505.67 billion.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Kuala Lumpur is estimated at RM73,536 million in 2008 with an average annual growth rate of 5.9 percent. By 2015, the GDP has reached RM160,388 million, representing 15.1% of the total GDP of Malaysia. The per capita GDP for Kuala Lumpur in 2013 was RM79,752 with an average annual growth rate of 5.6 percent, and RM94,722 in 2015. Average monthly household income is RM9,073 (~$2,200) as of 2016, growing at a pace of approximately 6% a year. The service sector comprising finance, insurance, real estate, business services, wholesale and retail trade, restaurants and hotels, transport, storage and communication, utilities, personal services and government services form the largest component of employment representing about 83.0 percent of the total. The remaining 17 percent comes from manufacturing and construction.
The large service sector is evident in the number of local and foreign banks and insurance companies operating in the city. Kuala Lumpur is poised to become the global Islamic Financing hub with an increasing number of financial institutions providing Islamic Financing and the strong presence of Gulf's financial institutions such as the world's largest Islamic bank, Al-Rajhi Bank and Kuwait Finance House. Apart from that, the Dow Jones & Company is keen to work with Bursa Malaysia to set up Islamic Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs), which would help raise Malaysia's profile in the Gulf. The city has a large number of foreign corporations and is also host to many multi national companies' regional offices or support centres, particularly for finance and accounting, and information technology functions. Most of the country's largest companies have their headquarters here, and as of December 2007 and excluding Petronas, there are 14 companies that are listed in Forbes 2000 based in Kuala Lumpur.
Other important economic activities in the city are education and health services. Kuala Lumpur also has advantages stemming from the high concentration of educational institutions that provide a wide-ranging of courses. Numerous public and private medical specialist centres and hospitals in the city offer general health services, and a wide range of specialist surgery and treatment that caters to locals and tourists.
There has been growing emphasis to expand the economic scope of the city into other service activities, such as research and development, which supports the rest of the economy of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur has been home for years to important research centres such as the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia and the Institute of Medical Research and more research centres are expected to be established in the coming years.
Tourism plays an important role in the city's service-driven economy. Many large worldwide hotel chains have a presence in the city. One of the oldest hotels is the Hotel Majestic. Kuala Lumpur is the sixth most visited city in the world, with 8.9 million tourists per year. Tourism here is driven by the city's cultural diversity, relatively low costs, and wide gastronomic and shopping variety. MICE tourism, which mainly encompasses conventions— has expanded in recent years to become a vital component of the industry, and is expected to grow further once the Malaysian government's Economic Transformation Programme kicks in, and with the completion of a new 93,000 sq m-size MATRADE Centre in 2014. Another notable trend is the increased presence of budget hotels in the city.
The major tourist destinations in Kuala Lumpur include the PETRONAS Twin Towers, the Bukit Bintang shopping district, the Kuala Lumpur Tower, Petaling Street (Chinatown), the Merdeka Square, the House of Parliament, the National Palace ("Istana Negara"), the National Museum, Islamic Arts Museum, Central Market, KL Bird Park, Aquaria KLCC, the National Monument, and religious sites such as the Sultan Abdul Samad Jamek Mosque, Thean Hou Temple and Buddhist Maha Vihara in Brickfield. Kuala Lumpur plays host to many cultural festivals such as the Thaipusam procession at the Sri Mahamariamman Temple. Every year during the Thaipusam celebration, a silver chariot carrying the statue of Lord Muruga together with his consort Valli and Teivayanni would be paraded through the city beginning at the temple all the way to Batu Caves in the neighboring Selangor.
The entertainment hub of the city is mainly centred in the Golden Triangle encompassing " Jalan P. Ramlee", "Jalan Sultan Ismail" and Ampang Road. Trendy nightclubs, bars and lounges, such as Marini's on 57, Skybar at Traders Hotel, the Beach Club, Espanda, the Hakka Republic Wine Bar & Restaurant, Hard Rock Cafe, the Luna Bar, Nuovo, Rum Jungle, No Black Tie, the Thai Club, Zion club, Zouk, and many others are located here.
Kuala Lumpur alone has 66 shopping malls and is the retail and fashion hub in Malaysia as well as Southeast Asia. Shopping in Malaysia contributed RM7.7 billion (US$2.26 billion) or 20.8 percent of the RM31.9 billion tourism receipts in 2006.
Suria KLCC is one of Malaysia's premier upscale shopping destination due to its location beneath the Petronas Twin Towers.
Apart from Suria KLCC, Bukit Bintang district has the highest concentration of shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur. It includes: Pavilion, Fahrenheit 88, Plaza Low Yat, Berjaya Times Square, Lot 10, Sungei Wang Plaza and Quill City Mall. Changkat area of Bukit Bintang hosts various cafes, alfresco dining outlets and illegal activities. Bangsar district also has a few shopping complexes, including Bangsar Village, Bangsar Shopping Centre, and Mid Valley Megamall.
Apart from shopping complexes, Kuala Lumpur has designated numerous zones in the city to market locally manufactured products such as textiles, fabrics and handicrafts. The Chinatown of Kuala Lumpur, commonly known as Petaling Street, is one of them. Chinatown features many pre-independence buildings with Straits Chinese and colonial architectural influences.
Since 2000, the Malaysian Ministry of Tourism introduced the mega sale event for shopping in Malaysia. The mega sale event at the time is held three times a year – in March, May and December – during which all shopping malls are encouraged to participate to boost Kuala Lumpur as a leading shopping destination in Asia which being maintained until present with new mega sales.
Kuala Lumpur is the most populous city in Malaysia, with a population of 1.76 million in the city proper . It has a population density of , and is the most densely populated administrative district in Malaysia. Residents of the city are colloquially known as KLites. Kuala Lumpur is also the centre of the wider Klang Valley metropolitan (covering Petaling Jaya, Klang, Subang Jaya, Puchong, Shah Alam, Gombak and others) which has an estimated metropolitan population of 7.25 million .
Kuala Lumpur's heterogeneous populace includes the country's three major ethnic groups: the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians, although the city also has a mix of different cultures including Eurasians, as well as Kadazans, Ibans and other indigenous races from around Malaysia.
Historically Kuala Lumpur was a predominantly Chinese city, although more recently the Bumiputra component of the city has increased substantially and they are now the dominant group. The Kuala Lumpur of 1872 beside the Klang River was described by Frank Swettenham as a "purely Chinese village", although a Malay stockade already existed at Bukit Nanas at that time. By 1875, after the Selangor Civil War participated by Pahang Malays had ended, Swettenham noted Malay quarters near the Chinese area in a sketch map he had drawn, and there were said to be 1,000 Chinese and 700 Malays in the town in this period (many of the Malays may have settled in Kuala Lumpur after the war). The population of Kuala Lumpur had increased to around three thousand in 1880 when it was made the capital of Selangor. A significant component of the Malay population in Kuala Lumpur of this period consisted of Malays recruited by the British in 1880 mostly from rural Malacca to establish a police force of 2–300, many of whom then brought their families here. Many of the Malays were originally from the other islands of Malay Archipelago i.e. Sumatra and Java such as the Mandailings, the Minangkabaus, Javanese, and Buginese began arriving in Kuala Lumpur in the 19th century, while the Acehnese arrived in the late 20th century. In the following decade which saw the rebuilding of the town it showed considerable increase with a large influx of immigrants, due in large part to the construction of a railway line in 1886 connecting Kuala Lumpur and Klang.
A census in 1891 of uncertain accuracy gave a figure of 43,796 inhabitants, 79% of whom were Chinese (71% of the Chinese were Hakka 客家人), 14% Malay, and 6% Indian. Another perhaps more accurate estimate put the population of Kuala Lumpur in 1890 at 20,000. The rubber boom in the early 20th century lead to a further increase in population, from 30,000 in 1900 to 80,000 in 1920. In 1931, 61% of Kuala Lumpur's 111,418 inhabitants were Chinese, and in 1947 63.5%. The Malays however began to settle in the Kuala Lumpur in significant numbers, in part due to government employment, as well as the expansion of the city that absorbed the surrounding rural areas where many Malays lived. Between 1947 and 1957 the population of Malays in Kuala Lumpur doubled, increasing from 12.5 to 15%, while the proportion of Chinese dropped. The process continued after Malayan independence with the growth of a largely Malay civil service, and later the implementation of the New Economic Policy which encouraged Malay participation in urban industries and business. In 1980 the population of Kuala Lumpur had reached over a million, with 52% Chinese, 33% Malay, and 15% Indian. From 1980 to 2000 the number of Bumiputras increased by 77%, but the Chinese still outnumbered the Bumiputras in Kuala Lumpur in the 2000 census at 43% compared to Bumiputras at 38%. By the 2010 census, according to the Department of Statistics and excluding non-citizens, the percentage of the Bumiputera population in Kuala Lumpur had reached around 45.9% (44.7% Malay), with the Chinese population at 43.2% and Indians 10.3%.
A notable phenomenon in recent times has been the increase of foreign residents in Kuala Lumpur, which rose from 1% of the city's population in 1980 to about 8% in the 2000 census, and 9.4% in the 2010 census. These figures also do not include a significant number of illegal immigrants. Kuala Lumpur's rapid development has triggered a huge influx of low-skilled foreign workers from Indonesia, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia into Malaysia, many of whom enter the country illegally or without proper permits.
Birth rates in Kuala Lumpur have declined and resulted in the lower proportion of young people – the proportion of those in the below 15 years old category fell from 33% in 1980 to slightly less than 27% in 2000. On the other hand, the working age group of 15–59 increased from 63% in 1980 to 67% in 2000. The elderly age group, 60 years old and above has increased from 4% in 1980 and 1991 to 6% in 2000.
Kuala Lumpur is pluralistic and religiously diverse. The city has many places of worship catering to the multi-religious population. Islam is practised primarily by the Malays, the Indian Muslim communities and a small number of Chinese Muslims. Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are practised mainly among the Chinese. Indians traditionally adhere to Hinduism. Some Chinese and Indians also subscribe to Christianity.
Kuala Lumpur is one of the three states where less than 50% of the population are self-identified Muslims, the other two being Penang and Sarawak.
Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 87.4% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhists, with significant minorities of adherents identifying as Christians (7.9%), Chinese folk religions (2.7%) and Muslims (0.6%). The majority of the Indian population identify as Hindus (81.1%), with a significant minorities of numbers identifying as Christians (7.8%), Muslims (4.9%) and Buddhists (2.1%). The non-Malay "bumiputera" community are predominantly Christians (44.9%), with significant minorities identifying as Muslims (31.2%) and Buddhists (13.5%). All bumiputera Malays are Muslim; this is due to the criterion in the definition of a Malay in the Malaysian constitution that they should adhere to Islam.
Bahasa Malaysia is the principal language in Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur residents are generally literate in English, with a large proportion adopting it as their first language. Malaysian English is a variant widely used. It has a strong presence, especially in business and is a compulsory language taught in schools. Cantonese and Mandarin are prominent as they are spoken by the local majority Chinese population. Another major dialect spoken is Hakka. While Tamil is dominant amongst the local Indian population, other Indian languages spoken by minorities include Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, and Hindi. Beside the Malay language, there are a variety of languages spoken by people of Indonesian descent, such as Minangkabau and Javanese.
The architecture of Kuala Lumpur is a mixture of old colonial influences, Asian traditions, Malay Islamic inspirations, modern, and postmodern architecture mix. Being a relatively young city compared with other Southeast Asian capitals such as Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila, most of Kuala Lumpur's notable colonial-era buildings were built toward the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. These buildings were designed in a number of styles – Mughal/Moorish Revival, Mock Tudor, Neo-Gothic or Grecian-Spanish style or architecture. Most of the styling has been modified to use local resources and acclimatised to the local climate, which is hot and humid all year around. A significant architect of the early period is Arthur Benison Hubback who designed a number of the colonial era buildings including the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station and Jamek Mosque.
Prior to the Second World War, many shophouses, usually two stories with functional shops on the ground floor and separate residential spaces upstairs, were built around the old city centre. These shop-houses drew inspiration from Straits Chinese and European traditions. Some of these shophouses have made way for new developments but there are still many standing today around Medan Pasar (Old Market Square), Chinatown, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Doraisamy, Bukit Bintang and Tengkat Tong Shin areas.
Independence coupled with the rapid economic growth from the 1970s to the 1990s and with Islam being the official religion in the country, has resulted in the construction of buildings with a more local and Islamic flavour arise around the city. Many of these buildings derive their design from traditional Malay items such as the songkok and the keris. Some of these buildings have Islamic geometric motifs integrated with the designs of the building, signifying Islamic restriction on imitating nature through drawings. Examples of these buildings are Telekom Tower, Maybank Tower, Dayabumi Complex, and the Islamic Centre. Some buildings such as the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia and National Planetarium have been built to masquerade as a place of worship, complete with dome and minaret, when in fact it is a place of science and knowledge. The tall Petronas Towers are the tallest twin buildings in the world and the tallest buildings in the country. They were designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic art.
Late modern and postmodern architecture began to appear in the late-1990s and early-2000s. With the economic development, old buildings such as Bok House have been razed to make way for new ones. Buildings with all-glass shells exist throughout the city, with the most prominent examples being the Petronas Towers and Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. Kuala Lumpur's central business district today has shifted around the Kuala Lumpur city centre (KLCC) where many new and tall buildings with modern and postmodern architecture fill the skyline. According to the World Tallest 50 Urban Agglomeration 2010 Projection by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Kuala Lumpur was ranked 10th among cities to have most buildings above 100 metres with a combined height of 34,035 metres from its 244 high rise buildings.
The Lake Gardens, a botanical garden, is the first recreational park created in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian Parliament building is located close by, and Carcosa Seri Negara which was once the official residence of British colonial administration is also sited here. The park includes a Butterfly Park, Deer Park, Orchid Garden, Hibiscus Garden and the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, which is the world's largest aviary bird park. Other parks in the city include the ASEAN Sculpture Garden, KLCC Park, Titiwangsa Lake Gardens, Metropolitan Lake Gardens in Kepong, Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Taman Tasik Permaisuri (Queen's Lake Gardens), Bukit Kiara Botanical Gardens, Equestrian Park and West Valley Park near TTDI, and Bukit Jalil International Park.
There are three forest reserves within the city namely the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve in the city centre, the oldest gazetted forest reserve in the country , Bukit Sungai Putih Forest Reserve () and Bukit Sungai Besi Forest Reserve (). Bukit Nanas, in the heart of the city centre, is one of the oldest virgin forests in the world within a city. These residual forest areas are home to a number of fauna species particularly monkeys, treeshrews, pygmy goats, budgerigars, squirrels and birds.
There is another park in the close vicinity to Kuala Lumpur i.e. Templer Park initiated and opened by Sir Gerald Templer in 1954 during the "Emergency" time.
According to government statistics, Kuala Lumpur has a literacy rate of 97.5% in 2000, the highest rate in any state or territory in Malaysia.
In Malaysia, Malay is the language of instruction for most subjects while English is a compulsory subject, but , English is still the language of instruction for mathematics and the natural sciences for certain schools. Some schools provide Mandarin and Tamil as languages of instruction for certain subjects. Each level of education demands different skills of teaching and learning ability.
Kuala Lumpur contains 13 tertiary education institutions, 79 high schools, 155 elementary schools and 136 kindergartens.
Several institutions in the city are older than 100 years—such as Bukit Bintang Girls' School (1893–2000, relocated to Taman Shamelin Perkasa in Cheras and renamed GIS Garden International school Seri Bintang Utara), the Victoria Institution (1893); Methodist Girls' School (1896); Methodist Boys' School (1897); Convent Bukit Nanas (1899), St. John's Institution (1904), Confucian Private Secondary School (1906), Kuen Cheng High School (1908), Tsun Jin High School (1913) and Maxwell School (1917).
Kuala Lumpur is home to the University of Malaya (UM). Established in 1949, it is the oldest university in Malaysia, and one of the oldest in the region. It was ranked the best university in Malaysia, the 22nd best in Asia, and 3rd in Southeast Asia in QS World University Rankings 2019. In recent years, the number of international students at University of Malaya has risen, as a result of increasing efforts made to attract more international students.
Other universities located in Kuala Lumpur include Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TARUC), UCSI University (UCSI), Taylor's University (TULC), International Medical University (IMU), Open University Malaysia (OUM), Kuala Lumpur University (UniKL), Wawasan Open University (WOU), HELP University and the branch campus of the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and University of Technology Malaysia (UTM). The National Defence University of Malaysia is located at Sungai Besi Army Base, at the southern part of central Kuala Lumpur. It was established to be a major centre for military and defence technology studies. This institution covers studies in the field of army, navy, and air force.
Greater Kuala Lumpur covers an even more extensive selection of universities including several international branches such as Monash University Malaysia Campus, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and Xiamen University Malaysia.
Kuala Lumpur is a hub for cultural activities and events in Malaysia. Among the centres is the National Museum, which is situated along the Mahameru Highway. Its collection comprises artefacts and paintings collected throughout the country. The Islamic Arts Museum, which houses more than seven thousand Islamic artefacts including rare exhibits as well as a library of Islamic art books, is the largest Islamic Arts collection in Southeast Asia. The museum's collection not only concentrate on works from the Middle East, but also includes work from elsewhere in Asia, such as China and Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur has a Craft Complex coupled with a museum that displays a variety of textile, ceramic, metal craft and weaved products. All the information of the production process are portrayed in diorama format complete with historical facts, technique and traditionally engineered equipment. Among the processes shown are pottery making, intricate wood carving, silver-smithing, weaving songket cloth, stamping batik patterns on cloth and boat making. Royal Selangor has an ultra modern visitor's centre, which allows tours to be conducted through its pewter museum, gallery and its factory. In its pewtersmithing workshop, "The School of Hard Knocks", participants are taught to create their own pewter dish using traditional tools and methods.
The premier performing arts venue is the Petronas Philharmonic Hall located underneath the Petronas Towers. The resident orchestra is the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO), consisting of musicians from all over the world and features regular concerts, chamber concerts and traditional cultural performances. The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac) in Sentul West and Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPac) in Damansara Perdana are two of the most established centres for performing arts, notably theatre, plays, music, and film screening in the country. It has housed many local productions and has been a supporter of local and regional independent performance artists. The Future Music Festival Asia are being held in the city since 2012 featuring local and international artists.
The National Art Gallery of Malaysia is located on Jalan Temerloh, off Jalan Tun Razak on a site neighbouring the National Theatre (Istana Budaya) and National Library. The architecture of the gallery incorporates elements of traditional Malay architecture, as well as contemporary modern architecture. The National Art Gallery serves as a centre of excellence and trustee of the national art heritage. The Petronas Art Gallery, another centre for fine art, is situated in Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC). The Ilham Tower Gallery near Ampang Park houses exhibitions of works by local and foreign artists.
Kuala Lumpur holds the Malaysia International Gourmet Festival annually. Another event hosted annually by the city is the Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week, which includes international brands as well as local designers.
Kuala Lumpur also is becoming the centre for new media, innovation and creative industry development in the region and hosts the international creative industry event, Kreative.Asia.
Kreative.Asia gathers local, regional and international experts in the creative industry who are involved in the creation, development and delivery of interactive content, arts, community and applications. Kuala Lumpur is at the forefront of the convergence of media, art, culture and communications.
Kuala Lumpur has numerous parks, gardens and open spaces for recreational purposes. Total open space for recreational and sport facilities land use in the city has increased significantly by 169.6 percent from in 1984 to in 2000.
Kuala Lumpur was touted as one of the host cities for the Formula One World Championship from 1999 to 2017. The open-wheel auto racing A1 Grand Prix was held until the series folded in 2009. The Motorcycle Grand Prix races are held at the Sepang International Circuit in Sepang in the neighbouring state of Selangor. The Formula One event contributed significantly to tourist arrivals and tourism income to Kuala Lumpur. This was evident during the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Despite cities around Asia suffering declining tourist arrivals, Kuala Lumpur tourist arrivals increased from 6,210,900 in 1997 to 10,221,600 in 2000, or 64.6% increase in tourist arrivals. In 2015, the Kuala Lumpur Street Circuit was constructed to host the Kuala Lumpur City Grand Prix motor racing event.
Football is one of the most popular sports in Kuala Lumpur. The Merdeka Tournament is mainly held at Stadium Merdeka. The city also the home of Kuala Lumpur FA, which plays in the Malaysia Super League.
Kuala Lumpur hosted the official Asian Basketball Championship in 1965, 1977 and 1985. The city's basketball supporters cheered Malaysia's national basketball team to a Final Four finish in 1985, the team's best performance to date. Further, the city is home to the Westports Malaysia Dragons, 2016 Champion of the ASEAN Basketball League. The team plays its home games in the "MABA Stadium".
KL Grand Prix CSI 5*, a five-star international showjumping equestrian event is held annually in the city. This annual event draws the world's top riders and their prized horses to Malaysia.
Other annual sport events hosted by the city include the KL Tower Run, the KL Tower International BASE Jump Merdeka Circuit and the Kuala Lumpur International Marathon. Kuala Lumpur is also one of the stages of the Tour de Langkawi cycling race.
The annual Malaysia Open Super Series badminton tournament is held in Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur has a considerable array of sports facilities of international class after hosting the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Many of these facilities including the main stadium (with running track and a football field), hockey stadium and swimming pools are located in the National Sports Complex at Bukit Jalil while a velodrome and more swimming pools are located in Bandar Tun Razak, next to the Taman Tasik Permaisuri Lake Gardens. There are also football fields, local sports complexes, swimming pools and tennis courts scattered around the suburbs. Badminton and 'takraw' courts are usually included in community halls. The AFC House—current headquarters of the Asian Football Confederation—is built on a complex in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Bukit Jalil.
Kuala Lumpur has several golf courses including the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club (KLGCC) and the Malaysia Civil Service Golf Club in Kiara and the Berjaya Golf Course at Bukit Jalil.
The city also has numerous large private fitness centres run by Celebrity Fitness, Fitness First, True Fitness and major five-star hotels.
Kuala Lumpur is also the birthplace of Hashing, which began in December 1938 when a group of British colonial officers and expatriates, some from the Selangor Club, began meeting on Monday evenings to run, in a fashion patterned after the traditional British Paper Chase or "Hare and Hounds".
Kuala Lumpur hosted the 128th IOC Session in 2015 where the IOC elected Beijing as the host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics and Lausanne as the host city of the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
Kuala Lumpur daily, business, and digital papers include "The Malaysian Reserve", "The Edge", "The Star", "New Straits Times", "The Sun", "Malay Mail", "Berita Harian", and "Harian Metro". Mandarin and Tamil newspapers are also published daily, for example "Sin Chew Daily", "China Press, "Nanyang Siang Pau" and "Tamil Nesan", "Malaysia Nanban", and "Makkal Osai".
Kuala Lumpur is also the headquarters for Malaysia's state media public government terrestrial television stations: TV1 and TV2, the subsidiaries of RTM, TV Alhijrah, a subsidiary of Alhijrah Media Corporation, and Media Prima Berhad, a media corporation that houses the private commercial terrestrial television stations: TV3, NTV7, 8TV and TV9. Programmes are broadcast in Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil.
The city is home to the country's main pay television service, Astro, a satellite television service.
Kuala Lumpur female diva pop singer including Elizabeth Tan, Ernie Zakri and .
Kuala Lumpur has been featured in all aspects of popular culture such as movies, television, music and books. Television series set in Kuala Lumpur include "A Tale of 2 Cities" (starring Rui En and Joanne Peh). Movies set in Kuala Lumpur include "" (starring Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh) and "Entrapment" (starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones), in which the Petronas Towers were depicted in flames for a few seconds.
Kuala Lumpur was referenced in an episode of "The Simpsons" entitled "Bart Gets Famous", in which the Bumblebee Man stated that "a powerful tidal wave in Kuala Lumpur has killed 120 people".
Books set in Kuala Lumpur include "KL 24/7" by Ida M Rahim, Shireen Zainudin and Rizal Zainudin, "My Life As a Fake" by Peter Carey, and "Democracy" by Joan Didion.
A few notable local films featured Kuala Lumpur as background location, such as "Masam-masam Manis" (1965), "Keluarga Si Comat" (1973), "Jiwa Remaja" (1976), "Abang" (1981), "Matinya Seorang Patriot" (1984), "Kembara Seniman Jalanan" (1986), "Orang Kampung Otak Kimia" (1988), "Hati Bukan Kristal" (1990), "Mat Som" (1990), "Mira Edora" (1990), "Femina" (1993), "Maria Mariana" (1996), "Hanya Kawan" (1997), "KLU" (1999), "Soal Hati" (2000), "KL Menjerit" (2002), "Laila Isabella" (2003), "Gangster" (2005), "Gol & Gincu" (2005), "Remp-it" (2006), "Cinta" (2006), "Anak Halal" (2007) "Evolusi KL Drift" (2008), "Adnan Sempit" (2010), "KL Gangster" (2011), "Kepong Gangster" (2012), "Lagenda Budak Setan 2: Katerina" (2012) and "Kolumpo" (2013). A few local films featured Kuala Lumpur during the historical era, such as "1975: Hati Malaya" (2007), "Petaling Streets Warrior" (2011) and "Tanda Putera" (2013).
Kuala Lumpur is mentioned in many songs by local Malaysian artists, such as "Keroncong Kuala Lumpur'" by P. Ramlee, "Kuala Lumpur, Ibu Kota" by Saloma, "Chow Kit Road" by Sudirman Arshad, "Senyumlah Kuala Lumpur" by Alleycats, "Streets of Kuala Lumpur" by Murkyway, "K.L." by Vandal, "Kuala Lumpur" by Poetic Ammo, "Anak Dara" by Azmyl Yunor, "KL"' by Too Phat, "Kotarayaku" by Hujan and Altimet, and "Lagu Untuk Kuala Lumpur" by Tom.
Kuala Lumpur at this late night after Sepang, was featured in the music video for the single "Gerimis Mengundang" by Elizabeth Tan.
Kuala Lumpur was one of the destinations in "The Amazing Race Asia" and "The Amazing Race".
Video games have also been set in Kuala Lumpur, including three levels of "" and two tracks in racing game "Burnout Dominator".
A reality game show set in Kuala Lumpur from February until April 2013 was aired on AXN Asia. "The Apprentice Asia" was launched on 22 May 2013.
Like most other Asian cities, driving is the main mode of commuting in Kuala Lumpur. Hence, every part of the city is well connected by highways. As capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur has a comprehensive road network with more transportation development are being planned and carried out.
In terms of air connectivity, Kuala Lumpur is served by two airports. The main airport, Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at Sepang, Selangor, which is also the aviation hub of Malaysia, is located about south of city. The other airport is Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport, also known as Subang Skypark and served as the main international gateway to Kuala Lumpur from 1965 until KLIA opened in 1998. KLIA connects the city with direct flights to destinations in six continents around the world, and is the main hub for the national carrier, Malaysia Airlines and low-cost carrier, AirAsia. KLIA can be reached using the KLIA Ekspres, an airport rail link service from KL Sentral, which takes twenty-eight minutes and costs RM 55 (roughly US$13.50), while travelling by car or bus via highway will take about an hour but cost a lot less. Direct buses from KLIA to the city centre are plentiful (every 10 to 15 minutes during peak hours), air-conditioned and comfortable with fares ranging from RM 11 (roughly US$2.70) to RM 15 (roughly US$3.70). Air Asia and other low-cost carrier flights do not fly out of KLIA main terminal but from KLIA2 which is two kilometres from KLIA. KLIA2 is served by an extension of the KLIA Ekspres and by a free shuttle bus service from KLIA. , Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport is only used for chartered and turboprop flights by airlines such as Firefly and Malindo Air.
Public transport in Kuala Lumpur and the rest of the Klang Valley covers a variety of transport modes such as bus, rail and taxi. Despite efforts to promote usage of public transport, utilisation rates are low as only 16 percent of the population used public transport in 2006. However, public transport utilisation is set to rise with the expansion of the rail network. Rail transport in Kuala Lumpur encompasses the light rapid transit (LRT), monorail, commuter rail, mass rapid transit (MRT) and airport rail link. The LRT system has three lines, Kelana Jaya Line, Ampang Line and Sri Petaling Line, connecting many locations within the city and surrounding suburbs. The KL Monorail serves various key locations in the city centre whereas the KTM Komuter and MRT connect the city centre with other suburbs and cities of the Klang Valley. The main railway hub is KL Sentral, which is an interchange station for the most of the rail lines. KL Sentral is also a hub for the intercity railway service KTM ETS, which travels from north to south Peninsular Malaysia through the city centre. It provides rail services to as far as Singapore in the south, and Hat Yai, Thailand, in the north. The rail system in Kuala Lumpur is expanding fast with more railway lines due for completion or in the pipeline, such as the Putrajaya Line and Bandar Utama-Klang Line.
The largest public transport operator in Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley is Prasarana Malaysia via its subsidiaries Rapid Rail and Rapid Bus, using Rapid KL brand name. Since the take over from Intrakota Komposit Sdn Bhd, Prasarana Malaysia has redrawn the entire bus network of Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley metropolitan area to increase passenger numbers and improve Kuala Lumpur's public transport system. The Prasarana Malaysia has adopted the hub and spoke system to provide greater connectivity, and cut down the need of more buses.
In Kuala Lumpur, most taxis have distinctive white and red liveries. Kuala Lumpur is one of the major ASEAN city with taxis extensively running on natural gas. Taxis can be hailed from taxi stands or from the streets. Nevertheless, it was claimed by London-based website, LondonCabs.co.uk, taxis services in the city are charging high rates to passengers by refusing to turn on their meter and offer instead a flat rate fare that is overpriced, although other passengers refuted such claims.
Kuala Lumpur is served by Port Klang, located about southwest of the city. The port is the largest and busiest in the country handling about of cargo in 2006.
Kuala Lumpur is twinned with the following cities: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16854 |
Kansas State University
Kansas State University (KSU), commonly shortened to Kansas State or K-State, is a public research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public institution of higher learning in the state of Kansas. It had a record high enrollment of 24,766 students for the Fall 2014 semester.
The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." Kansas State's academic offerings are administered through nine colleges, including the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Technology and Aviation in Salina. Graduate degrees offered include 65 master's degree programs and 45 doctoral degrees.
Branch campuses are in Salina and Olathe. The Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus in Salina is home to the College of Technology and Aviation. The Olathe Innovation Campus has a focus on graduate work in research bioenergy, animal health, plant science and food safety and security.
Kansas State University, originally named Kansas State Agricultural College, was founded in Manhattan on February 16, 1863, during the American Civil War, as a land-grant institution under the Morrill Act. The school was the first land-grant college created under the Morrill Act. K-State is the third-oldest school in the Big 12 Conference and the oldest public institution of higher learning in the state of Kansas.
The effort to establish the school began in 1861, the year that Kansas was admitted to the United States. One of the new state legislature's top priorities involved establishing a state university. That year, the delegation from Manhattan introduced a bill to convert the private Blue Mont Central College in Manhattan, incorporated in 1858, into the state university. But the bill establishing the university in Manhattan was controversially vetoed by Governor Charles L. Robinson of Lawrence, and an attempt to override the veto in the Legislature failed by two votes. In 1862, another bill to make Manhattan the site of the state university failed by one vote. Finally, upon the third attempt on February 16, 1863, the state accepted Manhattan's offer to donate the Blue Mont College building and grounds and established the state's land-grant college at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University.
When the college opened for its first session on September 2, 1863, it became only the second public institution of higher learning to admit women and men equally in the United States. Enrollment for the first session totaled 52 students: 26 men and 26 women. Twelve years after opening, the university moved its main campus from the location of Blue Mont Central College to its present site in 1875. The original site is now occupied by Central National Bank of Manhattan and Founders Hill Apartments.
The early years of the institution witnessed debate over whether the college should provide a focused agricultural education or a full liberal arts education. During this era, the tenor of the school shifted with the tenure of college presidents. For example, President John A. Anderson (1873–1879) favored a limited education and President George T. Fairchild (1879–1897) favored a classic liberal education. Fairchild was credited with saying, "Our college exists not so much to make men farmers as to make farmers men."
During this era, in 1873, Kansas State helped pioneer the academic teaching of home economics for women, becoming one of the first two colleges to offer the program of study.
In November 1928, the school was accredited by the Association of American Universities (AAU) as a school whose graduates were deemed capable of advanced graduate work. The name of the school was changed in 1931 to Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science. In 1959, the Kansas legislature changed the name again to Kansas State University of Agriculture and Applied Science to reflect a growing number of graduate programs. However, since then, the "Agriculture and Applied Science" portion has usually been omitted even from official documents such as state statutes, and as a practical and legal matter it is usually called Kansas State University. Milton S. Eisenhower served as president of the university from 1943 to 1950, and Dr. James McCain succeeded him, serving from 1950 to 1975. Several buildings, including residence halls and a student union, were added to the campus in the 1950s. The 1960s witnessed demonstrations against the Vietnam War, though fewer than at other college campuses. Enrollment was relatively high through most of the 1970s, but the university endured a downward spiral from approximately 1976 to 1986, when enrollment decreased to 17,570 and a number of faculty resigned. In 1986, Jon Wefald assumed the presidency of Kansas State University. During his tenure, enrollment and donations increased.
On June 15, 2009, Kirk Schulz became the 13th president of Kansas State University. In March 2010 he announced his K-State 2025 plan. The initiative is designed to elevate K-State to a top 50 nationally recognized research university by 2025. His last day was April 22, 2016, as he was selected as Washington State University's next president.
In late April 2016, Ret. General Richard Myers began serving as the interim president of Kansas State University and was announced as the permanent president on November 15, 2016.
The state legislature established the state's land-grant college in Manhattan on January 13, 1863. A commission to establish a state university in Lawrence was called for later in the same legislative session, provided that town could meet certain requirements, and finalized later that year. Kansas State was the first public institution of higher learning founded in the state and began teaching college-level classes in 1863. By comparison, the University of Kansas opened in 1866, and offered only preparatory-level classes until college-level classes began in 1869.
Kansas State was founded with an agricultural and scientific college consistent with the land-grant college mandate, as well as departments for military science and literature. It was formally renamed as "Kansas State University" in 1959.
The main campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan now covers . The campus is historic, featuring more buildings built before 1910 than any other campus in Kansas. Holtz Hall, built in 1876, is the oldest free-standing building on campus. However, the oldest building on campus is the original section of Seaton Hall, which now forms Seaton Court, facing the courtyard of Hale Library and Eisenhower Hall. Originally named the Industrial Workshop, this section of Seaton Hall is the oldest remaining education building on the Manhattan campus.
The predominant architectural feature of the Manhattan campus is its use of native limestone. This includes the signature building at Kansas State University, Anderson Hall, developed in three stages between 1877 and 1885. Anderson Hall, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has housed the university's administrative offices for more than a century. Although there are many historic building on the campus, since 1986 Kansas State has also added over two million square feet (186,000 m²) of new buildings to the campus, including an expanded library, new art museum, and plant sciences building.
Several of the buildings on campus were heavily damaged by an EF4 tornado on June 11, 2008. Damage estimates totaled more than $20 million. K-State paid a deductible of $5 million for their insurance to repair all damages.
Since 2014, the Main campus has been under significant renovation to accommodate infrastructure changes. The campus is also adopting a more walking friendly atmosphere by closing off many small access roads to vehicles.
Since 1986, Kansas State ranks first nationally among public universities in its total of Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall scholars with 124 recipients. The school is a member of the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools, and is home to the Kansas Beta chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. The institution petitioned in 1925, and three years later received, a charter of Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society.
Kansas State University has 65 academic departments in nine colleges: Agriculture; Architecture, Planning and Design; Arts and Sciences; Business Administration; Education; Engineering; Human Ecology; Technology and Aviation; and Veterinary Medicine. The graduate school offers 65 master's degree programs and nearly 50 doctoral programs.
In 1991, the former Kansas Technical Institute in Salina, Kansas was merged with Kansas State University by an act of the Kansas legislature. The College of Technology and Aviation is at the Salina campus. Initially, this campus was referred to as Kansas State University – Salina, but on October 14, 2014, the Kansas Board of Regents approved a name change to Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus.
K-State implemented an academic honor code in 1999. When students are admitted, it is implied that they will adhere to the Honor Pledge: "On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work."
The university has had a long-standing interest in agriculture, particularly native Great Plains plant and animal life. The Kansas State University Gardens is an on-campus horticulture display garden that serves as an educational resource and learning laboratory for K-State students and the public. The Konza Prairie is a native tallgrass prairie preserve south of Manhattan, which is co-owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University and operated as a field research station by the department of biology. The university also owns an additional in cities across the state that it operates as Agricultural Experiment Stations in research centers in Hays, Garden City, Colby, and Parsons.
In 2006, K-State dedicated the Biosecurity Research Institute. The BRI, in Pat Roberts Hall, is a safe and secure location in which scientists and their collaborators can study high-consequence pathogens. It was designed and constructed for biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) and biosafety level 3 agriculture (BSL-3Ag) research.
Kansas State University has a long history in biodefense, a history that accelerated in 1999 with the publication of "Homeland Defense Food Safety, Security, and Emergency Preparedness Program." The 100-page document, informally called "The Big Purple Book", outlined the university's research programs in three major infectious disease components: plant pathology, animal health and food processing.
The university maintains numerous facilities, research collaborations and academic programs devoted to agrodefense and biodefense. Notably, the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center (NABC) unites biosecurity researchers with federal, state and local agencies to provide a response to emerging agricultural threats.
Following the NBAF decision, leaders at two additional federal facilities announced they are coming to K-State. The Arthropod-Borne Animal Disease Research Unit, or ABADRU, specializes in animal and plant diseases transmitted by insects. The lab relocated from Laramie, Wyo., to K-State in order to fully realize its research mandate. The Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, or CEEZAD, will research foreign animal, zoonotic and newly discovered pathogens that can have a consequential economic impact on U.S. agriculture, homeland security and human and animal health. It will be led by K-State's Dr. Juergen Richt.
The university's extensive list of research facilities includes the James R. Macdonald Laboratory for research in atomic, molecular and optical physics and the NASA Center for Gravitational Studies in Cellular and Developmental Biology. The excimer laser, which made LASIK eye surgery possible, is a technology developed by Kansas State researchers.
Kansas State was involved in early experimentation with television and radio broadcasts. The first radio station licensed in Manhattan was Kansas State's experimental station 9YV. In 1912 the station began a daily broadcast (in morse code) of the weather forecast, becoming the first radio station in the U.S. to air a regularly-scheduled forecast. After a series of efforts to secure a more high-powered signal for the university – including a brief cooperation with John R. Brinkley's notorious KFKB – Kansas State was granted a license for KSAC, which began broadcasting with 500 watts of power on December 1, 1924. The station was reassigned to the frequency of AM 580 in 1928, and continued broadcasting on that frequency until November 27, 2002, when it made its last broadcast after the frequency was bought out by WIBW in Topeka, Kansas.
On March 9, 1932, the Federal Radio Commission granted Kansas State a license to operate the television station W9XAK. It was the first television station in Kansas. Activity on the station peaked in 1933 and 1934, with original programs being produced three nights a week. On October 28, 1939, the station broadcast the Homecoming football game in Manhattan between Kansas State and Nebraska, which was the second college football game ever televised. The station went off the air in 1939.
The university is home to several museums, including the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, the KSU Historic Costume and Textiles Museum, the K-State Insect Zoo, and the Chang, Chapman, and Kemper galleries, which feature faculty and student artwork. The university also offers an annual cycle of performance art at McCain Auditorium, including concerts, plays and dance.
K-State is also known for several distinguished lecture series: Landon Lecture, Lou Douglas Lecture, Huck Boyd Lecture, and Dorothy L. Thompson Civil Rights Lectures. The Landon Lecture Series annually brings high-profile speakers to KSU – primarily current or former political or government leaders. Speakers in the last few years include President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, former Mexican President Vicente Fox and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Overall, seven U.S. presidents and ten current or former foreign heads of state have given Landon Lectures at K-State since the series was inaugurated in 1966. The series is named after former Kansas governor and presidential candidate Alfred Landon.
The former All-University Convocation lecture series – which began with a speech by Harry Golden on April 3, 1963, and ended in 1997 – brought to campus prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justices Byron White and William O. Douglas, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, and thinkers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Betty Friedan, Buckminster Fuller, and Saul Alinsky.
K-State has twelve residence halls on campus: Boyd Hall, Ford Hall, Goodnow Hall, Haymaker Hall, Marlatt Hall, Moore Hall, West Hall, Putnam Hall, Van Zile Hall, and the new Wefald hall, completed in 2016. The Living Community at Jardine, and Smurthwaite, as well as Jardine Apartments. Smurthwaite, Ford, and Boyd Halls are all female. Haymaker and Marlatt Halls were all-male residence halls until the fall semesters of 2002 and 2009 respectively, when they became co-educational. The residence halls are divided into three complexes: Derby, Kramer, and Strong.
Kansas State has more than 400 student organizations. The Student Governing Association is the largest organization of student leaders, composed of elected and appointed officials. The Student Governing Association follows the model of the U.S. government, with executive, legislative and judicial branches.
The Association of Residence Halls (KSUARH) is the second largest organization of student leaders working towards better the on-campus living experience for students living in the Residence Halls around campus. GSA is the Graduate Student Association, and members include K-State's graduate-level business students. GSC is the Graduate Student Council, open to graduate-level students of all disciplines. Kansas State University also offers Army ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) and Air Force ROTC programs.
Student media includes KSDB-FM The Wildcat 91.9 Student Radio, the "Kansas State Collegian", the "Royal Purple Yearbook", and the "Purple Power Hour," "Manhattan Matters," & "Wildcat Watch".
"Alma Mater" is the name of the official school song of Kansas State University. In 1888, when the University was still Kansas State Agricultural College, H.W. Jones submitted the song as part of a school-wide contest. It was originally a four-stanza song and, over the years, some lyrics have changed. The song is sung at most K-State sporting events by fans, students and alumni. Wildcat Victory and Wabash Cannonball are both commonly used as fight songs. Wildcat Victory is used by many high schools as their fight song.
There are several national and international social-leadership and service fraternities and sororities at Kansas State University:
Intercollegiate sports began at Kansas State in the 1890s. The school's sports teams are called the Wildcats, and they participate in the NCAA Division I and the Big 12 Conference. The official school color is Royal Purple, making Kansas State one of very few schools (alongside Syracuse and Harvard) that have only one official color. White and silver are commonly used as complementary colors; white is mentioned with purple in the university's fight song "Wildcat Victory." The athletics logo is a stylized Wildcat head in profile usually featured in the school color, called the "Powercat."
Sports sponsored by the school include football, basketball, cross country and track, baseball, golf, tennis, rowing, women's soccer, and volleyball. The head football coach is Chris Klieman, the head men's basketball coach is Bruce Weber, the head women's basketball coach is Jeff Mittie, and the head baseball coach is Pete Hughes. In 2012−2013, Kansas State became only the second Big 12 school to win conference titles in football, men's basketball, and baseball in the same school year.
Historically, African-American athletes at Kansas State were responsible for breaking the modern "color barrier" in Big Seven Conference athletics. Harold Robinson became the first African-American athlete in the conference in more than two decades and the first ever to receive a scholarship, playing football for Kansas State in 1949. In the spring of 1951 the conference's baseball color barrier was broken by Kansas State's Earl Woods, and in the winter of 1951–1952 Kansas State's Gene Wilson broke the conference color barrier in basketball (together with LaVannes C. Squires at the University of Kansas).
Beginning with the first graduating class in 1867, a number of Kansas State alums have gone on to distinguished careers. The 46th Governor of Kansas, now serving as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom under President Donald Trump, Sam Brownback, and one U.S. Senator from Kansas, Pat Roberts, are graduates of Kansas State University. Other graduates currently serve as the vice-president of Liberia, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the president of the University of the Virgin Islands. Kansas State alums have been enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and have earned Emmy Awards and Olympic gold medals. Geraldine L. Richmond, the National Medal of Science laureate (2013) and Priestley Medalist (2018), received a B.S. in chemistry in 1975.
In line with its roots as a land grant college, a number of Kansas State's most eminent faculty in its earliest years were in the areas of agriculture, science and military. For example, famed geologist Benjamin Franklin Mudge was chair of the geology department, while famed Army officer Andrew Summers Rowan, the subject of the essay "A Message to Garcia", served as professor of military tactics.
Kansas State faculty have received a number of awards. Prof. Fred Albert Shannon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1929, while teaching history at Kansas State. In 2008, CASE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching honored Michael Wesch as national Professor of the Year. At least eight Kansas State faculty members have gone on to serve as university presidents, including Naomi B. Lynn, the first Hispanic female president of an American public university. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16855 |
Sporting Kansas City
Sporting Kansas City, often shortened to Sporting KC, are an American professional soccer club based in Kansas City, Kansas. The administrative offices are located in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and the team clubhouse and practice facilities are located in Kansas City, Kansas near Children's Mercy Park. The club competes as a member of the Western Conference in Major League Soccer (MLS), having returned in 2015 after spending ten seasons in the Eastern Conference.
Sporting KC began play in 1996 as a charter team in the league, then known as the Kansas City Wiz. The team was founded by Lamar Hunt in 1995. Since moving across the state line, they have been the only major professional sports league franchise to play their home games in Kansas.
For the majority of their existence, the franchise were known as the Kansas City Wizards. The team rebranded in November 2010, coinciding with its move to their home stadium, now known as Children's Mercy Park. The franchise has won the MLS Cup twice (2000, 2013), the Supporters' Shield in 2000, and the U.S. Open Cup in 2004, 2012, 2015 and 2017.
The club also has a reserve team, Sporting Kansas City II, that plays in the second-tier USL Championship.
The Kansas City MLS franchise was founded by Lamar Hunt, who was also the founder of the American Football League, the Kansas City Chiefs, the United Soccer Association, and Major League Soccer.
The Kansas City Wiz played their first game on April 13, 1996, defeating the Colorado Rapids at Arrowhead Stadium, 3–0. The Wiz players included Preki, Mo Johnston and Digital Takawira, and were coached by Ron Newman. The team finished third in the Western Conference (fifth overall) in 1996 regular season with a 17–15 record, qualifying for the first ever MLS Playoffs. In the 1996 conference semi-finals, the Wiz beat the Dallas Burn in three games, winning the final game in a shootout, before losing the conference final to the LA Galaxy.
Following the 1996 season, the Wiz changed names, becoming the "Wizards", following legal action from electronics retailer The Wiz. For the 1997 MLS season, their record was 21–11, sufficient for the Western Conference regular season championship. Preki was named 1997 MLS MVP. In the first round of the playoffs, the Wizards lost to the last-seeded Colorado Rapids. The Wizards had losing records for the 1998 and 1999 seasons, finishing last in the Western Conference both years. The Wizards fired Ron Newman early during the 1999 season, and replaced him with Bob Gansler. The Wizards finished the 1999 season with a record of 8–24, which put them in last place in the Western Conference once again.
In 2000, their first full season under Bob Gansler, the Wizards opened the season on a 12-game unbeaten streak. Goalkeeper Tony Meola recorded an MLS record shutout streak at 681 minutes and 16 shutouts, and won MLS Goalkeeper of the Year and MLS MVP. Peter Vermes was named 2000 MLS Defender of the Year. The Wizards finished the 2000 regular season 16–7–9, the best record in the league, winning the MLS Supporters' Shield.
In the 2000 playoffs, fell behind 4 to 1 to the LA Galaxy, but Miklos Molnar scored a penalty kick in game three to send the series into a tiebreaker, where he scored again to send the Wizards to their first MLS Cup. At RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., the Wizards, with the league's best defense, faced the team with the league's best offense, the Chicago Fire. The Wizards took the lead on an 11th-minute goal by Miklos Molnar. The Fire put ten shots on goal, but Tony Meola and the defense held, and the Wizards claimed their first MLS Cup Championship. Tony Meola was named 2000 MLS Cup MVP.
After the loss of Preki to the Miami Fusion, the team struggled to defend their championship in 2001, making the playoffs as the 8th seed with a record of 11–13–3. In the first round, the Wizards' reign as champion ended with a 6 points to 3 loss to Preki and the Miami Fusion. Despite getting back Preki, the Wizards sat in last place in the Western Conference in 2002. They made the playoffs with a record of 9–10–9. The last two teams in the East, the MetroStars and D.C. United missed the playoffs, which propelled the Wizards into the playoffs. In the first round, the team would fall, 6 points to 3 to eventual champions, Los Angeles Galaxy.
The Wizards returned to the top half of the West in 2003 with a record of 11–10–9. In the first round of the playoffs, the Wizards defeated the Colorado Rapids in the aggregate goal series, 3–1. That set up a one-game showdown with the San Jose Earthquakes the winner would advance to the 2003 MLS Cup. The Wizards took the lead, but the Earthquakes battled back and forced golden goal in overtime by Landon Donovan in the 117th minute, which sent his team to the 2003 MLS Cup and the Wizards home.
The Wizards started out 2004 mediocre, before turning around in the summer. The Wizards finished the season on a six-game unbeaten streak to finish 14–9–9 for the Western Conference regular season championship. Goalkeeper Tony Meola went down with injury and backup Bo Oshoniyi filled as a replacement.
In the first round of the 2004 playoffs, the Wizards lost the first game to San Jose Earthquakes, 2–0. In the second game, however, the Wizards scored 2 goals before Jack Jewsbury scored in stoppage time to move KC onto the conference final. In the conference final, the Wizards held off the Los Angeles Galaxy to reach their second MLS Cup. In the 2004 MLS Cup final, the Wizards went up against D.C. United at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The Wizards Jose Burciaga scored in the sixth minute, but D.C. United replied with three goals in the first half. KC was given a lifeline in the 58th minute as Josh Wolff scored the first penalty kick in MLS Cup history, but KC lost the 2004 MLS Cup final 3–2.
Following MLS expansion, the Wizards moved to the Eastern Conference in 2005. By the end of the 2005 season, despite the solid play of 2005 MLS Defender of the Year Jimmy Conrad, the Wizards found themselves outside the playoffs with a record of 11–9–12. After the season, the team's veteran leader, Preki announced his retirement.
In the 2006 season, the Wizards just missed out on a playoff berth with a loss to the New York Red Bulls on the final day of the regular season, finishing with a 10–14–8 record. Lamar Hunt sold the club in August 2006 to OnGoal, LLC, a six-man ownership group led by Cerner Corporation co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig, a local group committed to keeping the Wizards in Kansas City.
The club dedicated its 2007 season to Lamar Hunt, who had died in December 2006. A good start earned them four wins in the first seven weeks of the season. The club picked up goalkeeper Kevin Hartman from the LA Galaxy to help with that position. Despite winning just four games after the All-Star break, Kansas City managed to finish fifth in the East at 11–12–7 and qualify for the playoffs. The club shifted over to the West as a result of a playoff format change, the Wizards played against Chivas USA. With the Wizards Davy Arnaud's goal in the first game to win the series, the defense and Kevin Hartman did the rest and kept Chivas USA off the scoreboard. In the conference final, the Wizards came up short to the Houston Dynamo, 2–0.
In 2008, the Wizards played their home games at CommunityAmerica Ballpark in Kansas, and ended a four-year playoff drought by posting an 11–10–9 record, good enough for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. Facing the Columbus Crew, the Wizards earned a 1–1 tie in Game 1 of the first round series, but with a 2–0 loss in Game 2 the Wizards lost the aggregate series 3–1.
In the 2009 season, the Wizards remained at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, but struggled to score. They went 426 minutes without scoring a goal, the longest streak of the season. In August 2009, with the team holding a 5–7–6 record, KC fired Head Coach Curt Onalfo, and named general manager Peter Vermes the head coach. The Wizards finished with the worst home record in the league, and at 8–13–9 were third to last in the league standings. Top players were Claudio López (8 goals & 7 assists) and Josh Wolff (11 goals), who sparked the Wizards offense.
In 2010, the Wizards finished third in the Eastern Conference and narrowly missed qualifying for the playoffs.
With the rebranding (of Wizards to Sporting) the team follows a recent trend in MLS of adopting European-style names, such as Toronto FC, D.C. United, and Real Salt Lake. The title "Sporting" has its origins in Iberia where it is used only by multi-sports clubs with a history of having multiple departments fielding teams across different sports. Kansas City's use of the term has been criticized for inaccuracy and cultural appropriation. At the rebrand announcement, the Kansas City's president announced plans to add a rugby club and lacrosse club. Since then, a partnership with the Kansas City Blues Rugby Club has been announced, but the two sides are not part of one "Sporting Club" and no lacrosse team has been established. The rebranding was met with a mixture of both excitement and disdain by fans when originally announced.
With the opening of the new Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas, Sporting became the first major-league team to have played in stadiums on both sides of the state line in Kansas City, while Kansas City became the only U.S. metropolitan area other than New York City to have major professional sports teams playing in different states.
Because Children's Mercy Park was not ready for the beginning of the 2011 season, Sporting Kansas City played its first ten games on the road, only winning one game. Once the road trip was over, the team found more success and ended the regular season with the most points of any Eastern Conference team. After defeating the Colorado Rapids on a 4–0 aggregate in the Eastern Conference semifinals, Sporting lost to the Houston Dynamo 2–0 in the Eastern Conference finals.
KC began the 2012 season with seven consecutive wins, in the process setting an MLS record for 335 minutes without allowing a shot on goal. The team finished the regular season first in the East with an 18–7–9 record. KC was led by Graham Zusi, who delivered a league-leading 15 assists and was named finalist for 2012 MLS MVP, Jimmy Nielsen, who notched a league leading 15 shutouts and was named 2012 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, and Matt Besler, who was named MLS Defender of the Year. KC lost to the Houston Dynamo in the conference semifinals. KC won the 2012 U.S. Open Cup, defeating Seattle Sounders FC in the finals, to qualify for the 2013–14 CONCACAF Champions League.
In 2013, Kansas City took advantage of MLS's newly-created retention funds to renew contracts with U.S. national team players Graham Zusi and Matt Besler. Sporting had finished second in the Eastern Conference and overall with 17 wins, 10 losses, and tied 7 times in the regular season. In the 2013 MLS Playoffs, Sporting KC defeated NE Revolution in the conference semifinals and Houston Dynamo in the conference finals, advancing to MLS Cup 2013. SKC defeated Real Salt Lake on penalties (7–6) after the match was tied 1–1 in regulation and overtime. It was the coldest MLS Cup game on record.
In the 2014 MLS Cup Playoffs, Sporting were eliminated in the East Knockout Round by the New York Red Bulls.
On October 27, 2014, the league announced that Sporting, along with the Houston Dynamo, would move from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference when two teams from East Coast states, New York City FC and Orlando City SC, joined the league in 2015. Sporting finished sixth in the Western Conference that year, again qualifying for postseason play due to the expanded twelve-club field in the 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs. They were eliminated in the Western Knockout Round by the Portland Timbers, 6–7 in a Penalty Shootout.
Sporting's co-owner Neal Patterson died due to soft tissue cancer in July 2017. Kansas City unveiled wordmarks that was worn on the team's jerseys and on Children's Mercy Park to commemorate their late owner. Later that month, the club traded Dom Dwyer to Orlando City in exchange for $1.6 million (in general and targeted allocation money with additional incentives), setting the record for the most expensive internal trade in league history.
The team won the 2017 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, defeating the New York Red Bulls 2–1 in the final. The win gave Sporting their fourth Open Cup title, and their third in the last six years. The victory extended head coach Peter Vermes's record to 4–0 in cup finals and championship games with the club. In Open Cup history, Kansas City became just the second franchise in the single elimination tournament to have won four Open Cup finals in the same number of appearances.
Sporting Kansas City's official colors are "sporting blue" and "dark indigo" with "lead" as a tertiary color. The primary logo is composed of a teardrop-shaped shield containing a stylized representation of the Kansas-Missouri state line with "sporting blue" stripes on the "Kansas" side and an interlocking "SC" on the "Missouri" side. The shield's contour alludes to the team's former logo while under the "Kansas City Wizards" appellation. The stateline represents Sporting's fanbase in both of the Kansas and Missouri portions of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The eleven alternating horizontal stripes of "sporting blue" and "dark indigo" forming the state line are a nod to the number of players a team fields. The "SC" (for "Sporting Club") is inspired by Asclepius' rod representing health and fitness, a Greek statue called the "Winged Victory of Samothrace" – alluding to strength and movement, and to the Spanish architecture of Kansas City's Country Club Plaza. Beginning in 2013, Ivy Funds became the club's first uniform sponsor, and a new home and away jersey design was unveiled, as well as an alternate argyle design.
Home: 1996–2010
Home: 2011–present
Third
Home venue(s):
Other stadiums used:
From 1996 through 2007, the Wizards played home games in Arrowhead Stadium, the American football stadium mainly used by the Kansas City Chiefs. Wizards management kept the west end of Arrowhead tarped off for the first 10 years of play, limiting seating near the field. In 2006, fans could sit all the way around the field, but, in 2007, seating was [again] only available along the sidelines. After the 2007 final season at Arrowhead, the Wizards continued to use the stadium for select large events. In 2008, the club played a regular season home game against the Los Angeles Galaxy at the stadium to accommodate the large crowd expected for David Beckham's Galaxy debut. Again in 2010, the Wizards played a friendly here against English club Manchester United, winning 2–1.
The Wizards entered an agreement with the Kansas City T-Bones to use their home stadium, CommunityAmerica Ballpark, during the 2008 and 2009 seasons. The deal was later extended to include 2010. The stadium, located across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas, built a new bleacher section financed by the Wizards to increase its capacity to 10,385. This move made the Wizards the third MLS team to share their home ground with a baseball team. D.C. United had been sharing RFK Stadium with Major League Baseball's Washington Nationals in Washington, D.C., before the latter's move into Nationals Park. The San Jose Earthquakes used Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, home of the Oakland A's (and Oakland Raiders), for certain games during the 2008 and 2009 seasons.
The Wizards originally planned to return to Kansas City, Missouri, and build a new stadium there – tentatively called Trails Stadium – as part of a major mixed-use development. The team had received all required approvals and was awaiting site demolition; however, the 2008–09 financial crisis ultimately led to the scrapping of the Trails Stadium project.
The team sought a new site for its stadium, quickly settling on a development in Kansas City, Kansas, known as Village West, near CommunityAmerica Ballpark and the Kansas Speedway.
In September 2009, the developer asked Wyandotte County (in Kansas) and Kansas state officials for permission to use revenues from existing tax increment financing in the Village West area to help finance the soccer complex. On December 17, Wizards president Robb Heineman provided an update on the stadium situation, identifying the Kansas City, Kansas, location as near final, pending the signature of the final agreements. On January 19, 2010, Wyandotte County approved the bonds to help finance the stadium, and on January 20 the groundbreaking ceremony was made, with Wizards CEO Robb Heineman using heavy machinery to move dirt on the construction site.
When the Kansas City Wizards first rebranded as Sporting Kansas City, they built Livestrong Sporting Park. Spending $200 million on the complex, it was the first "European style" soccer complex in the United States. Name rights were held by the Livestrong Foundation until the downfall of Lance Armstrong from his doping scandal; Sporting Kansas City subsequently changed the name of their stadium to Sporting Park. On November 19, 2015, the stadium was renamed to Children's Mercy Park in a ten-year deal with Children's Mercy Hospital.
Sporting regularly sells out its matches, with over 100 straight sellouts as of August 2017. Sporting has 14,000 season-ticket holders, with a wait list for season tickets of 3,000 people. Sporting KC has a relatively young fan base, with season-ticket holders having an average age of 29.7 years. Sporting KC works with Sporting Innovations, a consulting firm spun off from the team that focuses on fan engagement. Administrators from several college football teams, such as the Florida Gators, have visited Sporting KC to learn from the team's success at fan engagement.
The main supporters group of Sporting Kansas City cheers in the Members' Stand on the North side of Children's Mercy Park and is known as "The Cauldron". The name is derived from the large metal pots used for boiling potions, due to the team's former name Wizards. Since the rebranding in 2010, Sporting have seen dramatic growth in their fan section, with several fan groups adding their voice to The Cauldron culture and atmosphere.
Current groups in the north stands along with The Cauldron include: La Barra KC, Mass Street Mob, King City Yardbirds, Trenches, Omaha Boys, Northland Noise, Ladies of SKC, Fountain City Ultras, and K.C. Futbol Misfits.
The South Stand SC cheers from the south end of Children's Mercy Park and is the umbrella group for The Wedge and Ad Astra SKC (a reference to the motto of the state of Kansas), while American Outlaws – Kansas City Chapter are also present in the stands.
SKC's "Blue the Dog" is the franchise's official mascot.
Sporting Kansas City's two primary rivals are Real Salt Lake and Houston Dynamo.
Prior to 2017 matches were broadcast in high definition on KMCI-TV (except for nationally broadcast matches). The play-by-play announcer was WHB 810AM 'Border Patrol' host Nate Bukaty, who began broadcasting for the team in the 2015 season. Former Sporting Kansas City goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum provided color commentary following his retirement after the 2014 season. Color commentary was covered by Jake Yadrich through the 2013 season, after which he transitioned to be the lead analyst on the sidelines during games. Morning reporter Kacie McDonnell of KSHB-TV, an NBC affiliate and KMCI-TV's sister station, served as the network host of the pregame and postgame shows.
In addition, the Sporting Kansas City Television Network provided coverage across markets in six states:
Matches that are not broadcast nationally are now broadcast on Fox Sports Kansas City, as well Fox Sports Midwest in the St. Louis market. In 2017, Fox Sports Midwest only carried select matches, while in 2018, the club announced the St. Louis market would receive all matches while the Mid-Missouri and Iowa markets would receive most matches. Nate Bukaty continues to provide the play-by-play commentary, while Jacob Peterson joined as the color commentator ahead of the 2020 season with Carter Augustine returning as the sideline reporter.
Regular local radio coverage in English is provided through an official partnership with Sports Radio 810 WHB and its affiliate ESPN Kansas City 99.3FM. Spanish broadcasting was previously found on KDTD 1340AM, but is on KCZZ (ESPN Deportes Kansas City 1480AM) for the 2018 season. The broadcasts are produced by Jorge Moreno and feature the voice of 13-year MLS veteran Diego Gutierrez along with Ale Cabero, Raul Villegas and Alonso Cadena.
1. Avg. Attendance include statistics from league matches only.
The following records are for MLS regular season only:
Source: Updated: March 8, 2020
Sporting Legends is an initiative launched in 2013 that pays tribute to the individuals who played an instrumental role for Sporting Kansas City and in the growth of soccer in the region.
The individuals named as Sporting Legends, their year of induction, and a brief description are listed below:
+ Dom Dwyer scored
four goals in this game | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16857 |
Knights of Columbus
The Knights of Columbus (K of C) is a global Catholic fraternal service order. Membership is composed of (and limited to) practicing Catholic men. It is led by Supreme Knight Sir Carl A. Anderson.
The organization was founded in 1882 as a mutual benefit society for working-class and immigrant Catholics in the United States. It has grown to support refugee relief, Catholic education, local parishes and dioceses, and global Catholic causes. The Knights promote a conservative Catholic view on public policy issues, including opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and birth control. Between 2008 and 2012, K of C gave at least $15 million to lobbies opposed to same-sex marriage.
The organization provides certain financial services to affiliated groups and individuals. Its wholly owned insurance company, one of the largest in the world, underwrites more than two million insurance contracts, totaling more than $100 billion of life insurance in force. The order also owns the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors, a money management firm which invests in accordance with Catholic social teachings.
As of 2019, there were nearly two million members around the world. Women may participate in K of C through the Columbiettes and other female auxiliaries, and boys may join the Columbian Squires. The Order comprises four different "degrees", each one of which exemplifies one of the core principles of the order. There are more than 16,000 local Knights of Columbus councils around the world, including over 300 on college campuses.
Irish-American priest Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 as a mutual benefit society for Catholic immigrants in New Haven, Connecticut.
During World War I, the Knights established soldiers' welfare centers in the U.S. and abroad. After the war, the Knights participated in education, occupational training, and employment programs for veterans.
The Oregon Compulsory Education Act of 1922 would have disallowed parochial schools, including Catholic schools, in that state. The Knights of Columbus challenged the law in court, and, in a landmark 1925 ruling ("Pierce v. Society of Sisters"), the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down.
In the 1920s, to combat animus targeted at racial and religious minorities, the organization published a series of three books: "Knights of Columbus Racial Contributions Series": "The Gift of Black Folk", by W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Jews in the Making of America" by George Cohen, and "The Germans in the Making of America" by Frederick Schrader.
During the nadir of American race relations, the Ku Klux Klan promoted a conspiracy theory claiming that Fourth Degree Knights swore an oath to exterminate Freemasons and Protestants. The Knights began suing distributors for libel in an effort to stop this, and the KKK ended its publication of the false oath.
According to Church historian Massimo Faggioli, the Knights of Columbus are today "'an extreme version' of a post-VaticanII phenomenon, the rise of discrete lay groups that have become centers of power themselves".
The order is dedicated to the principles (Degrees) of charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism. The first ritual handbook, printed in 1885, contained only the first two Degrees teaching unity and charity. Assemblies may form color guards, which are often the most visible arm of the Knights, to attend important civic and church events.
The Knights of Columbus states that charity is its most important principle. Beginning in 1897, the National Council encouraged local councils to establish funds to support members affected by the 1890s depression. Aid was also dispensed to assist victims of natural and man-made disasters in the early 20th century. Councils also offered employment agency services and provided aid to the poor and sick as well as people burdened with intellectual disability. The organization has been reluctant to discuss the charitable and social causes it supports, which have tended to be more conservative than the mainstream views of Catholics in general.
Membership is restricted to adult male Catholics. , there were 1.9 million knights. Each member belongs to one of more than 16,000 local "councils" around the world. The college councils program started with the chartering of University of Notre Dame Council #1477 in 1910. As of 2018, there are more than 300 college councils.
The Supreme Council is the governing body of the order. It elects insurance members to serve three-year terms on a 24-member Board of Directors. Leaders' salaries are set by the board of directors and ratified by the delegates to the Supreme Convention. The seven-figure salaries of senior K of C officers have been criticized as excessive. In 1969, the Knights opened a 23-story headquarters building in New Haven.
Since its earliest days, the Knights of Columbus has been a "Catholic anti-defamation society". In 1914, it established a Commission on Religious Prejudices. As part of the effort, the order distributed pamphlets, and lecturers toured the country speaking on how Catholics could love and be loyal to America.
The creation of the 4th Degree, with its emphasis on patriotism, performed an anti-defamation function as well as asserting claims to Americanism. In response to a defamatory "bogus oath" circulated by the KKK, in 1914 the Knights set up a framework for a lecture series and educational programs to combat anti-Catholic sentiment.
The Knights have been urged to take a prominent role in the new evangelization. The CIS published a series on the new evangelization in 2011, and donations to other Catholic mass communication services represent one of the Knights' major expenditures. The Knights have also established councils in both secular and Catholic universities.
While the Knights were active politically from an early date, in the years following the Second Vatican Council, as the "Catholic anti-defamation character" of the order began to diminish as Catholics became more accepted, the leadership began to use its financial resources to directly influence the direction of the Church. That led to the creation of a "variety of new programs reflecting the proliferation of the new social ministries of the church".
The leadership of the order has been, at times, both liberal and conservative. Martin H. Carmody and Luke E. Hart were both political conservatives, but John J. Phelan was a Democratic politician prior to becoming Supreme Knight, John Swift's "strong support for economic democracy and social-welfare legislation marks him as a fairly representative New Deal anti-communist," and Francis P. Matthews was a civil rights official and member of Harry Truman's cabinet. The current Supreme Knight, Carl A. Anderson, previously served in Ronald Reagan's White House.
While the Knights of Columbus support political awareness and activity, United States councils are prohibited by tax laws from engaging in candidate endorsement and partisan political activity due to their non-profit status. The rules of the order also prohibit partisan politics in council chambers or at any events. Public policy activity is limited to issue-specific campaigns, typically dealing with Catholic family and sanctity of life issues. They state that
In addition to performing charitable works, the Knights of Columbus encourages its members to meet their responsibilities as Catholic citizens and to become active in the political life of their local communities, to vote and to speak out on the public issues of the day... In the political realm, this means opening our public policy efforts and deliberations to the life of Christ and the teachings of the Church. In accord with our Bishops, the Knights of Columbus has consistently maintained positions that take these concerns into account. The order supports and promotes the social doctrine of the Church, including a robust vision of religious liberty that embraces religion's proper role in the private and public spheres.
The order opposed persecution of Catholics in Mexico during the Cristero War, and opposed communism. Also during the 20th century, the order established the Commission on Religious Prejudices, and the Knights of Columbus Historical Commission which combated racism. It was also supportive of trade unionism, and published the works "of the broad array of intellectuals", including George Schuster, Samuel Flagg Bemis, Allan Nevins, and W. E. B. DuBois.
During the Cold War, the order had a history of anti-socialist, anti-communist crusades. They lobbied to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, as a religious response to Soviet atheism. The Knights have been active opponents against the legal introduction of same-sex marriage and have been a key contributor in terms of funding to local measures. The Knights have donated over to the Susan B. Anthony Foundation and other anti-abortion and anti- contraception organizations.
Under the initial insurance scheme devised by founder McGivney, a deceased Knight's widow was granted a 1,000 death benefit, funded by a pro-rata contribution from the membership. In addition, there was also a sick benefit for members who fell ill and could not work.
On March 10, 2001, the order opened a museum in New Haven dedicated to their history. The 77,000 square foot building cost to renovate. It holds mosaics on loan from the Vatican and gifts from Popes, the membership application from John F. Kennedy, and a number of other items related to the history of the Knights. Near the entrance is the cross held by Jesus Christ on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica before undergoing a Knights-financed renovation. As many as 300,000 visitors were expected per year.
In 2015, the order launched Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors, a money management firm which invests money in accordance with Catholic social teaching. The firm uses the Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to guide their investment decisions. The guidelines include protecting human life, promoting human dignity, reducing arms production, pursuing economic justice, protecting the environment, and encouraging corporate responsibility. trim
In addition to the wholly owned subsidiary, it also purchased 20% of Boston Advisors, a boutique investment management firm, managing assets for institutional and high-net-worth investors. Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors manages the fixed-income strategies for their funds while Boston Advisors sub-advises on the equity strategies. Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors also offers model portfolio, outsourced CIO services, a bank loan strategy, and other alternative investment strategies. In 2019, the Knights purchased the institutional management business of Boston Advisors.
The order owns and operates the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington D.C. In 2011, the Order purchased the 130,000-square-foot John Paul II Cultural Center. The mission as a cultural center ended in 2009 and the Knights rebranded it as a shrine to Pope John Paul II. Soon after the pope was canonized, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops named the building a national shrine.
Each year 64,000 pilgrims visit the shrine, which features video content, interactive displays, and personal effects from John Paul. There is also a first class relic of the pope's blood on display for veneration. It also serves as a base for the Order in Washington, D.C.
Many notable Catholic men from all over the world have been Knights of Columbus. In the United States, some of the most notable include John F. Kennedy; Ted Kennedy; Al Smith; Sargent Shriver; Samuel Alito; John Boehner; Ray Flynn; Jeb Bush; and Sergeant Major Daniel Daly, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient.
In the world of sports, Vince Lombardi, the famed former coach of the Green Bay Packers; James Connolly, the first Olympic gold medal champion in modern times; Floyd Patterson, former heavyweight boxing champion; and baseball legend Babe Ruth were all knights.
On October 15, 2006, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia (1878–1938) was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. In 2000, six other Knights, who were killed in the violence following the Mexican Revolution, were declared saints by Pope John Paul II.
The emblem of the order was designed by Past Supreme Knight James T. Mullen and adopted at the second Supreme Council meeting on May 12, 1883. Shields used by medieval knights served as the inspiration. The emblem consists of a shield mounted on a Formée cross, which is an artistic representation of the cross of Christ. This represents the Catholic identity of the order.
Mounted on the shield are three objects: a fasces; an anchor; and a dagger. In ancient Rome, the fasces was carried before magistrates as an emblem of authority. The order uses it as "symbolic of authority which must exist in any tightly-bonded and efficiently operating organization". The anchor represents Christopher Columbus, patron of the order. The short sword, or dagger, was a weapon used by medieval knights. The shield as a whole, with the letters "K of C", represents "Catholic Knighthood in organized merciful action".
Many councils also have women's auxiliaries. At the turn of the 20th century two were formed by local councils, each taking the name Daughters of Isabella. They expanded and issued charters to other circles but never merged. The newer organization renamed itself the Catholic Daughters of the Americas in 1921, and both have structures independent of the Knights of Columbus. Other groups are known as the Columbiettes. In the Philippines, the ladies' auxiliary is known as the Daughters of Mary Immaculate.
A proposal in 1896 to establish councils for women did not pass, and was never proposed again.
The Knights' official junior organization is the Columbian Squires. According to the McDonald, "The supreme purpose of the Columbian Squires is character building."
It was founded in 1925 in Duluth, Minnesota, by Brother Barnabas McDonald, F.S.C.. The formation of new Squire Circles in the United States and Canada is discouraged as the Order desires to move youth activities from exclusive clubs into the local parish youth groups.
The Knights of Columbus is a member of the International Alliance of Catholic Knights, which includes fifteen fraternal orders such as the Knights of Saint Columbanus in Ireland, the Knights of Saint Columba in the United Kingdom, the Knights of Peter Claver in the United States, the Knights of the Southern Cross in Australia and New Zealand, the Knights of Marshall in Ghana, the Knights of Da Gama in South Africa, and the Knights of Saint Mulumba in Nigeria.
The Loyal Orange Institution, also known as the Orange Order, is a similar organization for Protestant Christians. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16858 |
Japanese sword
A is one of several types of traditionally made swords from Japan. Swords have been made from as early as the Kofun period, though most people generally refer to the curved blades made after the Heian period when speaking of "Japanese swords". There are many types of Japanese swords that differ by size, shape, field of application and method of manufacture. Some of the more commonly known types of Japanese swords are the katana, tsurugi, wakizashi, odachi, and tachi.
The type classifications for Japanese swords indicate the combination of a blade and its mounts as this, then, determines the style of use of the blade. An unsigned and shortened blade that was once made and intended for use as a tachi may be alternately mounted in tachi koshirae and katana koshirae. It is properly distinguished, then, by the style of mount it currently inhabits. A long tanto may be classified as a wakizashi due to its length being over 30 cm, however it may have originally been mounted and used as a tanto making the length distinction somewhat arbitrary but necessary when referring to unmounted short blades. When the mounts are taken out of the equation, a tanto and wakizashi will be determined by length under or over 30 cm unless their intended use can be absolutely determined or the speaker is rendering an opinion on the intended use of the blade. In this way, a blade formally attributed as a wakizashi due to length may be informally discussed between individuals as a tanto because the blade was made during an age where tanto were popular and the wakizashi as a companion sword to katana did not yet exist.
The following are types of Japanese swords:
There are bladed weapons made in the same traditional manner as Japanese swords, which are not swords, but which are still nihontō (as "tō" means "blade", rather than specifically "sword"):
Other edged weapons or tools that are made using the same methods as Japanese swords:
The production of swords in Japan is divided into time periods:
In modern times the most commonly known type of Japanese sword is the Shinogi-Zukuri katana, which is a single-edged and usually curved longsword traditionally worn by samurai from the 15th century onwards. Other types of Japanese swords include: tsurugi or , which is a double-edged sword; ōdachi, tachi, which are older styles of a very long single-edged sword; wakizashi, a medium-sized sword and tantō which is an even smaller knife-sized sword. Naginata and yari despite being polearms are still considered to be swords.
Japanese swords are still commonly seen today, antique and modern forged swords can easily be found and purchased. Modern, authentic "nihontō" are made by a few hundred swordsmiths. Many examples can be seen at an annual competition hosted by the All Japan Swordsmith Association, under the auspices of the Nihontō Bunka Shinkō Kyōkai (Society for the promotion of Japanese Sword Culture).
Western historians have said that Japanese katana were among the finest cutting weapons in world military history, for their intended use.
The word "katana" was used in ancient Japan and is still used today, whereas the old usage of the word "nihontō" is found in the poem, the Song of "Nihontō", by the Song dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu. The word "nihontō" became more common in Japan in the late Tokugawa shogunate. Due to importation of Western swords, the word "nihontō" was adopted in order to distinguish it from the .
"Meibutsu" (noted swords) is a special designation given to sword masterpieces which are listed in a compilation from the 18th century called the "Kyoho Meibutsucho". The swords listed are "Koto" blades from several different provinces, 100 of the 166 swords listed are known to exist today with "Soshu" blades being very well represented. The "Kyoho Meibutsucho" also listed the nicknames, prices, history and length of the "Meibutsu" with swords by Yoshimitsu, Masamune, Yoshihiro, and Sadamune being very highly priced.
Each blade has a unique profile, mostly dependent on the swordsmith and the construction method. The most prominent part is the middle ridge, or "shinogi". In the earlier picture, the examples were flat to the shinogi, then tapering to the blade edge. However, swords could narrow down to the shinogi, then narrow further to the blade edge, or even expand outward towards the shinogi then shrink to the blade edge(producing a trapezoidal shape). A flat or narrowing shinogi is called "shinogi-hikushi", whereas a flat blade is called a "shinogi-takushi".
The shinogi can be placed near the back of the blade for a longer, sharper, more fragile tip or a more moderate shinogi near the center of the blade.
The sword also has an exact tip shape, which is considered an extremely important characteristic: the tip can be long ("ōkissaki"), medium ("chūkissaki"), short ("kokissaki"), or even hooked backwards ("ikuri-ōkissaki"). In addition, whether the front edge of the tip is more curved ("fukura-tsuku") or (relatively) straight ("fukura-kareru") is also important.
The "" (point) is not usually a "chisel-like" point, and the Western knife interpretation of a "tantō point" is rarely found on true Japanese swords; a straight, linearly sloped point has the advantage of being easy to grind, but less stabbing/piercing capabilities compared to traditional Japanese kissaki Fukura(curvature of the cutting edge of tip) types. Kissaki usually have a curved profile, and smooth three-dimensional curvature across their surface towards the edge—though they are bounded by a straight line called the "yokote" and have crisp definition at all their edges. While the straight tip on the "American tanto" is identical to traditional Japanese fukura, two characteristics set itself apart from Japanese sword makes; The absolute lack of curve only possible with modern tools, and the use of the word "tanto" in the nomenclature of the western tribute is merely a nod to the Japanese word for knife or short sword, rather than a tip style.
Although it is not commonly known, the "chisel point" kissaki originated in Japan. Examples of such are shown in the book "The Japanese Sword" by Kanzan Sato. Because American bladesmiths use this design extensively it is a common misconception that the design originated in America.
A hole is punched through the tang "", called a "". It is used to anchor the blade using a "", a small bamboo pin that is inserted into another cavity in the handle "" and through the mekugi-ana, thus restricting the blade from slipping out. To remove the handle one removes the mekugi. The swordsmith's signature "" is carved on the tang.
In Japanese, the scabbard is referred to as a "", and the handguard piece, often intricately designed as an individual work of art—especially in later years of the Edo period—was called the "tsuba". Other aspects of the mountings , such as the "" (decorative grip swells), "" (blade collar and scabbard wedge), "" and "" (handle collar and cap), "" (small utility knife handle), "" (decorative skewer-like implement), "" lacquer, and "" (professional handle wrap, also named "tsukamaki"), received similar levels of artistry.
The "mei" is the signature inscribed on to the tang of the Japanese sword. Fake signatures ("gimei") are common not only due to centuries of forgeries but potentially misleading ones that acknowledge prominent smiths and guilds, and those commissioned to a separate signer.
Sword scholars collect and study "oshigata", or paper tang-rubbings, taken from a blade:
to identify the mei, the hilt is removed and the sword is held point side up. The mei is chiseled onto the tang on the side which traditionally faces away from the wearer's body while being worn; since the katana and wakizashi are always worn with the cutting-edge up, the edge should be held to the viewer's left. The inscription will be viewed as kanji on the surface of the tang: the first two kanji represent the province; the next pair is the smith; and the last, when present, is sometimes a variation of 'made by', or, 'respecfully'. The date will be inscribed near the mei, either with the reign name; the Zodiacal Method; or those calculated from the reign of the legendary Emperor Jimmu, dependent upon the period.
What generally differentiates the different swords is their length. Japanese swords are measured in units of "shaku". Since 1891, the modern Japanese shaku is approximately equal to a foot (11.93 inches), calibrated with the meter to equal exactly 10 meters per 33 shaku (30.30 cm).
However the historical shaku was slightly longer (13.96 inches or 35.45 cm). Thus, there may sometimes be confusion about the blade lengths, depending on which shaku value is being assumed when converting to metric or U.S. customary measurements.
The three main divisions of Japanese blade length are:
A blade shorter than one "shaku" is considered a "tantō" (knife). A blade longer than one "shaku" but less than two is considered a "shōtō" (short sword). The wakizashi and "kodachi" are in this category. The length is measured in a straight line across the back of the blade from tip to "munemachi" (where blade meets tang). Most blades that fall into the ""shōtō"" size range are "wakizashi". However, some "daitō" were designed with blades slightly shorter than 2 "shaku". These were called "kodachi" and are somewhere in between a true "daitō" and a "wakizashi". A "shōtō" and a "daitō" together are called a "daishō" (literally, "big-little"). The "daishō" was the symbolic armament of the Edo period samurai.
A blade longer than two "shaku" is considered a "daitō", or long sword. To qualify as a "daitō" the sword must have a blade longer than 2 "shaku" (approximately 24 inches or 60 centimeters) in a straight line. While there is a well defined lower-limit to the length of a "daitō", the upper limit is not well enforced; a number of modern historians, swordsmiths, etc. say that swords that are over 3 "shaku" in blade length are "longer than normal "daitō"" and are usually referred to or called "ōdachi". The word ""daitō"" is often used when explaining the related terms "shōtō" (short sword) and "daishō" (the set of both large and small sword). Miyamoto Musashi refers to the long sword in "The Book of Five Rings". He is referring to the "katana" in this, and refers to the "nodachi" and the "odachi" as "extra-long swords".
Before about 1500 most swords were usually worn suspended from cords on a belt, edge-down. This style is called "jindachi-zukuri", and "daitō" worn in this fashion are called "tachi" (average blade length of 75–80 cm). From 1600 to 1867, more swords were worn through an "obi" (sash), paired with a smaller blade; both worn edge-up. This style is called "buke-zukuri", and all "daitō" worn in this fashion are "katana", averaging 70–74 cm (2 shaku 3 sun to 2 shaku 4 sun 5 bu) in blade length. However, "nihontō" of longer lengths also existed, including lengths up to 78 cm (2 shaku 5 sun 5 bu).
It was not simply that the swords were worn by cords on a belt, as a 'style' of sorts. Such a statement trivializes an important function of such a manner of bearing the sword. It was a very direct example of 'form following function.' At this point in Japanese history, much of the warfare was fought on horseback. Being so, if the sword or blade were in a more vertical position, it would be cumbersome, and awkward to draw. Suspending the sword by 'cords,' allowed the sheath to be more horizontal, and far less likely to bind while drawing it in that position.
Abnormally long blades (longer than 3 "shaku"), usually carried across the back, are called "ōdachi" or "nodachi." The word "ōdachi" is also sometimes used as a synonym for nihontō. "Odachi" means "great sword", and "Nodachi" translates to "field sword". These greatswords were used during war as the longer sword gave a foot soldier a reach advantage. These swords are now illegal in Japan. Citizens are not allowed to possess an "odachi" unless it is for ceremonial purposes.
Here is a list of lengths for different types of blades:
Blades whose length is next to a different classification type are described with a prefix 'O-' (for great) or 'Ko-' (for small), e.g. a Wakizashi with a length of 59 cm is called an O-wakizashi (almost a Katana) whereas a Katana with 61 cm is called a Ko-Katana (for small Katana; but note that a small accessory blade sometimes found in the sheath of a long sword is also a "kogatana" (小刀)).
Since 1867, restrictions and/or the deconstruction of the samurai class meant that most blades have been worn "jindachi-zukuri" style, like Western navy officers. Since 1953, there has been a resurgence in the "buke-zukuri" style, permitted only for demonstration purposes.
Most old Japanese swords can be traced back to one of five provinces, each of which had its own school, traditions, and "trademarks" (e.g., the swords from Mino province were "from the start famous for their sharpness"). These schools are known as Gokaden (The Five Traditions). These traditions and provinces are as follows:
In the Kotō era there were several other schools that did not fit within the Five Traditions or were known to mix elements of each Gokaden, and they were called "wakimono" (small school). There were 19 commonly referenced "wakimono".
The production of swords in Japan is divided into specific time periods: jokoto (ancient swords, until around 900 A.D.), koto (old swords from around 900–1596), shinto (new swords 1596–1780), shinshinto (new new swords 1781–1876), gendaito (modern swords 1876–1945), and shinsakuto (newly made swords 1953–present).
Early examples of swords were straight "chokutō" or "jōkotō" and others with unusual shapes, some of styles and techniques probably are derived from Chinese swords, and some of them are directly imported through trade.
Swords forged between 987 and 1597 are called (lit., "old swords"); these are considered the pinnacle of Japanese swordcraft. Early models had uneven curves with the deepest part of the curve at the hilt. As eras changed the center of the curve tended to move up the blade.
The predecessor of the Japanese sword has been called "Warabite sword()", It had been manufactured by Emishi persons in Tōhoku region. In the middle of the Heian period, samurai improved on the Warabite to develop Kenukigatatati () -early Japanese sword-.
The Japanese sword known today with its deep, graceful curve has its origin in shinogi-zukuri (single-edged blade with ridgeline) "tachi" which were developed sometime around the middle of the Heian period to service the need of the growing military class. Its shape reflects the changing form of warfare in Japan. Cavalry were now the predominant fighting unit and the older straight "chokutō" were particularly unsuitable for fighting from horseback. The curved sword is a far more efficient weapon when wielded by a warrior on horseback where the curve of the blade adds considerably to the downward force of a cutting action.
The "tachi" is a sword which is generally larger than a katana, and is worn suspended with the cutting edge down. This was the standard form of carrying the sword for centuries, and would eventually be displaced by the katana style where the blade was worn thrust through the belt, edge up. The "tachi" was worn slung across the left hip. The signature on the tang of the blade was inscribed in such a way that it would always be on the outside of the sword when worn. This characteristic is important in recognizing the development, function, and different styles of wearing swords from this time onwards.
When worn with full armour, the "tachi" would be accompanied by a shorter blade in the form known as "koshigatana" ("waist sword"); a type of short sword with no handguard, and where the hilt and scabbard meet to form the style of mounting called an "aikuchi" ("meeting mouth"). Daggers ("tantō"), were also carried for close combat fighting as well as carried generally for personal protection.
The Mongol invasions of Japan in the 13th century spurred further evolution of the Japanese sword. Often forced to abandon traditional mounted archery for hand-to-hand combat, many samurai found that their swords were too delicate and prone to damage when used against the thick leather armor of the invaders. In response, Japanese swordsmiths started to adopt thinner and simpler temper lines. Certain Japanese swordsmiths of this period began to make blades with thicker backs and bigger points as a response to the Mongol threat.
By the 15th century, the Sengoku Jidai civil war erupted, and the vast need for swords together with the ferocity of the fighting caused the highly artistic techniques of the Kamakura period (known as the "Golden Age of Swordmaking") to be abandoned in favor of more utilitarian and disposable weapons. The export of nihontō reached its height during the Muromachi period when at least 200,000 swords were shipped to Ming Dynasty China in official trade in an attempt to soak up the production of Japanese weapons and make it harder for pirates in the area to arm.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, samurai who increasingly found a need for a sword for use in closer quarters along with increasing use of foot-soldiers armed with spears led to the creation of the "uchigatana", in both one-handed and two-handed forms. As the Sengoku civil wars progressed, the "uchigatana" evolved into the modern "katana", and replaced the "tachi" as the primary weapon of the samurai, especially when not wearing armor. Many longer "tachi" were shortened in the 15th–17th centuries to meet the demand for "katana".
The craft decayed as time progressed and firearms were introduced as a decisive force on the battlefield. At the end of the Muromachi period, the Tokugawa shōguns issued regulations controlling who could own and carry swords, and effectively standardized the description of a nihontō.
In times of peace, swordsmiths returned to the making of refined and artistic blades, and the beginning of the Momoyama period saw the return of high quality creations. As the techniques of the ancient smiths had been lost during the previous period of war, these swords were called , literally "new swords". Generally they are considered inferior to most "kotō" ("old swords"), and coincide with a decline in manufacturing skills. As the Edo period progressed, blade quality declined, though ornamentation was refined. Originally, simple and tasteful engravings known as "horimono" were added for religious reasons. Later, in the more complex work found on many "shintō," form no longer strictly followed function.
Under the Tokugawa shogunate, swordmaking and the use of firearms declined. The master swordsmith Suishinshi Masahide (c. 1750–1825) published opinions that the arts and techniques of the "shintō" swords were inferior to the "kotō" blades, and that research should be made by all swordsmiths to rediscover the lost techniques. Masahide traveled the land teaching what he knew to all who would listen, and swordsmiths rallied to his cause and ushered in a second renaissance in Japanese sword smithing . With the discarding of the "shintō" style, and the re-introduction of old and rediscovered techniques, swords made in the "kotō" style between 1761 and 1876 are , "new revival swords" or literally "new-new swords." These are considered superior to most "shintō", but inferior to true "kotō".
The arrival of Matthew Perry in 1853 and the subsequent Convention of Kanagawa forcibly reintroduced Japan to the outside world; the rapid modernization of the Meiji Restoration soon followed. The Haitōrei Edict in 1876 all but banned carrying swords and guns on streets. Overnight, the market for swords died, many swordsmiths were left without a trade to pursue, and valuable skills were lost. The nihontō remained in use in some occupations such as the police force. At the same time, kendo was incorporated into police training so that police officers would have at least the training necessary to properly use one.
In time, it was rediscovered that soldiers needed to be armed with swords, and over the decades at the beginning of the 20th century swordsmiths again found work. These swords, derisively called "guntō," were often oil-tempered, or simply stamped out of steel and given a serial number rather than a chiseled signature. The mass-produced ones often look like Western cavalry sabers rather than nihontō, with blades slightly shorter than blades of the "shintō" and "shinshintō" periods.
Military swords hand made in the traditional way are often termed as "gendaitō". The craft of making swords was kept alive through the efforts of a few individuals, notably Gassan Sadakazu (月山貞一, 1836–1918) and Gassan Sadakatsu (月山貞勝, 1869–1943), who were employed as Imperial artisans. These smiths produced fine works that stand with the best of the older blades for the Emperor and other high-ranking officials. The students of Sadakatsu went on to be designated Intangible Cultural Assets, "Living National Treasures," as they embodied knowledge that was considered to be fundamentally important to the Japanese identity. In 1934 the Japanese government issued a military specification for the "shin guntō" (new army sword), the first version of which was the Type 94 Katana, and many machine- and hand-crafted swords used in World War II conformed to this and later "shin guntō" specifications.
The events of Japanese society have shaped the craft of sword making, as has the sword itself influenced the course of cultural and social development within the nation.
The Museum of Fine Arts states that when an artisan plunged the newly crafted sword into the cold water, a portion of his spirit was transferred into the sword. His spirit, morals and state of mind at the time became crucial to the defining of the swords moral and physical characteristics
During the Jōmon Period (10,000-300BCE) swords resembled iron knife blades and were used for hunting, fishing and farming. There is the idea that swords were more than a tool during the Jōmon period, no swords have been recovered to back this hypothesis.
The Yayoi Period (400BCE-300CE) saw the establishment of villages and the cultivation of rice farming within Japan. Rice farming came as a result of Chinese and Korean influence, they were the first group of people to introduce swords into the Japanese Isles. Subsequently, bronze swords were used for religious ceremonies. The Yayoi period saw swords be used primarily for religious and ceremonial purposes.
During the Kofun Period (250-538CE) Animism was introduced into Japanese society. Animism is the belief that everything in life contains or is connected to a divine spirits. This connection to the spirit world premediates the introduction of Buddhism into Japan. During this time, China was craving steel blades on the Korean Peninsula. Japan saw this as a threat to national security and felt the need to develop their military technology. As a result, clan leaders took power as military elites, fighting one another for power and territory. As dominant figures took power, loyalty and servitude became an important part of Japanese life – this became the catalyst for the honour culture that is often affiliated with Japanese people.
In the Edo period (1603-1868), swords gained prominence in everyday life as the “most important” part of a warrior's amour. The Edo era saw swords became a mechanism for bonding between Daimyo and Samurai. Daimyo would gift samurai's with swords as a token of their appreciation for their services. In turn, samurai would gift Daimyo swords as a sign of respect, most Daimyo would keep these swords as family heirlooms. In this period, it was believed that swords were multifunctional; in spirit they represent proof of military accomplishment, in practice they are coveted weapons of war and diplomatic gifts.
The peace of the Edo period saw the demand for swords fall. To retaliate, in 1719 the eighth Tokugawa shogun, Yoshimune, compiled a list of “most famous swords”. Masamune, Awatacuchi Yoshimitsu, and Go no Yoshihiro were dubbed the “Three Famous Smiths”, their swords became sought after by the Daimyo. The prestige and demand for these status symbols spiked the price for these fine pieces.
During the Late-Edo period, Suishinshi Masahide wrote that swords should be less extravagant. Swords began to be simplified and altered to be durable, sturdy and made to cut well. In 1543 guns arrived in Japan, changing military dynamic and practicality of swords and samurai's. This period also saw introduction of martial arts as a means to connecting to the spirit world and allowed common people to participate in samurai culture.
The Meiji Period (1868-1912) saw the dissolution of the samurai class, after foreign powers demanded Japan open their borders to international trade - 300-hundred years of Japanese isolation came to an end. In 1869 and 1873, two petition were submitted to government to abolish the custom of sword wearing because people feared the outside world would view swords as a “tool for bloodshed” and would consequentially associate Japanese people as violent. Haitōrei (1876) outlawed and prohibited wearing swords in public, with the exception for those in the military and government official; swords lost their meaning within society. Emperor Meiji was determined to westernize Japan with the influence of American technological and scientific advances; however, he himself appreciated the art of sword making. The Meiji era marked the final moments of samurai culture, as samurai's were no match for conscript soldiers who were trained to use westerns firearms. Some samurai found it difficult to assimilate to the new culture as they were forced to give up their privileges, while others preferred this less-hierarchical way of life. Even with the ban, the Sino-Japanese War (1894) saw Japanese troops wear swords into battle, not for practical use but for symbolic reasons.
The Meiji era also saw the integration of Buddhism into Shinto Japanese beliefs. Swords were no longer necessary, in war or lifestyle, and those who practiced martial arts became the “modern samurai” – young children were still groomed to serve the emperor and put loyalty and honour above all else, as this new era of rapid development required loyal, hard working men. The practice of sword making was prohibited, thus swords during the Meiji period were obsolete and a mere symbol of status. Swords were left to rust, sold or melted into more ‘practical’ objects for everyday life.
Prior to and during WWII, even with the modernization of the army, the demand for swords exceeded the number of swordsmiths still capable of making them. As a result, swords of this era are of poor quality. In 1933, during the Shōwa era (1926-1989), a sword making factory designed to re-establish the “spirit of Japan” through the art of sword making was built to preserve the legacy and art of swordsmiths and sword making. The government at the time feared that the warrior spirit (loyalty and honour) was disappearing within Japan, along with the integrity and quality of swords.
Heisei era (1989-2019, modern period, Post-war era), for a portion of the US occupation of Japan, sword making, swordsmiths and wielding of swords was prohibited. As a means to preserve their warrior culture, martial arts became was put into school curriculum. In 1953, America finally lifted the ban on swords after realizing that sword making is an important cultural asset to preserving Japanese history and legacy.
The origins of Japanese swords and their effects and influence on society differs depending on the story that is followed.
"The blade represents the juncture where the wisdom of leaders and gods intersects with the commoner. The sword represents the implement by which societies are managed. The effectiveness of the sword as a tool and the societal beliefs surrounding it both lift the sword to the pinnacle of warrior symbolism."
There is a rich relationship between swords, Japanese culture, and societal development. The different interpretations of the origins of swords and their connection to the spirit world, each hold their own merit within Japanese society, past and present. Which one and how modern-day samurai interpret the history of swords, help influence the kind of samurai and warrior they choose to be.
Under the United States occupation at the end of World War II all armed forces in occupied Japan were disbanded and production of nihontō with edges was banned except under police or government permit. The ban was overturned through a personal appeal by Dr. Junji Honma. During a meeting with General Douglas MacArthur, Honma produced blades from the various periods of Japanese history and MacArthur was able to identify very quickly what blades held artistic merit and which could be considered purely weapons. As a result of this meeting, the ban was amended so that "guntō" weapons would be destroyed while swords of artistic merit could be owned and preserved. Even so, many nihontō were sold to American soldiers at a bargain price; in 1958 there were more Japanese swords in America than in Japan. The vast majority of these one million or more swords were "guntō", but there were still a sizable number of older swords.
After the Edo period, swordsmiths turned increasingly to the production of civilian goods. The Occupation and its regulations almost put an end to the production of nihonto. A few smiths continued their trade, and Honma went on to be a founder of the , who made it their mission to preserve the old techniques and blades. Thanks to the efforts of other like-minded individuals, the nihontō did not disappear, many swordsmiths continued the work begun by Masahide, and the old swordmaking techniques were rediscovered.
Modern swords manufactured according to traditional methods are usually known as , meaning "newly made swords". Alternatively, they can be termed when they are designed for combat as opposed to "iaitō" training swords.
Due to their popularity in modern media, display-only "nihontō" have become widespread in the sword marketplace. Ranging from small letter openers to scale replica "wallhangers", these items are commonly made from stainless steel (which makes them either brittle (if made from cutlery-grade 400-series stainless steel) or poor at holding an edge (if made from 300-series stainless steel)) and have either a blunt or very crude edge. There are accounts of good quality stainless steel nihontō, however, these are rare at best. Some replica nihontō have been used in modern-day armed robberies. As a part of marketing, modern ahistoric blade styles and material properties are often stated as traditional and genuine, promulgating disinformation.
In Japan, genuine edged hand-made Japanese swords, whether antique or modern, are classified as art objects (and not weapons) and must have accompanying certification in order to be legally owned. Some companies and independent smiths outside Japan produce katana as well, with varying levels of quality.
Prior to WWII Japan had 1.5million swords in the country - 200,000 of which had been manufactured in factories during the Meiji Restoration. As of 2008, only 100,000 swords remain in Japan. It is estimated that 250,000-350,000 sword have been brought to other nations as souvenirs, art pieces or for Museum purposes. 70% of "daito" (long swords), formerly owned by Japanese officers, have been exported or brought to the United States.
Japanese swords were often forged with different profiles, different blade thicknesses, and varying amounts of grind. "Wakizashi", for instance, were not simply scaled-down versions of "katana"; they were often forged in "hira-zukuri" or other such forms which were very rare on other swords.
The "daishō" was not always forged together. If a samurai was able to afford a "daishō", it was often composed of whichever two swords could be conveniently acquired, sometimes by different smiths and in different styles. Even when a "daishō" contained a pair of blades by the same smith, they were not always forged as a pair or mounted as one. "Daishō" made as a pair, mounted as a pair, and owned/worn as a pair, are therefore uncommon and considered highly valuable, especially if they still retain their original mountings (as opposed to later mountings, even if the later mounts are made as a pair).
The forging of a Japanese blade typically took weeks or even months and was considered a sacred art. As with many complex endeavors, rather than a single craftsman, several artists were involved. There was a smith to forge the rough shape, often a second smith (apprentice) to fold the metal, a specialist polisher (called a "togi") as well as the various artisans that made the "koshirae" (the various fittings used to decorate the finished blade and "saya" (sheath) including the "tsuka" (hilt), "fuchi" (collar), "kashira" (pommel), and "tsuba" (hand guard)). It is said that the sharpening and polishing process takes just as long as the forging of the blade itself.
The legitimate Japanese sword is made from Japanese steel "Tamahagane". The most common lamination method the Japanese sword blade is formed from is a combination of two different steels: a harder outer jacket of steel wrapped around a softer inner core of steel. This creates a blade which has a hard, razor sharp cutting edge with the ability to absorb shock in a way which reduces the possibility of the blade breaking when used in combat. The "hadagane", for the outer skin of the blade, is produced by heating a block of raw steel, which is then hammered out into a bar, and the flexible back portion. This is then cooled and broken up into smaller blocks which are checked for further impurities and then reassembled and reforged. During this process the billet of steel is heated and hammered, split and folded back upon itself many times and re-welded to create a complex structure of many thousands of layers. Each different steel is folded differently, in order to provide the necessary strength and flexibility to the different steels. The precise way in which the steel is folded, hammered and re-welded determines the distinctive grain pattern of the blade, the "jihada", (also called "jigane" when referring to the actual surface of the steel blade) a feature which is indicative of the period, place of manufacture and actual maker of the blade. The practice of folding also ensures a somewhat more homogeneous product, with the carbon in the steel being evenly distributed and the steel having no voids that could lead to fractures and failure of the blade in combat.
The shingane (for the inner core of the blade) is of a relatively softer steel with a lower carbon content than the hadagane. For this, the block is again hammered, folded and welded in a similar fashion to the hadagane, but with fewer folds. At this point, the hadagane block is once again heated, hammered out and folded into a ‘U’ shape, into which the shingane is inserted to a point just short of the tip. The new composite steel billet is then heated and hammered out ensuring that no air or dirt is trapped between the two layers of steel. The bar increases in length during this process until it approximates the final size and shape of the finished sword blade. A triangular section is cut off from the tip of the bar and shaped to create what will be the kissaki. At this point in the process, the blank for the blade is of rectangular section. This rough shape is referred to as a sunobe.
The sunobe is again heated, section by section and hammered to create a shape which has many of the recognisable characteristics of the finished blade. These are a thick back (mune), a thinner edge (ha), a curved tip (kissaki), notches on the edge (hamachi) and back (munemachi) which separate the blade from the tang (nakago). Details such as the ridge line (shinogi) another distinctive characteristic of the Japanese sword, are added at this stage of the process. The smith's skill at this point comes into play as the hammering process causes the blade to naturally curve in an erratic way, the thicker back tending to curve towards the thinner edge, and he must skillfully control the shape to give it the required upward curvature. The sunobe is finished by a process of filing and scraping which leaves all the physical characteristics and shapes of the blade recognisable. The surface of the blade is left in a relatively rough state, ready for the hardening processes. The sunobe is then covered all over with a clay mixture which is applied more thickly along the back and sides of the blade than along the edge. The blade is left to dry while the smith prepares the forge for the final heat treatment of the blade, the yaki-ire, the hardening of the cutting edge.
This process takes place in a darkened smithy, traditionally at night, in order that the smith can judge by eye the colour and therefore the temperature of the sword as it is repeatedly passed through the glowing charcoal. When the time is deemed right (traditionally the blade should be the colour of the moon in February and August which are the two months that appear most commonly on dated inscriptions on the tang), the blade is plunged edge down and point forward into a tank of water. The precise time taken to heat the sword, the temperature of the blade and of the water into which it is plunged are all individual to each smith and they have generally been closely guarded secrets. Legend tells of a particular smith who cut off his apprentice's hand for testing the temperature of the water he used for the hardening process. In the different schools of swordmakers there are many subtle variations in the materials used in the various processes and techniques outlined above, specifically in the form of clay applied to the blade prior to the yaki-ire, but all follow the same general procedures.
The application of the clay in different thicknesses to the blade allows the steel to cool more quickly along the thinner coated edge when plunged into the tank of water and thereby develop into the harder form of steel called martensite, which can be ground to razor-like sharpness. The thickly coated back cools more slowly retaining the pearlite steel characteristics of relative softness and flexibility. The precise way in which the clay is applied, and partially scraped off at the edge, is a determining factor in the formation of the shape and features of the crystalline structure known as the hamon. This distinctive tempering line found near the edge is one of the main characteristics to be assessed when examining a blade.
The martensitic steel which forms from the edge of the blade to the hamon is in effect the transition line between these two different forms of steel, and is where most of the shapes, colours and beauty in the steel of the Japanese sword are to be found. The variations in the form and structure of the hamon are all indicative of the period, smith, school or place of manufacture of the sword. As well as the aesthetic qualities of the hamon, there are, perhaps not unsurprisingly, real practical functions. The hardened edge is where most of any potential damage to the blade will occur in battle. This hardened edge is capable of being reground and sharpened many times, although the process will alter the shape of the blade. Altering the shape will allow more resistance when fighting in hand-to-hand combat.
Almost all blades are decorated, although not all blades are decorated on the visible part of the blade. Once the blade is cool, and the mud is scraped off, grooves and markings (hi or bo-hi) may be cut into it. One of the most important markings on the sword is performed here: the file markings. These are cut into the tang or the hilt-section of the blade, where they will be covered by the hilt later. The tang is never supposed to be cleaned; doing this can reduce the value of the sword by half or more. The purpose is to show how well the steel ages.
Some other marks on the blade are aesthetic: dedications written in Kanji characters as well as engravings called "horimono" depicting gods, dragons, or other acceptable beings. Some are more practical. The presence of a groove (the most basic type is called a "hi") reduces the weight of the sword yet keeps its structural integrity and strength.
The "tachi" became the primary weapon on the battlefield during the Kamakura period, used by cavalry. The sword was mostly considered as a secondary weapon until then, used in the battlefield only after the bow and polearm were no longer feasible. During the Edo period samurai went about on foot unarmored, and with much less combat being fought on horseback in open battlefields the need for an effective close quarter weapon resulted in samurai being armed with daishō.
Testing of swords, called "tameshigiri", was practiced on a variety of materials (often the bodies of executed criminals) to test the sword's sharpness and practice cutting technique.
"Kenjutsu" is the Japanese martial art of using the nihontō in combat. The nihontō was primarily a cutting weapon, or more specifically, a slicing one. Its moderate curve, however, allowed for effective thrusting as well. The hilt was held with two hands, though a fair amount of one-handed techniques exist. The placement of the right hand was dictated by both the length of the handle and the length of the wielder's arm. Two other martial arts were developed specifically for training to draw the sword and attack in one motion. They are "battōjutsu" and "iaijutsu", which are superficially similar, but do generally differ in training theory and methods.
For cutting, there was a specific technique called ""ten-uchi"." "Ten-uchi" refers to an organized motion made by arms and wrist, during a descending strike. As the sword is swung downwards, the elbow joint drastically extends at the last instant, popping the sword into place. This motion causes the swordsman's grip to twist slightly and if done correctly, is said to feel like wringing a towel (Thomas Hooper reference). This motion itself caused the sword's blade to impact its target with sharp force, and is used to break initial resistance. From there, fluidly continuing along the motion wrought by "ten-uchi", the arms would follow through with the stroke, dragging the sword through its target. Because the nihontō slices rather than chops, it is this "dragging" which allows it to do maximum damage, and is thus incorporated into the cutting technique. At full speed, the swing will appear to be full stroke, the sword passing through the targeted object. The segments of the swing are hardly visible, if at all. Assuming that the target is, for example, a human torso, "ten-uchi" will break the initial resistance supplied by shoulder muscles and the clavicle. The follow through would continue the slicing motion, through whatever else it would encounter, until the blade inherently exited the body, due to a combination of the motion and its curved shape.
Nearly all styles of "kenjutsu" share the same five basic guard postures. They are as follows; "chūdan-no-kamae" (middle posture), "jōdan-no-kamae" (high posture), "gedan-no-kamae" (low posture), "hassō-no-kamae" (eight-sided posture), and "waki-gamae" (side posture).
The nihontō's razor-edge was so hard that upon hitting an equally hard or harder object, such as another sword's edge, chipping became a definite risk. As such, blocking an oncoming blow blade-to-blade was generally avoided. In fact, evasive body maneuvers were preferred over blade contact by most, but, if such was not possible, the flat or the back of the blade was used for defense in many styles, rather than the precious edge. A popular method for defeating descending slashes was to simply beat the sword aside. In some instances, an "umbrella block", positioning the blade overhead, diagonally (point towards the ground, pommel towards the sky), would create an effective shield against a descending strike. If the angle of the block was drastic enough, the curve of the nihontō's blade would cause the attacker's blade to slide along its counter and off to the side.
Japanese swords were carried in several different ways, varying throughout Japanese history. The style most commonly seen in "samurai" movies is called "buke-zukuri", with the katana (and "wakizashi", if also present) carried edge up, with the sheath thrust through the "obi" (sash).
The sword would be carried in a sheath and tucked into the samurai's belt. Originally, they would carry the sword with the blade turned down. This was a more comfortable way for the armored samurai to carry his very long sword or to draw while mounted. The bulk of the samurai armor made it difficult to draw the sword from any other place on his body. When unarmored, samurai would carry their sword with the blade facing up. This made it possible to draw the sword and strike in one quick motion. In one such method of drawing the sword, the samurai would turn the sheath downward ninety degrees and pull it out of his sash just a bit with his left hand, then gripping the hilt with his right hand he would slide it out while sliding the sheath back to its original position. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16860 |
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of nonfiction, with further collections being published after his death. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, bestselling novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969).
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but dropped out in January 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden and survived the Allied bombing of the city by taking refuge in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He later adopted his sister's three sons, after she died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident.
Vonnegut published his first novel, "Player Piano", in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively but was not commercially successful at the time. In the nearly 20 years that followed, Vonnegut published several novels that were well regarded, two of which ("The Sirens of Titan" [1959] and "Cat's Cradle" [1963]) were nominated for the Hugo Award for best novel. He published a short story collection titled "Welcome to the Monkey House" in 1968. Vonnegut's breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five". The book's anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, "Slaughterhouse-Five" went to the top of "The New York Times" Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures and commencement addresses around the country and received many awards and honors.
Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essays and short-story collections, including "Fates Worse Than Death" (1991), and "A Man Without a Country" (2005). After his death, he was hailed as a black-humor commentator on the society in which he lived and as one of the most important contemporary writers. Vonnegut's son Mark published a compilation of his father's unpublished compositions, titled "Armageddon in Retrospect". In 2017, Seven Stories Press published "Complete Stories", a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction including five previously unpublished stories. "Complete Stories" was collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the youngest of three children of Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and his wife Edith (born Lieber). His older siblings were Bernard (born 1914) and Alice (born 1917). Vonnegut was descended from German immigrants who settled in the United States in the mid-19th century; his patrilineal great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut of Westphalia, Germany, settled in Indianapolis and founded the Vonnegut Hardware Company. Kurt's father, and his father before him, Bernard, were architects; the architecture firm under Kurt Sr. designed such buildings as Das Deutsche Haus (now called "The Athenæum"), the Indiana headquarters of the Bell Telephone Company, and the Fletcher Trust Building. Vonnegut's mother was born into Indianapolis high society, as her family, the Liebers, were among the wealthiest in the city, their fortune derived from ownership of a successful brewery.
Both of Vonnegut's parents were fluent German speakers, but the ill feeling toward Germany during and after World War I caused them to abandon German culture in order to show their American patriotism. Thus, they did not teach their youngest son German, or introduce him to German literature and traditions, leaving him feeling "ignorant and rootless." Vonnegut later credited Ida Young, his family's African-American cook and housekeeper for the first 10 years of his life, for raising him and giving him values: she "gave me decent moral instruction and was exceedingly nice to me. So she was as great an influence on me as anybody." Vonnegut described Young as "humane and wise", adding that "the compassionate, forgiving aspects of [his] beliefs" came from her.
The financial security and social prosperity that the Vonneguts had once enjoyed were destroyed in a matter of years. The Liebers' brewery was closed in 1921 after the advent of Prohibition in the United States. When the Great Depression hit, few people could afford to build, causing clients at Kurt Sr.'s architectural firm to become scarce. Vonnegut's brother and sister had finished their primary and secondary educations in private schools, but Vonnegut was placed in a public school, called Public School No. 43, now known as the James Whitcomb Riley School. He was bothered by the Great Depression; both his parents were affected deeply by their economic misfortune. His father withdrew from normal life and became what Vonnegut called a "dreamy artist". His mother became depressed, withdrawn, bitter, and abusive. She labored to regain the family's wealth and status, and Vonnegut said that she expressed hatred "as corrosive as hydrochloric acid" for her husband. Edith Vonnegut tried to sell short stories to "Collier's", "The Saturday Evening Post", and other magazines, with no success.
Vonnegut enrolled at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1936. While there, he played clarinet in the school band and became a co-editor (along with Madelyn Pugh) for the Tuesday edition of the school newspaper, "The Shortridge Echo". Vonnegut said his tenure with the "Echo" allowed him to write for a large audience—his fellow students—rather than for a teacher, an experience he said was "fun and easy". "It just turned out that I could write better than a lot of other people", Vonnegut observed. "Each person has something he can do easily and can't imagine why everybody else has so much trouble doing it."
After graduating from Shortridge in 1940, Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He wanted to study the humanities or become an architect like his father, but his father and brother Bernard, an atmospheric scientist, urged him to study a "useful" discipline. As a result, Vonnegut majored in biochemistry, but he had little proficiency in the area and was indifferent towards his studies. As his father had been a member at MIT, Vonnegut was entitled to join the Delta Upsilon fraternity, and did. He overcame stiff competition for a place at the university's independent newspaper, "The Cornell Daily Sun", first serving as a staff writer, then as an editor. By the end of his first year, he was writing a column titled "Innocents Abroad" which reused jokes from other publications. He later penned a piece, "Well All Right", focusing on pacifism, a cause he strongly supported, arguing against U.S. intervention in World War II.
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war. Vonnegut was a member of Reserve Officers' Training Corps, but poor grades and a satirical article in Cornell's newspaper cost him his place there. He was placed on academic probation in May 1942 and dropped out the following January. No longer eligible for a deferment as a member of ROTC, he faced likely conscription into the United States Army. Instead of waiting to be drafted, he enlisted in the Army and in March 1943 reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for basic training. Vonnegut was trained to fire and maintain howitzers and later received instruction in mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee as part of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). In early 1944, the ASTP was canceled due to the Army's need for soldiers to support the D-Day invasion, and Vonnegut was ordered to an infantry battalion at Camp Atterbury, south of Indianapolis in Edinburgh, Indiana, where he trained as a scout. He lived so close to his home that he was "able to sleep in [his] own bedroom and use the family car on weekends". On May 14, 1944, Vonnegut returned home on leave for Mother's Day weekend to discover that his mother had committed suicide the previous night by overdosing on sleeping pills. Possible factors that contributed to Edith Vonnegut's suicide include the family's loss of wealth and status, Vonnegut's forthcoming deployment overseas, and her own lack of success as a writer. She was inebriated at the time and under the influence of prescription drugs.
Three months after his mother's suicide, Vonnegut was sent to Europe as an intelligence scout with the 106th Infantry Division. In December 1944, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the final German offensive of the war. During the battle, the 106th Infantry Division, which had only recently reached the front and was assigned to a "quiet" sector due to its inexperience, was overrun by advancing German armored forces. Over 500 members of the division were killed and over 6,000 were captured.
On December 22, Vonnegut was captured with about 50 other American soldiers. Vonnegut was taken by boxcar to a prison camp south of Dresden, in Saxony. During the journey, the Royal Air Force bombed the prisoner trains and killed about 150 men. Vonnegut was sent to Dresden, the "first fancy city [he had] ever seen". He lived in a slaughterhouse when he got to the city, and worked in a factory that made malt syrup for pregnant women. Vonnegut recalled the sirens going off whenever another city was bombed. The Germans did not expect Dresden to get bombed, Vonnegut said. "There were very few air-raid shelters in town and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories."
On February 13, 1945, Dresden became the target of Allied forces. In the hours and days that followed, the Allies engaged in a fierce firebombing of the city. The offensive subsided on February 15, with around 25,000 civilians killed in the bombing. Vonnegut marveled at the level of both the destruction in Dresden and the secrecy that attended it. He had survived by taking refuge in a meat locker three stories underground. "It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around", Vonnegut said. "When we came up the city was gone ... They burnt the whole damn town down." Vonnegut and other American prisoners were put to work immediately after the bombing, excavating bodies from the rubble. He described the activity as a "terribly elaborate Easter-egg hunt".
The American prisoners of war were evacuated on foot to the border of Saxony and Czechoslovakia after General George S. Patton captured Leipzig. With the captives abandoned by their guards, Vonnegut reached a prisoner-of-war repatriation camp in Le Havre, France, before the end of May 1945, with the aid of the Soviets. He returned to the United States and continued to serve in the Army, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, typing discharge papers for other soldiers. Soon after he was awarded a Purple Heart about which he remarked "I myself was awarded my country's second-lowest decoration, a Purple Heart for frost-bite." He was discharged from the U.S. Army and returned to Indianapolis.
After he returned to the United States, 22-year-old Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, his high school girlfriend and classmate since kindergarten, on September 1, 1945. The pair relocated to Chicago; there, Vonnegut enrolled in the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, as an anthropology student in an unusual five-year joint undergraduate/graduate program that conferred a master's degree. He augmented his income by working as a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago at night. Jane accepted a scholarship from the university to study Russian literature as a graduate student. Jane dropped out of the program after becoming pregnant with the couple's first child, Mark (born May 1947), while Kurt also left the University without any degree (despite having completed his undergraduate education) when his master's thesis on the Ghost Dance religious movement was unanimously rejected by the department.
Shortly thereafter, General Electric (GE) hired Vonnegut as a publicist for the company's Schenectady, New York, research laboratory. Although the job required a college degree, Vonnegut was hired after claiming to hold a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His brother Bernard had worked at GE since 1945, contributing significantly to an iodine-based cloud seeding project. In 1949, Kurt and Jane had a daughter named Edith. Still working for GE, Vonnegut had his first piece, titled "Report on the Barnhouse Effect", published in the February 11, 1950 issue of "Collier's", for which he received $750. Vonnegut wrote another story, after being coached by the fiction editor at "Collier's", Knox Burger, and again sold it to the magazine, this time for $950. While Burger supported Vonnegut's writing, he was shocked when Vonnegut quit GE as of January 1, 1951, later stating: "I never said he should give up his job and devote himself to fiction. I don't trust the freelancer's life, it's tough." Nevertheless, in early 1951 Vonnegut moved with his family to Cape Cod, Massachusetts to write full-time, leaving GE behind.
In 1952, Vonnegut's first novel, "Player Piano", was published by Scribner's. The novel has a post-Third World War setting, in which factory workers have been replaced by machines.
"Player Piano" draws upon Vonnegut's experience as an employee at GE. He satirizes the drive to climb the corporate ladder, one that in "Player Piano" is rapidly disappearing as automation increases, putting even executives out of work. His central character, Paul Proteus, has an ambitious wife, a backstabbing assistant, and a feeling of empathy for the poor. Sent by his boss, Kroner, as a double agent among the poor (who have all the material goods they want, but little sense of purpose), he leads them in a machine-smashing, museum-burning revolution. "Player Piano" expresses Vonnegut's opposition to McCarthyism, something made clear when the Ghost Shirts, the revolutionary organization Paul penetrates and eventually leads, is referred to by one character as "fellow travelers".
In "Player Piano", Vonnegut originates many of the techniques he would use in his later works. The comic, heavy-drinking Shah of Bratpuhr, an outsider to this dystopian corporate United States, is able to ask many questions that an insider would not think to ask, or would cause offense by doing so. For example, when taken to see the artificially intelligent supercomputer EPICAC, the Shah asks it "what are people for?" and receives no answer. Speaking for Vonnegut, he dismisses it as a "false god". This type of alien visitor would recur throughout Vonnegut's literature.
"The New York Times" writer and critic Granville Hicks gave "Player Piano" a positive review, favorably comparing it to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Hicks called Vonnegut a "sharp-eyed satirist". None of the reviewers considered the novel particularly important. Several editions were printed—one by Bantam with the title "Utopia 14", and another by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club—whereby Vonnegut gained the repute of a science fiction writer, a genre held in disdain by writers at that time. He defended the genre, and deplored a perceived sentiment that "no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works."
After "Player Piano", Vonnegut continued to sell short stories to various magazines. Contracted to produce a second novel (which eventually became "Cat's Cradle"), he struggled to complete it, but the work languished for years. In 1954 the couple had a third child, Nanette. With a growing family and no financially successful novels yet, Vonnegut's short stories helped to sustain the family, though he frequently needed to find additional sources of income as well. In 1957, he and a partner opened a Saab automobile dealership in Cape Cod, but it went bankrupt by the end of the year.
In 1958, his sister, Alice, died of cancer two days after her husband, James Carmalt Adams, was killed in a train accident. The Vonneguts took in three of the Adams' young sons—James, Steven, and Kurt, aged 14, 11, and 9, respectively. A fourth Adams son, Peter (2), also stayed with the Vonneguts for about a year before being given to the care of a paternal relative in Georgia.
Grappling with family challenges, Vonnegut continued to write, publishing novels vastly dissimilar in terms of plot. "The Sirens of Titan" (1959) features a Martian invasion of Earth, as experienced by a bored billionaire, Malachi Constant. He meets Winston Rumfoord, an aristocratic space traveler, who is virtually omniscient but stuck in a time warp that allows him to appear on Earth every 59 days. The billionaire learns that his actions and the events of all of history are determined by a race of robotic aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who need a replacement part that can only be produced by an advanced civilization in order to repair their spaceship and return home—human history has been manipulated to produce it. Some human structures, such as the Kremlin, are coded signals from the aliens to their ship as to how long it may expect to wait for the repair to take place. Reviewers were uncertain what to think of the book, with one comparing it to Offenbach's opera "The Tales of Hoffmann".
Rumfoord, who is based on Franklin D. Roosevelt, also physically resembles the former president. Rumfoord is described, "he put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up." William Rodney Allen, in his guide to Vonnegut's works, stated that Rumfoord foreshadowed the fictional political figures who would play major roles in "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" and "Jailbird".
"Mother Night", published in 1961, received little attention at the time of its publication. Howard W. Campbell Jr., Vonnegut's protagonist, is an American who goes to Nazi Germany during the war as a double agent for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and rises to the regime's highest ranks as a radio propagandist. After the war, the spy agency refuses to clear his name and he is eventually imprisoned by the Israelis in the same cell block as Adolf Eichmann, and later commits suicide. Vonnegut wrote in a foreword to a later edition, "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be". Literary critic Lawrence Berkove considered the novel, like Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", to illustrate the tendency for "impersonators to get carried away by their impersonations, to become what they impersonate and therefore to live in a world of illusion".
Also published in 1961 was Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron", set in a dystopic future where all are equal, even if that means disfiguring beautiful people and forcing the strong or intelligent to wear devices that negate their advantages. Fourteen-year-old Harrison is a genius and athlete forced to wear record-level "handicaps" and imprisoned for attempting to overthrow the government. He escapes to a television studio, tears away his handicaps, and frees a ballerina from her lead weights. As they dance, they are killed by the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. Vonnegut, in a later letter, suggested that "Harrison Bergeron" might have sprung from his envy and self-pity as a high school misfit. In his 1976 biography of Vonnegut, Stanley Schatt suggested that the short story shows "in any leveling process, what really is lost, according to Vonnegut, is beauty, grace, and wisdom". Darryl Hattenhauer, in his 1998 journal article on "Harrison Bergeron", theorized that the story was a satire on American Cold War misunderstandings of communism and socialism.
With "Cat's Cradle" (1963), Allen wrote, "Vonnegut hit full stride for the first time". The narrator, John, intends to write of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the fictional fathers of the atomic bomb, seeking to cover the scientist's human side. Hoenikker, in addition to the bomb, has developed another threat to mankind, ice-9, solid water stable at room temperature, and if a particle of it is dropped in water, all of it becomes ice-9. Much of the second half of the book is spent on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, where John explores a religion called Bokononism, whose holy books (excerpts from which are quoted), give the novel the moral core science does not supply. After the oceans are converted to ice-9, wiping out most of humankind, John wanders the frozen surface, seeking to have himself and his story survive.
Vonnegut based the title character of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" (1964), on an accountant he knew on Cape Cod, who specialized in clients in trouble and often had to comfort them. Eliot Rosewater, the wealthy son of a Republican senator, seeks to atone for his wartime killing of noncombatant firefighters by serving in a volunteer fire department, and by giving away money to those in trouble or need. Stress from a battle for control of his charitable foundation pushes him over the edge, and he is placed in a mental hospital. He recovers, and ends the financial battle by declaring the children of his county to be his heirs. Allen deemed "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" more "a cry from the heart than a novel under its author's full intellectual control", that reflected family and emotional stresses Vonnegut was going through at the time.
In the mid-1960s, Vonnegut contemplated abandoning his writing career. In 1999 he wrote in "The New York Times", "I had gone broke, was out of print and had a lot of kids..." But then, on the recommendation of an admirer, he received a surprise offer of a teaching job at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, employment that he likened to the rescue of a drowning man.
After spending almost two years at the writer's workshop at the University of Iowa, teaching one course each term, Vonnegut was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Germany. By the time he won it, in March 1967, he was becoming a well-known writer. He used the funds to travel in Eastern Europe, including to Dresden, where he found many prominent buildings still in ruins. At the time of the bombing, Vonnegut had not appreciated the sheer scale of destruction in Dresden; his enlightenment came only slowly as information dribbled out, and based on early figures he came to believe that 135,000 had died there.
Vonnegut had been writing about his war experiences at Dresden ever since he returned from the war, but had never been able to write anything acceptable to himself or his publishers—Chapter 1 of "Slaughterhouse-Five" tells of his difficulties. Released in 1969, the novel rocketed Vonnegut to fame. It tells of the life of Billy Pilgrim, who like Vonnegut was born in 1922 and survives the bombing of Dresden. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, with many of the story's climaxes—Billy's death in 1976, his kidnapping by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore nine years earlier, and the execution of Billy's friend Edgar Derby in the ashes of Dresden for stealing a teapot—disclosed in the story's first pages. In 1970, he was also a correspondent in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" received generally positive reviews, with Michael Crichton writing in "The New Republic", "he writes about the most excruciatingly painful things. His novels have attacked our deepest fears of automation and the bomb, our deepest political guilts, our fiercest hatreds and loves. No one else writes books on these subjects; they are inaccessible to normal novelists." The book went immediately to the top of "The New York Times" Best Seller list. Vonnegut's earlier works had appealed strongly to many college students, and the antiwar message of "Slaughterhouse-Five" resonated with a generation marked by the Vietnam War. He later stated that the loss of confidence in government that Vietnam caused finally allowed for an honest conversation regarding events like Dresden.
After "Slaughterhouse-Five" was published, Vonnegut embraced the fame and financial security that attended its release. He was hailed as a hero of the burgeoning anti-war movement in the United States, was invited to speak at numerous rallies, and gave college commencement addresses around the country. In addition to briefly teaching at Harvard University as a lecturer in creative writing in 1970, Vonnegut taught at the City College of New York as a distinguished professor during the 1973–1974 academic year. He was later elected vice president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and given honorary degrees by, among others, Indiana University and Bennington College. Vonnegut also wrote a play called "Happy Birthday, Wanda June", which opened on October 7, 1970, at New York's Theatre de Lys. Receiving mixed reviews, it closed on March 14, 1971. In 1972, Universal Pictures adapted "Slaughterhouse-Five" into a film which the author said was "flawless".
Meanwhile, Vonnegut's personal life was disintegrating. His wife Jane had embraced Christianity, which was contrary to Vonnegut's atheistic beliefs, and with five of their six children having left home, Vonnegut said the two were forced to find "other sorts of seemingly important work to do". The couple battled over their differing beliefs until Vonnegut moved from their Cape Cod home to New York in 1971. Vonnegut called the disagreements "painful", and said the resulting split was a "terrible, unavoidable accident that we were ill-equipped to understand." The couple divorced and they remained friends until Jane's death in late 1986. Beyond his marriage, he was deeply affected when his son Mark suffered a mental breakdown in 1972, which exacerbated Vonnegut's chronic depression, and led him to take Ritalin. When he stopped taking the drug in the mid-1970s, he began to see a psychologist weekly.
Vonnegut's difficulties materialized in numerous ways; most distinctly though, was the painfully slow progress he was making on his next novel, the darkly comical "Breakfast of Champions". In 1971, Vonnegut stopped writing the novel altogether. When it was finally released in 1973, it was panned critically. In Thomas S. Hischak's book "American Literature on Stage and Screen", "Breakfast of Champions" was called "funny and outlandish", but reviewers noted that it "lacks substance and seems to be an exercise in literary playfulness." Vonnegut's 1976 novel "Slapstick", which meditates on the relationship between him and his sister (Alice), met a similar fate. In "The New York Times"'s review of "Slapstick", Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said Vonnegut "seems to be putting less effort into [storytelling] than ever before", and that "it still seems as if he has given up storytelling after all." At times, Vonnegut was disgruntled by the personal nature of his detractors' complaints.
In 1979, Vonnegut married Jill Krementz, a photographer whom he met while she was working on a series about writers in the early 1970s. With Jill, he adopted a daughter, Lily, when the baby was three days old. In subsequent years, his popularity resurged as he published several satirical books, including "Jailbird" (1979), "Deadeye Dick" (1982), "Galápagos" (1985), "Bluebeard" (1987), and "Hocus Pocus" (1990). Although he remained a prolific writer in the 1980s Vonnegut struggled with depression and attempted suicide in 1984. Two years later, Vonnegut was seen by a younger generation when he played himself in Rodney Dangerfield's film "Back to School". The last of Vonnegut's fourteen novels, "Timequake" (1997), was, as University of Detroit history professor and Vonnegut biographer Gregory Sumner said, "a reflection of an aging man facing mortality and testimony to an embattled faith in the resilience of human awareness and agency." Vonnegut's final book, a collection of essays entitled "A Man Without a Country" (2005), became a bestseller.
In a 2006 "Rolling Stone" interview, Vonnegut sardonically stated that he would sue the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, the maker of the Pall Mall-branded cigarettes he had been smoking since he was twelve or fourteen years old, for false advertising. "And do you know why?" he said. "Because I'm 83 years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me." He died on the night of April 11, 2007, in Manhattan, as a result of brain injuries incurred several weeks prior from a fall at his New York brownstone home. His death was reported by his wife Jill. Vonnegut was 84 years old. At the time of his death, Vonnegut had written fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays and five non-fiction books. A book composed of Vonnegut's unpublished pieces, "Armageddon in Retrospect", was compiled and posthumously published by Vonnegut's son Mark in 2008.
When asked about the impact Vonnegut had on his work, author Josip Novakovich stated that he has "much to learn from Vonnegut—how to compress things and yet not compromise them, how to digress into history, quote from various historical accounts, and not stifle the narrative. The ease with which he writes is sheerly masterly, Mozartian." "Los Angeles Times" columnist Gregory Rodriguez said that the author will "rightly be remembered as a darkly humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture", and Dinitia Smith of "The New York Times" dubbed Vonnegut the "counterculture's novelist".
Vonnegut has inspired numerous posthumous tributes and works. In 2008, the Kurt Vonnegut Society was established, and in November 2010, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library was opened in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis. The Library of America published a compendium of Vonnegut's compositions between 1963 and 1973 the following April, and another compendium of his earlier works in 2012. Late 2011 saw the release of two Vonnegut biographies, Gregory Sumner's "Unstuck in Time" and Charles J. Shields's "And So It Goes". Shields's biography of Vonnegut created some controversy. According to "The Guardian", the book portrays Vonnegut as distant, cruel and nasty. "Cruel, nasty and scary are the adjectives commonly used to describe him by the friends, colleagues, and relatives Shields quotes", said "The Daily Beast"'s Wendy Smith. "Towards the end he was very feeble, very depressed and almost morose", said Jerome Klinkowitz of the University of Northern Iowa, who has examined Vonnegut in depth.
Vonnegut's works have evoked ire on several occasions. His most prominent novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five", has been objected to or removed at various institutions in at least 18 instances. In the case of "Island Trees School District v. Pico", the United States Supreme Court ruled that a school district's ban on "Slaughterhouse-Five"—which the board had called "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy"—and eight other novels was unconstitutional. When a school board in Republic, Missouri decided to withdraw Vonnegut's novel from its libraries, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library offered a free copy to all the students of the district.
Tally, writing in 2013, suggests that Vonnegut has only recently become the subject of serious study rather than fan adulation, and much is yet to be written about him. "The time for scholars to say 'Here's why Vonnegut is worth reading' has definitively ended, thank goodness. We know he's worth reading. Now tell us things we don't know." Todd F. Davis notes that Vonnegut's work is kept alive by his loyal readers, who have "significant influence as they continue to purchase Vonnegut's work, passing it on to subsequent generations and keeping his entire canon in print—an impressive list of more than twenty books that [Dell Publishing] has continued to refurbish and hawk with new cover designs." Donald E. Morse notes that Vonnegut, "is now firmly, if somewhat controversially, ensconced in the American and world literary canon as well as in high school, college and graduate curricula". Tally writes of Vonnegut's work:
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Vonnegut posthumously in 2015.
The asteroid 25399 Vonnegut is named in his honor.
In the introduction to "Slaughterhouse-Five" Vonnegut recounts meeting filmmaker Harrison Starr at a party who asked him whether his forthcoming book was an anti-war novel—"I guess" replied Vonnegut. Starr responded "Why don't you write an anti-glacier novel?". This underlined Vonnegut's belief that wars were, unfortunately, inevitable, but that it was important to ensure the wars one fought were just wars.
In 2011, NPR wrote, "Kurt Vonnegut's blend of anti-war sentiment and satire made him one of the most popular writers of the 1960s." Vonnegut stated in a 1987 interview that, "my own feeling is that civilization ended in World War I, and we're still trying to recover from that", and that he wanted to write war-focused works without glamorizing war itself. Vonnegut had not intended to publish again, but his anger against the George W. Bush administration led him to write "A Man Without a Country".
"Slaughterhouse-Five" is the Vonnegut novel best known for its antiwar themes, but the author expressed his beliefs in ways beyond the depiction of the destruction of Dresden. One character, Mary O'Hare, opines that "wars were partly encouraged by books and movies", made by "Frank Sinatra or John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men". Vonnegut made a number of comparisons between Dresden and the bombing of Hiroshima in "Slaughterhouse-Five" and wrote in "Palm Sunday" (1991) that "I learned how vile that religion of mine could be when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima".
Nuclear war, or at least deployed nuclear arms, is mentioned in almost all of Vonnegut's novels. In "Player Piano", the computer EPICAC is given control of the nuclear arsenal, and is charged with deciding whether to use high-explosive or nuclear arms. In "Cat's Cradle", John's original purpose in setting pen to paper was to write an account of what prominent Americans had been doing as Hiroshima was bombed.
Vonnegut was an atheist and a humanist, serving as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association. In an interview for "Playboy", he stated that his forebears who came to the United States did not believe in God, and he learned his atheism from his parents. He did not however disdain those who seek the comfort of religion, hailing church associations as a type of extended family. Like his great-grandfather Clemens, Vonnegut was a freethinker. He occasionally attended a Unitarian church, but with little consistency. In his autobiographical work "Palm Sunday", Vonnegut says he is a "Christ-worshipping agnostic"; in a speech to the Unitarian Universalist Association, he called himself a "Christ-loving atheist". However, he was keen to stress that he was not a Christian.
Vonnegut was an admirer of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, particularly the Beatitudes, and incorporated it into his own doctrines. He also referred to it in many of his works. In his 1991 book "Fates Worse than Death", Vonnegut suggests that during the Reagan administration, "anything that sounded like the Sermon on the Mount was socialistic or communistic, and therefore anti-American". In "Palm Sunday", he wrote that "the Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade." However, Vonnegut had a deep dislike for certain aspects of Christianity, often reminding his readers of the bloody history of the Crusades and other religion-inspired violence. He despised the televangelists of the late 20th century, feeling that their thinking was narrow-minded.
Religion features frequently in Vonnegut's work, both in his novels and elsewhere. He laced a number of his speeches with religion-focused rhetoric, and was prone to using such expressions as "God forbid" and "thank God". He once wrote his own version of the Requiem Mass, which he then had translated into Latin and set to music. In "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian", Vonnegut goes to heaven after he is euthanized by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Once in heaven, he interviews 21 deceased celebrities, including Isaac Asimov, William Shakespeare, and Kilgore Trout—the last a fictional character from several of his novels. Vonnegut's works are filled with characters founding new faiths, and religion often serves as a major plot device, for example in "Player Piano", "The Sirens of Titan" and "Cat's Cradle". In "The Sirens of Titan", Rumfoord proclaims The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. "Slaughterhouse-Five" sees Billy Pilgrim, lacking religion himself, nevertheless become a chaplain's assistant in the military and display a large crucifix on his bedroom wall. In "Cat's Cradle", Vonnegut invented the religion of Bokononism.
Vonnegut did not particularly sympathize with liberalism or conservatism, and mused on the specious simplicity of American politics, saying facetiously, "If you want to take my guns away from me, and you're all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other ... you're a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you're a conservative. What could be simpler?" Regarding political parties, Vonnegut said, "The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."
Vonnegut disregarded more mainstream political ideologies in favor of socialism, which he thought could provide a valuable substitute for what he saw as social Darwinism and a spirit of "survival of the fittest" in American society, believing that "socialism would be a good for the common man". Vonnegut would often return to a quote by socialist and five-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Vonnegut expressed disappointment that communism and socialism seemed to be unsavory topics to the average American, and believed that they may offer beneficial substitutes to contemporary social and economic systems.
Vonnegut's writing was inspired by an eclectic mix of sources. When he was younger, Vonnegut stated that he read works of pulp fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and action-adventure. He also read the classics, such as the plays of Aristophanes—like Vonnegut's works, humorous critiques of contemporary society. Vonnegut's life and work also share similarities with that of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" writer Mark Twain. Both shared pessimistic outlooks on humanity, and a skeptical take on religion, and, as Vonnegut put it, were both "associated with the enemy in a major war", as Twain briefly enlisted in the South's cause during the American Civil War, and Vonnegut's German name and ancestry connected him with the United States' enemy in both world wars. He also cited Ambrose Bierce as an influence, calling An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge the greatest American short story and deeming who disagreed or had not read the story 'twerps.'
Vonnegut called George Orwell his favorite writer, and admitted that he tried to emulate Orwell. "I like his concern for the poor, I like his socialism, I like his simplicity", Vonnegut said. Vonnegut also said that Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", and "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, heavily influenced his debut novel, "Player Piano", in 1952. Vonnegut commented that Robert Louis Stevenson's stories were emblems of thoughtfully put together works that he tried to mimic in his own compositions. Vonnegut also hailed playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw as "a hero of [his]", and an "enormous influence". Within his own family, Vonnegut stated that his mother, Edith, had the greatest influence on him. "[My] mother thought she might make a new fortune by writing for the slick magazines. She took short-story courses at night. She studied writers the way gamblers study horses."
Early on in his career, Vonnegut decided to model his style after Henry David Thoreau, who wrote as if from the perspective of a child, allowing Thoreau's works to be more widely comprehensible. Using a youthful narrative voice allowed Vonnegut to deliver concepts in a modest and straightforward way. Other influences on Vonnegut include "The War of the Worlds" author H. G. Wells, and satirist Jonathan Swift. Vonnegut credited American journalist and critic H. L. Mencken for inspiring him to become a journalist.
In his book "Popular Contemporary Writers", Michael D. Sharp describes Vonnegut's linguistic style as straightforward; his sentences concise, his language simple, his paragraphs brief, and his ordinary tone conversational. Vonnegut uses this style to convey normally complex subject matter in a way that is intelligible to a large audience. He credited his time as a journalist for his ability, pointing to his work with the Chicago City News Bureau, which required him to convey stories in telephone conversations. Vonnegut's compositions are also laced with distinct references to his own life, notably in "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Slapstick".
Vonnegut believed that ideas, and the convincing communication of those ideas to the reader, were vital to literary art. He did not always sugarcoat his points: much of "Player Piano" leads up to the moment when Paul, on trial and hooked up to a lie detector, is asked to tell a falsehood, and states, "every new piece of scientific knowledge is a good thing for humanity". Robert T. Tally Jr., in his volume on Vonnegut's novels, wrote, "rather than tearing down and destroying the icons of twentieth-century, middle-class American life, Vonnegut gently reveals their basic flimsiness." Vonnegut did not simply propose utopian solutions to the ills of American society, but showed how such schemes would not allow ordinary people to live lives free from want and anxiety. The large artificial families that the U.S. population is formed into in "Slapstick" soon serve as an excuse for tribalism, with people giving no help to those not part of their group, and with the extended family's place in the social hierarchy becoming vital.
In the introduction to their essay "Kurt Vonnegut and Humor", Tally and Peter C. Kunze suggest that Vonnegut was not a "black humorist", but a "frustrated idealist" who used "comic parables" to teach the reader absurd, bitter or hopeless truths, with his grim witticisms serving to make the reader laugh rather than cry. "Vonnegut makes sense through humor, which is, in the author's view, as valid a means of mapping this crazy world as any other strategies." Vonnegut resented being called a black humorist, feeling that, as with many literary labels, it allows readers to disregard aspects of a writer's work that do not fit the label's stereotype.
Vonnegut's works have, at various times, been labeled science fiction, satire and postmodern. He also resisted such labels, but his works do contain common tropes that are often associated with those genres. In several of his books, Vonnegut imagines alien societies and civilizations, as is common in works of science fiction. Vonnegut does this to emphasize or exaggerate absurdities and idiosyncrasies in our own world. Furthermore, Vonnegut often humorizes the problems that plague societies, as is done in satirical works. However, literary theorist Robert Scholes noted in "Fabulation and Metafiction" that Vonnegut "reject[s] the traditional satirist's faith in the efficacy of satire as a reforming instrument. [He has] a more subtle faith in the humanizing value of laughter." Examples of postmodernism may also be found in Vonnegut's works. Postmodernism often entails a response to the theory that the truths of the world will be discovered through science. Postmodernists contend that truth is subjective, rather than objective, as it is biased towards each individual's beliefs and outlook on the world. They often use unreliable, first-person narration, and narrative fragmentation. One critic has argued that Vonnegut's most famous novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five", features a metafictional, Janus-headed outlook as it seeks both to represent actual historical events while problematizing the very notion of doing exactly that. This is encapsulated in the opening lines of the novel: "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true." This bombastic opening—"All this happened"—"reads like a declaration of complete mimesis" which is radically called into question in the rest of the quote and "[t]his creates an integrated perspective that seeks out extratextual themes [like war and trauma] while thematizing the novel's textuality and inherent constructedness at one and the same time." While Vonnegut does use elements as fragmentation and metafictional elements, in some of his works, he more distinctly focuses on the peril posed by individuals who find subjective truths, mistake them for objective truths, then proceed to impose these truths on others.
Vonnegut was a vocal critic of American society, and this was reflected in his writings. Several key social themes recur in Vonnegut's works, such as wealth, the lack of it, and its unequal distribution among a society. In "The Sirens of Titan", the novel's protagonist, Malachi Constant, is exiled to Saturn's moon Titan as a result of his vast wealth, which has made him arrogant and wayward. In "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", readers may find it difficult to determine whether the rich or the poor are in worse circumstances as the lives of both groups' members are ruled by their wealth or their poverty. Further, in "Hocus Pocus", the protagonist is named Eugene Debs Hartke, a homage to the famed socialist Eugene V. Debs and Vonnegut's socialist views. In "Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion", Thomas F. Marvin states: "Vonnegut points out that, left unchecked, capitalism will erode the democratic foundations of the United States." Marvin suggests that Vonnegut's works demonstrate what happens when a "hereditary aristocracy" develops, where wealth is inherited along familial lines: the ability of poor Americans to overcome their situations is greatly or completely diminished. Vonnegut also often laments social Darwinism, and a "survival of the fittest" view of society. He points out that social Darwinism leads to a society that condemns its poor for their own misfortune, and fails to help them out of their poverty because "they deserve their fate". Vonnegut also confronts the idea of free will in a number of his pieces. In "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Timequake" the characters have no choice in what they do; in "Breakfast of Champions", characters are very obviously stripped of their free will and even receive it as a gift; and in "Cat's Cradle", Bokononism views free will as heretical.
The majority of Vonnegut's characters are estranged from their actual families and seek to build replacement or extended families. For example, the engineers in "Player Piano" called their manager's spouse "Mom". In "Cat's Cradle", Vonnegut devises two separate methods for loneliness to be combated: A "karass", which is a group of individuals appointed by God to do his will, and a "granfalloon", defined by Marvin as a "meaningless association of people, such as a fraternal group or a nation". Similarly, in "Slapstick", the U.S. government codifies that all Americans are a part of large extended families.
Fear of the loss of one's purpose in life is a theme in Vonnegut's works. The Great Depression forced Vonnegut to witness the devastation many people felt when they lost their jobs, and while at General Electric, Vonnegut witnessed machines being built to take the place of human labor. He confronts these things in his works through references to the growing use of automation and its effects on human society. This is most starkly represented in his first novel, "Player Piano", where many Americans are left purposeless and unable to find work as machines replace human workers. Loss of purpose is also depicted in "Galápagos", where a florist rages at her spouse for creating a robot able to do her job, and in "Timequake", where an architect kills himself when replaced by computer software.
Suicide by fire is another common theme in Vonnegut's works; the author often returns to the theory that "many people are not fond of life." He uses this as an explanation for why humans have so severely damaged their environments, and made devices such as nuclear weapons that can make their creators extinct. In "Deadeye Dick", Vonnegut features the neutron bomb, which he claims is designed to kill people, but leave buildings and structures untouched. He also uses this theme to demonstrate the recklessness of those who put powerful, apocalypse-inducing devices at the disposal of politicians.
"What is the point of life?" is a question Vonnegut often pondered in his works. When one of Vonnegut's characters, Kilgore Trout, finds the question "What is the purpose of life?" written in a bathroom, his response is, "To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool." Marvin finds Trout's theory curious, given that Vonnegut was an atheist, and thus for him, there is no Creator to report back to, and comments that, "[as] Trout chronicles one meaningless life after another, readers are left to wonder how a compassionate creator could stand by and do nothing while such reports come in." In the epigraph to "Bluebeard", Vonnegut quotes his son Mark, and gives an answer to what he believes is the meaning of life: "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
Unless otherwise cited, items in this list are taken from Thomas F. Marvin's 2002 book "Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion", and the date in brackets is the date the work was first published: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16861 |
Kōan
A (; , ; "gong-an"; ) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen.
The Japanese term "kōan" is the Sino-Japanese reading of the Chinese word "gong'an" (). The term is a compound word, consisting of the characters "public; official; governmental; common; collective; fair; equitable" and "table; desk; (law) case; record; file; plan; proposal."
According to the Yuan dynasty Zen master Zhongfeng Mingben ( 1263–1323), "gōng'àn" originated as an abbreviation of "gōngfǔ zhī àndú" (, Japanese "kōfu no antoku"—literally the "andu" "official correspondence; documents; files" of a "gongfu" "government post"), which referred to a "public record" or the "case records of a public law court" in Tang dynasty China. "Kōan/gong'an" thus serves as a metaphor for principles of reality beyond the private opinion of one person, and a teacher may test the student's ability to recognize and understand that principle.
Commentaries in kōan collections bear some similarity to judicial decisions that cite and sometimes modify precedents. An article by T. Griffith Foulk claims
"Gong'an" was itself originally a metonym—an article of furniture involved in setting legal precedents came to stand for such precedents. For example, "Di Gong'an" () is the original title of "Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee", the famous Chinese detective novel based on a historical Tang dynasty judge. Similarly, Zen kōan collections are public records of the notable sayings and actions of Zen masters and disciples attempting to pass on their teachings.
Gong'ans developed during the Tang dynasty (618–907) from the recorded sayings collections of Chán-masters, which quoted many stories of "a famous past Chán figure's encounter with disciples or other interlocutors and then offering his own comment on it". Those stories and the accompanying comments were used to educate students, and broaden their insight into the Buddhist teachings.
Those stories came to be known as gongan, "public cases". Such a story was only considered a gongan when it was commented upon by another Chán-master. This practice of commenting on the words and deeds of past masters confirmed the master's position as an awakened master in a lineage of awakened masters of the past.
Koan practice developed from a literary practice, styling snippets of encounter-dialogue into well-edited stories. It arose in interaction with "educated literati". There were dangers involved in such a literary approach, such as ascribing specific meanings to the cases. Dahui Zonggao is even said to have burned the woodblocks of the "Blue Cliff Record", for the hindrance it had become to study of Chán by his students. Kōan literature was also influenced by the pre-Zen Chinese tradition of the "literary game"—a competition involving improvised poetry.
The style of writing of Zen texts has been influenced by "a variety of east Asian literary games":
During the Song dynasty (960–1297) the use of gongans took a decisive turn. Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) introduced the use of "kanhua", "observing the phrase". In this practice students were to observe ("kan") or concentrate on a single word or phrase ("huatou"), such as the famous "mu" of the mu-koan.
In the eleventh century this practice had become common. A new literary genre developed from this tradition as well. Collections of such commented cases were compiled which consisted of the case itself, accompanied by verse or prose commentary.
Dahui's invention was aimed at balancing the insight developed by reflection on the teachings with developing samatha, calmness of mind. Ironically, this development became in effect "silent illumination", a "[re-absorbing] of koan-study into the "silence" of meditation ("ch'an")". It led to a rejection of Buddhist learning:
This development left Chinese Chan vulnerable to criticisms by neo-Confucianism, which developed after the Sung Dynasty. Its anti-intellectual rhetoric was no match for the intellectual discourse of the neo-Confucianists.
The recorded encounter dialogues, and the koan collections which derived from this genre, mark a shift from solitary practice to interaction between master and student:
This mutual enquiry of the meaning of the encounters of masters and students of the past gave students a role model:
Kōan training requires a qualified teacher who has the ability to judge a disciple's depth of attainment. In the Rinzai Zen school, which uses kōans extensively, the teacher certification process includes an appraisal of proficiency in using that school's extensive kōan curriculum.
In China and Korea, "observing the phrase" is still the sole form of koan-practice, though Seung Sahn used the Rinzai-style of koan-practice in his Kwan Um School of Zen.
Japanese Zen, both Rinzai and Sōtō, took over the use of koan-study and commenting. In Sōtō-Zen, koan commentary was not linked to seated meditation.
When the Chán-tradition was introduced in Japan, Japanese monks had to master the Chinese language and specific expressions used in the koan-training. The desired "spontaneity" expressed by enlightened masters required a thorough study of Chinese language and poetry. Japanese Zen imitated the Chinese "syntax and stereotyped norms".
In the officially recognized monasteries belonging to the Gozan (Five Mountain System) the Chinese system was fully continued. Senior monks were supposed to compose Chinese verse in a complex style of matched counterpoints known as "bienli wen". It took a lot of literary and intellectual skills for a monk to succeed in this system.
The Rinka-monasteries, the provincial temples with less control of the state, laid less stress on the correct command of the Chinese cultural idiom. These monasteries developed "more accessible methods of koan instruction". It had three features:
By standardizing the koan-curriculum every generation of students proceeded to the same series of koans. Students had to memorize a set number of stereotyped sayings, "agyō", "appended words". The proper series of responses for each koan were taught by the master in private instruction-sessions to selected individual students who would inherit the dharma lineage.
"Missanroku" and "missanchō", "Records of secret instruction" have been preserved for various Rinzai-lineages. They contain both the koan-curricula and the standardized answers. In Sōtō-Zen they are called "monsan", an abbreviation of "monto hissan", "secret instructions of the lineage". The "monsan" follow a standard question-and-answer format. A series of questions is given, to be asked by the master. The answers are also given by the master, to be memorized by the student.
In the eighteenth century the Rinzai school became dominated by the legacy of Hakuin, who laid a strong emphasis on koan study as a means to gain kensho and develop insight. There are two curricula used in Rinzai, both derived from the principal heirs of Rinzai: the Takuju curriculum, and the Inzan curriculum. According to AMA Samy, "the koans and their standard answers are fixed."
During the late eighteenth and nineteenth century the tradition of koan-commentary became suppressed in the Sōtō-school, due to a reform movement that sought to standardise the procedures for dharma transmission. One reason for suppressing the koan-tradition in the Sōtō-school may have been to highlight the differences with the Rinzai-school, and create a clear identity. This movement also started to venerate Dogen as the founding teacher of the Sōtō-school. His teachings became the standard for the Sōtō-teachings, neglecting the fact that Dogen himself made extensive use of koan-commentary.
The popular western understanding sees "kōan" as referring to an unanswerable question or a meaningless statement. However, in Zen practice, a kōan is not meaningless, and not a riddle or a puzzle. Teachers do expect students to present an appropriate response when asked about a kōan.
Koans are also understood as pointers to an unmediated "Pure Consciousness", devoid of cognitive activity. Victor Hori criticizes this understanding:
According to Hori, a central theme of many koans is the 'identity of opposites':
Comparable statements are: "Look at the flower and the flower also looks"; "Guest and host interchange".
Study of kōan literature is common to all schools of Zen, though with varying emphases and curricula. The Rinzai-school uses extensive koan-curricula, checking questions, and "jakogo" ("capping phrases", quotations from Chinese poetry) in its use of koans. The Sanbo Kyodan, and its western derivates of Taizan Maezumi and the White Plum Asanga, also use koan-curricula, but have omitted the use of capping phrases. In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, the emphasis is on Hua Tou, the study of one koan throughout one's lifetime. In Japanese Sōtō Zen, the use of koans has been abandoned since the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.
In the Rinzai-school, the Sanbo Kyodan, and the White Plum Asanga, koan practice starts with the assignment of a "hosshi" or "break-through koan", usually the mu-koan or "the sound of one hand clapping". In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, various koan can be used for the hua-tou practice.
Students are instructed to concentrate on the "word-head", like the phrase "mu". In the Wumenguan (Mumonkan), public case No. 1 ("Zhaozhou's Dog"), Wumen (Mumon) wrote:
Arousing this great inquiry or "Great Doubt" is an essential element of kōan practice. It builds up "strong internal pressure ("gidan"), never stopping knocking from within at the door of [the] mind, demanding to be resolved". To illustrate the enormous concentration required in kōan meditation, Zen Master Wumen commented,
Analysing the koan for its literal meaning won't lead to insight, though understanding the context from which koans emerged can make them more intelligible. For example, when a monk asked Zhaozhou (Joshu) "does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?", the monk was referring to the understanding of the teachings on Buddha-nature, which were understood in the Chinese context of absolute and relative reality.
The continuous pondering of the break-through koan ("shokan") or Hua Tou, "word head", leads to kensho, an initial insight into "seeing the (Buddha-)nature.
The aim of the break-through koan is to see the "nonduality of subject and object":
Various accounts can be found which describe this "becoming one" and the resulting breakthrough:
But the use of the mu-koan has also been criticised. According to AMA Samy, the main aim is merely to "'become one' with the koan". Showing to have 'become one' with the first koan is enough to pass the first koan. According to Samy, this is not equal to prajna:
Teachers may probe students about their kōan practice using "sassho", "checking questions" to validate their satori (understanding) or kensho (seeing the nature). For the "mu-koan" and the "clapping hand-koan" there are twenty to a hundred checking questions, depending on the teaching lineage. The checking questions serve to deepen the insight of the student, but also to test his or her understanding.
Those checking questions, and their answers, are part of a standardised set of questions and answers. Students are learning a "ritual performance", learning how to behave and respond in specific ways, learning "clever repartees, ritualized language and gestures and be submissive to the master’s diktat and arbitration."
In the Rinzai-school, passing a koan and the checking questions has to be supplemented by "jakugo", "capping phrases", citations of Chinese poetry to demonstrate the insight. Students can use collections of those citations, instead of composing poetry themselves.
After the initial insight further practice is necessary, to deepen the insight and learn to express it in daily life. In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, this further practice consists of further pondering of the same Hua Tou. In Rinzai-Zen, this further practice is undertaken by further koan-study, for which elaborate curricula exist. In Sōtō-Zen, Shikantaza is the main practice for deepening insight.
In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, the primary form of Koan-study is "kanhua", "reflection on the koan", also called Hua Tou, "word head". In this practice, a fragment of the koan, such as ""mu"", or a "what is"-question is used by focusing on this fragment and repeating it over and over again:
The student is assigned only one hua-tou for a lifetime. In contrast to the similar-sounding "who am I?" question of Ramana Maharshi, hua-tou involves raising "great doubt":
Kōan practice is particularly important among Japanese practitioners of the Rinzai sect.
This importance is reflected in writings in the Rinzai-school on the koan-genre. Zhongfeng Mingben (1263–1323), a Chinese Chán-master who lived at the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, revitalized the Rinzai-tradition, and put a strong emphasis on the use of koans. He saw the kung-ans as "work of literature [that] should be used as objective, universal standards to test the insight of monks who aspired to be recognized as Ch'an masters":
Musō Soseki (1275–1351), a Japanese contemporary of Zhongfeng Mingben, relativized the use of koans. The study of koans had become popular in Japan, due to the influence of Chinese masters such as Zhongfeng Mingben. Despite belonging to the Rinzai-school, Musō Soseki also made extensive use of "richi" (teaching), explaining the sutras, instead of "kikan" (koan). According to Musō Soseki, both are "upaya", "skillful means" meant to educate students. Musō Soseki called both "shōkogyu", "little jewels", tools to help the student to attain satori.
In Rinzai a gradual succession of koans is studied. There are two general branches of curricula used within Rinzai, derived from the principal heirs of Rinzai: the Takuju curriculum, and the Inzan curriculum. However, there are a number of sub-branches of these, and additional variations of curriculum often exist between individual teaching lines which can reflect the recorded experiences of a particular lineage's members. Koan curricula are, in fact, subject to continued accretion and evolution over time, and thus are best considered living traditions of practice rather than set programs of study.
Koan practice starts with the "shokan", or "first barrier", usually the mu-koan or the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" After having attained "kensho", students continue their practice investigating subsequent koans. In the Takuju-school, after breakthrough students work through the "Gateless Gate" (Mumonkan), the "Blue Cliff Record" (Hekigan-roku), the "Entangling Vines" (Shumon Kattoshu), and the "Collection of Wings of the Blackbird" (, "Chin'u shū"). The Inzan-school uses its own internally generated list of koans.
Hakuin's descendants developed a fivefold classification system:
According to Akizuki there was an older classification-system, in which the fifth category was "Kojo", "Directed upwards". This category too was meant to rid the monk of any "stink of Zen". The very advanced practitioner may also receive the "Matsugo no rokan", "The last barrier, and "Saigo no ikketsu", "The final confirmation". "The last barrier" when one left the training hall, for example "Sum up all of the records of Rinzai in one word!" It is not meant to be solved immediately, but to be carried around in order to keep practising. "the final confirmation" may be another word for the same kind of koan.
Completing the koan-curriculum in the Rinzai-schools traditionally also led to a mastery of Chinese poetry and literary skills:
After completing the koan-training, "Gogo no shugyo", post-satori training is necessary:
Hakuin Ekaku, the 17th century revitalizer of the Rinzai school, taught several practices which serve to correct physical and mental imbalances arising from, among other things, incorrect or excessive koan practice. The "soft-butter" method ("nanso no ho") and "introspection method" ("naikan no ho") involve cultivation of ki centered on the tanden (Chinese:dantian). These practices are described in Hakuin's works Orategama and Yasen Kanna, and are still taught in some Rinzai lineages today.
Though few Sōtō practitioners concentrate on kōans during meditation, the Sōtō sect has a strong historical connection with kōans, since many kōan collections were compiled by Sōtō priests.
During the 13th century, Dōgen, founder of the Sōtō sect in Japan, quoted 580 kōans in his teachings. He compiled some 300 kōans in the volumes known as the Greater Shōbōgenzō. Dōgen wrote of Genjokōan, which points out that everyday life experience is the fundamental kōan.
However, according to Michel Mohr,
The Sanbo Kyodan school and the White Plum Asanga, which originated with the Sōtō-priest Hakuun Yasutani, incorporates koan-study. The Sanbo kyodan places great emphasis on kensho, initial insight into one's true nature, as a start of real practice. It follows the so-called Harada-Yasutani koan-curriculum, which is derived from Hakuin's student Takuju. It is a shortened koan-curriculum, in which the so-called "capping phrases" are removed. The curriculum takes considerably less time to study than the Takuju-curriculum of Rinzai.
To attain kensho, most students are assigned the mu-koan. After breaking through, the student first studies twenty-two "in-house" koans, which are "unpublished and not for the general public", but are nevertheless published and commented upon. There-after, the students goes through the "Gateless Gate" (Mumonkan), the "Blue Cliff Record", the "Book of Equanimity", and the "Record of Transmitting the Light". The koan-curriculum is completed by the Five ranks of Tozan and the precepts.
Kōans collectively form a substantial body of literature studied by Zen practitioners and scholars worldwide. Kōan collections commonly referenced in English include:
In these and subsequent collections, a terse "main case" of a kōan often accompanies prefatory remarks, poems, proverbs and other phrases, and further commentary about prior emendations.
The "Blue Cliff Record" (Chinese: Bìyán Lù; Japanese: Hekiganroku) is a collection of 100 kōans compiled in 1125 by Yuanwu Keqin ( 1063–1135).
The "Book of Equanimity" or "Book of Serenity" (Chinese: Cóngróng lù; Japanese: Shōyōroku) is a collection of 100 Kōans by Hongzhi Zhengjue (Chinese: ; Japanese: Wanshi Shōgaku) (1091–1157), compiled with commentaries by Wansong Xingxiu (1166–1246). The full title is "The Record of the Temple of Equanimity With the Classic Odes of Venerable Tiantong Jue and the Responsive Commentary of Old Man Wansong" (Wansong Laoren Pingchang Tiantong Jue Heshang Songgu Congrong An Lu) (Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 48, No. 2004)
"The Gateless Gate" (Chinese: Wumenguan; Japanese: Mumonkan) is a collection of 48 kōans and commentaries published in 1228 by Chinese monk Wumen () (1183–1260). The title may be more accurately rendered as "Gateless Barrier" or "Gateless Checkpoint").
Five kōans in the collection derive from the sayings and doings of Zhaozhou Congshen, (transliterated as Chao-chou in Wade-Giles and pronounced Jōshū in Japanese).
Dahui Zonggao (大慧宗杲) (1089–1163) the "Zhengfayan zang" (正法眼藏), "Treasury of the true dharma eye" (W-G.: Cheng-fa yen-tsang, (J.: Shōbōgenzō) a collection of koans and dialogues compiled between 1147 and 1150 by Dahui Zonggao . Dahui's 'Treasury' is composed of three scrolls prefaced by three short introductory pieces. The Zongmen liandeng huiyao 宗門聯燈會要 was compiled in 1183 by Huiweng Wuming 晦翁悟明 (n.d.), three generations after Dahui in the same line; the sermon is found in zh 20 (x 79: 173a).
Other kōan collections compiled and annotated by Sōtō priests include:
Victor Hori comments:
Huìnéng asked Hui Ming, "Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born." (This is a fragment of case No. 23 of the "Wumenguan".) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16862 |
Knights Templar
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (), also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar or simply the Templars, were a Catholic military order founded in 1119, headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem through 1128 when they went to the Vatican and were recognised in 1139 by the papal bull "Omne datum optimum". The order was active until 1312 when it was perpetually suppressed by Pope Clement V by the bull "Vox in excelso".
The Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. They were prominent in Christian finance. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members of the order, who made up as much as 90% of their members, managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, developing innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building its own network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming the world's first multinational corporation.
The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France – deeply in debt to the order – took advantage of this distrust to destroy them and erase his debt. In 1307, he had many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and burned at the stake. Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312 under pressure from King Philip. The abrupt reduction in power of a significant group in European society gave rise to speculation, legend, and legacy through the ages.
After the Franks in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from Muslim conquerors in 1099, many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was relatively secure under Christians control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon these Christian pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa through to the interior of the Holy Land.
In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple, and from this location the new order took the name of "Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon", or "Templar" knights. The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasising the order's poverty.
The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long. They had a powerful advocate in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, the French abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on their behalf in the letter 'In Praise of the New Knighthood', and in 1129, at the Council of Troyes, he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. Another major benefit came in 1139, when Pope Innocent II's papal bull "Omne Datum Optimum" exempted the order from obedience to local laws. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope.
With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their warhorses would set out to charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers.
Although the primary mission of the order was militaristic, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom and the Outremer, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value. This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers.
Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world's first multinational corporation.
In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the Crusades. The Islamic world had become more united under effective leaders such as Saladin. Dissension arose among Christian factions in and concerning the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were occasionally at odds with the two other Christian military orders, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the Sixth Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the Ayyubid dynasty together with Khwarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917 when, during World War I, the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire.
The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (Tartus in what is now Syria) and Atlit in present-day Israel. Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Arwad. In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate in the Siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.
With the order's military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom. The organisation's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level. The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state" – its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two orders. Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war against England, decided to seize upon the rumours for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.
At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307 (a date sometimes linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition) King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the phrase: "Dieu n'est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume" ["God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom"]. Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of worshipping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. These allegations though, were highly politicised without any real evidence. Still, the Templars were charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and secrecy. Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture (even though the Templars denied being tortured in their written confessions), and their confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross: "Moi, Raymond de La Fère, 21 ans, reconnais que [j'ai] craché trois fois sur la Croix, mais de bouche et pas de cœur" ["I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my heart"]. The Templars were accused of idolatry and were suspected of worshiping either a figure known as Baphomet or a mummified severed head they recovered, amongst other artifacts, at their original headquarters on the Temple Mount that many scholars theorize might have been that of John the Baptist, among other things.
Relenting to Phillip's demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull "Pastoralis praeeminentiae" on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.
With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including "Vox in excelso", which officially dissolved the order, and "Ad providam", which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.
As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession. Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows: "Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort" ("God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death"). Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.
The remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other Catholic military orders, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller except in the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Portugal was the first country in Europe where they had settled, occurring only two or three years after the order's foundation in Jerusalem and even having presence during Portugal's conception.
The Portuguese king, Denis I, refused to pursue and persecute the former knights, as had occurred in all other sovereign states under the influence of the Catholic Church. Under his protection, Templar organizations simply changed their name, from "Knights Templar" to the reconstituted "Order of Christ" and also a parallel "Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See"; both are considered successors to the Knights Templar.
In September 2001, a document known as the Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were "restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church". This other Chinon Parchment has been well known to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.
The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement's relative.
The Templars were organized as a monastic order similar to Bernard's Cistercian Order, which was considered the first effective international organization in Europe. The organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, Poitou, Anjou, Jerusalem, England, Aragon (Spain), Portugal, Italy, Tripoli, Antioch, Hungary, and Croatia) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region.
All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the order's military efforts in the East and their financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the Master of the province concerned.
No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the order's peak there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of whom about a tenth were actual knights.
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars: the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already. They were the most visible branch of the order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolize their purity and chastity. They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the order but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time. Beneath the knights in the order and drawn from non-noble families were the sergeants. They brought vital skills and trades from blacksmiths and builders, including administration of many of the order's European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse. Several of the order's most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the "de facto" Admiral of the Templar fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templars' spiritual needs. All three classes of brother wore the order's red cross.
Starting with founder Hugues de Payens in 1118–1119, the order's highest office was that of Grand Master, a position which was held for life, though considering the martial nature of the order, this could mean a very short tenure. All but two of the Grand Masters died in office, and several died during military campaigns. For example, during the Siege of Ascalon in 1153, Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay led a group of 40 Templars through a breach in the city walls. When the rest of the Crusader army did not follow, the Templars, including their Grand Master, were surrounded and beheaded. Grand Master Gérard de Ridefort was beheaded by Saladin in 1189 at the Siege of Acre.
The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the order, including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and the Templars' financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise: several blunders in de Ridefort's combat leadership contributed to the devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.
Bernard de Clairvaux and founder Hugues de Payens devised a specific code of conduct for the Templar Order, known to modern historians as the Latin Rule. Its 72 clauses laid down the details of the knights' way of life, including the types of garments they were to wear and how many horses they could have. Knights were to take their meals in silence, eat meat no more than three times per week, and not have physical contact of any kind with women, even members of their own family. A Master of the Order was assigned "4 horses, and one chaplain-brother and one clerk with three horses, and one sergeant brother with two horses, and one gentleman valet to carry his shield and lance, with one horse". As the order grew, more guidelines were added, and the original list of 72 clauses was expanded to several hundred in its final form.
The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross, and a white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and a black or brown mantle. The white mantle was assigned to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris. Under the Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times: they were even forbidden to eat or drink unless wearing it.
The red cross that the Templars wore on their robes was a symbol of martyrdom, and to die in combat was considered a great honour that assured a place in heaven. There was a cardinal rule that the warriors of the order should never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then they were first to try to regroup with another of the Christian orders, such as that of the Hospitallers. Only after all flags had fallen were they allowed to leave the battlefield. This uncompromising principle, along with their reputation for courage, excellent training, and heavy armament, made the Templars one of the most feared combat forces in medieval times.
Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about 1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an "order of bearded brethren"; while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in 1310–1311, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being "in the style of the Templars", and 133 are said to have shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they had hoped to escape detection.
Initiation, known as Reception ("receptio") into the order, was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign over all of their wealth and goods to the order and take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience. Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had his wife's permission, but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.
With their military mission and extensive financial resources, the Knights Templar funded a large number of building projects around Europe and the Holy Land. Many of these structures are still standing. Many sites also maintain the name "Temple" because of centuries-old association with the Templars. For example, some of the Templars' lands in London were later rented to lawyers, which led to the names of the Temple Bar gateway and the Temple Underground station. Two of the four Inns of Court which may call members to act as barristers are the Inner Temple and Middle Temple – the entire area known as Temple, London.
Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings include the use of the image of "two knights on a single horse", representing the Knights' poverty, and round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
The Knights Templar were dismantled in the Rolls of the Catholic Church in 1309; with the suppression of the Order, a number of Knights Templar joined the newly established Order of Christ, which effectively reabsorbed the Knights Templar and its properties in AD 1319, especially in Portugal. The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use alleged connections with them as a way of enhancing their own image and mystery. Apart from the Order of Christ, there is no clear historical connection between the Knights Templar and any other modern organization, the earliest of which emerged publicly in the 18th century.
Following the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the Order of Christ was erected in 1319 and absorbed many of the Knights Templar into its ranks, along with Knights Templar properties in Portugal. Its headquarters became a castle in Tomar, a former Knights Templar castle.
Many temperance organizations named themselves after the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, citing the belief that the original Knights Templar "drank sour milk, and also because they were fighting 'a great crusade' against 'this terrible vice' of alcohol". The largest of these, the International Order of Good Templars (IOGT), grew throughout the world after being started in the 19th century and continues to advocate for the abstinence from alcohol and other drugs; other Orders in this tradition include those of the Templars of Honor and Temperance (Tempel Riddare Orden), which has a large presence in Scandinavia.
The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem is a self-styled order established in 1804 and "accredited as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) by the UN in 2001". It is ecumenical in that it admits Christians of many denominations in its ranks. Its founder, Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat, produced the Larmenius Charter in order to try to link it with the original Catholic Christian military order.
Freemasonry has incorporated the symbols and rituals of several medieval military orders in a number of Masonic bodies since the 18th century at least. This can be seen in the "Red Cross of Constantine," inspired by the Military Constantinian Order; the "Order of Malta," inspired by the Knights Hospitaller; and the "Order of the Temple", inspired by the Knights Templar. The Orders of Malta and the Temple feature prominently in the York Rite. One theory on the origin of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical Knights Templar through its final fourteenth-century members who allegedly took refuge in Scotland and aided Robert the Bruce in his victory at Bannockburn. This theory is usually rejected by both Masonic authorities and historians due to lack of evidence.
The Knights Templar have become associated with legends concerning secrets and mysteries handed down to the select from ancient times. Rumours circulated even during the time of the Templars themselves. Masonic writers added their own speculations in the 18th century, and further fictional embellishments have been added in popular novels such as "Ivanhoe", "Foucault's Pendulum", and "The Da Vinci Code", modern movies such as "National Treasure", "The Last Templar", "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", the television series "Knightfall", as well as video games such as "Broken Sword", "Deus Ex" and "Assassin's Creed".
Beginning in the 1960s, there have been speculative popular publications surrounding the order's early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there, such as the quest for the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant, or the historical accusation of idol worship (Baphomet) transformed into a context of "witchcraft".
The association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in 12th-century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" calls the knights guarding the Grail Kingdom "templeisen", apparently a conscious fictionalisation of the "templarii". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16869 |
Kazaa
Kazaa Media Desktop (once stylized as "KaZaA", but later usually written "Kazaa") started as a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequently under license as a legal music subscription service by Atrinsic, Inc. According to one of its creators, Jaan Tallinn, Kazaa is pronounced ka-ZAH.
Kazaa Media Desktop was commonly used to exchange MP3 music files and other file types, such as videos, applications, and documents over the Internet. The Kazaa Media Desktop client could be downloaded free of charge; however, it was bundled with adware and for a period there were "No spyware" warnings found on Kazaa's website. During the years of Kazaa's operation, Sharman Networks and its business partners and associates were the target of copyright-related lawsuits, related to the copyright of content distributed via Kazaa Media Desktop on the FastTrack protocol.
By August 2012, the Kazaa website was no longer active.
Kazaa and FastTrack were originally created and developed by Estonian programmers from BlueMoon Interactive including Jaan Tallinn and sold to Swedish Niklas Zennström and Danish Janus Friis (who were later to create Skype and later still Joost and Rdio). Kazaa was introduced by the Dutch company Consumer Empowerment in March 2001, near the end of the first generation of P2P networks typified by the shutdown of Napster in July 2001. Skype itself was based on Kazaa's P2P backend, which allowed users to make a call by directly connecting them with each other.
Initially, some users of the Kazaa network were users of the Morpheus client program, formerly made available by MusicCity. Eventually, the official Kazaa client became more widespread. In February 2002, when Morpheus developers failed to pay license fees, Kazaa developers used an automatic update ability to shut out Morpheus clients by changing the protocol. Morpheus later became a client of the gnutella network.
Consumer Empowerment was sued in the Netherlands in 2001 by the Dutch music publishing body, Buma/Stemra. The court ordered Kazaa's owners to take steps to prevent its users from violating copyrights or else pay a heavy fine. In October 2001 a lawsuit was filed against Consumer Empowerment by members of the music and motion picture industry in the USA. In response Consumer Empowerment sold the Kazaa application to Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia and incorporated in Vanuatu. In late March 2002, a Dutch court of appeal reversed an earlier judgment and stated that Kazaa was not responsible for the actions of its users. Buma/Stemra lost its appeal before the Dutch Supreme Court in December 2003.
In 2003, Kazaa signed a deal with Altnet and Streamwaves to try to convert users to paying, legal customers. Searchers on Kazaa were offered a free 30-second sample of songs for which they were searching and directed to sign up for the full-featured Streamwaves service.
However, Kazaa's new owner, Sharman, was sued in Los Angeles by the major record labels and motion pictures studios and a class of music publishers. The other defendants in that case (Grokster and MusicCity, makers of the Morpheus file-sharing software) initially prevailed against the plaintiffs on summary judgment (Sharman joined the case too late to take advantage of that ruling). The summary judgment ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but was unanimously reversed by the US Supreme Court in a decision titled "MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd."
Following that ruling in favor of the plaintiff labels and studios, Grokster almost immediately settled the case. Shortly thereafter, on 27 July 2006, it was announced that Sharman had also settled with the record industry and motion picture studios. As part of that settlement, the company agreed to pay $100 million in damages to the four major music companies—Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music—and an undisclosed amount to the studios. Sharman also agreed to convert Kazaa into a legal music download service. Like the creators of similar products, Kazaa's owners have been taken to court by music publishing bodies to restrict its use in the sharing of copyrighted material.
While the U.S. action was still pending, the record industry commenced proceedings against Sharman on its home turf. In February 2004, the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) announced its own legal action against Kazaa, alleging massive copyright breaches. The trial began on 29 November 2004. On 6 February 2005, the homes of two Sharman Networks executives and the offices of Sharman Networks in Australia were raided under a court order by ARIA to gather evidence for the trial.
On 5 September 2005, the Federal Court of Australia issued a landmark ruling that Sharman, though not itself guilty of copyright infringement, had "authorized" Kazaa users illegally to swap copyrighted songs. The court ruled six defendants—including Kazaa's owners Sharman Networks, Sharman's Sydney-based boss Nikki Hemming and associate Kevin Bermeister—had knowingly allowed Kazaa users illegally to swap copyrighted songs. The company was ordered to modify the software within two months (a ruling enforceable only in Australia). Sharman and the other five parties faced paying millions of dollars in damages to the record labels that instigated the legal action.
On 5 December 2005, the Federal Court of Australia ceased downloads of Kazaa in Australia after Sharman Networks failed to modify their software by the December 5 deadline. Users with an Australian IP address were greeted with the message "Important Notice: The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted" when visiting the Kazaa website. Sharman planned to appeal against the Australian decision, but ultimately settled the case as part of its global settlement with the record labels and studios in the United States.
In yet another set of related cases, in September 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit in civil court against several private individuals who had shared large numbers of files with Kazaa; most of these suits were settled with monetary payments averaging $3,000. Sharman Networks responded with a lawsuit against the RIAA, alleging that the terms of use of the network were violated and that unauthorized client software (such as Kazaa Lite, see below) was used in the investigation to track down the individual file sharers. An effort to throw out this suit was denied in January 2004. However, that suit was also settled in 2006 (see above). Most recently, in Duluth, Minnesota, the recording industry sued Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 30-year-old single mother. On October 5, 2007, Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies (Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.) $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they had focused on in this case. She was accused of sharing a total of 1,702 songs through her Kazaa account. Along with attorney fees, Thomas may owe as much as half a million dollars. Thomas testified that she does not have a Kazaa account, but her testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer's hard drive after the alleged downloading took place, and later than she originally said in a deposition before the trial.
Thomas-Rasset appealed the verdict and was given a new trial. In June 2009 that jury awarded the recording industry plaintiffs a judgment of $80,000 per song, or $1.92 million. This is less than half of the $150,000 amount authorized by statute.
The federal court found the award "monstrous and shocking" and reduced it to $54,000. The recording industry offered to accept a settlement of $25,000, with the money going to charities that support musicians. Apparently undaunted, Thomas-Rasset was able to obtain a third trial on the issue of damages. In November 2010 she was again ordered to pay for her violation, this time $62,500 per song, for a total of $1.5 million. At last word, her attorneys were examining a challenge to the constitutional validity of massive statutory damages, where actual damages would have been $24.
In 2006 StopBadware.org identified Kazaa as a spyware application. They identified the following components:
Kazaa's legal issues ended after a settlement of $100 million in reparations to the recording industry. Kazaa, including the domain name, was then sold off to Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc. Kazaa then operated as a monthly music subscription service allowing users to download unlimited songs, before finally ending the service.
Some users still use the old network on the unauthorized versions of Kazaa, either Kazaa Lite or Kazaa Resurrection, which is still a self-sustaining network where thousands of users still share unrestricted media. This fact was previously stated by Kazaa when they claimed their FastTrack network was not centralized (like the old Napster), but instead a link between millions of computers around the world.
However, in the wake of the bad publicity and lawsuits, the number of users on Kazaa Lite has dropped dramatically. They have gone from several millions of users at a given time to mere thousands.
Without further recourse, and until the lawsuit was settled, the RIAA actively sued thousands of people and college campuses across the U.S. for sharing copyrighted music over the network. Particularly, students were targeted and most were threatened with a penalty of $750 per song. Although the lawsuits were mainly in the U.S., other countries also began to follow suit. Beginning in 2008, however, RIAA announced an end to individual lawsuits.
While Napster lasted just three years, Kazaa survived much longer. However, the lawsuits eventually ended the company. By 2012, Kazaa's website was inactive, displaying the message "We thank you for your interest in Kazaa. However we no longer offer a music service."; by 2017 kazaa.com no longer existed.
Kazaa Lite was an unauthorized modification of the Kazaa Media Desktop application which excluded adware and spyware and provided slightly extended functionality. It became available in April 2002. It was available free of charge, and as of mid-2005 was almost as widely used as the official Kazaa client itself. It connected to the same FastTrack network and thus allowed to exchange files with all Kazaa users, and was created by third party programmers by modifying the binary of the original Kazaa application. Later versions of Kazaa Lite included K++, a memory patcher that removed search limit restrictions, and set one's "participation level" to the maximum of 1000. Sharman Networks considers Kazaa Lite to be a copyright violation.
After development of Kazaa Lite stopped, K-Lite v2.6, Kazaa Lite Resurrection and Kazaa Lite Tools appeared. Unlike Kazaa Lite, which is a modification of an old version of Kazaa, K-Lite v2.6 and later require the corresponding original KMD executable to run. K-Lite doesn't include any code by Sharman: instead, it runs the user's original Kazaa Media Desktop executable in an environment which removes the malware, spyware and adware and adds features.
In November 2004, the developers of K-Lite released K-Lite v2.7, which similarly requires the KMD 2.7 executable.
Other clean variants used an older core (2.02) and thus, K-Lite had some features that others didn't have. K-Lite included multiple search tabs, a custom toolbar, and autostart, a download accelerator, an optional splash screen, preview with option (to view files you are currently downloading), an IP blocker, Magnet links support, and ad blocking, although the clients based on the 2.02 core abstract these functions to third-party programs.
Kazaa Lite Tools was an update of the original Kazaa Lite, with modifications to the third-party programs included, it is newer and includes more tools.
Kazaa Lite Resurrection (KLR) appeared almost immediately after Kazaa Lite development was stopped in August 2003. KLR was a copy of Kazaa Lite 2.3.3. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16871 |
Kimono
The (lit., "thing to wear" – from the verb , "to wear (on the shoulders)" and the noun , "thing") is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a T-shaped garment wrapped left over right (unless the wearer is deceased), and is worn with an alongside accessories such as and socks.
Kimono are made from mostly rectangular pieces of fabric cut from a long, thing bolt, known as a . There are different types of kimono for men and women, and these kimono can indicate the wearer's age, gender, the formality of the occasion, and, less commonly, the wearer's marital status. Types of kimono range in formality, and kimono can be worn to the most and least formal of events.
In modern day Japan, the kimono is not commonly worn as everyday dress. It has steadily fallen out of fashion as the most common garment for a Japanese person to wear, and is now most commonly seen at summer festivals, where people mostly wear the , a type of kimono that is relatively cheap and easy to wear. It is also less commonly seen at weddings and funerals, but these are typically the only times the average person wears a kimono.
The people who wear the kimono the most often in Japanese society - in some cases daily - are older men and women who might have grown up wearing it, geisha and , who are required to wear it for their work, and wrestlers, who have to wear kimono when appearing in public.
Though it has garnered a reputation as uncomfortable and difficult to wear, the kimono has experienced a number of revivals in popularity over the decades, and is still worn as fashionable clothing in Japan.
The first instances of kimono-like garments in Japan were traditional Chinese clothing introduced to Japan via Chinese envoys in the period, with immigration between the two countries and envoys to the Tang dynasty court leading to Chinese styles of dress, appearance and culture becoming extremely popular in Japanese court society. The Imperial Japanese court quickly adopted Chinese styles of dress and clothing, with evidence of the oldest samples of tie-dyed fabric stored at the Temple being Chinese in origin, due to the technical capacities of Japan's ability to produce the fabrics stored there at the time.
During the Heian period (794-1193 CE), Japan stopped sending envoys to the Chinese dynastic courts, leading to the prevention of Chinese-exported goods, including clothing, from entering the Imperial Palace and thus disseminating to the upper classes who could afford it. The ensuing vacuum led to the facilitation of a Japanese culture independent from Chinese fashions to a much greater degree; this saw elements previously lifted from the Tang Dynastic courts develop independently into what is known as , the term used to refer to Heian-period Japanese culture, with the dress of the upper classes also affected.
Clothing became increasingly stylised, with some elements - such as the round-necked and tube-sleeved jacket, worn by both genders in the early seventh century - being abandoned by both male and female courtiers. Others, such as the wrap-front robes also worn by men and women, were kept, and some elements, such as the skirt worn by women, continued on in a reduced capacity, worn only to formal occasions.
During the later Heian period, various clothing edicts reduced the number of layers a woman could wear, leading to the - lit., "small sleeve" - garment, previously considered underwear, becoming outerwear by the time of the Muromachi period (1336-1573 CE). Originally worn with trousers - another piece of underwear in the Heian period - the began to be held closed with a small belt known as an . The resembled a modern kimono, though at this time, the sleeves were sewn shut at the back, and were smaller in width than the much wider body of the garment. During the Sengoku period and the Azuchi-Momoyama period, bold designs and flashy primary colors of kimono became popular.
During the Edo period (1603-1867 CE), the economy and culture developed remarkably, and especially in the Genroku period, the Genroku culture flourished and the kimono of not only the aristocracy and the samurai class but also the Chōnin class became remarkably gorgeous. In response to this, the Tokugawa shogunate issued several sumptuous bans on the kimono of the Chōnin class, prohibiting the use of purple or red fabric and gold embroidery, and prohibiting fine patterns by tie-dyeing with fine threads. As a result, an aesthetic called that pursued sophisticated simplicity and a bit of playfulness flourished, continuing to affect kimono aesthetics even in the present day. From this point onwards, the basic shape of both men's and women's kimono remained largely unchanged. In the Edo period, the sleeves of the began to grow in length, especially amongst unmarried women, and the became much longer and wider, with various styles of knots coming into fashion, alongside stiffer weaves of material supporting them.
During the Meiji era, the opening of Japan to Western trade after the enclosure of the period led to a drive towards Western dress as a sign of "modernity". After an edict by Emperor Meiji, for instance, policemen, railroad workers and teachers moved to wearing Western clothing within their job roles, with the adoption of Western clothing by men in Japan happening at a much greater pace than by women. Initiatives such as the Tokyo Women's & Children's Wear Manufacturers' Association (東京婦人子供服組合) promoted Western clothing as everyday dress.
Western clothing quickly became standard issue as army uniform for men and school uniform for boys, and between 1920 and 1930, the sailor outfit replaced the kimono and undivided as school uniform for girls. However, kimono still remained popular as an item of everyday fashion; following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, cheap and informal kimono (woven from raw and waste silk threads that were not suitable for formal kimono) became highly popular following the loss of many people's possessions, and by 1930 ready-to-wear kimono had become highly popular for their bright, seasonally-changing designs, many of which took inspiration from the Art Deco movement. kimono were usually dyed using the ikat () technique of dyeing, where either warp or both warp and weft threads (known as ) were dyed using a stencil pattern before weaving.
Today, the vast majority of people in Japan wear Western clothing in the everyday, and are most likely to wear kimono either to formal occasions such as wedding ceremonies and funerals, or to summer events, where the standard kimono is the easy-to-wear, single-layer cotton . In the Western world, kimono-style women's jackets, similar to a casual cardigan, gained public attention as a popular fashion item in 2014.
In 2019, the mayor of Kyoto announced that his staff were working to register “Kimono Culture” on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list.
Though the basic shape of the kimono has not changed in centuries, proportions have, historically, varied in different eras of Japanese history. Beginning in the later Heian period, the - an unlined robe worn as underwear - became the predominant outerwear garment for both men and women, known as the (lit. "small sleeve"). Court-appropriate dress continued to resemble the previous eras.
By the beginning of the Kamakura period, the was an ankle-length garment for both men and women, and had small, rounded sleeves that were sewn to the body of the garment. The was a relatively thin belt tied somewhat low on the waist, usually in a plain bow, and was known as a . During this time period, the fashion of wearing a draped around the shoulders, over the head, or as the outermost garment stripped off the shoulders and held in place by the , led to the rise of the - a heavily-decorated over-kimono, stemming from the verb (lit., "to drape upon"), worn unbelted over the top of the - becoming popular as formal dress for the upper classes.
In the following centuries, the mostly retained its small, narrow and round-sleeved nature, with the length of women's sleeves gradually increasing over time and eventually becoming mostly detached from the body of the garment below the shoulders. The collar on both men's and women's retained its relatively long and wide proportions, and the front panel kept its long, shallow angle towards the hem. During the Edo period, the had developed roughly modern kimono proportions, though variety existed until roughly the mid- to later years of the era. Men's sleeves continued to be sewn shut to the body down most of their length. Sleeves for both men and women grew in proportion to be of roughly equal width to the body panels, and the collar for both men's and women's kimono became shorter and narrower.
In the present day, both men's and women's kimono retain some historical features - for instance, women's kimono, which trailed along the floor throughout certain eras, ideally should be as tall as the person wearing them, with the excess length folded and tied underneath the in a hip fold known as the . Formal women's kimono also retain the wider collar of previous eras, though it is always folded in half lengthwise before wearing - a style known as (lit. "wide collar", as opposed to , a normal width collar).
Historically, kimono were taken apart to be washed, as the pattern pieces for kimono were mostly rectangular - a process known as . Once cleaned, it would be resewn by hand to a roughly standardised method of construction, with any excess fabric being kept in the seam allowances, allowing it to be easily retailored for different people and measurements. Though some modern kimono are machine-sewn, formal kimono, and in particular silk kimono, are still hand-sewn, with even a machine-sewn kimono requiring some degree of hand-sewing to be finished.
Both kimono and are made from a wide variety of fibre types, including hemp, linen, silk, crepe (known as ), and figured satin weaves such as . Fibres such as rayon became widespread during WW2, and modern kimono are widely available in fabrics considered easier to care for, such as polyester. However, almost all formal kimono are made entirely from silk, as well as usually being hand-sewn.
Kimono textiles can to be classified into two categories: , which indicates silk textiles in general, and cotton/hemp for everyday wear. was named after 呉 (Wú) in ancient China, where the technology of silk fabrics originated from. Cotton clothing is called whereas hemp clothing is called in Japanese. Cotton/hemp fabrics are generally called as as the fiber of these materials are thicker compared to that of silk. Till the end of the Edo period, tailoring of these fabrics were handled respectively at stores (known as ) and stores (known as ), however, after the Meiji period, kimono was not worn as daily wear very often and stores eventually went out of business.
Kimono are traditionally made from a single bolt of fabric known as a , which is roughly 11.5m long and 36 cm wide for women, and 12.5m long and 42 cm wide for men. The entire bolt is used to make one kimono, and some men's are woven to be long enough to create a matching jacket and as well. Some custom bolts of fabric are produced for especially tall or heavy people, such as sumo wrestlers, who must have kimono custom-made by either joining multiple bolts, weaving custom-width fabric, or using non-standard size fabric.
Kimono fabrics are frequently hand-made and -decorated. Techniques such as dye resist are used for applying decoration and patterns to the base cloth. Repeating patterns that cover a large area of a kimono are traditionally done with the resist technique and a stencil. Over time there have been many variations in color, fabric, and style, as well as accessories such as the . Customarily, woven patterns and dyed repeat patterns are considered informal. Formal kimono have free-style designs dyed over the whole surface or along the hem.
The pattern of the kimono can determine in which season it should be worn. For example, a pattern with butterflies or cherry blossoms would be worn in spring. Watery designs are common during the summer. A popular autumn motif is the russet leaf of the Japanese maple; for winter, designs may include bamboo, pine trees and plum blossoms (the Three Friends of Winter).
A popular form of textile art in Japan is (intricate tie dye), found on some of the more expensive kimono and kimono jackets. Patterns are created by minutely binding the fabric and masking off areas, then dying it, usually by hand. When the bindings are removed, an undyed pattern is revealed. work can be further enhanced with (hand applied) drawing or painting with textile dyes or with embroidery; it is then known as . textiles are very time-consuming to produce and require great skill, so the textiles and garments created from them are very expensive and highly prized.
Old kimono have historically been recycled in various ways, depending on the type of kimono and its original use. Kimono were shortened, with the okumi taken off and the collar re-sewn, to make , or would simply be cut at the waist to create a side-tying jacket. After marriage or a certain age, young women would shorten the sleeves of their kimono, and extra material taken from kimono could be used to lengthen it at the waist, create an , or was used to patch similar kimono.
Kimono were also used to create , underkimono worn on top of the , and the material would show at the sleeve, hem and collar. Kimono were also used to create themselves, and after wearing layered kimono fell out of fashion, create a false underlayer – a – was another use for old kimono. They could also be resewn into kimono for children.
Historically, skilled craftsmen would laboriously cut old silk kimono into strips roughly 1 cm wide to weave into , called . The technique was a kind of rag-weaving, creating a mostly one-sided that was relatively narrow and informal. are prized for their craftsmanship and rustic quality today, as they would have taken many hours to create, and often feature patterns of stripes, checks and arrows. The technique is kept alive to this day by craftspeople interested in rustic arts.
These terms refer to parts of a kimono:
Both men's and women's brand-new kimono can range in expense, from the relatively cheap nature of second-hand garments, to high-end artisan pieces costing as much as US$50,000 (not allowing for the cost of accessories).
The high expense of some hand-crafted brand-new kimono reflects the traditional kimono making industry, where the most skilled artisans practice specific, expensive and time-consuming techniques, known to and mastered only by a few. These techniques, such as hand-plied fabrics and hand-tied dotwork dyeing, may take over a year to finish. Kimono artisans may be made Living National Treasures in recognition of their work, with the pieces they produce being considered culturally important.
Even kimono that have not been hand-crafted will constitute a relatively high expense when bought new, as even for one outfit, a number of accessories of the right formality and appearance must be bought. Not all brand-new kimono originate from artisans, and mass-production of kimono - mainly of casual or semi-formal kimono - does exist, with mass-produced pieces being mostly cheaper than those purchased through a (kimono shop, see below).
Though artisan-made kimono are some of the most accomplished works of textile art on the market, many pieces are not bought solely for appreciation of the craft. Unwritten social obligations to wear kimono to certain events - weddings, funerals - often leads consumers to purchase artisan pieces for reasons other than personal choice, fashion sense or love of kimono:
[Third-generation dyer ] believes we are in a strange age where people who know nothing about kimono are the ones who spend a lot of money on a genuine handcrafted kimono for a wedding that is worn once by someone who suffers wearing it, and then is never used again.
The high cost of most brand-new kimono reflects in part the pricing techniques within the industry. Most brand-new kimono are purchased through , where kimono are sold as fabric rolls only, the price of which is often left to the shop's discretion. The shop will charge a fee separate to the cost of the fabric for it to be sewn to the customer's measurements, and fees for washing the fabric or weatherproofing it may be added as another separate cost. If the customer is unfamiliar with wearing kimono, they may hire a service to help dress them; the end cost of a new kimono, therefore, remains uncertain until the kimono itself has been finished and worn.
Many [Japanese kimono consumers] feared a tactic known as : being surrounded by staff and essentially pressured into purchasing an expensive kimono...Shops are also renowned for lying about the origins of their products and who made them...[My kimono dressing () teacher] gave me careful instructions before we entered the []: 'do not touch anything. And even if you don’t buy a kimono today, you have to buy something, no matter how small it is.’
In contrast, kimono bought by hobbyists are likely to be less expensive, purchased from second-hand stores with no such sales practices or obligation to buy. Hobbyists may also buy cheaper synthetic kimono (marketed as 'washable') brand-new. Some enthusiasts also make their own kimono; this may be due to difficulty finding kimono of the right size, or simply for personal choice and fashion.
Second-hand items are seen as highly affordable; costs can be as little as ¥100 (about US$0.90) at thrift stores within Japan, and certain historic kimono production areas around the country - such as the district of Kyoto - are well-known for their second-hand kimono markets. Kimono themselves do not go out of fashion, making even vintage or antique pieces viable for wear, depending on condition.
However, even second-hand women's are likely to remain somewhat pricey; a used, well-kept and high-quality second-hand can cost upwards of US$300, as they are often intricately woven, or decorated with embroidery, goldwork and may be hand-painted. Men's , in contrast, retail much cheaper, as they are narrower, shorter, and have either very little or no decoration, though high-end men's can still retail at a high cost equal to that of a high-end women's .
Kimono range in variation from extremely formal to very casual. The formality of a woman's kimono is determined mostly by pattern placement, decoration style, fabric choice and colour. The formality of men's kimono is determined more by fabric choice and coordination elements (, , etc.) than decoration, as men's kimono tend to be one colour with motifs only visible when looked at closely.
In both cases, formality is also determined by the number and type of (crests). Five crests () are the most formal, three crests () are mid-formality, and one crest () is the least formal, used for occasions such as tea ceremony.
The type of crest adds formality as well. A "full sun" () crest, where the design is outlined and filled in with white, is the most formal type. A "mid-shadow" () crest is mid-formality, with only the outline of the crest visible in white. A "shadow" () crest is the least formal, with the outline of the crest relatively faint. Shadow crests may be embroidered onto the kimono, and full-embroidery crests, called , are also seen.
Formality can also be determined by the type and colour of accessories, such as weave of and the style of .
The typical woman's kimono outfit may consist of up to twelve or more separate pieces; some outfits, such as formal wedding kimono, may require the assistance of licensed kimono dressers, though usually this is due to the wearer's inexperience with kimono and the difficult-to-tie nature of formal knots. Most professional kimono dressers are found in Japan, where they work out of hair salons, as specialist businesses, or freelance.
Choosing an appropriate type of kimono requires knowledge of the wearer's age, occasionally marital status (though less so in modern times), the formality of the occasion at hand, and the season. Choice of fabric is also dependent on these factors, though some fabrics - such as crepe and - are never seen in certain varieties of kimono, and some fabrics such as (heavy satin) silk are barely ever seen in kimono altogether, instead being worn on the .
Though length of kimono, collar style and the way the sleeves are sewn on varies for kimono, in all other types of women's kimono, the construction generally does not change; the collar is set back slightly into the nape of the neck, the sleeves are only attached at the shoulder, not all the way down the sleeve length, and the kimono's length from shoulder to hem should generally equal the entire height of the woman wearing it, to allow for the hip fold.
Sleeve length increases for - young women's formal dress - but young women are not limited to wearing only , as outside of formal occasions that warrant it, can wear all other types of women's kimono such as and .
In the present day, most are brightly-coloured (for women) featuring large motifs from a variety of different seasons. They are worn with (half-width ) or (a soft, sash-like ), and are often accessorised with colourful hair accessories. are always unlined, and it is possible to wear a casual with a high-end, more subdued .
The sleeves of the average at between 100–110 cm in length. (mid-size ) have shorter sleeves at roughly 80 cm in length; most are vintage kimono, as in the modern day are not worn often enough to warrant buying a more casual form of the dress.
A completely black mourning ensemble for women - a plain black , black and black - is usually reserved for those closest to the deceased. Those further away will wear kimono in dark and subdued colours, rather than a plain black kimono with a reduced number of crests. In time periods when kimono were worn more often, those closest to the deceased would slowly begin dressing in coloured kimono over a period of weeks after the death, with the being the last thing to be changed over to colour.
A will form part of a bridal ensemble with matching or coordinating accessories, such as a bridal , a set of matching (usually mock-tortoiseshell), and a fan tucked into the kimono. Due to the expensive nature of traditional bridal clothing, few are likely to buy brand-new ; it is not unusual to rent kimono for special occasions, and Shinto shrines are known to keep and rent out for traditional weddings. Those who do possess already are likely to have inherited them from close family members.
, apart from their extreme length, are also sewn differently to normal kimono due to the way they are worn. The collar on a is sewn further and deeper back into the nape of the neck, so that it can be pulled down much lower without causing the front of the kimono to ride up. The sleeves are set unevenly onto the body, shorter at the back than at the front, so that the underarm does not show when the collar is pulled down.
The total weight of the could be up to 20 kg. The garments were decorated in relatively large motifs, with a more important aspect being the numerous recorded colour combinations an outfit could have.
An important accessory of this outfit was an elaborate hand fan, which could be tied together by tassels tied onto the end fan bones. These fans were made of cypress wood entirely, with the design painted onto the wide, flat bones themselves, and were known as .
No garments from the Heian period survive, and today the can only be seen as a reproduction in museums, movies, festivals and demonstrations. The Imperial Household still officially uses them at some important functions, such as the coronation of the new Empress.
In contrast to women's kimono, men's kimono outfits are far simpler, typically consisting of five pieces, not including footwear.
Men's kimono sleeves are attached to the body of the kimono with no more than a few inches unattached at the bottom, unlike the women's style of very deep sleeves mostly unattached from the body of the kimono. Men's sleeves are less deep than women's kimono sleeves to accommodate the around the waist beneath them, whereas on a woman's kimono, the long, unattached bottom of the sleeve can hang over the without getting in the way.
In the modern era, the principal distinctions between men's kimono are in the fabric. The typical men's kimono is a subdued, dark color; black, dark blues, greens, and browns are common. Fabrics are usually matte. Some have a subtle pattern, and textured fabrics are common in more casual kimono. More casual kimono may be made in slightly brighter colors, such as lighter purples, greens and blues. Sumo wrestlers have occasionally been known to wear quite bright colors such as fuchsia.
The most formal style of kimono is plain black silk with five on the chest, shoulders and back. Slightly less formal is the three- kimono, and least formal the one- and uncrested kimono.
Though the kimono is the national dress of Japan, it has never been the sole item of clothing worn throughout Japan; even before the introduction of Western dress to Japan, many variations of or cousins to the kimono existed, often as rural or (in the case of the Ainu people) cultural dress.
Some related garments still worn today were the contemporary clothing of previous time periods, and have survived on in an official and/or ceremonial capacity, worn only on certain occasions by certain people.
Some related garments are specific to certain religious roles. The is worn only by and in some Shinto shrine ceremonies, and the is the everyday clothing for a male Zen Buddhist lay-monk, and the favoured garment for monks playing the .
are a style of worn only by some high-ranking male practitioners of tea ceremony. are made of unlined silk gauze, fall to the hip, and have sewn ties at the front made of the same fabric as the main garment. The has a wrist opening that is entirely open along the sleeve's vertical length. The garment originated in the Kamakura Period (1185-1333 CE), and are worn without .
For formal ceremonies, members of Japanese nobility will wear certain types of antiquated kimono such as the and the . Outside of nobility, are only found in dress-up () studios, or in museums as recreations; no examples of Heian period clothing exist, and only small and fragile samples of the fabrics used in those times survive.
Brides in Japan who opt for a traditional ceremony will wear specific accessories and types of kimono, which may be changed and switched out for certain parts of the ceremony; for instance, the hood is removed during the ceremony, and are worn over the top of bridal kimono once the ceremony has been completed, usually at the reception. Many bridalwear traditions, such as the addition of a small (fake) dagger, are amalgams and facsimiles of samurai dress from previous eras.
There are a number of accessories that can be worn with the kimono, and these vary by occasion and use. Some are ceremonial, or worn only for special occasions, whereas others are part of dressing in kimono and are used in a more practical sense.
Both geisha and wear variations on common accessories that are not found in everyday dress. As an extension of this, many practitioners of Japanese traditional dance wear similar kimono and accessories to geisha and .
For certain traditional holidays and occasions some specific types of kimono accessories are worn. For instance, , also known as , are worn by girls for , alongside brightly-coloured . are also worn by young women on (Coming of Age Day).
Pre-WW2, kimono were commonly worn layered, with three being the standard number of layers worn over the top of undergarments. The layered kimono underneath were known as , and were often a patchwork of older or unwearable kimono taken apart for their fabric.
In modern-day Japan, layered kimono are only seen on the stage, whether for classical dances or in kabuki. A false second layer called a may be attached instead of an entirely separate kimono to achieve this look; it is a type of floating lining, sewn to the kimono only along the centre back and underneath the collar.
This effect allows it to show at the collar and the hem, and in some kabuki performances such as , the kimono is worn with the flipped back slightly underneath the to expose the design on the . The can also be seen on some bridal kimono.
In the past, a kimono would often be entirely taken apart for washing, and then re-sewn for wearing. This traditional washing method is called . Because the stitches must be taken out for washing, traditional kimono need to be hand sewn. is very expensive and difficult and is one of the causes of the declining popularity of kimono. Modern fabrics and cleaning methods have been developed that eliminate this need, although the traditional washing of kimono is still practiced, especially for high-end garments.
New, custom-made kimono are generally delivered to a customer with long, loose basting stitches placed around the outside edges. These stitches are called . They are sometimes replaced for storage. They help to prevent bunching, folding and wrinkling, and keep the kimono's layers in alignment.
Like many other traditional Japanese garments, there are specific ways to fold kimono. These methods help to preserve the garment and to keep it from creasing when stored. Kimono are often stored wrapped in paper called .
Kimono need to be aired out at least seasonally and before and after each time they are worn. Many people prefer to have their kimono dry cleaned. Although this can be extremely expensive, it is generally less expensive than but may be impossible for certain fabrics or dyes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16873 |
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames (spelled with hyphens until 1965 and sometimes abbreviated to Kingston) is a town, former manor, ecclesiastical parish and borough now within Greater London, England, formerly within the county of Surrey. It is situated on the River Thames, about above sea level and southwest of Charing Cross (deemed the geographical centre of London). It is notable as the ancient market town in which Saxon kings were crowned and today is the administrative centre of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames.
The large historic parish of Kingston became absorbed in modern times into the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, reformed in 1835 and from 1893 has been the location of Surrey County Hall, extraterritorially in terms of local government administration. Since 1965 Kingston has been a part of Greater London.
Today most of the town centre is part of the KT1 postcode area, but some areas north of Kingston railway station are within KT2. The United Kingdom Census 2011 recorded the population of the town (comprising the four wards of Canbury, Grove, Norbiton and Tudor) as 43,013, while the borough overall counted 175,470. Kingston is identified as a metropolitan centre in the London Plan and is today a major retail centre, one of the biggest in the UK, receiving 18 million visitors a year.
Kingston was called "Cyninges tun" in 838 AD, "Chingestune" in 1086, "Kingeston" in 1164, "Kyngeston super Tamisiam" in 1321 and "Kingestowne upon Thames" in 1589. The name means 'the king's manor or estate' from the Old English words "cyning" and "tun". It belonged to the king in Saxon times and was the earliest royal borough.
The first surviving record of Kingston is from AD 838 as the site of a meeting between King Egbert of Wessex and Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury. Kingston lay on the boundary between the ancient kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, until in the early tenth century when King Athelstan united both to create the kingdom of England. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two tenth-century kings were consecrated in Kingston: Æthelstan (925), and Æthelred the Unready (978). There are certain other kings who are said to have been crowned there, but for whom the evidence (including the writings of Florence of Worcester and Ralph de Diceto) is less substantial: Edward the Elder (902), Edmund I (939), Eadred (946), Eadwig (956), Edgar the Peaceful (circa 960) and Edward the Martyr (975). It was later thought that the coronations were conducted in the chapel of St Mary, which collapsed in 1730. Tradition dating to the 18th century holds that a large stone recovered from the ruins played a part in the coronations. It was initially used as a mounting block, but in 1850 it was moved to a more dignified place in the market before finally being moved to its current location in the grounds of the Guildhall.
For much of the 20th century, Kingston was a major military aircraft manufacturing centre specialising in fighter aircraft – first with Sopwith Aviation, H G Hawker Engineering, later Hawker Aircraft, Hawker Siddeley and eventually British Aerospace. The renowned Sopwith Camel, Hawker Fury, Hurricane, Hunter and Harrier Jump Jet were all designed and built in the town and examples of all of these aircraft can be seen today at the nearby Brooklands Museum in Weybridge.
Well known aviation personalities Sydney Camm, Harry Hawker and Tommy Sopwith were responsible for much of Kingston's achievements in aviation. British Aerospace finally closed its Lower Ham Road factory in 1992; part of the site was subsequently redeveloped for housing but the riverside part houses a community centre and sports complex. The growth and development of Kingston Polytechnic and its transformation into Kingston University has made Kingston a university town.
Kingston upon Thames formed an ancient parish in the Kingston hundred of Surrey. The parish of Kingston upon Thames covered a large area including Hook, Kew, New Malden, Petersham, Richmond, Surbiton, Thames Ditton and East Molesey.
The town of Kingston was granted a charter by King John in 1200, but the oldest one to survive is from 1208 and this document is housed in the town's archives. Other charters were issued by later kings, including Edward IV's charter that gave the town the status of a borough in 1481.
The borough covered a much smaller area than the ancient parish, although as new parishes were split off the borough and parish eventually became identical in 1894. The borough was reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, becoming the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames (then spelt with hyphens). It had been known as a Royal borough through custom and the right to the title was confirmed by George V in 1927. Kingston upon Thames has been the seat of Surrey County Council since it moved from Newington in 1893, and remains the seat of the county council to this day, despite not being governed by it.
In 1965 the local government of Greater London was reorganised and the municipal borough was abolished. Its former area was merged with that of the Municipal Borough of Surbiton and the Municipal Borough of Malden and Coombe, to form the London Borough of Kingston upon Thames. At the request of Kingston upon Thames London Borough Council another Royal Charter was granted by Queen Elizabeth II entitling it to continue using the title "Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames" for the new borough.
Kingston was built at the first crossing point of the Thames upstream from London Bridge and a bridge still exists at the same site. It was this 'great bridge' that gave it its early importance in the 13th century. Kingston was occupied by the Romans, and later it was either a royal residence or a royal demesne. There is a record of a council held there in 838, at which Egbert of Wessex, King of Wessex, and his son Ethelwulf of Wessex were present. In the Domesday Book it was held by William the Conqueror. Its domesday assets were: a church, five mills, four fisheries worth 10s, 27 ploughs, of meadow, woodland worth six hogs. It rendered £31 10s (£31.5).
In 1730 the chapel containing the royal effigies collapsed, burying the sexton, who was digging a grave, the sexton's daughter and another person. The daughter survived this accident and was her father's successor as sexton. Kingston sent members to early Parliaments, until a petition by the inhabitants prayed to be relieved from the burden. Another chapel, the collegiate chapel of St Mary Magdalene, The Lovekyn Chapel, still exists. It was founded in 1309 by a former mayor of London, Edward Lovekyn. It is the only private chantry chapel to survive the Reformation.
With the coming of the railway in the 1830s, there was much building development to the south of the town. Much of this became the new town of Surbiton, but the Surbiton Park estate, built in the grounds of Surbiton Place in the 1850s, remained part of Kingston during the period of the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames.
A permanent military presence was established in the borough with the completion of The Barracks in 1875.
Kingston straddles two Parliamentary constituencies: the area north of the railway line is part of Richmond Park, which is represented by Sarah Olney of the Liberal Democrats, and the area south of the railway line (including the ancient town centre) is part of Kingston and Surbiton which is represented by Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats.
Central Kingston is a busy predominantly retail centre, with a small number of commercial offices and civic buildings. The shopping centre includes a shopping mall, "The Bentall Centre", containing the Bentalls department store and large branches of chain stores found in many British high streets. There is a large branch of the John Lewis department store group, with a Waitrose supermarket in the basement. A smaller 1960s shopping centre called Eden Walk exists nearby. The Rotunda, in a former Bentalls furniture depository building (a local landmark), includes a bowling alley, fitness centre, a 15-screen Odeon multiplex cinema and a few restaurants. Recent developments along the riverside south of Kingston Bridge have added bars, restaurants and a theatre, the Rose Theatre which opened in 2008 with Sir Peter Hall as the director.
The ancient market is still held daily in the Market Place, including today such produce as fish, jewellery, exotic foods, local foods and flowers.
Kingston's civic buildings include Kingston Museum, public library, modern Crown Court and smaller county court and the Guildhall by the part-culverted mouth of the Hogsmill River which houses Kingston Council and magistrates' court. A short distance away is the County Hall Building which houses the main offices of Surrey County Council. From 1893 to 1965, before Kingston became one of the 32 London boroughs of Greater London, it was the county town of Surrey following the period of 1791–1893 when Newington had this role. Guildford has officially reclaimed this ancient, now ceremonial title as Kingston is no longer administered by Surrey.
Kingston's main open space is the River Thames, with its lively frontage of bars and restaurants. Downstream there is a walk through Canbury Gardens towards Teddington Lock. Upstream there is a promenade crossing the Hogsmill river and reaching almost to Surbiton. Eagle Brewery Wharf is a council-owned public space located on the riverside. Across Kingston Bridge is a tree lined river bank fronting the expanse of Hampton Court Park.
Kingston has many pubs and restaurants and several public houses in the centre have become restaurants or bars. The more traditional pubs tend to be in the northern part of the town (Canbury) and include The Canbury Arms, Park Tavern, The Wych Elm and Willoughby Arms. Further south are found the Druid's Head, the Spring Grove, The Cricketers, The Albion Tavern, The Duke of Buckingham, and several small local pubs around Fairfield. The Druid's Head is notable as one of the first taverns to make the famous dessert syllabub in the 18th century. There are several Chinese, Indian, Thai and Italian restaurants.
The local newspapers are the weekly paid-for "Surrey Comet", which celebrated its 150th year in 2004, and the free "Kingston Guardian".
In 2010 retail footprint research, Kingston ranked 25th in terms of retail expenditure in the UK at £810 million, equal to Covent Garden and just ahead of Southampton. This puts it as generating the fifth most amount of money from the retail sector in Greater London, passing Croydon, with just four West End alternatives ahead. In 2005, Kingston was 24th with £864 million, and 3rd in London. In a 2015 study by CACI, Kingston was ranked 28th in the UK in the Hot 100 Retail Locations - and the second highest in Greater London after Croydon. In 2018, Kingston was ranked joint 5th in the UK by Knight Frank in the "High Street Investment Ranking", only bettered by Cambridge, Bath, Chichester and Reading.
As of 2011, Kingston upon Thames has the fourth highest retail turnover for comparison goods in Greater London, £432 million annually, only bettered by the West End, Shepherd's Bush and Stratford. As of 2012, Kingston has of total town centre floorspace, the 3rd highest in London.
A notable dramatic arts venue is the Rose Theatre. This theatre opened on 16 January 2008 and seats about 900 people. The audience are arranged around the semi-circular stage. All Saints Church is host to classical choral and music concerts mostly on Saturdays and houses a Frobenius organ. There are a number of choral societies including the Kingston Orpheus Choir and the Kingston Choral Society, an amateur symphony orchestra the Kingston Philharmonia, and the Kingston and District Chamber Music Society. A number of annual festivals are organised by the Council and Kingston Arts Council including Kingston Readers' Festival, Think-in-Kingston and the Festival of the Voice. Kingston University runs the Stanley Picker Gallery and Kingston Museum has a changing gallery on the first floor. A regular singing group at the Rose Theatre caters to schools and families.
John Galsworthy the author was born on Kingston Hill and Jacqueline Wilson grew up, and went to school in Kingston and still lives there today. Both are commemorated at Kingston University – Galsworthy in the newest building and Wilson in the main hall. Also commemorated at the University is photographer Eadweard Muybridge who was born at Kingston and changed the spelling of his first name in reference to the name of the Saxon king on the Coronation Stone. He was a pioneer in the photography of the moving image. R. C. Sherriff the playwright is also associated with Kingston, writing his first play to support Kingston Rowing Club. An earlier writer born in Kingston was John Cleland.
Kingston has been covered in literature, film and television. It is where the comic Victorian novel "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome begins; cannons aimed against the Martians in H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" are positioned on Kingston Hill; in "The Rainbow" by D. H. Lawrence the youngest Brangwen dreams of a job in Kingston upon Thames in a long, lyrical passage; Mr. Knightly in "Emma" by Jane Austen regularly visits Kingston, although the narrative never follows him there.
Fine art is also a prominent feature in the history of Kingston. Both John Hoyland and Jeremy Moon worked from permanent studios in Kingston and many prominent artists and designers have studied at the university including Fiona Banner, John Bratby, David Nash and Jasper Morrison.
Early in his music career, the guitarist and singer-songwriter Eric Clapton spent time busking in Kingston upon Thames, having grown up and studied in the area. Rock band Cardiacs were formed in the town.
Kingston is mentioned (and used as a filming location) in episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus. More recently, a scene from "Mujhse Dosti Karoge", a Bollywood film starring Hrithik Roshan as the leading actor, was filmed by the toppled telephone boxes sculpture in Old London Road. A scene in the television programme "The Good Life" sees Richard Briers get on a 71 bus in 'The Avenue' towards Kingston town centre (albeit this route never served the east side of Surbiton where the series is set). The 1974 Doctor Who story "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" used several locations in the town for filming. The 2008 series of "Primeval", shown on ITV1 in January, featured almost an entire episode filmed inside the Bentall Centre and John Lewis department stores. Kingston featured in "Primeval" again in May 2009 with several scenes shot in and around the Market Place. Nipper, the famous "His Master's Voice" (HMV) dog, is buried in the town under Lloyds Bank. His owners lived nearby in Fife Road.
Kingston Green Fair was held annually from 1987 to 2008 in Canbury Gardens, next to the river, on the Spring Bank Holiday. The word "Green" in the title refers to the ethos of the fair as promoting sustainable development. For instance no meat or other products derived from dead animals were allowed to be sold, and no electricity was permitted on the site unless generated by wind, sun, or bicycle power. Kingston is also home to Crack Comedy Club which opened at The Grey Horse Pub in 2002.
One of the more unusual sights in Kingston is "Out of Order" by David Mach, a sculpture in the form of twelve disused red telephone boxes that have been tipped up to lean against one another in an arrangement resembling dominoes. The work was commissioned in 1988 as part of the landscaping for the new Relief Road, and was described by its creator as "anti-minimalist".
The town is served by two South Western Railway routes advertised from London as to and to , though the second route is a complete loop. There are up to four trains an hour Monday - Saturday during off-peak hours. Three railway stations serve the town on this line from London Waterloo: Kingston, and . Norbiton is east of the town centre near Kingston Hospital, and Hampton Wick is to the west across Kingston Bridge. , Wimbledon and Richmond upon Thames are on the lines.
A primary stop exists on the nearby main (express) line in nearby which has a peak hour non-stopping service to London Waterloo. The town led to the South Western Main Line being in Surbiton as much of Kingston's wealth and status were as a direct consequence of the road and stagecoach network developed as a result of its crossing on the Thames. Local landowners would not consent to the line coming through their land so in 1838 the rail station was built a few miles out at Surbiton, which was known as "Kingston Upon Railway" and led to the development of Surbiton. Kingston recognised the need for a railway, and in the 1860s Kingston opened. However, due to the eastern landowners' resistance, the line had to take a longer route via Richmond upon Thames. Only later did the line receive all the relevant permissions for a closer link, connecting to London Waterloo via .
The A3 road runs from central London towards Kingston before by-passing the town to the east. The "Kingston bypass road" was one of the first arterial roads to be built in Britain. It was originally proposed in 1912 to relieve the pressure of traffic in the town centre, but World War I delayed the start of work until 1924. It was opened by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin on 28 October 1927. Kingston is also served by the A240, the A307 (Portsmouth Road), A308 and A310.
Kingston has a large number of car parks, connected by a one-way system. It is also one of the main centres of the south-west London bus network.
Compared with other outer London boroughs and towns in Surrey, a high proportion of trips are made by bicycle in Kingston. The 2011 census recorded that 2.8% of journeys to work were made by bicycle.
Riverboats run regularly between Kingston and Hampton Court as well as Richmond all during the summer season. There are also direct services to Putney and Westminster from Hampton Court connected by the 10–15-minute interval route 111 to London Heathrow, the destination for X26, an express service also serving the bus station and the Bentall Centre. Local buses, many of which call or terminate at the Cromwell Road or Fairfield bus stations, link the town with nearby residential districts and other towns in neighbouring boroughs.
Kingston is the location of Kingston University and Kingston College. Primary schools in the town include Latchmere School, Fernhill School, King Athelstan School and St Agatha's Catholic Primary School. Kingston also is home to Tiffin School, The Tiffin Girls' School and Kingston Grammar School, all of which have large catchment areas across Greater London and Surrey.
The 12th-century All Saints Church serves the Church of England parish of Kingston which lies ecclesiastically in the Diocese of Southwark, although there has been a church in Kingston since at least 838. The suffragan or Area Bishop of Kingston is the Rt Rev Dr Richard Cheetham. Other Anglican churches in Kingston, of more recent date, are St John the Evangelist and St Luke.
Kingston lies in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark, and there is a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to Saint Agatha.
Kingston is also the home of the Kingston Surbiton & District Synagogue. It also has a Quaker meeting house, a Mosque and a Sikh Gurdwara.
Lady Booth Road, formally Fairfield Road, is named to commemorate the former location of the Salvation Army citadel.
Kingston is the home of four association football clubs, AFC Wimbledon who play at the Kingsmeadow Stadium, Corinthian-Casuals and Kingstonian who play in Tolworth and Chessington & Hook United who play in Chessington. AFC Wimbledon have played in League One since the 2016–17 season, whereas Kingstonian, Corinthian-Casuals and Chessington & Hook United are non-league clubs.
Kingston Athletic Club and Polytechnic Harriers are based at the neighbouring Kingsmeadow athletics stadium. This stadium boasts a 400m track which is floodlit, a gym and 5-a-side football facilities. In the 2013 season the men competed in Division 3 of the British Athletics League. Kingston Rugby Club is based on the outskirts of the town, and Kingston Rowing Club is based on the River Thames. Kingston Regatta takes place on the river at the town in July.
The town has a large leisure centre next to Fairfield named the Kingfisher Centre, which contains an indoor swimming pool and gymnasium. Sport in Kingston is promoted and encouraged by Sport Kingston, an organisation funded by the Royal Borough of Kingston.
Kingston Wildcats School of Basketball is a community basketball development club that practices and plays its home fixtures at Chessington Community College, competing in the Surrey League and Basketball England National League.
The borough was the setting for four cycling events during the 2012 Summer Olympics, the men's road race, women's road race, men's road time trial and women's road time trial. Prior to the opening of the games, Kingston hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay on two occasions with the flame travelling through the borough on 24 July 2012 and aboard the Gloriana in a cauldron on 27 July 2012 en route to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony.
Kingston is south-east of Twickenham, north-east of Walton-on-Thames, and north-west of Sutton.
Kingston upon Thames has been twinned with Oldenburg in Germany since 2010. It also has been historically twinned with the town Delft in the Netherlands.
In 2016, Kingston upon Thames has been twinned with Jaffna in Sri Lanka. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16876 |
Karnataka
Karnataka (ISO: , ) is a state in the south western region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as the State of Mysore, it was renamed "Karnataka" in 1973. The state corresponds to the Carnatic region. The capital and largest city is Bengaluru.
Karnataka is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, Goa to the northwest, Maharashtra to the north, Telangana to the northeast, Andhra Pradesh to the east, Tamil Nadu to the southeast, and Kerala to the south. It is the only southern state to have land borders with all of the other 4 southern Indian sister states. The state covers an area of , or 5.83 percent of the total geographical area of India. It is the sixth largest Indian state by area. With 61,130,704 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Karnataka is the eighth largest state by population, comprising 30 districts. Kannada, one of the classical languages of India, is the most widely spoken and official language of the state. Other minority languages spoken include Urdu, Konkani, Marathi, Tulu, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kodava and Beary. Karnataka also contains some of the only villages in India where Sanskrit is primarily spoken.
The two main river systems of the state are the Krishna and its tributaries, the Bhima, Ghataprabha, Vedavathi, Malaprabha and Tungabhadra in North Karnataka, and the Kaveri and its tributaries, the Hemavati, Shimsha, Arkavati, Lakshmana Thirtha and Kabini, in South Karnataka. Most of these rivers flow out of Karnataka eastward, reaching the sea at the Bay of Bengal. Other prominent rivers such as the Sharavati in Shimoga and Netravati in Dakshina Kannada flow westward, reaching the sea at the Arabian Sea.
Though several etymologies have been suggested for the name Karnataka, the generally accepted one is that "Karnataka" is derived from the Kannada words "karu" and "nādu", meaning "elevated land". "Karu Nadu" may also be read as "karu", meaning "black" and "nadu", meaning "region", as a reference to the black cotton soil found in the Bayalu Seeme region of the state. The British used the word Carnatic, sometimes "Karnatak", to describe both sides of peninsular India, south of the Krishna.
With an antiquity that dates to the paleolithic, Karnataka has been home to some of the most powerful empires of ancient and medieval India. The philosophers and musical bards patronised by these empires launched socio-religious and literary movements which have endured to the present day. Karnataka has contributed significantly to both forms of Indian classical music, the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions.
The economy of Karnataka is the fourth-largest of any Indian state with in gross domestic product and a per capita GDP of . Karnataka has the nineteenth highest ranking among Indian states in Human Development Index.
Karnataka's pre-history goes back to a paleolithic hand-axe culture evidenced by discoveries of, among other things, hand axes and cleavers in the region. Evidence of neolithic and megalithic cultures have also been found in the state. Gold discovered in Harappa was found to be imported from mines in Karnataka, prompting scholars to hypothesise about contacts between ancient Karnataka and the Indus Valley Civilisation ca. 3300 BCE.
Prior to the third century BCE, most of Karnataka formed part of the Nanda Empire before coming under the Mauryan empire of Emperor Ashoka. Four centuries of Satavahana rule followed, allowing them to control large areas of Karnataka. The decline of Satavahana power led to the rise of the earliest native kingdoms, the Kadambas and the Western Gangas, marking the region's emergence as an independent political entity. The Kadamba Dynasty, founded by Mayurasharma, had its capital at Banavasi; the Western Ganga Dynasty was formed with Talakad as its capital.
These were also the first kingdoms to use Kannada in administration, as evidenced by the Halmidi inscription and a fifth-century copper coin discovered at Banavasi. These dynasties were followed by imperial Kannada empires such as the Badami Chalukyas, the Rashtrakuta Empire of Manyakheta and the Western Chalukya Empire, which ruled over large parts of the Deccan and had their capitals in what is now Karnataka. The Western Chalukyas patronised a unique style of architecture and Kannada literature which became a precursor to the Hoysala art of the 12th century. Parts of modern-day Southern Karnataka (Gangavadi) were occupied by the Chola Empire at the turn of the 11th century. The Cholas and the Hoysalas fought over the region in the early 12th century before it eventually came under Hoysala rule.
At the turn of the first millennium, the Hoysalas gained power in the region. Literature flourished during this time, which led to the emergence of distinctive Kannada literary metres, and the construction of temples and sculptures adhering to the Vesara style of architecture. The expansion of the Hoysala Empire brought minor parts of modern Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu under its rule. In the early 14th century, Harihara and Bukka Raya established the Vijayanagara empire with its capital, "Hosapattana" (later named Vijayanagara), on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in the modern Bellary district. The empire rose as a bulwark against Muslim advances into South India, which it completely controlled for over two centuries.
In 1565, Karnataka and the rest of South India experienced a major geopolitical shift when the Vijayanagara empire fell to a confederation of Islamic sultanates in the Battle of Talikota. The Bijapur Sultanate, which had risen after the demise of the Bahmani Sultanate of Bidar, soon took control of the Deccan; it was defeated by the Moghuls in the late 17th century. The Bahmani and Bijapur rulers encouraged Urdu and Persian literature and Indo-Saracenic architecture, the Gol Gumbaz being one of the high points of this style. During the sixteenth century, Konkani Hindus migrated to Karnataka, mostly from Salcette, Goa, while during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Goan Catholics migrated to North Canara and South Canara, especially from Bardes, Goa, as a result of food shortages, epidemics and heavy taxation imposed by the Portuguese.
In the period that followed, parts of northern Karnataka were ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Maratha Empire, the British, and other powers. In the south, the Mysore Kingdom, a former vassal of the Vijayanagara Empire, was briefly independent. With the death of Krishnaraja Wodeyar II, Haidar Ali, the commander-in-chief of the Mysore army, gained control of the region. After his death, the kingdom was inherited by his son Tipu Sultan. To contain European expansion in South India, Haidar Ali and later Tipu Sultan fought four significant Anglo-Mysore Wars, the last of which resulted in Tippu Sultan's death and the incorporation of Mysore into the British Raj in 1799. The Kingdom of Mysore was restored to the Wodeyars and Mysore remained a princely state under the British Raj.
As the "doctrine of lapse" gave way to dissent and resistance from princely states across the country, Kittur Chennamma, Sangolli Rayanna and others spearheaded rebellions in Karnataka in 1830, nearly three decades before the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, Kitturu was taken over by the British East India Company even before the doctrine was officially articulated by Lord Dalhousie in 1848. Other uprisings followed, such as the ones at Supa, Bagalkot, Shorapur, Nargund and Dandeli. These rebellions—which coincided with the Indian Rebellion of 1857—were led by Mundargi Bhimarao, Bhaskar Rao Bhave, the Halagali Bedas, Raja Venkatappa Nayaka and others. By the late 19th century, the independence movement had gained momentum; Karnad Sadashiva Rao, Aluru Venkata Raya, S. Nijalingappa, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, Nittoor Srinivasa Rau and others carried on the struggle into the early 20th century.
After India's independence, the Maharaja, Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar, allowed his kingdom's accession to India. In 1950, Mysore became an Indian state of the same name; the former Maharaja served as its "Rajpramukh" (head of state) until 1975. Following the long-standing demand of the Ekikarana Movement, Kodagu- and Kannada-speaking regions from the adjoining states of Madras, Hyderabad and Bombay were incorporated into the Mysore state, under the States Reorganisation Act of 1956. The thus expanded state was renamed Karnataka, seventeen years later, in 1973. In the early 1900s through the post-independence era, industrial visionaries such as Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya, born in Muddenahalli, Chikballapur district, played an important role in the development of Karnataka's strong manufacturing and industrial base.
The state has three principal geographical zones:
The bulk of the state is in the Bayaluseeme region, the northern part of which is the second-largest arid region in India. The highest point in Karnataka is the Mullayanagiri hills in Chikmagalur district which has an altitude of . Some of the important rivers in Karnataka are Kaveri, Tungabhadra, Krishna, Malaprabha and the Sharavathi. A large number of dams and reservoirs are constructed across these rivers which richly add to the irrigation and hydel power generation capacities of the state.
Karnataka consists of four main types of geological formations – the "Archean complex" made up of Dharwad schists and granitic gneisses, the "Proterozoic" non-fossiliferous sedimentary formations of the Kaladgi and Bhima series, the "Deccan trappean and intertrappean deposits" and the tertiary and recent laterites and alluvial deposits. Significantly, about 60% of the state is composed of the "Archean complex" which consist of gneisses, granites and charnockite rocks. Laterite cappings that are found in many districts over the Deccan Traps were formed after the cessation of volcanic activity in the early tertiary period. Eleven groups of soil orders are found in Karnataka, viz. Entisols, Inceptisols, Mollisols, Spodosols, Alfisols, Ultisols, Oxisols, Aridisols, Vertisols, Andisols and Histosols. Depending on the agricultural capability of the soil, the soil types are divided into six types, "viz." red, lateritic, black, alluvio-colluvial, forest and coastal soils.
About of Karnataka (i.e. 20% of the state's geographic area) is covered by forests. The forests are classified as reserved, protected, unclosed, village and private forests. The percentage of forested area is slightly less than the all-India average of about 23%, and significantly less than the 33% prescribed in the National Forest Policy. Western Ghats of India has of the rarest and unique collections of flora and fauna.
Karnataka experiences four seasons. The winter in January and February is followed by summer between March and May, the monsoon season between June and September and the post-monsoon season from October till December. Meteorologically, Karnataka is divided into three zones – coastal, north interior and south interior. Of these, the coastal zone receives the heaviest rainfall with an average rainfall of about per annum, far in excess of the state average of . Amagaon in Khanapura taluka of Belgaum district received of rainfall in the year 2010. In the year 2014, Kokalli in Sirsi taluka of Uttara Kannada district received of rainfall. Agumbe in Thirthahalli taluka and Hulikal of Hosanagara taluka in Shimoga district were considered the rainiest cities in Karnataka, being one of the wettest regions in the world.
The highest recorded temperature was in Raichuru district. The lowest recorded temperature was at Bidar district.
There are 30 districts in Karnataka. Each district ("zila") is governed by a district commissioner ("ziladar"). The districts are further divided into sub-districts ("talukas"), which are governed by sub-commissioners ("talukdars"); sub-divisions comprise blocks ("tehsils"/"hobli"), which are governed by block development officers ("tehsildars"), which contain village councils ("panchayats"), town municipal councils ("purasabhe"), city municipal councils ("nagarasabhe"), and city municipal corporations ("mahanagara palike").
According to the 2011 census of India, the total population of Karnataka was 61,095,297 of which 30,966,657 (50.7%) were male and 30,128,640 (49.3%) were female, or 1000 males for every 973 females. This represents a 15.60% increase over the population in 2001. The population density was 319 per km2 and 38.67% of the people lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 75.36% with 82.47% of males and 68.08% of females being literate. 84.00% of the population were Hindu, 12.92% were Muslim, 1.87% were Christian, 0.72% were Jains, 0.16% were Buddhist, 0.05% were Sikh and 0.02% were belonging to other religions and 0.27% of the population did not state their religion.
In 2007 the state had a birth rate of 2.2%, a death rate of 0.7%, an infant mortality rate of 5.5% and a maternal mortality rate of 0.2%. The total fertility rate was 2.2.
In the field of speciality health care, Karnataka's private sector competes with the best in the world. Karnataka has also established a modicum of public health services having a better record of health care and child care than most other states of India. In spite of these advances, some parts of the state still leave much to be desired when it comes to primary health care.
Karnataka has a parliamentary system of government with two democratically elected houses, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. The Legislative Assembly consists of 224 members who are elected for five-year terms. The Legislative Council is a permanent body of 75 members with one-third (25 members) retiring every two years.
The government of Karnataka is headed by the Chief Minister who is chosen by the ruling party members of the Legislative Assembly. The Chief Minister, along with the council of ministers, executes the legislative agenda and exercises most of the executive powers. However, the constitutional and formal head of the state is the Governor who is appointed for a five-year term by the President of India on the advice of the Union government. The people of Karnataka also elect 28 members to the "Lok Sabha", the lower house of the Indian Parliament. The members of the state Legislative Assembly elect 12 members to the "Rajya Sabha", the upper house of the Indian Parliament.
For administrative purposes, Karnataka has been divided into four revenue divisions, 49 sub-divisions, 30 districts, 175 "taluks" and 745 "hoblies" / revenue circles. The administration in each district is headed by a Deputy Commissioner who belongs to the Indian Administrative Service and is assisted by a number of officers belonging to Karnataka state services. The Deputy Commissioner of Police, an officer belonging to the Indian Police Service and assisted by the officers of the Karnataka Police Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and related issues in each district. The Deputy Conservator of Forests, an officer belonging to the Indian Forest Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of managing forests, environment and wildlife of the district, he will be assisted by the officers belonging to Karnataka Forest Service and officers belonging to Karnataka Forest Subordinate Service. Sectoral development in the districts is looked after by the district head of each development department such as Public Works Department, Health, Education, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, etc. The judiciary in the state consists of the Karnataka High Court ("Attara Kacheri") in Bangalore, Dharwad, and Gulbarga, district and session courts in each district and lower courts and judges at the "taluk" level.
Politics in Karnataka has been dominated by three political parties, the Indian National Congress, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Politicians from Karnataka have played prominent roles in federal government of India with some of them having held the high positions of Prime Minister and Vice-President. Border disputes involving Karnataka's claim on the Kasaragod and Solapur districts and Maharashtra's claim on Belgaum are ongoing since the states reorganisation.
The official has a "Ganda Berunda" in the centre. Surmounting this are four lions facing the four directions, taken from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath. The emblem also carries two "Sharabhas" with the head of an elephant and the body of a lion.
Karnataka had an estimated GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) of about US$115.86 billion in the 2014–15 fiscal year. The state registered a GSDP growth rate of 7% for the year 2014–2015. Karnataka's contribution to India's GDP in the year 2014–15 was 7.54%. With GDP growth of 17.59% and per capita GDP growth of 16.04%, Karnataka is on the 6th position among all states and union territories. In an employment survey conducted for the year 2013–2014, the unemployment rate in Karnataka was 1.8% compared to the national rate of 4.9%. A BloombergQuint article argues Karnataka to be India's most prosperous state citing many reasons.
In 2011–2012, Karnataka had an estimated poverty ratio of 20.91% compared to the national ratio of 21.92%.
Nearly 56% of the workforce in Karnataka is engaged in agriculture and related activities. A total of 12.31 million hectares of land, or 64.6% of the state's total area, is cultivated. Much of the agricultural output is dependent on the southwest monsoon as only 26.5% of the sown area is irrigated.
Karnataka is the manufacturing hub for some of the largest public sector industries in India, including Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Bharat Earth Movers Limited and HMT (formerly Hindustan Machine Tools), which are based in Bangalore. Many of India's premier science and technology research centres, such as Indian Space Research Organisation, Central Power Research Institute, Bharat Electronics Limited and the Central Food Technological Research Institute, are also headquartered in Karnataka. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited is an oil refinery, located in Mangalore.
The state has also begun to invest heavily in solar power centred on the Pavagada Solar Park. As of December 2017, the state has installed an estimated 2.2 gigawatts of block solar panelling and in January 2018 announced a tender to generate a further 1.2 gigawatts in the coming years: Karnataka Renewable Energy Development suggests that this will be based on 24 separate systems (or 'blocks') generating 50 megawatts each.
Since the 1980s, Karnataka has emerged as the pan-Indian leader in the field of IT (information technology). In 2007, there were nearly 2,000 firms operating in Karnataka. Many of them, including two of India's biggest software firms, Infosys and Wipro, are also headquartered in the state. Exports from these firms exceeded in 2006–07, accounting for nearly 38% of all IT exports from India. The Nandi Hills area in the outskirts of Devanahalli is the site of the upcoming $22 billion, 50 km2 BIAL IT Investment Region, one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of Karnataka. All this has earned the state capital, Bangalore, the sobriquet "Silicon Valley of India".
Karnataka also leads the nation in biotechnology. It is home to India's largest biocluster, with 158 of the country's 320 biotechnology firms being based here. The state accounts for 75% of India's floriculture, an upcoming industry which supplies flowers and ornamental plants worldwide.
Seven of India's banks, Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank, Vijaya Bank, Karnataka Bank, ING Vysya Bank and the State Bank of Mysore originated in this state. The coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada have a branch for every 500 persons—the best distribution of banks in India. In March 2002, Karnataka had 4767 branches of different banks with each branch serving 11,000 persons, which is lower than the national average of 16,000.
A majority of the silk industry in India is headquartered in Karnataka, much of it in Doddaballapura in Bangalore Rural district and the state government intends to invest in a "Silk City" at Muddenahalli in Chikkaballapura district.
Air Transport
Air transport in Karnataka, as in the rest of the country, is still a fledgling but fast expanding sector. Karnataka has airports at Bangalore, Mangalore, Belgaum, Hubli, Hampi, Bellary, Gulbarga, and Mysore with international operations from Bangalore and Mangalore airports.
Rail Transport
Karnataka has a railway network with a total length of approximately . Until the creation of the South-Western Railway Zone headquartered at Hubballi in 2003, the railway network in the state was in the Southern Railway zone, South-Central Railway Zone and Western Railway zone. Several parts of the state now come under the South Western Railway zone with 3 Railway Divisions at Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli, with the remainder under the Southern Railway zone and Konkan Railway Zone, which is considered one of India's biggest railway projects of the century due to the difficult terrain. Bangalore and other cities in the state are well-connected with intrastate and inter-state destinations.
Water Transport
Karnataka has 11 ports, including the New Mangalore Port, a major port and ten minor ports, of which three were operational in 2012. The New Mangalore port was incorporated as the ninth major port in India on 4 May 1974. This port handled 32.04 million tonnes of traffic in the fiscal year 2006–07 with 17.92 million tonnes of imports and 14.12 million tonnes of exports. The port also handled 1015 vessels including 18 cruise vessels during the year 2006–07. Foreigners can enter Mangalore through the New Mangalore Port with the help of Electronic visa (e-visa). Cruise ships from Europe, North America and UAE arrive at New Mangalore Port to visit the tourist places across Coastal Karnataka. The port of Mangalore is among the 4 major ports of India that receive over 25 international cruise ships every year.
Road Transport
The total lengths of National Highways and State Highways in Karnataka are , respectively.
The state transport corporations, transports an average of 2.2 million passengers daily and employs about 25,000 people. The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation(KSRTC) and The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) headquartered in Bangalore, The North Eastern Karnataka Road Transport Corporation(NEKRTC) headquartered in Gulbarga, and The North Western Karnataka Road Transport Corporation(NWKRTC) headquartered in Hubballi are the 4 state-owned transport corporations, which are famous for their best service in the country.
The diverse linguistic and religious ethnicities that are native to Karnataka, combined with their long histories, have contributed immensely to the varied cultural heritage of the state. Apart from Kannadigas, Karnataka is home to Tuluvas, Kodavas and Konkanis. Minor populations of Tibetan Buddhists and tribes like the Soligas, Yeravas, Todas and Siddhis also live in Karnataka. The traditional folk arts cover the entire gamut of music, dance, drama, storytelling by itinerant troupes, etc. "Yakshagana" of Malnad and coastal Karnataka, a classical dance drama, is one of the major theatrical forms of Karnataka. Contemporary theatre culture in Karnataka remains vibrant with organisations like "Ninasam", "Ranga Shankara", "Rangayana" and "Prabhat Kalavidaru" continuing to build on the foundations laid by Gubbi Veeranna, T. P. Kailasam, B. V. Karanth, K V Subbanna, Prasanna and others. "Veeragase", "Kamsale", "Kolata" and "Dollu Kunitha" are popular dance forms. The Mysore style of "Bharatanatya", nurtured and popularised by the likes of the legendary Jatti Tayamma, continues to hold sway in Karnataka, and Bangalore also enjoys an eminent place as one of the foremost centres of "Bharatanatya".
Karnataka also has a special place in the world of Indian classical music, with both Karnataka (Carnatic) and Hindustani styles finding place in the state, and Karnataka has produced a number of stalwarts in both styles. The Haridasa movement of the sixteenth century contributed significantly to the development of Karnataka (Carnatic) music as a performing art form. Purandara Dasa, one of the most revered Haridasas, is known as the "Karnataka Sangeeta Pitamaha" ('Father of Karnataka a.k.a. Carnatic music'). Celebrated Hindustani musicians like Gangubai Hangal, Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi, Basavaraja Rajaguru, Sawai Gandharva and several others hail from Karnataka, and some of them have been recipients of the Kalidas Samman, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan awards. Noted Carnatic musicians include Violin T. Chowdiah, Veena Sheshanna, Mysore Vasudevachar, Doreswamy Iyengar and Thitte Krishna Iyengar.
"Gamaka" is another classical music genre based on Carnatic music that is practised in Karnataka. "Kannada Bhavageete" is a genre of popular music that draws inspiration from the expressionist poetry of modern poets. The Mysore school of painting has produced painters like Sundarayya, Tanjavur Kondayya, B. Venkatappa and Keshavayya. "Chitrakala Parishat" is an organisation in Karnataka dedicated to promoting painting, mainly in the Mysore painting style.
"Saree" is the traditional dress of women in Karnataka. Women in Kodagu have a distinct style of wearing the "saree", different from the rest of Karnataka. "Dhoti", known as "Panche" in Karnataka, is the traditional attire of men. Shirt, Trousers and "Salwar kameez" are widely worn in Urban areas. "Mysore Peta" is the traditional headgear of southern Karnataka, while the "pagadi" or "pataga" (similar to the Rajasthani turban) is preferred in the northern areas of the state.
Rice and "Ragi" form the staple food in South Karnataka, whereas "Jolada rotti", Sorghum is staple to North Karnataka. "Bisi bele bath", "Jolada rotti", "Ragi mudde", "Uppittu", "Benne Dose", "Masala Dose" and "Maddur Vade" are some of the popular food items in Karnataka. Among sweets, "Mysore Pak", "Karadantu" of Gokak and "Amingad", "Belgaavi Kunda" and "Dharwad pedha" are popular. Apart from this, coastal Karnataka and Kodagu have distinctive cuisines of their own. Udupi cuisine of coastal Karnataka is popular all over India.
Adi Shankaracharya (788–820) chose Sringeri in Karnataka to establish the first of his four "mathas" (monastery). Madhvacharya (1238–1317) was the chief proponent of Tattvavada (Philosophy of Reality), popularly known as Dvaita or Dualistic school of Hindu philosophy – one of the three most influential Vedanta philosophies. Madhvacharya was one of the important philosophers during the Bhakti movement. He was a pioneer in many ways, going against standard conventions and norms. According to tradition, Madhvacharya is believed to be the third incarnation of Vayu (Mukhyaprana), after Hanuman and Bhima. The Haridasa devotional movement is considered as one of the turning points in the cultural history of India. Over a span of nearly six centuries, several saints and mystics helped shape the culture, philosophy, and art of South India and Karnataka in particular by exerting considerable spiritual influence over the masses and kingdoms that ruled South India.
This movement was ushered in by the Haridasas (literally "servants of Lord Hari") and took shape in the 13th century – 14th century CE, period, prior to and during the early rule of the Vijayanagara empire. The main objective of this movement was to propagate the Dvaita philosophy of Madhvacharya (Madhva Siddhanta) to the masses through a literary medium known as Dasa Sahitya literature of the servants of the Lord. Purandaradasa is widely recognised as the ""Pithamaha"" of Carnatic Music for his immense contribution. Ramanujacharya, the leading expounder of "Vishishtadvaita", spent many years in Melkote. He came to Karnataka in 1098 AD and lived here until 1122 AD. He first lived in Tondanur and then moved to Melkote where the Cheluvanarayana Swamy Temple and a well-organised "matha" were built. He was patronised by the Hoysala king, Vishnuvardhana.
In the twelfth century, Lingayatism emerged in northern Karnataka as a protest against the rigidity of the prevailing social and caste system. Leading figures of this movement were Basava, Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu, who established the Anubhava Mantapa which was the centre of all religious and philosophical thoughts and discussions pertaining to Lingayats. These three social reformers did so by the literary means of ""Vachana Sahitya"" which is very famous for its simple, straight forward and easily understandable Kannada language. Lingayatism preached women equality by letting women wear "Ishtalinga" i.e. Symbol of god around their neck. Basava shunned the sharp hierarchical divisions that existed and sought to remove all distinctions between the hierarchically superior master class and the subordinate, servile class. He also supported inter-caste marriages and Kaayaka Tatva of Basavanna. This was the basis of the Lingayat faith which today counts millions among its followers.
The Jain philosophy and literature have contributed immensely to the religious and cultural landscape of Karnataka. Islam, which had an early presence on the west coast of India as early as the tenth century, gained a foothold in Karnataka with the rise of the Bahamani and Bijapur sultanates that ruled parts of Karnataka. Christianity reached Karnataka in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese and St. Francis Xavier in 1545.
Buddhism was popular in Karnataka during the first millennium in places such as Gulbarga and Banavasi. A chance discovery of edicts and several Mauryan relics at Sannati in Gulbarga district in 1986 has proven that the Krishna River basin was once home to both Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism. There are Tibetan refugee camps in Karnataka.
Mysore Dasara is celebrated as the "Nada habba" (state festival) and this is marked by major festivities at Mysore. Bangalore Karaga, celebrated in the heart of Bangalore, is the second most important festival celebrated in Karnataka. "Ugadi" (Kannada New Year), Makara Sankranti (the harvest festival), Ganesh Chaturthi, Gowri Habba, Ram Navami, Nagapanchami, Basava Jayanthi, Deepavali, and Balipadyami are the other major festivals of Karnataka.
Kannada is the official language of the state of Karnataka, as the native language of 66.54% of its population as of 2011 and is one of the classical languages of India. Other linguistic minorities in the state were Urdu (10.83%), Telugu (5.84%), Tamil (3.45%), Marathi (3.38%), Hindi (3.3%), Tulu (2.61%), Konkani (1.29%), Malayalam (1.27%) and Kodava Takk (0.18%).
Kannada played a crucial role in the creation of Karnataka: linguistic demographics played a major role in defining the new state in 1956. Tulu, Konkani and Kodava are other minor native languages that share a long history in the state. Urdu is spoken widely by the Muslim population. Less widely spoken languages include Beary bashe and certain languages such as Sankethi. Some of the regional languages in Karnataka are Tulu, Kodava, Konkani and Beary.
Kannada features a rich and ancient body of literature including religious and secular genre, covering topics as diverse as Jainism (such as "Puranas"), Lingayatism (such as Vachanas), Vaishnavism (such as "Haridasa Sahitya") and modern literature. Evidence from edicts during the time of Ashoka (reigned 274–232 BCE) suggest that Buddhist literature influenced the Kannada script and its literature. The Halmidi inscription, the earliest attested full-length inscription in the Kannada language and script, dates from 450 CE, while the earliest available literary work, the "Kavirajamarga", has been dated to 850 CE. References made in the "Kavirajamarga", however, prove that Kannada literature flourished in the native composition metres such as "Chattana", "Beddande" and "Melvadu" during earlier centuries. The classic refers to several earlier greats ("purvacharyar") of Kannada poetry and prose.
Kuvempu, the renowned Kannada poet and writer who wrote Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, the state anthem of Karnataka
was the first recipient of the "Karnataka Ratna" award, the highest civilian award bestowed by the Government of Karnataka. Contemporary Kannada literature has received considerable acknowledgement in the arena of Indian literature, with eight Kannada writers winning India's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith award.
Tulu is spoken mainly in the coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada. "Tulu Mahabharato", written by Arunabja in the Tigalari script, is the oldest surviving Tulu text. Tigalari script was used by Brahmins to write Sanskrit language. The use of the Kannada script for writing Tulu and non-availability of print in Tigalari script contributed to the marginalisation of Tigalari script. Konkani is mostly spoken in the Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts and in parts of Udupi, Konkani use the Kannada script for writing. The Kodavas who mainly reside in the Kodagu district, speak Kodava Takk. Two regional variations of the language exist, the northern "Mendale Takka" and the southern "Kiggaati Takka". Kodava Takk use the Kannada script for writing. English is the medium of education in many schools and widely used for business communication in most private companies.
All of the state's languages are patronised and promoted by governmental and quasi-governmental bodies. The "Kannada Sahitya Parishat" and the "Kannada Sahitya Akademi" are responsible for the promotion of Kannada while the "Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Akademi", the "Tulu Sahitya Akademi" and the "Kodava Sahitya Akademi" promote their respective languages.
As per the 2011 census, Karnataka had a literacy rate of 75.36%, with 82.47% of males and 68.08% of females in the state being literate. In 2001, the literacy rate of the state were 67.04%, with 76.29% of males and 57.45% of females being literate. The state is home to some of the premier educational and research institutions of India such as the Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology - Dharwad the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences - Bangalore, the National Institute of Technology Karnataka - Surathkal and the National Law School of India University - Bangalore.
In March 2006, Karnataka had 54,529 primary schools with 252,875 teachers and 8.495 million students, and 9498 secondary schools with 92,287 teachers and 1.384 million students. There are three kinds of schools in the state, viz., government-run, private aided (financial aid is provided by the government) and private unaided (no financial aid is provided). The primary languages of instruction in most schools are Kannada and English.
The syllabus taught in the schools is either of KSEEB(SSLC) and Pre-University Couse(PUC) of the State Syllabus, the CBSE of the Central Syllabus, CISCE , IGCSE, IB, NIOS, etc., are all defined by the Department of Public Instruction of the Government of Karnataka. The state has two Sainik Schools – Kodagu Sainik School in Kodagu and Vijayapura Sainik School in Vijayapura.
To maximise attendance in schools, the Karnataka Government has launched a mid-day meal scheme in government and aided schools in which free lunch is provided to the students.
Statewide board examinations are conducted at the end of secondary education. Students who qualify are allowed to pursue a two-year pre-university course, after which they become eligible to pursue under-graduate degrees.
There are 481-degree colleges affiliated with one of the universities in the state, viz. Bangalore University, Gulbarga University, Karnatak University, Kuvempu University, Mangalore University and Mysore University. In 1998, the engineering colleges in the state were brought under the newly formed Visvesvaraya Technological University headquartered in Belagavi, whereas the medical colleges are run under the jurisdiction of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences headquaetered in Bangalore. Some of these baccalaureate colleges are accredited with the status of a deemed university. There are 186 engineering, 39 medical and 41 dental colleges in the state. Udupi, Sringeri, Gokarna and Melkote are well-known places of Sanskrit and Vedic learning. In 2015 the Central Government decided to establish the first Indian Institute of Technology in Karnataka at Dharwad. Tulu and Konkani languages are taught as an optional subject in the twin districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi.
Christ University, Jain University, CMR University, Dayananda Sagar University, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, PES University, and REVA University are famous private universities in Karnataka.
The era of Kannada newspapers started in the year 1843 when Hermann Mögling, a missionary from Basel Mission, published the first Kannada newspaper called "Mangaluru Samachara" in Mangalore. The first Kannada periodical, "Mysuru Vrittanta Bodhini" was started by Bhashyam Bhashyacharya in Mysore. Shortly after Indian independence in 1948, K. N. Guruswamy founded "The Printers (Mysuru) Private Limited" and began publishing two newspapers, "Deccan Herald" and "Prajavani". Presently "The Times of India" and "Vijaya Karnataka" are the largest-selling English and Kannada newspapers respectively. A vast number of weekly, biweekly and monthly magazines are under publication in both Kannada and English. "Udayavani", "Kannadaprabha", "Samyukta Karnataka", "VarthaBharathi", "Sanjevani", "Eesanje", "Hosa digantha", "Karavali Ale" are also some popular dailies published from Karnataka.
Doordarshan is the broadcaster of the Government of India and its channel DD Chandana is dedicated to Kannada. Prominent Kannada channels include Colors Kannada, Zee Kannada and Udaya TV.
Karnataka occupies a special place in the history of Indian radio. In 1935, "Aakashvani", the first private radio station in India, was started by Prof. M.V. Gopalaswamy in Mysore. The popular radio station was taken over by the local municipality and later by All India Radio (AIR) and moved to Bangalore in 1955. Later in 1957, AIR adopted the original name of the radio station, "Aakashavani" as its own. Some of the popular programs aired by AIR Bangalore included "Nisarga Sampada" and "Sasya Sanjeevini" which were programs that taught science through songs, plays, and stories. These two programs became so popular that they were translated and broadcast in 18 different languages and the entire series was recorded on cassettes by the Government of Karnataka and distributed to thousands of schools across the state. Karnataka has witnessed a growth in FM radio channels, mainly in the cities of Bangalore, Mangalore and Mysore, which has become hugely popular.
Karnataka's smallest district, Kodagu, is a major contributor to Indian field hockey, producing numerous players who have represented India at the international level. The annual Kodava Hockey Festival is the largest hockey tournament in the world. Bangalore has hosted a WTA tennis event and, in 1997, it hosted the fourth National Games of India. The Sports Authority of India, the premier sports institute in the country, and the Nike Tennis Academy are also situated in Bangalore. Karnataka has been referred to as the cradle of Indian swimming because of its high standards in comparison to other states.
One of the most popular sports in Karnataka is cricket. The state cricket team has won the Ranji Trophy seven times, second only to Mumbai in terms of success. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore regularly hosts international matches and is also the home of the National Cricket Academy, which was opened in 2000 to nurture potential international players. Many cricketers have represented India and in one international match held in the 1990s; players from Karnataka composed the majority of the national team. The Royal Challengers Bangalore, an Indian Premier League franchise, the Bengaluru Football Club, an Indian Super League franchise, the Bengaluru Yodhas, a Pro Wrestling League franchise, the Bengaluru Blasters, a Premier Badminton League franchise and the Bengaluru Bulls, a Pro Kabaddi League franchise are based in Bangalore. The Karnataka Premier League is an inter-regional Twenty20 cricket tournament played in the state.
Notable sportsmen from Karnataka include B.S. Chandrasekhar, E. A. S. Prasanna, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid, Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Uthappa, Vinay Kumar, Gundappa Vishwanath, Syed Kirmani, Stuart Binny, K. L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Manish Pandey, Karun Nair, Ashwini Ponnappa, Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna, Prakash Padukone who won the All England Badminton Championships in 1980 and Pankaj Advani who has won three world titles in cue sports by the age of 20 including the amateur World Snooker Championship in 2003 and the World Billiards Championship in 2005.
Bijapur district has produced some of the best-known road cyclists in the national circuit. Premalata Sureban was part of the Indian contingent at the Perlis Open '99 in Malaysia. In recognition of the talent of cyclists in the district, the state government laid down a cycling track at the B.R. Ambedkar Stadium at a cost of .
Sports like "kho kho", "kabaddi", "Chinni Daandu" and "goli" (marbles) are played mostly in Karnataka's rural areas.
Karnataka has a rich diversity of flora and fauna. It has a recorded forest area of which constitutes 20.19% of the total geographical area of the state. These forests support 25% of the elephant and 10% of the tiger population of India. Many regions of Karnataka are as yet unexplored, so new species of flora and fauna are found periodically. The Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot, includes the western region of Karnataka. Two sub-clusters in the Western Ghats, viz. Talacauvery and Kudremukh, both in Karnataka, are on the tentative list of World Heritage Sites of UNESCO. The Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks, which fall outside these subclusters, were included in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in 1986, a UNESCO designation. The Indian roller and the Indian elephant are recognised as the state bird and animal while sandalwood and the lotus are recognised as the state tree and flower respectively. Karnataka has five national parks: Anshi, Bandipur, Bannerghatta, Kudremukh and Nagarhole. It also has 27 wildlife sanctuaries of which seven are bird sanctuaries.
Wild animals that are found in Karnataka include the elephant, the tiger, the leopard, the gaur, the sambar deer, the chital or spotted deer, the muntjac, the bonnet macaque, the slender loris, the common palm civet, the small Indian civet, the sloth bear, the dhole, the striped hyena, the Bengal fox and the golden jackal. Some of the birds found here are the great hornbill, the Malabar pied hornbill, the Ceylon frogmouth, herons, ducks, kites, eagles, falcons, quails, partridges, lapwings, sandpipers, pigeons, doves, parakeets, cuckoos, owls, nightjars, swifts, kingfishers, bee-eaters and munias. Some species of trees found in Karnataka are "Callophyllum tomentosa", "Callophyllum wightianum", "Garcina cambogia", "Garcina morealla", "Alstonia scholaris", "", "Artocarpus hirsutus", "Artocarpus lacoocha", "Cinnamomum zeylanicum", "Grewia tilaefolia", "Santalum album", "Shorea talura", "Emblica officinalis", "Vitex altissima" and "Wrightia tinctoria". Wildlife in Karnataka is threatened by poaching, habitat destruction, human-wildlife conflict and pollution.
By virtue of its varied geography and long history, Karnataka hosts numerous spots of interest for tourists. There is an array of ancient sculptured temples, modern cities, scenic hill ranges, forests and beaches. Karnataka has been ranked as the fourth most popular destination for tourism among the states of India. Karnataka has the second highest number of nationally protected monuments in India, second only to Uttar Pradesh, in addition to 752 monuments protected by the State Directorate of Archaeology and Museums. Another 25,000 monuments are yet to receive protection.
The districts of the Western Ghats and the southern districts of the state have popular eco-tourism locations including Kudremukh, Madikeri and Agumbe. Karnataka has 25 wildlife sanctuaries and five national parks. Popular among them are Bandipura National Park, Bannerghatta National Park and Nagarhole National Park. The ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi and the monuments of Pattadakal are on the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. The cave temples at Badami and the rock-cut temples at Aihole representing the Badami Chalukyan style of architecture are also popular tourist destinations. The Hoysala temples at Beluru and Halebidu, which were built with Chloritic schist (soapstone) are proposed UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Gol Gumbaz and Ibrahim Rauza are famous examples of the Deccan Sultanate style of architecture. The monolith of Gomateshwara Bahubali at Shravanabelagola is the tallest sculpted monolith in the world, attracting tens of thousands of pilgrims during the Mahamastakabhisheka festival.
The waterfalls of Karnataka and Kudremukh are considered by some to be among the "1001 Natural Wonders of the World". Jog Falls is India's tallest single-tiered waterfall with Gokak Falls, Unchalli Falls, Magod Falls, Abbey Falls and Shivanasamudra Falls among other popular waterfalls.
Several popular beaches dot the coastline, including Murudeshwara, Gokarna, Malpe and Karwar. In addition, Karnataka is home to several places of religious importance. Several Hindu temples including the famous Udupi Sri Krishna Matha, the Marikamba Temple at Sirsi, the Kollur Mookambika Temple, the Sri Manjunatha Temple at Dharmasthala, Kukke Subramanya Temple, Janardhana and Mahakali Temple at Ambalpadi, Sharadamba Temple at Shringeri attract pilgrims from all over India. Most of the holy sites of Lingayatism, like Kudalasangama and Basavana Bagewadi, are found in northern parts of the state. Shravanabelagola, Mudabidri and Karkala are famous for Jain history and monuments. Jainism had a stronghold in Karnataka in the early medieval period with Shravanabelagola as its most important centre. The Shettihalli Rosary Church near Shettihalli, an example of French colonial Gothic architecture, is a rare example of a Christian ruin, is a popular tourist site.
Recently Karnataka has emerged as a center of health care tourism. Karnataka has the highest number of approved health systems and alternative therapies in India. Along with some ISO certified government-owned hospitals, private institutions which provide international-quality services have caused the health care industry to grow by 30% during 2004–05. Hospitals in Karnataka treat around 8,000 health tourists every year. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16880 |
Kashrut
Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus, ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jews are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, ), from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term "kashér" (), meaning "fit" (in this context: "fit for consumption").
Although the details of the laws of "kashrut" are numerous and complex, they rest on a few basic principles:
Every food that is considered kosher is also categorized as follows:
While any produce that grows from the earth, such as fruits, grains, vegetables and mushrooms, are always permissible, laws regarding the status of certain agricultural produce, especially that grown in the Land of Israel, such as tithes and produce of the Sabbatical year, impact their permissibility for consumption.
Most of the basic laws of "kashrut" are derived from the Torah's books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Their details and practical application, however, are set down in the oral law (eventually codified in the Mishnah and Talmud) and elaborated on in the later rabbinical literature. Although the Torah does not state the rationale for most "kashrut" laws, some suggest that they are only tests of obedience, while others have suggested philosophical, practical and hygienic reasons.
Over the past century, many kashrut certification agencies have started to certify products, manufacturers and restaurants as kosher, usually authorizing the use of a proprietary symbol called a "hechsher" on products or issuing a certificate, also called a "hechsher", to be displayed by the food establishment, which indicates that they are in compliance with the kosher laws.
Jewish philosophy divides the 613 commandments (or "mitzvot") into three groups—laws that have a rational explanation and would probably be enacted by most orderly societies ("mishpatim"), laws that are understood after being explained but would not be legislated without the Torah's command ("eidot"), and laws that do not have a rational explanation ("chukim"). Some Jewish scholars say that "kashrut" should be categorized as laws for which there is no particular explanation since the human mind is not always capable of understanding divine intentions. In this line of thinking, the dietary laws were given as a demonstration of God's authority, and man must obey without asking why. However, Maimonides believed that Jews were permitted to seek out reasons for the laws of the Torah.
Some theologians have said that the laws of "kashrut" are symbolic in character: Kosher animals represent virtues, while non-kosher animals represent vices. The 1st-century BCE Letter of Aristeas argues that the laws "have been given ... to awake pious thoughts and to form the character". This view reappears in the work of the 19th century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
The Torah prohibits "seething the kid (goat, sheep, calf) in its mother's milk". While the Bible does not provide a reason, it has been suggested that the practice was perceived as cruel and insensitive.
Hasidic Judaism believes that everyday life is imbued with channels connecting with Divinity, the "activation" of which it sees as helping the Divine Presence to be drawn into the physical world; Hasidism argues that the food laws are related to the way such channels, termed "sparks of holiness", interact with various animals. These "sparks of Holiness" are released whenever a Jew manipulates any object for a "holy reason" (which includes eating); however, not all animal products are capable of releasing their "sparks of holiness". The Hasidic argument is that animals are imbued with signs that reveal the release of these sparks, and the signs are expressed in the biblical categorization of ritually "clean" and ritually "unclean".
According to Christian theologian Gordon J. Wenham, the purpose of "kashrut" was to help Jews maintain a distinct and separate existence from other peoples; he says that the effect of the laws was to prevent socialization and intermarriage with non-Jews, preventing Jewish identity from being diluted. Wenham argued that since the impact of the food laws was a public affair, this would have enhanced Jewish attachment to them as a reminder of their distinct status as Jews.
There have been attempts to provide empirical support for the view that Jewish food laws have an overarching health benefit or purpose. One of the earliest is that of Maimonides in "The Guide for the Perplexed". In 1953, David Macht, an Orthodox Jew and proponent of the theory of biblical scientific foresight, conducted toxicity experiments on many kinds of animals and fish. His experiment involved lupin seedlings being supplied with extracts from the meat of various animals; Macht reported that in 100% of cases, extracts from ritually "unclean" meat inhibited the seedling's growth more than that from ritually "clean" meats. At the same time, these explanations are controversial. Scholar Lester L. Grabbe, writing in the "Oxford Bible Commentary" on Leviticus, says "[a]n explanation now almost universally rejected is that the laws in this section have hygiene as their basis. Although some of the laws of ritual purity roughly correspond to modern ideas of physical cleanliness, many of them have little to do with hygiene. For example, there is no evidence that the 'unclean' animals are intrinsically bad to eat or to be avoided in a Mediterranean climate, as is sometimes asserted."
The laws of "kashrut" can be classified according to the origin of the prohibition (Biblical or rabbinical) and whether the prohibition concerns the food itself or a mixture of foods.
Biblically prohibited foods include:
Biblically prohibited mixtures include:
Rabbinically prohibited foods include:
Only meat from particular species is permissible. Mammals that "both" chew their cud (ruminate) and have cloven hooves can be kosher. Animals with one characteristic but not the other (the camel, the hyrax, and the hare because they have no cloven hooves, and the pig because it does not ruminate) are specifically excluded. In 2008, a rabbinical ruling determined that giraffes and their milk are eligible to be considered kosher. The giraffe has both split hooves and chews its cud, characteristics of animals considered kosher. Findings from 2008 show that giraffe milk curdles, meeting kosher standards. Although kosher, the giraffe is not slaughtered today because the process would be very costly. Giraffes are difficult to restrain, and their use for food could cause the species to become endangered.
Non-kosher birds are listed outright but the exact "zoological" references are disputed and some references refer to families of birds (24 are mentioned). The Mishnah refers to four signs provided by the sages. First, a "dores" (predatory bird) is not kosher. Additionally, kosher birds possess three physical characteristics: an extra toe in the back (which does not join the other toes in supporting the leg), a "zefek" (crop), and a "korkoban" (gizzard) with a peelable lumen. However, individual Jews are barred from merely applying these regulations alone; an established tradition ("masorah") is necessary to allow birds to be consumed, even if it can be substantiated that they meet all four criteria. The only exception to this is the turkey. There was a time when certain authorities considered the signs sufficient, so Jews started eating this bird without a "masorah" because it possesses all the signs ("simanim") in Hebrew.
Fish must have fins and scales to be kosher. Shellfish and other non-fish water fauna are not kosher. (See kosher species of fish.) Insects are not kosher, except for certain species of kosher locust. Generally, any animal that eats other animals, whether they kill their food or eat carrion, is not kosher, as well as any animal that has been partially eaten by other animals.
Meat and milk (or derivatives) may not be mixed in the sense that meat and dairy products are not served at the same meal, served or cooked in the same utensils, or stored together. Observant Jews have separate sets of dishes, and sometimes different kitchens, for meat and milk, and wait anywhere between one and six hours after eating meat before consuming milk products. The "milchig" and "fleishig" (lit. "milky" and "meaty") utensils and dishes are the commonly referred to Yiddish delineations between dairy and meat ones, respectively.
Mammals and fowl must be slaughtered by a trained individual (a "shochet") using a special method of slaughter, "shechita". Among other features, "shechita" slaughter severs the jugular vein, carotid artery, esophagus, and trachea in a single continuous cutting movement with an unserrated, sharp knife. Failure of any of these criteria renders the meat of the animal unsuitable. The body of the slaughtered animal must be checked after slaughter to confirm that the animal had no medical condition or defect that would have caused it to die of its own accord within a year, which would make the meat unsuitable. These conditions ("treifot") include 70 different categories of injuries, diseases, and abnormalities whose presence renders the animal non-kosher. It is forbidden to consume certain parts of the animal, such as certain fats ("chelev") and the sciatic nerves from the legs, the process of excision being done by experts before the meat is sold. As much blood as possible must be removed through the "kashering" process; this is usually done through soaking and salting the meat, but the liver, as it is rich in blood, is grilled over an open flame. Fish (and kosher locusts, for those who follow the traditions permitting them) must be killed before being eaten, but no particular method has been specified in Jewish law. Legal aspects of ritual slaughter are governed not only by Jewish law but civil law as well.
When an animal is ritually slaughtered ("shechted") the raw meat is traditionally cut, rinsed and salted, prior to cooking. Salting of raw meat draws out the blood that lodges on the inner surface of the meat. Salting is made with any coarse grain of salt, while the meat is laid over a grating or colander to allow for drainage, and where the salt is allowed to remain on the meat for the duration of time that it takes to walk one biblical mile (approx. 18–24 minutes). Afterwards, the residue of salt is rinsed away with water, and the meat cooked. Meat that is roasted requires no prior salting, as fire acts as a natural purgatory of blood.
"Turei Zahav" ("Taz"), a 17th-century commentary on the Shulchan Arukh, ruled that the pieces of meat can be "very thick" when salting. The Yemenite Jewish practice, however, follows Saadiah Gaon, who required that the meat not be larger than half a "rotal" (i.e. ca. 216 grams) when salting. This allows the effects of the salt to penetrate. Some Orthodox Jewish communities require the additional stricture of submersing raw meat in boiling water prior to cooking it, a practice known as "ḥaliṭah" (), “blanching.” This was believed to constrict the blood lodged within the meat, to prevent it from oozing out when the meat was eaten. The raw meat is left in the pot of boiling water for as long as it takes for the meat to whiten on its outer layer. If someone wanted to use the water for soup after making "ḥaliṭah" in the same pot, he could simply scoop out the film, froth and scum that surface in the boiling water. "Ḥaliṭah" is not required when roasting meat over a fire, as the fire constricts the blood.
Utensils used for non-kosher foods become non-kosher, and make even otherwise kosher food prepared with them non-kosher. Some such utensils, depending on the material they are made from, can be made suitable for preparing kosher food again by immersion in boiling water or by the application of a blowtorch.Food prepared in a manner that violates the "Shabbat" (Sabbath) may not be eaten; although in certain instances it is permitted after the Shabbat is over.
Passover has stricter dietary rules, the most important of which is the prohibition on eating leavened bread or derivatives of this, which are known as "chametz". This prohibition is derived from Exodus 12:15. Utensils used in preparing and serving "chametz" are also forbidden on Passover unless they have been ritually cleansed ("kashered"). Observant Jews often keep separate sets of meat and dairy utensils for Passover use only. In addition, some groups follow various eating restrictions on Passover that go beyond the rules of "kashrut", such as not eating "kitniyot", "gebrochts" or garlic.
Biblical rules also control the use of agriculture produce, for example, with respect to their tithing, or when it is permitted to eat them or to harvest them, and what must be done to make them suitable for human consumption. For produce grown in the Land of Israel a modified version of the biblical tithes must be applied, including "Terumat HaMaaser", "Maaser Rishon", "Maaser Sheni", and "Maasar Ani" (untithed produce is called "tevel"); the fruit of the first three years of a tree's growth or replanting are forbidden for eating or any other use as "orlah"; produce grown in the Land of Israel on the seventh year obtains "k'dushat shvi'it", and unless managed carefully is forbidden as a violation of the "Shmita" (Sabbatical Year). Some rules of "kashrut" are subject to different rabbinical opinions. For example, many hold that the rule against eating "chadash" (new grain) before the 16th of the month Nisan does not apply outside the Land of Israel.
Many vegetarian restaurants and producers of vegetarian foods acquire a "hechsher", certifying that a Rabbinical organization has approved their products as being kosher. The "hechsher" usually certifies that certain vegetables have been checked for insect infestation and steps have been taken to ensure that cooked food meets the requirements of "bishul Yisrael". Vegetables such as spinach and cauliflower must be checked for insect infestation. The proper procedure for inspecting and cleaning varies by species, growing conditions, and views of individual rabbis.
A "pareve" food is one which is neither meat nor dairy. Fish fall into this category, as well as any food that is not animal-derived. Eggs are also considered "pareve" despite being an animal product.
Some processes convert a meat- or dairy-derived product into a "pareve" one. For example, rennet is sometimes made from stomach linings, yet is acceptable for making kosher cheese. Gelatins derived from kosher animal sources (which were ritually slaughtered) are also "pareve". Other gelatin-like products from non-animal sources such as agar agar and carrageenan are "pareve" by nature. Fish gelatin, like all kosher fish products, is "pareve".
Jewish law generally requires that bread be kept "parve" (i.e., not kneaded with meat or dairy products nor made on meat or dairy equipment).
"Kashrut" has procedures by which equipment can be cleaned of its previous non-kosher or meat/dairy use, but those may be inadequate for vegetarians, those with allergies, or adherents to other religious statutes. For example, dairy manufacturing equipment can be cleaned well enough that the rabbis grant "pareve" status to products manufactured with it but someone with a strong allergic sensitivity to dairy products might still react to the dairy residue. That is why some products that are legitimately "pareve" carry "milk" warnings.
If smoked, under normal circumstances there is no reason cannabis (marijuana) would not be kosher, although some rabbis apply this only to medical cannabis, not recreational usage. However, this is excepting that smoking it typically involves lighting a spark, so it would not be appropriate for example after sundown on Shabbat. If cannabis is "eaten", as cannabis edibles are, on the other hand, the issue is not as clear cut, as there may be small insects inside which are not kosher. For the observant it is recommended to only use brands that are certified as kosher. For cannabis grown in Israel, the plants must observe "shmittah", but this does not apply to cannabis from elsewhere.
Though it is not a food product, some tobacco receives a year-long Kosher certification. This year long certification means that the tobacco is certified also for Passover where different restrictions may be in place. Tobacco may, for example, come into contact with some "chametz" grains that are strictly forbidden during Passover and the certification is a guarantee that it is free from this type of contamination. In Israel this certification is given by a private kashrut rabbinic group Beit Yosef, but the Chief Rabbinate has objected to granting of any certification by rabbis because of health risks from tobacco.
With the advent of genetic engineering, a whole new type of food has been brought into the world, and scholars in both academia and Judaic faith have differing viewpoints on whether these new strains of foods are to be considered kosher or not. The first genetically modified animal approved by the FDA for human consumption is the AquAdvantage salmon and, while salmon is normally an acceptably kosher food, this modified organism has a gene from a non-kosher organism.
In 2015, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly released a document regarding genetically modified organisms, stating that modification of gene sequences via the introduction of foreign DNA in order to convey a specific capability in the new organism is allowable, that entirely new species should not be intentionally created, and that the health implications of genetically modified foods must be considered on an individual basis.
Some put forth that this intermixing of species is against the teachings of the Talmud and thus against Jewish Law and non-kosher. Others argue that the one in sixty parts law of "kashrut" is of significance, and that the foreign gene accounts for the less than 1/60 of the animal and thus the modified salmon is kosher.
Certain foods must be prepared in whole or in part by Jews. This includes grape wine, certain cooked foods ("bishul akum"), cheese ("g'vinat akum"), and according to some also butter ("chem'at akum"), dairy products (Hebrew: חלב ישראל chalav Yisrael "milk of Israel"), and bread (Pas Yisroel).
Although reading the label of food products can identify obviously non-kosher ingredients, some countries allow manufacturers to omit identification of certain ingredients. Such "hidden" ingredients may include lubricants and flavorings, among other additives; in some cases, for instance, the use of "natural" flavorings, these ingredients are more likely to be derived from non-kosher substances. Furthermore, certain products, such as fish, have a high rate of mislabeling, which may result in a non-kosher fish being sold in a package labeled as a species of kosher fish.
Producers of foods and food additives can contact Jewish religious authorities to have their products certified as "kosher": this involves a visit to the manufacturing facilities by an individual rabbi or a committee from a rabbinic organization, who will inspect the production methods and contents and, if everything is sufficiently "kosher" a certificate would be issued.
Manufacturers sometimes identify the products that have received such certification by adding particular graphical symbols to the label. These symbols are known in Judaism as "hechsherim". Due to differences in "kashrut" standards held by different organizations, the "hechsheirim" of certain Jewish authorities may at times be considered invalid by other Jewish authorities. The certification marks of the various rabbis and organisations are too numerous to list, but one of the most commonly used in the United States of America is that of the Union of Orthodox Congregations, who use a "U" inside a circle ("O-U"), symbolising the initials of "Orthodox Union". In Britain, a commonly used symbol is the "KLBD" logo of the London Beth Din. A single "K" is sometimes used as a symbol for "kosher", but since many countries do not allow letters to be trademarked (the method by which other symbols are protected from misuse), it only indicates that the company producing the product claims that it is kosher.
Many of the certification symbols are accompanied by additional letters or words to indicate the category of the product, according to Jewish law; the categorisation may conflict with legal classifications, especially in the case of food that Jewish law regards as "dairy", but legal classification does not.
In many cases constant supervision is required because, for various reasons such as changes in manufacturing processes, products that once were kosher may cease to be so. For example, a kosher lubricating oil may be replaced by one containing tallow, which many rabbinic authorities view as non-kosher. Such changes are often coordinated with the supervising rabbi or supervising organization to ensure that new packaging does not suggest any "hechsher" or "kashrut". In some cases, however, existing stocks of pre-printed labels with the "hechsher" may continue to be used on the now non-kosher product. An active grapevine among the Jewish community discusses which products are now questionable, as well as products which have become kosher but whose labels have yet to carry the "hechsher". Some newspapers and periodicals also discuss "kashrut" products.
Products labeled kosher-style are non-kosher products that have characteristics of kosher foods, such as all-beef hot dogs, or are flavored or prepared in a manner consistent with Ashkenazi practices, like dill pickles. The designation usually refers to delicatessen items.
Food producers often look to expand their markets or marketing potential, and offering kosher food has become a way to do that. The uniqueness of kosher food was advertised as early as 1849. In 1911 Procter & Gamble became the first company to advertise one of their products, Crisco, as kosher. Over the next two decades, companies such as Lender's Bagels, Maxwell House, Manischewitz, and Empire evolved and gave the kosher market more shelf-space. In the 1960s, Hebrew National hotdogs launched a "we answer to a higher authority" campaign to appeal to Jews and non-Jews alike. From that point on, "kosher" became a symbol for both quality and value. The kosher market quickly expanded, and with it more opportunities for kosher products. Menachem Lubinsky, founder of the Kosherfest trade fair, estimates as many as kosher consumers and in sales of kosher products in the U.S.A.
In 2014 the Israeli Defense Forces decided to allow female kosher supervisors to work in its kitchens on military bases, and the first women kosher inspectors were certified in Israel.
Advertising standards laws in many jurisdictions prohibit the use of the phrase "kosher" in a product's labeling unless the producer can show that the product conforms to Jewish dietary laws; however, different jurisdictions often define the legal qualifications for conforming to Jewish dietary laws differently. For example, in some places the law may require that a rabbi certify the "kashrut" nature, in others the rules of "kosher" are fully defined in law, and in others still it is sufficient that the manufacturer only believes that the product complies with Jewish dietary regulations. In several cases, laws restricting the use of the term "kosher" have later been determined to be illegal religious interference.
In the United States, the cost of certification for mass-produced items is typically minuscule and is usually more than offset by the advantages of being certified. In 1975 "The New York Times" estimated the cost per item for obtaining kosher certification at 6.5 millionths of a cent ($0.000000065) per item for a General Foods frozen-food item. According to a 2005 report by Burns & McDonnell, most U.S. national certifying agencies are non-profit, only charging for supervision and on-site work, for which the on-site supervisor "typically makes less per visit than an auto mechanic does per hour". However, re-engineering an existing manufacturing process can be costly. Certification usually leads to increased revenues by opening up additional markets to Jews who keep kosher, Muslims who keep halal, Seventh-day Adventists who keep the main laws of Kosher Diet, vegetarians, and the lactose-intolerant who wish to avoid dairy products (products that are reliably certified as "pareve" meet this criterion). According to the Orthodox Union, one of the largest "kashrut" organizations in the United States, "when positioned next to a competing non-kosher brand, a kosher product will do better by 20%".
In some European communities there is a special tax imposed on the purchase of kosher meat to help support the community's educational institutions. In 2009 delegates at a meeting of the Rabbinical Council of Europe broadly agreed that the tax that supports the rabbinate, "mikvo’os" and other communal facilities should be reduced. "While the supermarket Tesco sells a whole chicken for £2, its kosher counterpart of similar weight costs five to six times more."
Many Jews partially observe "kashrut," by abstaining from pork or shellfish or by not drinking milk with meat dishes. Some keep kosher at home but eat in non-kosher restaurants. In 2012, one analysis of the specialty food market in North America estimated that only 15% of kosher consumers were Jewish. Kosher meat is regularly consumed by Muslims when halal is not available. Muslims, Hindus, and people with allergies to dairy foods often consider the "kosher-pareve" designation as an assurance that a food contains no animal-derived ingredients, including milk and all of its derivatives. However, since "kosher-pareve" foods may contain honey, eggs, or fish, vegans cannot rely on the certification.
About a sixth of American Jews or 0.3% of the American population fully keep kosher, and many more of them do not strictly follow all of the rules but still abstain from some prohibited foods (especially pork). The Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Christian denomination, preaches a health message which expects adherence to the kosher dietary laws.
A 2013 survey found that 22% of American Jews claimed to keep kosher in their homes.
In Ancient Hebrew the word "kosher" () means "be advantageous", "proper", "suitable", or "succeed", according to the Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. In Modern Hebrew it generally refers to "kashrut" but it can also sometimes mean "proper". For example, the Babylonian Talmud uses "kosher" in the sense of "virtuous" when referring to Darius I as a "kosher king"; Darius, a Persian king (reigned 522–486 BCE), fostered the building of the Second Temple. In colloquial English, "kosher" often means "legitimate", "acceptable", "permissible", "genuine", or "authentic".
The word "kosher" can form part of some common product names. Sometimes it is used as an abbreviation of "koshering", meaning the process for making something "kosher"; for example, "kosher salt" is a form of salt with irregularly shaped crystals, making it particularly suitable for preparing meat according to the rules of "kashrut", because the increased surface area of the crystals absorbs blood more effectively. At other times "kosher" can occur as a synonym for "Jewish tradition"; for example, a "kosher dill" pickle is simply a pickle made in the traditional manner of Jewish New York City pickle-makers, using a generous addition of garlic to the brine, and is not necessarily compliant with the traditional Jewish food laws.
Although the term "kosher" is mainly used in relation to food, it is sometimes used in other areas. Some Orthodox retailers sell kosher cell phones, which are stripped-down devices with limited features. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16881 |
KLM
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, legally "Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V." (literal translation: Royal Aviation Company, Inc.), is the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands. KLM is headquartered in Amstelveen, with its hub at nearby Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. It is part of the Air France–KLM group and a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance. Founded in 1919, KLM is the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name and had 35,488 employees and a fleet of 119 (excluding subsidiaries) . KLM operates scheduled passenger and cargo services to 145 destinations.
In 1919, a young aviator lieutenant named Albert Plesman sponsored the ELTA aviation exhibition in Amsterdam. The exhibition was a great success; after it closed several Dutch commercial interests intended to establish a Dutch airline, which Plesman was nominated to head. In September 1919, Queen Wilhelmina awarded the yet-to-be-founded KLM its "Royal" (""Koninklijke"") predicate. On 7 October 1919, eight Dutch businessmen, including Frits Fentener van Vlissingen, founded KLM as one of the first commercial airline companies. Plesman became its first administrator and director.
The first KLM flight took place on 17 May 1920. KLM's first pilot, Jerry Shaw, flew from Croydon Airport, London, to Amsterdam. The flight was flown using a leased Aircraft Transport and Travel De Haviland DH-16, registration G-EALU, which was carrying two British journalists and some newspapers. In 1920, KLM carried 440 passengers and 22 tons of freight. In April 1921, after a winter hiatus, KLM resumed its services using its pilots, and Fokker F.II and Fokker F.III aircraft. In 1921, KLM started scheduled services.
KLM's first intercontinental flight took off on 1 October 1924. The final destination was Jakarta (then called 'Batavia'), Java, in the Dutch East Indies; the flight used a Fokker F.VII with registration H-NACC and was piloted by Van der Hoop. In September 1929, regular scheduled services between Amsterdam and Batavia commenced. Until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, this was the world's longest-distance scheduled service by airplane. By 1926, it was offering flights to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, Bremen, Copenhagen, and Malmö, using primarily Fokker F.II and Fokker F.III aircraft.
In 1930, KLM carried 15,143 passengers. The Douglas DC-2 was introduced on the Batavia service in 1934. The first experimental transatlantic KLM flight was between Amsterdam and Curaçao in December 1934 using the Fokker F.XVIII "Snip". The first of the airline's Douglas DC-3 aircraft were delivered in 1936; these replaced the DC-2s on the service via Batavia to Sydney. KLM was the first airline to serve Manchester's new Ringway airport, starting June 1938. KLM was the only civilian airline to receive the Douglas DC-5; the airline used two of them in the West Indies and sold two to the East Indies government, and is thus the only airline to have operated all Douglas 'DC' models other than the DC-1.
When Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, several KLM aircraft—mostly DC-3s and a few DC-2s—were en route to or from the Far East, or were operating services in Europe. Five DC-3s and one DC-2 were taken to Britain. During the war, these aircraft and crew members flew scheduled passenger flights between Bristol and Lisbon under BOAC registration.
The Douglas DC-3 PH-ALI "Ibis", then registered as G-AGBB, was attacked by the Luftwaffe on 15 November 1942, 19 April 1943, and finally on 1 June 1943 as BOAC Flight 777, killing all passengers and crew. Some KLM aircraft and their crews ended up in the Australia-Dutch East Indies region, where they helped transport refugees from Japanese aggression in that area.
Although operations paused in Europe, KLM continued to fly and expand in the Caribbean.
Also during the second world war a KLM flight carrying eight passengers, four crew and a 2020 value of 15 million dollars in diamonds was shot down by Japanese fighters returning from the Attack on Broome approximately 1,000 miles north of Perth in Western Australia. The pilot managed to dive to evade the fighters and crash land on the beach but three passengers and one crewman were killed. After six days and suffering other attacks by strafing Japanese pilots they were rescued. The diamonds may have been heisted by a survivor or civilian happening upon the wreck soon after.
After the end of the Second World War in August 1945, KLM immediately started to rebuild its network. Since the Dutch East Indies were in a state of revolt, Plesman's priority was to re-establish KLM's route to Batavia. This service was reinstated by the end of 1945. Domestic and European flights resumed in September 1945, initially with a fleet of Douglas DC-3s and Douglas DC-4s. On 21 May 1946, KLM was the first continental European airline to start scheduled transatlantic flights between Amsterdam and New York City using Douglas DC-4 aircraft. By 1948, KLM had reconstructed its network and services to Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean resumed.
Long-range, pressurized Lockheed Constellations and Douglas DC-6s joined KLM's fleet in the late 1940s; the Convair 240 short-range pressurized twin-engined airliner began European flights for the company in late 1948.
During the immediate post-war period, the Dutch government expressed interest in gaining a majority stake in KLM, thus nationalizing it. Plesman wanted KLM to remain a private company under private control; he allowed the Dutch government to acquire a minority stake in the airline. In 1950, KLM carried 356,069 passengers. The expansion of the network continued in the 1950s with the addition of several destinations in western North America. KLM's fleet expanded with the addition of new versions of the Lockheed Constellation and Lockheed Electra, of which KLM was the first European airline to fly.
On 31 December 1953, the founder and president of KLM, Albert Plesman, died at the age of 64. He was succeeded as president by Fons Aler. After Plesman's death, the company and other airlines entered a difficult economic period. The conversion to jet aircraft placed a further financial burden on KLM. The Netherlands government increased its ownership of the company to two-thirds, thus nationalizing it. The board of directors remained under the control of private shareholders.
On 25 July 1957, the airline introduced its flight simulator for the Douglas DC-7C – the last KLM aircraft with piston engines – which opened the transpolar route from Amsterdam via Anchorage to Tokyo on 1 November 1958. Each crew flying the transpolar route over the Arctic was equipped with a winter survival kit, including a 7.62 mm selective-fire AR-10 carbine for use against polar bears, in the event the plane was forced down onto the polar ice.
The four-engine turboprop Vickers Viscount 800 was introduced on European routes in 1957. Beginning in September 1959, KLM introduced the four-engine turboprop Lockheed L-188 Electra onto some of its European and Middle Eastern routes. In March 1960, the airline introduced the first Douglas DC-8 jet into its fleet. In 1961, KLM reported its first year of losses. In 1961, the airline's president Fons Aler was succeeded by Ernst van der Beugel. This change of leadership, however, did not lead to a reversal of KLM's financial difficulties. Van der Beugel resigned as president in 1963 due to health reasons. Horatius Albarda was appointed to succeed Ernst van der Beugel as president of KLM in 1963. Alberda initiated a reorganization of the company, which led to the reduction of staff and air services. In 1965, Alberda died in an air crash and was succeeded as president by Dr. Gerrit van der Wal. Van der Wal forged an agreement with the Dutch government that KLM would be once again run as a private company. By 1966, the stake of the Dutch government in KLM was reduced to a minority stake of 49.5%. In 1966, KLM introduced the Douglas DC-9 on European and Middle East routes.
The new terminal buildings at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol opened in April 1967, and in 1968 the stretched Douglas DC-8-63 ("Super DC-8") entered service. With 244 seats, it was the largest airliner at the time. KLM was the first airline to put the higher-gross-weight Boeing 747-200B, powered by Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines, into service in February 1971; this began the airline's use of widebody jets. In March 1971, KLM opened its current headquarters in Amstelveen. In 1972, it purchased the first of several McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft—McDonnell Douglas's response to Boeing's 747.
In 1973, Sergio Orlandini was appointed to succeed Gerrit van der Wal as president of KLM. At the time, KLM, as well as other airlines, had to deal with overcapacity. Orlandini proposed to convert KLM 747s to "combis" that could carry a combination of passengers and freight in a mixed configuration on the main deck of the aircraft. In November 1975, the first of these seven Boeing 747-200B Combi aircraft were added to the KLM fleet. The airline previously operated DC-8 passenger and freight combi aircraft as well and currently operates Boeing 747-400 combi aircraft.
The 1973 oil crisis, which caused difficult economic conditions, led KLM to seek government assistance in arranging debt refinancing. The airline issued additional shares of stock to the government in return for its money. In the late 1970s, the government's stake had again increased to a majority of 78%, re-nationalizing it. The company management remained under the control of private stakeholders.
In 1980, KLM carried 9,715,069 passengers. In 1983, it reached an agreement with Boeing to convert ten of its Boeing 747-200 aircraft (Three 747-200Bs and Seven 747-200Ms) into Boeing 747-300s with the stretched-upper-deck modification. The work started in 1984 at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, and finished in 1986. The converted aircraft were called Boeing 747-200SUD or 747-300, which the airline operated in addition to three newly built Boeing 747-300s manufactured from the ground up. In 1983, KLM took delivery of the first of ten Airbus A310 passenger jets. Sergio Orlandini retired in 1987 and was succeeded as president of KLM by Jan de Soet. In 1986, the Dutch government's shareholding in KLM was reduced to 54.8 percent. It was expected that this share would be further reduced during the decade. The Boeing 747-400 was introduced into KLM's fleet in June 1989.
With the liberalization of the European market, KLM started developing its hub at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by feeding its network with traffic from affiliated airlines. As part of its development of a worldwide network, KLM acquired a 20% stake in Northwest Airlines in July 1989. In 1990, KLM carried 16,000,000 passengers. KLM president Jan de Soet retired at the end of 1990 and was succeeded in 1991 by Pieter Bouw. In December 1991, KLM was the first European airline to introduce a frequent flyer loyalty program, which was called "Flying Dutchman".
In January 1993, the United States Department of Transportation granted KLM and Northwest Airlines anti-trust immunity, which allowed them to intensify their partnership. As of September 1993, the airlines operated their flights between the United States and Europe as part of a joint venture. In March 1994, KLM and Northwest Airlines introduced World Business Class on intercontinental routes. KLM's stake in Northwest Airlines was increased to 25% in 1994.
KLM introduced the Boeing 767-300ER in July 1995. In January 1996, KLM acquired a 26% share in Kenya Airways, the flag-carrier airline of Kenya. In 1997, Pieter Bouw resigned as president of KLM and was succeeded by Leo van Wijk. In August 1998, KLM repurchased all regular shares from the Dutch government to make KLM a private company. On 1 November 1999, KLM founded AirCares, a communication and fundraising platform supporting worthy causes and focusing on underprivileged children.
KLM renewed its intercontinental fleets by replacing the Boeing 767s, Boeing 747-300s, and eventually, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11s with Boeing 777-200ERs and Airbus A330-200s. Some 747s were withdrawn from service first. The MD-11s remained in service until October 2014. The first Boeing 777 was received on 25 October 2003, while the first Airbus A330-200 was introduced on 25 August 2005.
On 30 September 2003, Air France and KLM agreed to a merger plan in which Air France and KLM would become subsidiaries of a holding company called Air France–KLM. Both airlines would retain their own brands; both Charles de Gaulle Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol would become key hubs. In February 2004, the European Commission and United States Department of Justice approved the proposed merger of the airlines. In April 2004, an exchange offer in which KLM shareholders exchanged their KLM shares for Air France shares took place. Since 5 May 2004, Air France–KLM has been listed on the Euronext exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. In September 2004, the merger was completed by creation of the Air France–KLM holding company. The merger resulted in the world's largest airline group and should have led to an estimated annual cost-saving of between €400 million and €500 million.
It did not appear that KLM's longstanding joint venture with Northwest Airlines—which merged with Delta Air Lines in 2008—was affected by the merger with Air France. KLM and Northwest joined the SkyTeam alliance in September 2004. Also in 2004, senior management came under fire for providing itself with controversial bonuses after the merger with Air France, while 4,500 jobs were lost at KLM. After external pressure, management gave up on these bonuses.
In March 2007, KLM started to use the Amadeus reservation system, along with partner Kenya Airways. After 10 years as president of the airline, Leo van Wijk resigned from his position and was succeeded by Peter Hartman.
Beginning in September 2010, KLM integrated the passenger division of Martinair into KLM, transferring all personnel and routes. By November 2011, Martinair consisted of only the cargo and maintenance division. In March 2011, KLM and InselAir reached an agreement for mutual cooperation on InselAir destinations, thus expanding its passenger services. Beginning 27 March 2011, KLM passengers could fly to all InselAir destinations through InselAir's hubs in Curaçao and Sint Maarten. This cooperation was extended to a codeshare agreement in 2012. In early 2018, the cooperation with Inselair was terminated, including any interlining agreements, after Inselair found itself in financial difficulties which forced the airline to sell off part of its fleet and cancel some of its routes.
On 20 February 2013, KLM announced that Peter Hartman would resign as president and CEO of KLM on 1 July 2013. He was succeeded by Camiel Eurlings. Hartman remained employed by the company until he retired on 1 January 2014. On 15 October 2014, KLM announced that Eurlings, in joint consultation with the supervisory board, had decided to immediately resign as president and CEO. As of this date, he was succeeded by Pieter Elbers. KLM received the award for "Best Airline Staff Service" in Europe at the World Airline Awards 2013. This award represents the rating for an airline's performance across both airport staff and cabin staff combined. It is the second consecutive year that KLM won this award; in 2012 it was awarded with this title as well. On 19 June 2012, KLM made the first transatlantic flight fueled partly by sustainable biofuels to Rio de Janeiro. This was the longest distance any aircraft had flown on biofuels.
In 2019, KLM celebrated its centennial, as it was founded in 1919. Since it is the oldest airline still operating under its original name, it was the first airline to achieve this feat.
Key business and operating results of KLM are shown below (as at year ending 31 December):
, KLM's corporate leader is its president and chief executive officer (CEO) Pieter Elbers, who replaced Camiel Eurlings suddenly on 15 October 2014. The president and CEO is part of the larger Executive Committee, which manages KLM and consists of the statutory managing directors and executive vice-presidents of KLM's business units that are represented in the Executive Committee. The supervision and management of KLM are structured in accordance with the "two-tier model"; the Board of Managing Directors is supervised by a separate and independent Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board also supervises the general performance of KLM. The Board of Managing Directors is formed by the four Managing Directors, including the CEO. Nine Supervisory Directors compose the Supervisory Board.
KLM's head office is located in Amstelveen, on a site near Schiphol Airport. The airline's current headquarters was built between 1968 and 1970. Before the opening of the new headquarters, the airline's head office was on the property of Schiphol Airport in Haarlemmermeer.
Companies in which KLM has a stake include:
Subsidiaries, associates, and joint ventures of KLM in the past include:
KLM also worked closely with ALM Antillean Airlines in the Caribbean in order to provide air service for the Dutch controlled islands in the region with KLM aircraft such as the Douglas DC-8 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 being operated by KLM flight crews on behalf of ALM.
KLM Asia () is a wholly KLM-owned subsidiary registered in Taiwan. The airline was established in 1995 to operate flights to Taipei without compromising the traffic rights held by KLM for destinations in the People's Republic of China.
The livery of KLM Asia uses the same color scheme and livery of the original KLM but the only notable difference is that it lacks Dutch national symbols, such as the flag of the Netherlands and KLM's stylised Dutch Crown logo. Instead, it features a special KLM Asia logo.
This division of the airline's fleet consists, as of March 2020, of seven Boeing 777-200ER and two Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. KLM Asia initially operated the Amsterdam-Bangkok-Taipei route with a B747-400 Combi or a B747-400 non-combi aircraft. Since March 2012, it has operated the revised Amsterdam-Taipei-Manila route with Boeing 777-200ER/-300ER aircraft. Some aircraft are already painted in the revised KLM Asia livery of 2014.
KLM Asia aircraft are also occasionally used to service other destinations in the wider KLM network.
Dirk Roosenburg designed the KLM logo at its establishment in 1919; he intertwined the letter K, L, and M, and gave them wings and a crown. The crown was depicted to denote KLM's royal status, which was granted at KLM's establishment. The logo became known as the "vinklogo" in reference to the common chaffinch. The KLM logo was largely redesigned in 1961 by F.H.K. Henrion. The crown, redesigned using a line, four blue circles and a cross, was retained. In 1991, the logo was further revised by Chris Ludlow of Henrion, Ludlow & Schmidt. In addition to its main logo, KLM displays its alliance status in its branding, including "Worldwide Reliability" with Northwest Airlines (1993–2002) and the SkyTeam alliance (2004–present).
KLM has utilized several major liveries since its founding, with numerous variations on each. Initially, many aircraft featured a bare-metal fuselage with a stripe above the windows bearing the phrase "The Flying Dutchman". The rudder was divided into three segments and painted to match the Dutch flag. Later aircraft types sometimes bore a white upper fuselage, and additional detail striping and titling. In the mid-1950s, the livery was changed to feature a split cheatline in two shades of blue on a white upper fuselage and angled blue stripes on the vertical stabilizer. The tail stripes were later enlarged and made horizontal, and the then-new crown logo was placed in a white circle. The final major variation of this livery saw the vertical stabilizer painted completely white with the crown logo in the center. All versions of this livery had small "KLM Royal Dutch Airlines" titles, first in red, and later in blue.
Since 1971, the KLM livery has primarily featured a bright blue fuselage, with variations on the striping and details. Originally a wide, dark blue cheatline covered the windows and was separated from the light grey lower fuselage by a thin white stripe. The KLM logo was placed centrally on the white tail and the front of the fuselage. In December 2002, KLM introduced an updated livery in which the white strip was removed and the dark-blue cheatline was significantly narrowed. The bright blue colour was retained and now covers most of the fuselage. The KLM logo was placed more centrally on the fuselage while its position on the tail and the tail design remained the same. In 2014, KLM modified its livery with a swooping cheatline that wraps around the entire forward fuselage. The livery was first introduced on Embraer 190s.
In April 2010, KLM introduced new uniforms for its female cabin attendants, ground attendants and pilots at KLM and KLM Cityhopper. The new uniform was designed by Dutch couturier Mart Visser. It retains the KLM blue colour that was introduced in 1971 and adds a touch of orange—the national colour of the Netherlands.
KLM has used several slogans for marketing throughout its operational history:
KLM has an extensive presence on social media platforms and also runs a blog. Customers can make inquiries through these channels. The airline also uses these networks to inform customers of KLM news, marketing campaigns and promotions.
The airline's use of social media platforms to reach customers peaked when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010, causing widespread disruption to air traffic. Customers used the social networks to contact the airline, which used them to provide information about the situation. Following the increased use of social media, KLM created a centralized, public social media website named the Social Media Hub in October 2010.
KLM has developed several services based on these social platforms, including:
In June 2013, KLM launched its own 3D strategy game "Aviation Empire" for iOS and Android platforms. The game allows users to experience airline management. Players manage KLM from its establishment until the present; they can by investing in a fleet, build a network with international destinations and develop airports. The game combines the digital world with the real world by enabling the unlocking of airports by GPS check-ins.
KLM started KLM AirCares, a program that aids underprivileged children in developing countries to which KLM flies, in 1999. The airline collects money and airmiles from passengers. In 2012, new applications for support from the program were suspended because it needed an overhaul.
KLM and its partners serve 133 destinations in 70 countries on five continents from their hub at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Codeshare agreements bring the total amount of destinations available via KLM to 826.
KLM has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
KLM's first of 8 Boeing 787-10 aircraft was delivered on 28 June 2019; it featured 100th anniversary markings.
On 19 June 2013, KLM had ordered 7 Airbus A350-900s. In June 2019, Air France–KLM announced that KLM will not take up any of the group's ordered A350s, because of fleet rationalization purposes.
CEO Ben Smith has announced at Air France's Investor Day (5 November 2019) in Paris that "in the near future" KLM will only use the 777 and 787 as their long-haul fleet, retiring their 13 A330's. This move will make KLM an all-Boeing airline.
KLM has several aircraft painted in special liveries; they include:
KLM has three cabin classes for international long-haul routes; World Business Class, Economy Comfort and Economy. Personal screens with audio-video on-demand, satellite telephone, SMS, and e-mail services are available in all cabins on all long-haul aircraft. European short-haul and medium-haul flights have Economy seats in the rear cabin, and Economy Comfort and Europe Business in the forward cabin.
World Business Class is KLM's long-haul business class product. Seats in the older World Business Class are wide and have a pitch. Seats can be reclined into a 170-degree angled flat bed with a length of . Seats are equipped with a personal entertainment system with audio and video on demand in the armrest, privacy canopy, massage function and laptop power ports. World Business Class seating is in a 2–2–2 abreast arrangement on all Airbus A330s.
In March 2013, KLM introduced a new World Business Class seat to the long-haul fleet. Dutch designer Hella Jongerius designed the new cabin. The diamond-type seat is manufactured by B/E Aerospace and is currently installed on all Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s. The seats were also refurbished on former KLM Boeing 747-400s between 2013 and 2014. The new seats are fully flat and offer -high definition personal entertainment systems. When fully flat, the bed is about long. The cabin features a cradle-to-cradle carpet made from old uniforms woven in an intricate pattern, which is combined with new pillows and curtains with a similar design.
A completely new design of Business Class seat was introduced with the launch of KLM's Boeing 787; this aircraft's business class seats are based on the Zodiac Cirrus platform used by Air France. The new seats lie fully flat, with a 1-2-1 layout so every passenger has direct aisle access, a large side-storage area and HD video screen. Dutch design group Viktor & Rolf has designed and provides amenity kits to World Business Class passengers. A new design will be introduced each year and the color of the kits will change every six months. The kit contains socks, eye mask, toothbrush, toothpaste, earplugs and Viktor & Rolf lip balm.
Europe Business Class is KLM's and KLM Cityhopper's short-haul business-class. Europe Business Class seats are wide and have an average pitch of . Middle seats in rows of three are blocked to increase passengers' personal space. Europe Business Class seats feature extra legroom and recline further than regular Economy Class seats. In-seat power is available on all Boeing 737 aircraft. Europe Business Class has no personal entertainment. Seating is arranged 3–3 abreast with the middle seat blocked on the Boeing 737 aircraft, and a 2–2 abreast arrangement on the Embraer 190 aircraft.
Economy Comfort is the premium economy class offered on all KLM and KLM Cityhopper flights. Economy Comfort seats on long-haul flights have more pitch than Economy Class, a pitch and recline up to ; double the recline of Economy. Economy Comfort seats on short-haul flights have more pitch, totaling , and can recline up to (40%) further. Except for the increased pitch and recline, seating and service in Economy Comfort is the same as in Economy Class. Economy Comfort is located in a separate cabin before the Economy Class; passengers can exit the aircraft before Economy passengers.
Economy Comfort seats can be reserved by Economy Class passengers. The service is free for passengers with a full-fare ticket, for Flying Blue Platinum members and Delta Air Lines SkyMiles Platinum or Diamond members. Discounts apply for Flying Blue Silver or Gold members, SkyTeam Elite Plus members and Delta SkyMiles members.
The Economy Class seats on long-haul flights have a pitch and are wide. All seats are equipped with adjustable winged headrests, a PTV with AVOD, and a personal handset satellite telephone that can be used with a credit card. Economy Class seats in Airbus A330-300 aircraft are also equipped with in-seat power. The Economy Class seats on short-haul flights have a pitch and are wide. The Economy Class seats on short-haul flights do not feature any personal entertainment. The long-haul Economy Class seating is in a 3–4–3 abreast arrangement on the Boeing 747-400, Boeing 777-300ER aircraft and on Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, a 3-3-3 abreast arrangement on the Boeing 787-9 aircraft, and a 2–4–2 abreast arrangement on the Airbus A330 aircraft. The short-haul Economy Class seating is in a 3–3 abreast arrangement on the Boeing 737 aircraft and a 2–2 abreast arrangement on the Embraer 175 and 190 aircraft, and the seats on these aircraft are wide.
KLM's in-flight entertainment system is available in all classes on all widebody aircraft; it provides all passengers with Audio/Video on Demand (AVOD). The system includes interactive entertainment including movies, television programs, music, games, and language courses. About 80 movies including recent releases, classics and world cinema are available in several languages. The selection is changed every month. The in-flight entertainment system can be used to send SMS text messages and emails to the ground. Panasonic's 3000i system is installed on all Boeing 747-400, Boeing 777-200ER, and on most of the Airbus A330-200 aircraft. All Airbus A330-300 and Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, and some Airbus A330-200 aircraft are fitted with the Panasonic eX2 in-flight entertainment system.
KLM provides a selection of international newspapers to its passengers on long-haul flights; on short-haul flights they are only offered to Europe Business Class passengers. A selection of international magazines is available for World Business Class passengers on long-haul flights. All passengers are provided with KLM's in-flight magazine, the "Holland Herald." On board flights to China, South Korea and Japan, the airline offers in-flight magazines "EuroSky" (China and Japan), in either Chinese or Japanese, and "Wings of Europe" (South Korea) in Korean. On 29 May 2013, KLM and Air France launched a pilot scheme to test in-flight Wi-Fi internet access. Each airline equipped one Boeing 777-300ER in its fleet with Wi-Fi, which passengers can use with their Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Wireless service was available after the aircraft reached in altitude.
World Business Class passengers are served a three-course meal. Each year KLM partners with a leading Dutch chef to develop the dishes that are served on board. Passengers in Europe Business Class are served either a cold meal, a hot main course, or a three-course meal depending on the duration of the flight. All chicken served in World and Europe Business Class meets the standards of the Dutch Beter Leven Keurmerk (Better Life Quality Mark). KLM partnered with Dutch designer Marcel Wanders to design the tableware of World and European Business Class.
Economy Class passengers on long-haul flights are served a hot meal and a snack, and second hot meal or breakfast, depending on the duration of the flight. On short-haul flights, passengers are served sandwiches or a choice of sweet or savoury snack, depending on the duration and time of the day. If the flight is at least two hours long, "stroopwafel" cookies are served before the descent. Most alcoholic beverages are free-of-charge for all passengers. After a successful trial period, KLM introduced à la carte meals in Economy Class on 14 September 2011; Dutch, Japanese, Italian, cold delicacies, and Indonesian meals are offered.
Special meals, include children's, vegetarian, medical, and religious meals, can be requested in each class up to 24 or 36 hours before departure. On flights to India, China, South Korea, and Japan, KLM offers authentic Asian meals in all classes. Meals served on KLM flights departing from Amsterdam are provided by KLM Catering Services.
In September 2016, KLM launched the world's first in-flight draft beer under the partnership with Heineken. The new service made its premiere aboard a flight to Curaçao in the airline's World Business Class cabin.
Since the 1950s, KLM has presented its World Business Class passengers with a Delft blue miniature traditional Dutch house. These miniatures are reproductions of real Dutch houses and are filled with Dutch genever. Initially the houses were filled with Bols liqueur, which in 1986 was changed to Bols young genever.
In 1952, KLM started to give the houses to its First Class passengers. With the elimination of First Class in 1993, the houses were handed out to all Business Class passengers. The impetus for these houses was a rule aimed at curtailing a previously widespread practise of offering incentives to passengers by limiting the value of gifts given by airlines to 0.75 US cents. KLM did not bill the Delft Blue houses as a gift, but as a last drink on the house, which was served in the house.
Every year, a new house is presented on 7 October, the anniversary of KLM's founding in 1919. The number on the last-presented house thus represents the number of years KLM has been in operation. Special edition houses—the Dutch Royal Palace and the 17th century Cheese Weighing House "De Waag" in Gouda—are offered to special guests, such as VIPs and honeymoon couples.
KLM offers various check-in methods to its passengers, who can check in for their flights at self-service check-in kiosks at the airport, via the Internet, or a mobile telephone or tablet. At destinations where these facilities are not available, check-in is by an airline representative at the counter. Electronic boarding passes can be received on a mobile device while boarding passes can be printed at airport kiosks.
Since 4 July 2008 KLM, in cooperation with Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, has been offering self-service baggage drop-off to its passengers. The project started with a trial that included one drop-off point. The number of these points has gradually increased; there are 12 of them. KLM passengers can now drop off their bags themselves. Before they are allowed to do that they are being checked by a KLM employee.
In November 2012, KLM started a pilot scheme at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to test self-service boarding. Passengers boarded the aircraft without any interference of a gate agent by scanning their boarding passes, which opened a gate. KLM partner airline Air France ran the same pilot at its hub at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The pilot ran until March 2013, which was followed by an evaluation.
KLM is the first airline to offer self-service transfer kiosks on its European and intercontinental routes for passengers connecting through Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The kiosks enable connecting passengers to view flight details of connecting flights, to change seat assignments or upgrade to a more comfortable seat. When a passenger misses a connecting flight, details about alternative flights can be viewed on the kiosk and a new boarding pass can be printed. Passengers who are entitled to coupons for a beverage, meal, the use of a telephone, or a travel discount can have these printed at the kiosk.
KLM has bus services for customers living in certain cities without flights from KLM, transporting them to airports where they may board KLM flights. It operates buses from Nijmegen railway station and Arnhem Central Station in the Netherlands to Amsterdam Schiphol, and from Ottawa Railway Station to Montreal Dorval Airport in Canada. In addition KLM has codeshares with Thalys and SNCF services so passengers from various French cities may travel to Charles de Gaulle Airport and passengers from Belgium may go to Schiphol (from Antwerp) or Charles de Gaulle (from Brussels).
Air France-KLM's frequent flyer program, Flying Blue, awards miles based on the distance traveled, ticket fare and class of service. Other airlines that adopted the Flying Blue programme include Air Europa, Garuda Indonesia, Kenya Airways, Aircalin, and TAROM. Miles can also be earned from all other SkyTeam partners. Membership in the program is free. Two types of miles can be earned within the Flying Blue program; Award Miles and Level Miles. Award Miles can be exchanged for rewards and expire after 20 months without flying. Level Miles are used to determine membership level and remain valid until 31 December of each year.
Award Miles can be earned on Flying Blue partner airlines including Air Corsica, Airlinair, Bangkok Airways, Chalair Aviation, Comair, Copa Airlines, Gol Transportes Aéreos, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, TAAG Angola, Twin Jet, and Ukraine International Airlines, as well as SkyTeam partners. Award Miles are redeemable for free tickets, upgrades to a more expensive seating class, extra baggage allowance, and lounge access. They can also be donated to charity through KLM AirCares, or can be spent in the Flying Blue Store.
The Flying Blue programme is divided into four tiers; Explorer, Silver (SkyTeam Elite), Gold (SkyTeam Elite Plus) and Platinum (SkyTeam Elite Plus). Then, you have the special tiers, such as Platinum For Life, ultimate platinum, ultimate platinum skipper, club2000 skipper (for those who did something special for KLM, cannot be requested but will be distributed by KLM). The membership tier depends on the number of Level Miles earned and is recalculated each calendar year. Flying Blue privileges are additive by membership tier; higher tiers include all benefits listed for prior tiers. There is an additional fifth tier, Platinum for Life, which can be obtained after 10 consecutive years of Platinum membership. After the Platinum for Life status is obtained, re-qualification is not required. Level Miles can be earned with Air France, KLM, Air Europa, Kenya Airways, TAROM, and other SkyTeam partners. Qualification levels and general benefits with SkyTeam airline partners of the Flying Blue tiers are:
Flight Bundle
KLM offers customers a prepaid flight subscription program called Flight Bundle, which it operates in conjunction with USA based Optiontown Inc.
With KLM Flight Bundle, passengers can select one or more destinations in advance for a pre-set, fixed price and decide their travel dates later. Passengers can customize their own Flight Bundle and depending on the choices they make, can determine the ultimate price for the tickets in the Flight Bundle. Flight Bundle can be shared with family, friends or colleagues.
The Tenerife disaster, which occurred on 27 March 1977, remains the accident with the highest number of airliner passenger fatalities, as well as the most recent and notable incident involving a KLM aircraft. 583 people died when a KLM Boeing 747-200B attempted to take off without clearance, and collided with a taxiing Pan Am Boeing 747-100 at Los Rodeos Airport on the Canary Island of Tenerife, Spain. No one on the KLM 747 survived (14 crew, 234 passengers were killed) while 61 of the 396 passengers and crew on the Pan Am aircraft survived. Pilot error from the KLM aircraft was the primary cause. Owing to a communication misunderstanding, the KLM captain thought he had clearance for takeoff. Another cause was dense fog, meaning the KLM flight crew was unable to see the Pan Am aircraft on the runway until immediately prior to the collision. The accident had a lasting influence on the industry, particularly in the area of communication. An increased emphasis was placed on using standardized phraseology in air traffic control (ATC) communication by both controllers and pilots alike, thereby reducing the chance for misunderstandings. As part of these changes, the word "takeoff" was removed from general usage, and is only spoken by ATC when clearing an aircraft to take off. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16882 |
Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals are an American professional baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member team of the American League (AL) Central division. The team was founded as an expansion franchise in 1969, and has participated in four World Series, winning in 1985 and 2015, and losing in 1980 and 2014.
The name "Royals" pays homage to the American Royal, a livestock show, horse show, rodeo, and championship barbeque competition held annually in Kansas City since 1899, as well as the identical names of two former Negro League baseball teams that played in the first half of the 20th century. (One a semi-pro team based in Kansas City in the 1910s and 1920s that toured the Midwest and a California Winter League team based in Los Angeles in the 1940s that was managed by Chet Brewer and included Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson on its roster.) The Los Angeles team had personnel connections to the Monarchs but could not use the Monarchs name. The name also fits into something of a theme for other professional sports franchises in the city, including the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL, the former Kansas City Kings of the NBA, and the former Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League.
In 1968, the team held a name-the-team contest that received more than 17,000 entries. Sanford Porte, a bridge engineer from the suburb of Overland Park, Kansas, was named the winner for his “Royals” entry. His reason had nothing to do with royalty. “Kansas City’s new baseball team should be called the Royals because of Missouri’s billion-dollar livestock income, Kansas City’s position as the nation’s leading stocker and feeder market and the nationally known American Royal parade and pageant,” Porte wrote. The team's board voted 6–1 on the name, with the only opposition coming from team owner Ewing Kauffman, who eventually changed his vote and said the name had grown on him.
Entering the American League in 1969 along with the Seattle Pilots, the club was founded by Kansas City businessman Ewing Kauffman. The franchise was established following the actions of Stuart Symington, then-United States Senator from Missouri, who demanded a new franchise for the city after the Athletics (Kansas City's previous major league team that played from 1955 to 1967) moved to Oakland, California in 1968. Since April 10, 1973, the Royals have played at Kauffman Stadium, formerly known as Royals Stadium.
The new team quickly became a powerhouse, appearing in the playoffs seven times from 1976 to 1985, winning one World Series championship and another AL pennant, led by stars such as Amos Otis, Hal McRae, John Mayberry, George Brett, Frank White, Willie Wilson, and Bret Saberhagen. The team remained competitive throughout the early 1990s, but then had only one winning season from 1995 to 2012. For 28 consecutive seasons (1986–2013), the Royals did not qualify to play in the MLB postseason, one of the longest postseason droughts during baseball's current wild-card era. The team broke this streak in 2014 by securing the franchise's first wild card berth and advancing to the 2014 World Series, where they lost to the San Francisco Giants in seven games. The Royals followed this up by winning the team's first AL Central division title in 2015 and defeating the New York Mets in five games in the 2015 World Series to win their second World Series championship.
The Royals began play in 1969 in Kansas City, Missouri. In their inaugural game, on April 8, 1969, the Royals defeated the Minnesota Twins 4–3 in 12 innings. The Royals went 69–93 in their first season, highlighted by Lou Piniella, who won the AL Rookie of the Year Award.
The team was quickly built through a number of trades engineered by its first General Manager, Cedric Tallis, who picked up center fielder Amos Otis, who became the team's first great star, first baseman John Mayberry, who provided power, second baseman Cookie Rojas, shortstop Fred Patek, designated hitter Hal McRae, and others. The Royals also invested in a strong farm system and soon developed such future stars as pitchers Paul Splittorff, Dennis Leonard, and Steve Busby, infielders George Brett and Frank White, and outfielder Al Cowens. Under these young players, the Royals started to build a young core set up for future success.
In 1971, the Royals had their first winning season, with manager Bob Lemon leading them to a second-place finish. In 1973, under manager Jack McKeon, the Royals adopted their iconic "powder blue" road uniforms and moved from Municipal Stadium to the brand-new Royals Stadium (now known as Kauffman Stadium).
The 1973 All-Star Game was hosted at Royals Stadium, with Otis and Mayberry in the AL starting lineup. The event was previously held at Municipal Stadium in 1960, when the Athletics were based in Kansas City.
Manager Whitey Herzog replaced McKeon in 1975, and the Royals quickly became the dominant franchise in the American League's Western Division. After a second-place, 91 win season, they won three straight division championships from 1976 to 1978, including the franchise's only 100-win season in 1977. However, the Royals lost to the New York Yankees in three straight American League Championship Series encounters.
After the Royals finished in second place in 1979, Herzog was fired and replaced by Jim Frey. Under Frey and a legendary .390 season from George Brett, the Royals rebounded in 1980 and advanced to the ALCS, where they again faced the Yankees. The Royals vanquished the Yankees in a three-game sweep punctuated by a Brett's home run off of Yankees' star relief pitcher Goose Gossage. After reaching their first World Series, the Royals fell to the Philadelphia Phillies in six games. Game 6 was also significant because it remains the most-watched game in World Series history with a television audience of 54.9 million viewers.
In July 1983, while the Royals were headed for a second-place finish behind the Chicago White Sox another chapter in the team's rivalry with the New York Yankees occurred. In what has come to be known as "the Pine Tar Incident", umpires discovered illegal placement of pine tar (more than 18 inches up the handle) on third baseman George Brett's bat after he had hit a two-run home run off Gossage that put the Royals up 5–4 in the top of the 9th. After Yankee Manager Billy Martin came out of the dugout to talk to home plate umpire Tim McClelland, McClelland and the other umpires mulled over the bat (measuring it over home plate, touching it, etc.). McClelland then pointed to Brett in the dugout and gave the "out" sign, disallowing the home run. Enraged, Brett stormed out of the dugout toward McClelland and Martin, and McClelland ejected Brett. The homer was later reinstated by AL President Lee MacPhail, and the Royals won the game after it was resumed several weeks later.
The 1983 season was also notable for some transitional changes in the Royals organization. First, owner Ewing Kauffman sold 49% of his interest to Memphis developer Avron Fogelman. Second, John Schuerholz was named general manager. Schuerholz soon bolstered the farm system with pitchers Bud Black, Danny Jackson, Mark Gubicza, David Cone, and Bret Saberhagen, as well as hitters such as Kevin Seitzer.
Thanks to the sudden and surprising maturation (specifically, in pitching) of most of the aforementioned players, the Royals won their fifth division championship in 1984, relying on Brett's bat and the young pitching staff of Saberhagen, Gubicza, Charlie Leibrandt, Black and Jackson. The Royals were then swept by the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series. The Tigers went on to win the World Series.
In the 1985 regular season the Royals topped the Western Division for the sixth time in ten years, led by Bret Saberhagen's Cy Young Award-winning performance and George Brett's self-described best "all around year." Throughout the ensuing playoffs, the Royals came back from 2–0 and 3–1 deficits, but managed to win the Series. In game three, with KC down 2 games to 0, George Brett homered twice and doubled off the fence in right field to put Kansas City back into the series. With the Royals down three-games-to-one in the American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Royals eventually rallied to win the series 4–3.
In the 1985 World Series (nicknamed the "I-70 Series" because the two teams are both located in the state of Missouri and connected by Interstate 70) against the cross-state St. Louis Cardinals, the Royals again fell behind, three games to one. After Danny Jackson pitched the Royals to a 6–1 win in game five, the Cardinals and Royals headed back to Kansas City for game six. Facing elimination, the Royals trailed 1–0 in the bottom of the 9th inning, when Jorge Orta led off, hitting a bouncing ground ball to Cardinals 1st basemen Jack Clark, who flipped the ball back to pitcher Todd Worrell at first base. The ball beat Orta to the bag, but umpire Don Denkinger called him safe, and following a dropped popup by Clark and a pass ball the Royals rallied to score two runs, winning on a walk-off single from pinch hitter Dane Iorg to send the series to game seven. In game seven Bret Saberhagen shutout the Cardinals as Kansas City dominated the Cardinals 11–0, clinching their first title in franchise history.
The Royals maintained a reputation as one of the American League West's top teams throughout the late 1980s. The club posted a winning record in three of the four seasons following its 1985 World Series championship, while developing young stars such as Bo Jackson, Tom Gordon, and Kevin Seitzer. The Royals finished the 1989 season with a 92–70 record (third-best in the major leagues) but did not qualify for the playoffs, finishing second in their division behind the eventual World Series champion Oakland Athletics.
At the end of the 1989 season, the team boasted a powerhouse pitching rotation, including the AL Cy Young Award-winner Bret Saberhagen (who set franchise record 23 wins that year), two-time All-Star Mark Gubicza (a 15-game winner in 1989) and 1989 AL Rookie of the Year runner-up Tom Gordon (who won 17 games that year). But the organization felt it was still missing a few necessary pieces to give its divisional rival Oakland Athletics a run for their money. So prior to the 1990 season, the Royals acquired Mark Davis, the 1989 National League Cy Young Award-winner and league leader in saves, signing him to a 4-year, $13 million contract (the largest annual salary in baseball history at the time). The Royals also signed starting pitcher Storm Davis, who was coming off a career-high 19-game win season (third-best in the AL), to a three-year $6 million contract. Despite the promising off-season moves, the team suffered critical bullpen injuries while both newly signed Davises experienced lackluster seasons in 1990. The Royals concluded the season with a 75–86 record, in second-to-last place in the AL West (and with the worst franchise record since 1970). Bo Jackson—the team's potential future franchise player—suffered a devastating hip injury while playing football in the off-season, so the Royals waived him during spring training in 1991.
Though the team dropped out of contention from 1990 to 1992, the Royals still could generally be counted on to post winning records through the strike-shortened 1994 season. With no playoff appearances despite the winning records during this era, many of the team's highlights instead centered around the end of George Brett's career, such as his third and final batting title in 1990—which made him the first player to win batting titles in three different decades—and his 3,000th hit.
At the start of the 1990s, the Royals had been hit with a double-whammy when General Manager John Schuerholz departed in 1990 and team owner Ewing Kauffman died in 1993. Shortly before Kauffman's death, he set up an unprecedented complex succession plan to keep the team in Kansas City. The team was donated at his death to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and Affiliated Trusts with operating decisions of the team decided by a five-member group chaired by Wal-Mart executive David Glass. According to the plan the Royals had six years to find a local owner for the team before opening ownership to an outside bidder. The new owners would be required to say they would keep the team in Kansas City. Kauffman had feared that new owners would move it noting, "No one would want to buy a baseball team that consistently loses millions of dollars and had little prospect of making money because it was in a small city." If no owner could be found the Kauffman restrictions were to end on January 1, 2002, and the team was to be sold to the highest bidder. In 1999, New York City lawyer and minor league baseball owner Miles Prentice, vowing not to move the team, bid $75 million for the team. This was the minimum amount Kauffman had stipulated the team could be sold for. MLB rejected Prentice's first bid without specifying any reason. In a final round of bids on March 13, 2000, the Foundation voted to accept Glass' bid of $96 million, rejecting Prentice's revised bid of $115 million.
During the interregnum under Foundation ownership, the team declined. In 1994 season, the Royals reduced payroll by trading pitcher David Cone and outfielder Brian McRae, then continued their salary dump in the 1995 season. The team payroll, which had previously remained among the league's highest, was sliced in half from $40.5 million in 1994 (fourth-highest in the major leagues) to $18.5 million in 1996 (second-lowest in the major leagues).
As attendance slid and the average MLB salary continued to rise, rather than pay higher salaries or lose their players to free agency, the Royals traded their remaining stars such as Kevin Appier, Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye. By 1999, the team's payroll had fallen again to $16.5 million. Making matters worse, most of the younger players that the Royals received in exchange for these All-Stars proved of little value, setting the stage for an extended downward spiral. Indeed, the Royals set a franchise low with a .398 winning percentage (64–97 record) in 1999, and lost 97 games again in 2001.
In the middle of this era, in 1997, the Royals declined the opportunity to switch to the National League as part of a realignment plan to introduce the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays as expansion teams. The Milwaukee Brewers made the switch instead.
In 2002, the Royals set a new team record for futility, losing 100 games for the first time in franchise history. They fired manager Tony Muser, and he was replaced by Tony Peña.
The 2003 season saw a temporary end to the losing, when manager Tony Peña, in his first full season with the club, guided the team to its first winning record (83–79) since 1994 and finished in third place in the AL Central. He was named the American League Manager of the Year for his efforts and shortstop Ángel Berroa was named AL Rookie of the Year.
From the 2004 season through the 2012 season, the Royals posted nine consecutive losing records, the longest streak in team history. In six of those seasons, the team finished in last place in the American League Central, and in eight of those nine seasons the team lost at least 90 games. The worst seasons came in 2004–2006, when the Royals lost at least 100 games each year and set the franchise's all-time record for losses (56–106 in 2005).
Picked by many to win their division in 2004 after faring well in the free agent market, the Royals got off to a disappointing start and by late June were back in a rebuilding mode, releasing veteran reliever Curtis Leskanic and trading veteran reliever Jason Grimsley and superstar center fielder Carlos Beltrán for prospects, all within a week of each other.
The team subsequently fell apart completely, losing 104 games and breaking the franchise record set just two years earlier. The Royals did, however, see promising seasons from two rookies, center fielder David DeJesus and starting pitcher Zack Greinke. The team continued a youth movement in 2005, but finished with a 56–106 record (.346), a full 43 games out of first place, marking the third time in four seasons that the team reestablished the mark for worst record in franchise history. The season also saw the Royals lose 19 games in a row, a franchise record. During the season manager Tony Peña quit and was replaced by interim manager Bob Schaefer until the Indians' bench coach Buddy Bell was chosen as the next manager. Looking for a quick turnaround, general manager Allard Baird signed several veteran players prior to the 2006 season, including Doug Mientkiewicz, Mark Grudzielanek, Joe Mays and Scott Elarton. Nevertheless, the Royals struggled through another 100-loss season in 2006, becoming just the eleventh team in major league history to lose 100 games in three straight seasons. During the season Baird was fired as GM and replaced by Dayton Moore.
Kansas City entered the 2007 season looking to rebound from four out of five seasons ending with at least 100 losses. The Royals outbid the Cubs and Blue Jays for free agent righty Gil Meche, signing him to five-year, $55 million contract, the largest contract in Royals history. Reliever Octavio Dotel also inked a one-year, $5 million contract. The team also added several new prospects, including Alex Gordon and Billy Butler. Among Dayton Moore's first acts as General Manager was instating a new motto for the team: "True. Blue. Tradition." In June 2007, the Royals had their first winning month since July 2003 and followed it up with a winning July. The Royals finished the season 69–93, but 2007 marked the club's first season with fewer than 100 losses since 2003. Manager Buddy Bell resigned following the 2007 season.
The Royals hired Trey Hillman, formerly the manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters and a minor league manager with the New York Yankees, to be the 15th manager in franchise history. The 2008 season began with the release of fan favorite Mike Sweeney and the trade of Ángel Berroa to the Dodgers. Through 13 games in 2008, the Royals were 8–5 and in first place in the AL Central, a vast improvement over their start from the previous season. However, by the All-Star break, the Royals were again in losing territory, with their record buoyed only by a 13–5 record in interleague play, the best in the American League. The team finished the season in fourth place with a 75–87 record.
Prior to the 2009 season, the Royals renovated Kauffman Stadium. After the season began, the Royals ended April at the top of the AL Central, all of which raised excitement levels among fans. However, the team faded as the season progressed and finished the year with a final record of 65–97, in a fourth place tie in its division. The season was highlighted by starter Zack Greinke, who did not allow an earned run in the first 24 innings of the season, went on to finish the year with a Major League-leading 2.16 earned run average, and won the American League Cy Young Award. Greinke joined Bret Saberhagen (in 1985 and 1989) and David Cone (in 1994) as the only three players in Royals history to receive the award.
The Royals began the 2010 season with a rocky start, and after the team's record fell to 12–23, manager Trey Hillman was fired. Former Milwaukee Brewers skipper Ned Yost took over as manager. At the end of the 2010 season, the Royals finished with a 67–95 record, in last place in the division for the sixth time in seven years. The Royals also set a dubious franchise record during the season, allowing 42 runs in a three-day span from July 25 to 27. The Royals began 2011 with a hot start with a 10–4 record after 14 games, but success faded as the season progressed. The Royals last had a .500 record at 22–22, and by the All-Star break, the Royals had a record of 37–54, the worst in the American League. Almost all of the Royals' bullpen was called up in 2011 and the call up of the infielders Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Manny Piña, Johnny Giavotella, and Salvador Pérez. Hosmer won the AL Rookie of the Month award in July and September and finished the season with 19 home runs. Moustakas collected a fifteen-game hitting streak, which tied the largest such streak by a Royal rookie. The Royals finished the 2011 season with a 71–91 record. The 2012 team saw more of the same, as they improved by one game to 72–90.
The 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was hosted by the Royals at Kauffman Stadium on July 10, 2012 (in addition to the 2012 Home Run Derby, All-Star Futures Game and Taco Bell All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game during the All-Star break), which the National League won 8–0. The 2012 season marked the third time the "Midsummer Classic" was held in Kansas City.
On December 10, 2012, in an attempt to strengthen the pitching staff (which was among the worst in baseball in 2012), the Royals traded for Rays pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis giving Tampa top prospects Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery, and Patrick Leonard. This trade helped catalyze a return to winning records.
In the 2013 season, the Royals remained over .500 nearly most of April during regular season play. The team also did not commit an error in its first seven games (for innings) for the first time in team history. On September 22, the Royals won their 82nd game of the season to clinch the franchise's first winning season since 2003. The Royals finished the season 86–76, securing the team's best winning percentage since 1994.
The 2014 season was even more successful, featuring a return to the postseason for the first time in 29 years, and what would unfold as a historic playoff run to the 2014 World Series.
Anchored by the HDH Line (Bullpen trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland), the bullpen became one of the most dominant in MLB history.
Entering the 2014 season, the Royals had the longest playoff drought of any team in the four main American professional sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA). On July 21, 2014, the Royals had a losing record (48–50) and were eight games behind the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central standings. But spurred by a 22–5 record from July 22 to August 19 coinciding with a mediocre 12–15 stretch by the Tigers, the team surged into first place in the AL Central. The Royals reached the top of the division standings on August 11, after winning their eighth game in a row. This marked the latest date the Royals had led their division since August 29, 2003. The team retained its division lead for a month, before falling out of first-place permanently on September 12. They finished the 2014 regular season with a record 89–73, still the most wins for the Royals since 1989. Though the team finished one game behind Detroit in the AL Central, the Royals secured their first-ever wild card berth.
After qualifying for the postseason, the Royals embarked on a record-setting eight-game winning streak. They hosted the Oakland Athletics in the 2014 American League Wild Card Game and won 9–8 on a Salvador Pérez walk-off single in the 12th inning, having earlier rallied back from a 7–3 deficit in the eighth. The Royals then swept the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the 2014 American League Division Series. In Game 1 of the ALDS, the score was 2–2 going into the 11th inning, when Mike Moustakas hit a game-winning solo home run. The next day, Kansas City beat the Angels 4–1 in another extra-innings affair, in the process setting an MLB postseason record of three straight extra-inning wins. The Royals then completed the sweep at home, winning 8–3 in game three and advancing to the 2014 American League Championship Series against the Baltimore Orioles.
In the opening game of the ALCS on October 11, 2014, the Royals defeated the Orioles 8–6, with two home runs in the 10th inning. Thus, in eight extra innings over five postseason games in 2014, they succeeded in hitting four homers in extra innings, more than any team in the history of Major League Baseball. In the second ALCS game, the Royals again beat the Orioles 6–4, behind Lorenzo Cain's four hits, including an RBI single. After game three, the ALCS was delayed one day due to rainy weather, when the Royals hosted the Orioles at Kauffman Stadium on October 14, 2014. Pitcher Jeremy Guthrie allowed only one run as KC beat the Orioles 2–1, taking a 3–0 lead in the series. In game four, the Royals completed the sweep of the Orioles with another 2–1 win to advance to the World Series for the first time since 1985. The win marked the team's eighth consecutive postseason win in one year, breaking a major league record previously held by the Colorado Rockies in 2007 and Cincinnati Reds in 1976. It also marked the Royals' 11th win in a row overall in postseason play, dating back to the franchise's final three wins of the 1985 Series, the third-longest multi-year postseason streak in baseball history.
The Royals faced the San Francisco Giants in the 2014 World Series. They had home-field advantage, due to the American League's win in the 2014 All-Star Game.
After setting an AL record by winning eight straight games to reach the World Series, the Royals opened the series by losing 7–1 in the first game against starter Madison Bumgarner. The Royals bounced back with a 7–2 win in game two to tie the series at 1–1. The Royals won game three in San Francisco 3–2 to take the series lead for the first time. In game four, the Royals lost 11–4, which tied the series with the Giants. In game five, they lost 5–0 to the Giants against starter Madison Bumgarner. In game six, the Royals beat the Giants 10–0. In game seven, the Royals started RHP Jeremy Guthrie against Giants pitcher Tim Hudson. Guthrie lasted innings before he was replaced by Kelvin Herrera, who himself lasted innings. He was then replaced by Wade Davis, who pitched in two innings. Closer Greg Holland ended the game. On the Giants side, Hudson lasted only innings before he was replaced by Jeremy Affeldt, who was later replaced by Madison Bumgarner. The Royals lost game seven, 3–2, with the tying run (Alex Gordon) on third base in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, when Salvador Pérez fouled out to Pablo Sandoval to end the game and the series.
After earning a wild-card entry to the playoffs in 2014, in 2015 the Royals won the franchise's first division title since 1985 and first Central division title ever (the Central was created in 1994). The Royals went on to win the 2015 World Series – the first championship for the Royals since 1985 – beating the New York Mets four games to one.
The Royals entered the 2015 All-Star break with the best record in the American League (52–34). The team continued its momentum into the second half of the season, and on July 26, Royals management traded three prospects Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb, and Cody Reed for 2014 All-Star pitcher Johnny Cueto to help bolster its starting pitching rotation, as well as trading for super-utility player Ben Zobrist. The team ended the regular season with a record of 95–67, best in the American League, and the organization's best since 1980.
The Royals faced the Houston Astros in the ALDS. Down 2–1 in the series and trailing 6–2 in the 8th inning of Game 4, the Royals rallied for 5 runs en route to a 9–6 win before Cueto's gem in Game 5 powered the Royals to a second consecutive ALCS. The Royals defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 6, to win the 2015 ALCS and earn a trip to face the New York Mets in the 2015 World Series.
The Royals beat the New York Mets 4 games to 1 to become the 2015 World Series champions. It was the Royals' first World Series title since 1985. The series win was sealed after the Royals beat the Mets 7–2 in the 12th inning of Game 5. The Royals rallied in the 9th inning down 2–0 to tie the score 2–2, forcing the game into extra innings. The five-run 12th inning was initiated by a Perez single and Dyson pinch-running for him. This was followed by a single from Christian Colon, doubles from both Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain, scoring runs from Jarrod Dyson, Colon, Paulo Orlando (who reached base on an error by Daniel Murphy), Escobar and Ben Zobrist (who was intentionally walked). Wade Davis, who hadn't allowed a run yet that postseason, closed out the game with a flawless 12th, allowing a hit and striking out Wilmer Flores to end the game and win the World Series for the Royals.
The Royals followed up their World Series victory with an underachieving, injury-riddled campaign in 2016. The Royals had an inconsistent season in which they fittingly finished 81–81, third place in the division and out of the playoffs. This season is notable for the debut of future star Whit Merrifield. The 2017 season marked the end of the past World Series core. Pitcher Yordano Ventura was killed in a car crash on January 22, and the Royals wore patches that said 'ACE 30' on their jerseys for the 2017 season to honor Ventura. Wade Davis was traded in the off season, and after a second consecutive non-playoff season, finishing 80–82, stars Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer left the team in free agency.
Although Hosmer and Cain left in free agency, the Royals were still able to re-sign Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar. In 2018, the team started a new rebuild, trading Moustakas mid-season for prospects, and giving playing time to young players like Adalberto Mondesi, Ryan O'Hearn, and Brad Keller. Despite this, the team finished with a 58-win season, the team's fewest wins total since 2005. The season also marked the emergence of Merrifield as a star, as he led the Major Leagues in hits (192) and stolen bases (45).
On August 30, 2019 it was announced that John Sherman, a minority owner of the Cleveland Indians, had agreed to purchase the team from David Glass for a reported amount of $1 billion. The Royals finished the 2019 season one game better at 59-103 and manager Yost announced that he would retire at the end of the season after ten seasons and a franchise record 746 wins. Merrifield once again led the league in hits, while Jorge Soler led the American League with 48 home runs and three players paced the league in triples (Mondesi, Merrifield and Hunter Dozier, with 10 apiece).
The Royals' most prominent rivalry is with the intrastate St. Louis Cardinals. For geographic reasons, the teams long played exhibition games, but a true rivalry began with the Royals' victory over the Cardinals in the 1985 World Series, known as the "I-70 Series." Notably, the manager for the Cardinals in the series was Whitey Herzog, who had been the Royals' manager from 1975 to 1979, and led Kansas City to the franchise's first three playoff appearances – in 1976, 1977, and 1978 – before getting fired just shortly after the Royals were eliminated from the playoffs in 1979. Interleague play in 1997 allowed the I-70 Series to be revived in non-exhibition games. The first few seasons of the series were rather even, with the Cardinals holding a slight advantage with a 14–13 record through the 2003 season. Through the 2016 season, the Cardinals hold the series advantage 51–39.
From 1976 to 1980, the Royals faced the New York Yankees four times in five years in the American League Championship Series. The Yankees won in 1976, 1977 and 1978, while the Royals won in 1980. In a 2013 article about the 1983 Pine Tar Incident involving the two teams, Lou Pinella said: "As a team, we didn't really like Kansas City. We had played them in the '76, '77 and '78 postseason and beaten them every time. There was no love lost between the teams. We didn't like each other. They were our big rivals..." George Brett agreed: "I hated everyone on the Yankees, I really did. I hated 'em all, back in that era."
The Royals have retired the numbers of former players George Brett (No. 5) and Frank White (No. 20). Former manager Dick Howser's No. 10 was retired following his death in 1987. Former Brooklyn Dodgers player Jackie Robinson's No. 42 is retired throughout Major League Baseball.
No. 29, worn by Royals greats Dan Quisenberry (238 saves, 2.55 ERA) and Mike Sweeney (.299 batting average, 197 home runs, 837 RBI), has not been assigned since Sweeney's departure in 2007. Additionally, the team has not issued No. 30, worn by pitcher Yordano Ventura, since his death in 2017.
"Statistics current through December 1, 2018"
The Kansas City Royals farm system consists of nine minor league affiliates.
, the Royals affiliate radio station is KCSP 610AM, the station having entered into a new four-year deal starting from the 2015 season. The radio announcers are Denny Matthews and Ryan Lefebvre, with Steve Stewart and Steve Physioc.
Televised games are aired on Fox Sports Kansas City, a branch of Fox Sports Midwest. For the 2012 season, Ryan Lefebvre will be joined by Jeff Montgomery for about 20 games while the rest of the broadcasts will be covered by former Angels announcer duo of Rex Hudler and Steve Physioc. During the 2016 season, the Royals averaged an 11.7 rating and 105,000 viewers on primetime TV broadcasts.
On February 22, 2007, Matthews was selected as the 2007 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for major contributions to baseball broadcasting.
Sluggerrr is the mascot of the Royals. Sluggerrr is a lion, and made his first appearance on April 5, 1996.
On game day, Sluggerrr can be found giving aggressive encouragement to players and fans, pitching in the "Little K", and firing hot dogs from an air cannon into the stands between innings.
& 2015 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16883 |
Klingon language
The Klingon language ("codice_1", , in "codice_2" ) is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the "Star Trek" universe.
Described in the 1985 book "The Klingon Dictionary" by Marc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") and producer Jon Povill for "". That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English, even to each other. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language.
Klingon is sometimes referred to as "Klingonese" (most notably in the "" episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as "Klingonee" ), but among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language called Klingonaase that was introduced in John M. Ford's 1984 "Star Trek" novel "The Final Reflection," and appears in other "Star Trek" novels by Ford.
The play "A Klingon Christmas Carol" is the first production that is primarily in Klingon (only the narrator speaks English). The opera "codice_3" is entirely in Klingon.
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Because its vocabulary is heavily centered on "Star Trek"-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, it can sometimes be cumbersome for everyday use.
Although mentioned in the original "Star Trek" series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", the Klingon language first appeared on-screen in "" (1979). According to the actor who spoke the lines, Mark Lenard, James Doohan recorded the lines he had written on a tape, and Lenard transcribed the recorded lines in a way he found useful in learning them.
For "" (1984), director Leonard Nimoy and writer-producer Harve Bennett wanted the Klingons to speak a structured language instead of random gibberish, and so commissioned a full language, based on the phrases Doohan had originated, from Marc Okrand, who had earlier constructed four lines of Vulcan dialogue for "".
Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed a grammar based on Doohan's original dozen words. The language appeared intermittently in later films featuring the original cast (for example, in "" (1989) and in "" (1991), where translation difficulties served as a plot device).
Two "non-canon" dialects of Klingon are hinted at in the novelization of "", as Saavik speaks in Klingon to the only Klingon officer aboard Cpt. Kruge's starship after his death, as the survivors of the "Enterprise"'s self-destruction transport up from the crumbling Genesis Planet to the Klingon ship. The surviving officer, Maltz, states that he speaks the "Rumaiy" dialect, while Saavik is speaking to him in the "Kumburan" dialect of Klingon, per Maltz's spoken reply to her.
With the advent of the series "" (1987)—in which one of the main characters, Worf, was a Klingon—and successors, the language and various cultural aspects for the fictional species were expanded. In the "" episode "A Matter of Honor", several members of a Klingon ship's crew speak a language that is not translated for the benefit of the viewer (even Commander Riker, enjoying the benefits of a universal translator, is unable to understand) until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their [i.e., human] language".
A small number of non-Klingon characters were later depicted in "Star Trek" as having learned to speak Klingon, notably Jean-Luc Picard and Jadzia Dax.
Hobbyists around the world have studied the Klingon language. Six Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published: "codice_4" ("the Epic of Gilgamesh"), "codice_5" ("Hamlet"), "" ("Much Ado About Nothing"), "codice_6" ("Tao Te Ching"), "codice_7" ("the Art of War") and "codice_8" ("the Little Prince"). The Shakespearean choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor Gorkon in "", who said, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." In the bonus material on the DVD, screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and actor William Shatner both explain that this was an allusion to the German myth that Shakespeare was in fact German.
The Klingon Language Institute exists to promote the language.
CBS Television Studios owns the copyright on the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions of the language. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection, natural languages are not protected, excluding dictionaries and other works created with them. Mizuki Miyashita and Laura Moll note, "Copyrights on dictionaries are unusual because the entries in the dictionary are not copyrightable as the words themselves are facts, and facts can not be copyrighted. However, the formatting, example sentences, and instructions for dictionary use are created by the author, so they are copyrightable."
Okrand had studied some Native American and Southeast Asian languages, and phonological and grammatical features of these languages "worked their way into Klingon, but for the most part, not by design." Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are typologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basic word order.
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Arika Okrent guessed in her book "In the Land of Invented Languages" that there might be 20–30 fluent speakers. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on "Star Trek"–Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use. For instance, while words for "transporter ionizer unit" ("codice_9") or "bridge" (of a ship) ("codice_10") have been known since close to the language's inception, the word for "bridge" in the sense of a crossing over water ("codice_11") was unknown until August 2012. Nonetheless, mundane conversations are possible among skilled speakers.
One Klingon speaker, d'Armond Speers, raised his son Alec to speak Klingon as a first language, whilst the boy's mother communicated with him in English. Alec rarely responded to his father in Klingon, although when he did, his pronunciation was "excellent". After Alec's fifth birthday, Speers reported that his son eventually stopped responding to him when spoken to in Klingon as he clearly did not enjoy it, so Speers switched to English.
In 2007, a report surfaced that Multnomah County, Oregon, was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health program in case patients came into a psychiatric hospital speaking nothing but Klingon. Most circulations of the report seemingly implied that this was a problem that health officials faced before; however, the original report indicated that this was just a precaution for a hypothetical and that said translator would only be paid on an as needed basis. After the report was misinterpreted, the County issued another release noting that releasing the original report was a "mistake".
In May 2009, Simon & Schuster, in collaboration with Ultralingua Inc., a developer of electronic dictionary applications, announced the release of a suite of electronic Klingon language software for most computer platforms including a dictionary, a phrasebook, and an audio learning tool.
In September 2011, Eurotalk released the "Learn Klingon" course in its "Talk Now!" series. The language is displayed in both Latin and pIqaD fonts, making this the first language course written in pIqaD and approved by CBS and Marc Okrand. It was translated by Jonathan Brown and Okrand and uses the codice_12 TrueType font.
In August 2016, a company in the United Kingdom, Bidvine, began offering Klingon lessons as one of their services.
In March 2018, the popular language learning site Duolingo opened a beta course in Klingon.
There are Klingon language meetings and linguists or students are interested in researching this topic, even writing essays about the language or its users. In the media (music, literature and television) Klingon is also used frequently as a reference to Star Trek.
It is also referred to in The Big Bang Theory Series.
In 2010, a Chicago Theatre company presented a version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in Klingon language and a Klingon setting. On September 25, 2010, the Washington Shakespeare Company (now known as WSC Avant Bard) performed selections from "Hamlet" and "Much Ado About Nothing" in the Klingon language in Arlington, Virginia. The performance was proposed by Okrand in his capacity as chairman of the group's board. This performance was reprised on February 27, 2011 featuring Stephen Fry as the Klingon Osric and was filmed by the BBC as part of a 5-part documentary on language entitled "Fry's Planet Word".
Google Search and "Minecraft" each have a Klingon language setting.
The 2003–2010 version of the puzzle globe logo of Wikipedia, representing its multilingualism, contained a Klingon character. When updated in 2010, the Klingon character was removed from the logo, and substituted with one from the Ge'ez script. A was started in June 2004 at "tlh.wikipedia.org". It was permanently locked in August 2005 and moved to Wikia. The Klingon Wiktionary was closed in 2008.
The file management software XYplorer has been translated into Klingon by its developer.
Microsoft's Bing Translator attempts to translate Klingon from and to other languages. It can do a good job with individual words, and with phrases included in its training corpus, but it is not well tuned for Klingon's system of prefixes and suffixes. For example, codice_13 "You must study it" is rendered instead as "They Must Study."
In July 2015, when Conservative Welsh Assembly Member Darren Millar formally asked the Welsh Economy Minister Edwina Hart about the Welsh Government's policy funding research into sightings of UFOs at Cardiff Airport, a press officer in the Minister's office issued a written reply in Klingon: codice_14, which was translated as: "The minister will reply in due course. However this is a non-devolved matter."
With the digital only release of "" in 2017, streaming service Netflix announced it would provide Klingon subtitles for the entire first season. They can be enabled like any other language provided by the streaming service, and are shown as the phonetic pronunciation rather than Klingon script.
An important concept to spoken and written Klingon is canonicity. Only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand are considered canonical Klingon by the KLI and most Klingonists. However, as the growing number of speakers employ different strategies to express themselves, it is often unclear as to what level of neologism is permissible. New vocabulary has been collected in a list maintained by the KLI until 2005 and has since then been followed up by Klingon expert Lieven Litaer.
Within the fictional universe of "Star Trek", Klingon is derived from the original language spoken by the messianic figure Kahless the Unforgettable, who united the Klingon home-world of codice_15 under one empire more than 1500 years ago. Many dialects exist, but the standardized dialect of prestige is almost invariably that of the sitting emperor.
The Klingon Language Institute regards the following works as canon Klingon; they serve as sources of Klingon vocabulary and grammar for all other works.
The letters in parentheses following each item (if any) indicate the acronym of each source - used when quoting canon.
Klingon has been developed with a phonology that, while based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the "Star Trek" franchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected sounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of retroflex and uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Klingon has twenty-one consonants and five vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the Latin alphabet. The orthography of this transliteration is case-sensitive, that is, upper and lower case letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different from those expected by English speakers), although with the exception of Q/q there are no minimal pairs between case. In other words, while "tlhingan hol", meaning Klingon language, is incorrect, it cannot be misread as anything but a(n erroneous) form of "tlhIngan Hol", but "Qat" (be popular) is not the same as "qat" (accompany) . In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in "", and the phonemic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet is written between "/slashes/".
The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of places of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no velar plosives, and only one sibilant fricative. Deliberately, this arrangement is very different from that of most human languages. The combination of an aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive and a voiced retroflex plosive is particularly unusual.
There are a few dialectal pronunciation differences (it is not known if the aforementioned non-canon "Kumburan" or "Rumaiy" dialects of "codice_1" hinted at in the novelization might differ):
In the Morskan dialect:
In contrast to its consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple, and similar to those of many human languages, such as Spanish or Japanese. There are five vowels spaced more or less evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, one back unrounded vowel, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels. The vowel inventory is asymmetrical in that the back rounded vowels are tense and the front vowels are lax.
The two front vowels, and , represent sounds that are found in English, but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, thus causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.
Diphthongs can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the two semivowels and (represented by and , respectively). Thus, the combinations , , , , , , and are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain * or *.
Klingon follows a strict syllable structure. A syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and rare other syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /-codice_23 -codice_24 -codice_25/. Thus, "codice_26" "record", "codice_27" "poison" and "codice_28" "targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but *"codice_29" and *"codice_30" are not. Despite this, one suffix takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix codice_31.
In verbs, the stressed syllable is usually the verbal stem itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes, except when a suffix ending with codice_32 is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in codice_32 is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix that is meant to be emphasized.
In nouns, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in codice_32 are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.
The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. There are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.
Klingon is an agglutinative language, using mainly affixes in order to alter the function or meaning of words. Some nouns have inherently plural forms, such as "codice_35" "plate" (vs. codice_36 "plates"), but most nouns require a suffix to express plurality explicitly. Depending on the type of noun (body part, being capable of using language, or neither) the suffix changes. For beings capable of using language, the suffix is "codice_37," as in "codice_38," meaning "Klingons," or "codice_39," meaning "enemies". For body parts, the plural suffix is "codice_40," as in "codice_41," "eyes". For items that are neither body parts nor capable of speech, the suffix is "codice_42," such as in "codice_43" ("stars"), or "codice_44" ("targs") for a Klingon animal somewhat resembling a boar. (However, a plural suffix is never obligatory. To say "The stars are beautiful", "codice_45" and "codice_46" are equally grammatical, although the second can also mean "The star is beautiful".)
The words "codice_47" and "codice_48", which on their own mean "man" and "woman" respectively, can be used in compound words to refer to the referent's sex. For example, from "codice_49" ("child") this process derives "codice_50" ("son") and "codice_51" ("daughter").
Klingon nouns take suffixes to indicate grammatical number. There are three noun classes, two levels of deixis, and a possession and syntactic function. In all, twenty-nine noun suffixes from five classes may be employed: "codice_52" "for my beloved true friends". A word may carry no more than one suffix from each class, and the classes have a specific order of appearance.
Verbs in Klingon take a prefix indicating the number and person of the subject and object, whereas suffixes are taken from nine ordered classes and a special suffix class called rovers. Each of the four known rovers has a unique rule controlling its position among the suffixes in the verb. Verbs are marked for aspect, certainty, predisposition and volition, dynamic, causative, mood, negation, and honorific. The Klingon verb has two moods: indicative and imperative.
The most common word order in Klingon is object–verb–subject, and, in most cases, the word order is the exact reverse of English for an equivalent sentence:
An important aspect of Klingon grammar is its "ungrammaticality". As with for example Japanese, shortening of communicative statements is common, and is called "Clipped Klingon" ("codice_54" or, more simply, "codice_55") and Ritualized Speech. Clipped Klingon is especially useful in situations where speed is a decisive factor. Grammar is abbreviated, and sentence parts deemed to be superfluous are dropped. Intentional ungrammaticality is widespread, and it takes many forms. It is exemplified by the practice of "codice_56", which Marc Okrand translates as "to misfollow the rules" or "to follow the rules wrongly".
When written in the Latin alphabet, Klingon is unusual in being case-sensitive, with some letters written in capitals and others in lowercase. In one contrast, "codice_57" and "codice_58", there is an actual case-sensitive pair representing two different consonants. Capitals are generally reserved for uvular or retroflex consonants pronounced further back in the mouth or throat than is normal for the corresponding English sounds, as with "codice_59", "codice_58", and "codice_61". However, "codice_62", pronounced like the in German "ach" or Scottish "loch", is further forward in the throat than English /h/. One phoneme, the vowel "codice_63", is written capital to look more like the IPA symbol for the sound /ɪ/, and can pose problems when writing Klingon in sans-serif fonts such as Arial, as it looks almost the same as the consonant "codice_64".
This has led some Klingon enthusiasts to write it lowercase like the other vowels ("i") to prevent confusion, but this use is non-canonical. Instead, a serif font that clearly distinguishes "codice_63" and "codice_64", such as Courier or Courier New, has traditionally been employed for writing Klingon in the Latin alphabet. In any case, it can be disambiguated through context, as codice_63 never occurs next to another vowel, while codice_64 always is. The apostrophe, denoting the glottal stop, is considered a letter, not a punctuation mark.
Klingon is often written in (in-universe, "transliterated to") the Latin alphabet as used above, but on the television series, the Klingons use their own alien writing system. In "The Klingon Dictionary", this alphabet is named as "codice_2", but no information is given about it. When Klingon symbols are used in "Star Trek" productions, they are merely decorative graphic elements, designed to emulate real writing and create an appropriate atmosphere. Enthusiasts have settled on the name "codice_2" for this writing system.
The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols currently used to "write" Klingon for "", although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed to Michael Okuda. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16890 |
Kid Icarus
Kid Icarus, known in Japan as A Mythology of Light: The Mirror of Palthena, is an action platform video game for the Family Computer Disk System in Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and North America. It was released in Japan in December 1986, in Europe in February 1987, and in North America in July 1987.
The plot of "Kid Icarus" revolves around protagonist Pit's quest for three sacred treasures, which he must equip to rescue the Greek-inspired fantasy world Angel Land and its ruler, the goddess Palutena. The player controls Pit through platform areas while fighting monsters and collecting items. Their objective is to reach the end of the levels, and to find and defeat boss monsters that guard the three treasures. The game was developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division, and co-developed with TOSE, who helped with additional programming. It was designed by Toru Osawa and Yoshio Sakamoto, directed by Satoru Okada, and produced by Gunpei Yokoi.
Despite its mixed critical reception, "Kid Icarus" is a cult classic. Reviewers praised the game for its music and its mixture of gameplay elements from different genres, but criticized its graphics and high difficulty level. It was included in several lists of the best games compiled by "IGN" and "Nintendo Power".
It was later re-released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2004. The game was released on the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007 and the Wii U's Virtual Console in 2013. A 3D Classics remake of the game was released in Japan in 2011 and in North America, Europe, and Australia in 2012. In 2016, "Kid Icarus" was included on the North American and PAL region releases of the NES Classic Edition. It is also released on Nintendo Switch Online in 2019.
A sequel, "", was released for the Game Boy in 1991. A third entry in the series, "", was released for Nintendo 3DS in March 2012, after Pit's inclusion as a playable character in the 2008 game "Super Smash Bros. Brawl".
"Kid Icarus" is an action platformer with role-playing elements. The player controls the protagonist Pit through two-dimensional levels, which contain monsters, obstacles and items. Pit's primary weapon is a bow with an unlimited supply of arrows that can be upgraded with three collectable power items: the guard crystal shields Pit from enemies, the flaming arrows hit multiple targets, and the holy bow increases the range of the arrows. These upgrades will work only if Pit's health is high enough. The game keeps track of the player's score, and increases Pit's health bar at the end of a level if enough points were collected.
Throughout the stages, the player may enter doors to access seven different types of chambers. Stores and black markets offer items in exchange for hearts, which are left behind by defeated monsters. Treasure chambers contain items, enemy nests give the player an opportunity to earn extra hearts, and hot springs restore Pit's health. In the god's chamber, the strength of Pit's bow and arrow may be increased depending on several factors, such as the number of enemies defeated and the amount of damage taken in battle. In the training chamber, Pit will be awarded with one of the three power items if he passes a test of endurance.
The game world is divided into three stages – the underworld, the over world (Earth) and the sky world. Each stage encompasses three unidirectional area levels and a fortress. The areas of the underworld and sky world stages have Pit climb to the top, while those of the surface world are side-scrolling levels. The fortresses at the end of the stages are labyrinths with non-scrolling rooms, in which the player must find and defeat a gatekeeper boss. Within a fortress, Pit may buy a check sheet, pencil and torch to guide him through the labyrinth. A single-use item, the hammer, can destroy stone statues, which frees a flying soldier called a Centurion that will aid the player in boss battles. For each of the bosses destroyed, Pit receives one of three sacred treasures that are needed to access the fourth and final stage, the sky temple. This last portion abandons the platforming elements of the previous levels, and resembles a scrolling shooter.
The game is set in Angel Land, which is a fantasy world with a Greek mythology theme. The backstory of "Kid Icarus" is described in the instruction booklet: before the events of the game, Earth was ruled by Palutena: Goddess of Light and Medusa: Goddess of Darkness. Palutena bestowed the people with light to make them happy. Medusa hated the humans, dried up their crop, and turned them to stone. Enraged by this, Palutena transformed Medusa into a monster and banished her to the Underworld. Out of revenge, Medusa conspired with the monsters of the Underworld to take over Palutena's residence the Palace in the Sky. She launched a surprise attack, and stole the three sacred treasures — the Mirror Shield, the Light Arrows and the Wings of Pegasus — which deprived Palutena's army of its power. After her soldiers had been turned to stone by Medusa, Palutena was defeated in battle and imprisoned deep inside the Palace in the Sky.
With her last power, she sent a bow and arrow to the young angel Pit. He escapes from his prison in the Underworld and sets out to save Palutena and Angel Land. Throughout the course of the story, Pit retrieves the three sacred treasures from the fortress gatekeepers at their respective fortresses in the Underworld, the Overworld, and the Skyworld. Afterward, he equips himself with the treasures and storms the sky temple where he defeats Medusa and rescues Palutena. The game has five different endings; depending on the player's performance, Palutena may present Pit with headgear or transform him into a full-grown angel. In the Japanese version, the best ending from the English version does not exist, and instead another bad ending is present.
The game was designed at Nintendo's Research and Development 1 (R&D1) division, while the programming was handled by the external company Intelligent Systems. It was developed for the Family Computer Disk System (FDS) because the peripheral's "Disk Card" (Floppy disk) media allowed for three times the storage capacity of the Family Computer's cartridges. Combined with the possibility to store the players' progress, the Disk Card format enabled the developers to create a longer game with a more extensive game world. Kid Icarus was the debut of Toru Osawa (credited as Inusawa) as a video game designer, and he was the only staff member working on the game at the beginning of the project. Originally he set out to make an action game with role-playing elements, and wrote a story rooted in Greek mythology, which he had always been fond of. He drew the pixel art, and wrote the technical specifications, which were the basis for the playable prototype that was programmed by Intelligent Systems. After Nintendo's action-adventure "Metroid" had been finished, more staff members were allotted to the development of "Kid Icarus".
The game was directed by Satoru Okada (credited as S. Okada), and produced by the general manager of the R&D1 division, Gunpei Yokoi (credited as G. Yokoi). Hirokazu Tanaka (credited as Hip Tanaka) composed the music for "Kid Icarus". Yoshio Sakamoto (credited as Shikao.S) joined the team as soon as he had returned from his vacation after the completion of "Metroid". He streamlined the development process, and made many decisions that affected the game design of "Kid Icarus". Several out-of-place elements were included in the game, such as credit cards, a wizard turning player character Pit into an eggplant, and a large, moving nose that was meant to resemble composer Tanaka. Sakamoto attributed this unrestrained humor to the former personnel of the R&D1 division, which he referred to as "strange". Osawa said that he had originally tried to make "Kid Icarus" completely serious, but opted for a more humorous approach after objections from the team.
To meet the game's projected release date of December 19, 1986, the staff members worked overtime and often stayed in the office at night. They used torn cardboard boxes as beds, and covered themselves in curtains to resist the low temperatures of the unheated development building. Eventually, "Kid Icarus" was finished and entered production a mere three days before the release date. Several ideas for additional stages had to be dropped because of these scheduling conflicts. In February and July 1987, respectively, a cartridge-based version was published for the NES in Europe and North America under the name "Kid Icarus". For this release, the graphics of the ending were updated, and staff credits were added to the game. Unlike the Japanese version, which saves the player's progress on the Disk Card, the English version uses a password system to return to a game after the console was turned off, an almost unprecedented feature.
In August 2004, "Kid Icarus" was re-released as part of the "Famicom Mini Disk System Selection" for the Game Boy Advance. The game was released on the Wii's Virtual Console on January 23, 2007 in Japan, on February 12, 2007 in North America, and on February 23, 2007 in Europe and Australia; it was released on the Wii U's Virtual Console on August 14, 2013 in Japan, on July 11, 2013 in Europe and Australia, and on July 25, 2013 in North America. Passwords that were valid in the NES version do not work in the Virtual Console version due to the checksum algorithm being changed. In 2016, "Kid Icarus" was included on the North American and PAL region releases of the NES Classic Edition.
A 3D Classics remake of "Kid Icarus" was published for the Nintendo 3DS handheld console. The remake features stereoscopic 3D along with updated graphics including backgrounds, which the original lacked. It also uses the same save system as the Family Computer Disk System version does, as opposed to the Password system from the NES version. The 3D Classics version also utilizes the Family Computer Disk System's music and sound effects (utilizing the extra sound channel not available in the NES version).
The game became available for purchase on the Nintendo eShop on January 18, 2012 in Japan, on February 2, 2012 in Europe, on April 12, 2012 in Australia and on April 19, 2012 in North America. The game was available early for free via download code to users who registered two selected 3DS games with Nintendo in Japan, Europe and Australia: in Japan, it was available to users who registered any two Nintendo 3DS titles on Club Nintendo between October 1, 2011 and January 15, 2012 with the game available for download starting December 19, 2011; in Europe, it was available to users who registered any two of a selection of Nintendo 3DS titles on Club Nintendo between November 1, 2011 and January 31, 2012, with the first batch of emails with codes being sent out on January 5, 2012; in Australia, it was available to users who registered any two of a selection of Nintendo 3DS titles on Club Nintendo between November 1, 2011 and March 31, 2012, with the first batch of emails with codes being sent out in January 2012. In North America, download codes for the 3D Classics version were given to customers who pre-ordered "" at select retailers when they picked up the game itself, which released on March 23, 2012, allowing them to obtain the game before its release for purchase.
"Kid Icarus" had shipped 1.76 million copies worldwide by late 2003, and has gained a cult following. The game has been met with mixed reviews from critics over the years. In October 1992, a staff writer of the UK publication "Nintendo Magazine System" said that "Kid Icarus" was "pretty good fun", but did not "compare too well" to other platform games, owing in part to its "rather dated" graphics. "Retro Gamer" magazine's Stuart Hunt called "Kid Icarus" an "unsung hero of the NES" that "looks and sounds pretty". He described the music by Hirokazu Tanaka as "sublime", and the enemy characters as "brilliantly drawn". Although he considered the blend of gameplay elements from different genres a success, he said that "Kid Icarus" suffered from "frustrating" design flaws, such as its high difficulty level. Jeremy Parish of "1UP.com" expressed his disagreement with the game's status as an "unfairly forgotten masterpiece" among its substantial Internet following. He found "Kid Icarus" to be "underwhelming", "buggy" and "pretty annoying", and noted that it exhibited "shrill music[, ...] loose controls and some weird design decisions". Notwithstanding his disapproval of these elements, Parish said that the game was "[not] terrible, or even bad – just a little lacking." He recommended players to buy the Virtual Console version, if only because it allowed them to experience "Kid Icarus" "with a fresh perspective".
"GameSpot"s Frank Provo reviewed the Virtual Console version of the game. He noted that the gameplay of "Kid Icarus" was "[not] the most unique blueprint for a video game", but that it had been "fairly fresh back in 1987". He considered the difficulty level "excessive", and found certain areas to be designed "solely to frustrate players". Provo said that the presentation of the game had "[not] aged gracefully". Despite his favorable comments on the Grecian scenery, he criticized the graphics for its small, bicolored and barely animated sprites, its black backgrounds, and the absence of multiple scrolling layers. He thought that the music was "nicely composed", but that the sound effects were "all taps and thuds". He was dissatisfied with the emulation of the game, as the Virtual Console release preserves the slowdown problems of the original NES version, but has its cheat codes removed. Provo closed his review with a warning for potential buyers: he said that players could appreciate "Kid Icarus" for its "straightforward gameplay and challenging level layouts", but might "find nothing special in the gameplay and recoil in horror at the unflinching difficulty." Lucas M. Thomas of "IGN" noted that the game design was "odd" and "not Nintendo's most focused". He thought that it had "[not] aged in as timeless a manner as many other first-party Nintendo games from the NES era," and described "Kid Icarus" as "one of those games that made a lot more sense back in the '80s, accompanied by a tips and tricks strategy sheet." He complimented the theme music, which he considered "heroic and memorable". In his review of the Virtual Console release, Thomas frowned upon Nintendo's decision to remove the NES cheat codes, and called the omission "nonsensical". He found it to be "not an issue worthy of a prolonged rant", but said that "[Nintendo has] willfully edited its product, and damaged its nostalgic value in the process".
"Kid Icarus" was included in "IGN"s lists of the top 100 NES games and the top 100 games of all time; it came in 20th and 84th place, respectively. It came in 34th place on "Electronic Gaming Monthly"s 1997 "100 Best Games of All Time", which said it "was one of the first big NES games to show that the system went way beyond offering the single-screen arcade-style experience." In 2001 "Game Informer" ranked it the 83rd best game ever made. They claimed that despite its high level of difficulty and frustration, it was fun enough to be worth playing. The game was inducted into "GameSpy"s "Hall of Fame", and was voted 54th place in "Nintendo Power"s top 200 Nintendo games. "Nintendo Power" also listed it as the 20th best NES video game, and praised it for its "unique vertically scrolling stages, fun platforming, and infectious 8-bit tunes", in spite of its "unmerciful difficulty".
A Game Boy sequel to "Kid Icarus", titled "", was released in North America in November 1991, and in Europe on May 21, 1992. It was developed by Nintendo in cooperation with the independent company Tose, and largely adopts the gameplay mechanics of its predecessor. "Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters" remained the last installment in the series for over 20 years.
Pit is a recurring character in the American animated television series "", albeit erroneously named as "Kid Icarus", and made cameo appearances in Nintendo games such as "Tetris", "F-1 Race" and "Super Smash Bros. Melee". He became a playable character in the fighting game "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", for which his appearance was redesigned.
In 2008, there were rumors of a three-dimensional "Kid Icarus" game for the Wii that was allegedly developed by the German American studio Factor 5. However, the title was said to be in production without the approval of Nintendo, and Factor 5 cancelled multiple projects following the closure of its American branch in early 2009. In a 2010 interview, Yoshio Sakamoto was asked about a "Kid Icarus" game for the Wii, to which he replied that he was not aware of any plans to revive the franchise. A new series entry for the Nintendo 3DS, "", was eventually revealed at the E3 2010 trade show and was released in 2012. The game is a 3D shooter, and was developed by Project Sora, the company of "Super Smash Bros." designer Masahiro Sakurai. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16892 |
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, (; born 28 May 1968), often known simply as Kylie, is an Australian-British singer, songwriter and actress. She is the highest-selling female Australian artist of all time and has been recognised with several honorific nicknames, most notably the "Princess of Pop". Minogue has also been known for reinventing herself in music and fashion throughout her career, being referred to as a style icon.
Born and raised in Melbourne, she has worked and lived in the United Kingdom since the 1990s. Minogue achieved recognition starring in the Australian soap opera "Neighbours", where she played tomboy mechanic Charlene Robinson. She came to prominence as a recording artist in the late 1980s and released four bubblegum and dance-pop-influenced studio albums produced by Stock Aitken Waterman and released by PWL. By the time she released her fourth album in the early 1990s, she had amassed several top ten singles in the UK and Australia, including "I Should Be So Lucky", "The Loco-Motion", "Hand on Your Heart", "Better the Devil You Know" and "Step Back in Time". Minogue, however, felt alienated and dissatisfied with the little creative control she had over her music. In 1992, she left PWL and signed with Deconstruction Records, where she released "Kylie Minogue" (1994) and "Impossible Princess" (1997), both of which received positive reviews from critics, with the latter being often described as her most personal and best work. Returning to more mainstream dance-oriented music, Minogue signed to Parlophone and released her disco-influenced seventh studio album "Light Years" (2000), which was preceded by lead single "Spinning Around". The follow-up, "Fever" (2001) became her best-selling album to date and was a breakthrough for Minogue in markets where she had little recognition previously. Its lead single, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" became one of the most successful singles of the 2000s, selling over five million units.
She continued reinventing her image and experimenting with a range of genres on her next albums, which produced successful singles such as "Slow", "2 Hearts" and "All the Lovers". Minogue made her film debut in "The Delinquents" (1989) and portrayed Cammy in "Street Fighter" (1994). She has also appeared in the films "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), "Jack & Diane" and "Holy Motors" (2012). In 2014, she appeared as a judge on the third series of "The Voice UK" and "The Voice Australia". Her other ventures include product endorsements, children's books and fashion.
Minogue has sold 70 million records worldwide and has earned numerous awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award, three Brit Awards, 17 ARIA Music Awards, two MTV Europe Music Award and two MTV Video Music Award. She has mounted several successful and critically acclaimed concert tours for which she received a Mo Award for Australian Performer of the Year in 2001 and 2003. Minogue was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to Music. She was appointed by the French government as a Chevalier (knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her contribution to the enrichment of French culture. In 2005, while Minogue was on her , she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After treatment, she resumed the tour under the title , which critics viewed as a "triumph". Minogue was awarded an honorary Doctor of Health Science (D.H.Sc.) degree by Anglia Ruskin University for her work in raising awareness for breast cancer. On the 25th anniversary of the ARIA Music Awards in 2011, she was inducted by the Australian Recording Industry Association into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
Kylie Ann Minogue was born on 28 May 1968 in Melbourne, Australia. Her father, Ronald Charles Minogue, is a fifth-generation Australian and has Irish ancestry; her mother, Carol Ann Jones, came from Maesteg, Wales. Jones had lived in Wales until age ten when her mother and father, Millie and Denis Jones, decided to move to Australia for a better life. Just before Kylie's birth, Ron qualified as an accountant and worked through several jobs while Carol worked as a professional dancer. Kylie's younger brother, Brendan, is a news cameraman in Australia, while her younger sister Dannii Minogue is also a singer and television host. The Minogue family frequently moved around various suburbs in Melbourne to sustain their living expenses, which Kylie found unsettling as a child. After the birth of Dannii, the family moved to South Oakleigh. Kylie would often stay at home reading, sewing and learning to play the violin and piano. As money was tight, Ron worked as an accountant at a family-owned car company and Carol worked as a tea lady at a local hospital. After moving to Surrey Hills, Melbourne, Minogue attended Studfield Primary School briefly before attending Camberwell Primary School. She went on to Camberwell High School. During her schooling years, Minogue found it difficult to make friends. She got her HSC (graduated high school) with subjects including Arts and Graphics and English. Minogue described herself as being of "average intelligence" and "quite modest" during her high school years. Growing up, she and her sister Dannii took singing and dancing lessons.
A ten-year-old Minogue accompanied Dannii to a hearing arranged by the sisters' aunt, Suzette, and, while producers found Dannii too young, Alan Hardy gave Kylie a minor role in soap opera "The Sullivans" (1979). She also appeared in another small role in "Skyways" (1980). In 1985, she was cast in one of the lead roles in "The Henderson Kids". Minogue took time off school to film "The Henderson Kids" and while Carol was not impressed, Minogue felt that she needed the independence to make it into the entertainment industry. During filming, co-star Nadine Garner labelled Minogue "fragile" after producers yelled at her for forgetting her lines; she would often cry on set. Minogue was dropped from the second season of the show after producer Alan Hardy felt the need for her character to be "written off". In retrospect, Hardy stated that removing her from the showing "turned out to be the best thing for her". Interested in following a career in music, Minogue made a demo tape for the producers of weekly music programme "Young Talent Time", which featured Dannii as a regular performer. Kylie gave her first television singing performance on the show in 1985 but was not invited to join the cast. Kylie was cast in the soap opera "Neighbours" in 1986, as Charlene Mitchell, a schoolgirl turned garage mechanic. "Neighbours" achieved popularity in the UK, and a story arc that created a romance between her character and the character played by Jason Donovan culminated in a wedding episode in 1987 that attracted an audience of 20 million British viewers. Minogue became the first person to win four Logie Awards in one year and was the youngest recipient of the "Gold Logie" as the country's "Most Popular Television Performer", with the result determined by public vote.
During a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert with other "Neighbours" cast members, Minogue performed "I Got You Babe" as a duet with actor John Waters, and "The Loco-Motion" as an encore. She was subsequently signed to a recording contract with Mushroom Records in 1987. Her first single, "The Locomotion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles charts and became the country's highest-selling single in the 1980s. She received the ARIA Award for the year's highest-selling single. Its success resulted in Minogue travelling to England with Mushroom Records executive Gary Ashley to work with producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman. They knew little of Minogue and had forgotten that she was arriving; as a result, they wrote "I Should Be So Lucky" while she waited outside the studio. The song reached number one in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Israel and Hong Kong. Minogue won her second consecutive ARIA Award for the year's highest-selling single, and received a "Special Achievement Award". Minogue's debut album, "Kylie" was released in July 1988. The album is a collection of dance-oriented pop tunes and spent more than a year on the UK Albums Chart, including several weeks at number one. It went gold in the United States, while the single "The Locomotion" reached number three on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, and number one on the Canadian dance chart. The single "Got to Be Certain" became her third consecutive number one single on the Australian music charts. Later in the year, she left "Neighbours" to focus on her music career. Minogue also collaborated with Jason Donovan for the song "Especially for You", which peaked at number-one in the United Kingdom and, in December 2014, sold its one millionth copy in the UK. Minogue was sometimes referred to as "the Singing Budgie" by her detractors over the coming years. In a review of the album "Kylie" for AllMusic, Chris True described the tunes as "standard, late-80s ... bubblegum", but added, "her cuteness makes these rather vapid tracks bearable".
Minogue's second album, "Enjoy Yourself" was released in October 1989. It was a success in the United Kingdom, Europe, New Zealand, Asia and Australia and spawned the UK number one singles "Hand on Your Heart" and "Tears on My Pillow". However, it failed to sell well throughout North America and Minogue was dropped by her American record label Geffen Records. She then embarked on her first concert tour, the Enjoy Yourself Tour, in the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and Australia in February 1990. She was also one of the featured vocalists on the remake of "Do They Know It's Christmas?". Minogue's debut film, "The Delinquents" was released in December 1989. The movie received mixed reviews by critics but proved popular with audiences. In the UK it grossed more than £200,000, and in Australia, it was the fourth-highest grossing local film of 1989 and the highest grossing local film of 1990. From 1989 to 1991, Minogue dated INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.
Minogue's third album, "Rhythm of Love" was released in November 1990 and was described as "leaps and bounds more mature" than her previous albums. Her relationship with Michael Hutchence was also seen as part of her departure from her earlier persona. Its lead single, "Better the Devil You Know" peaked at number two in the UK and four in her native Australia. The making of the "Better the Devil You Know" video was the first time Minogue "felt part of the creative process". She said: "I wasn’t in charge but I had a voice. I’d bought some clothes on King's Road for the video. I saw a new way to express my point of view creatively." "Rhythm of Love"'s second and fourth single, "Step Back in Time" and "Shocked" were both a top ten hit in the UK and Australia. She then embarked on the Rhythm of Love Tour in February 1991.
Minogue's fourth album, "Let's Get to It" was released in October 1991 and reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart. It was her first album to fail to reach the top ten. While the first single from the album, "Word Is Out", became her first single to miss the top ten of the UK Singles Chart, subsequent singles "If You Were with Me Now" and "Give Me Just a Little More Time" both reached the top five. In support of the album, she embarked on the Let's Get to It Tour in October. She later expressed her opinion that she was stifled by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, saying, "I was very much a puppet in the beginning. I was blinkered by my record company. I was unable to look left or right." Her first "Greatest Hits" album was released in August 1992. It reached number one in the United Kingdom and number three in Australia. The singles from the album, "What Kind of Fool" and her cover version of Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" both reached the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart.
Minogue's signing with Deconstruction Records in 1993 marked a new phase in her career. Her fifth album, "Kylie Minogue", was released in September 1994 and was a departure from her previous efforts as it "no longer featured the Stock-Aitken-Waterman production gloss", with critics praising Minogue's vocals and the album production. It was produced by dance music producers the Brothers In Rhythm, namely Dave Seaman and Steve Anderson, who had previously produced "Finer Feelings", her last single with PWL. As of 2015, Anderson continued to be Minogue's musical director. The lead single, "Confide in Me", spent four weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart. The next two singles from the album, "Put Yourself in My Place" and "Where Is the Feeling?", reached the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart, while the album peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart, eventually selling 250,000 copies.
During this period, Minogue made a guest appearance as herself in an episode of the comedy "The Vicar of Dibley". Director Steven E. de Souza saw Minogue's cover photo in Australia's "Who Magazine" as one of "The 30 Most Beautiful People in the World" and offered her a role opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in the film "Street Fighter". The film was a moderate success, earning US$70 million in the US, but received poor reviews, with "The Washington Post"s Richard Harrington calling Minogue "the worst actress in the English-speaking world". She had a minor role in the 1996 film "Bio-Dome" starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin. She also appeared in the 1995 short film "Hayride to Hell" and in the 1997 film "Diana & Me". In 1995, Minogue collaborated with Australian artist Nick Cave for the song "Where the Wild Roses Grow". Cave had been interested in working with Minogue since hearing "Better the Devil You Know", saying it contained "one of pop music's most violent and distressing lyrics". The music video for their song was inspired by John Everett Millais's painting "Ophelia" (1851–1852), and showed Minogue as the murdered woman, floating in a pond as a serpent swam over her body. The single received widespread attention in Europe, where it reached the top 10 in several countries, and reached number two in Australia. The song won ARIA Awards for "Song of the Year" and "Best Pop Release". Following concert appearances with Cave, Minogue recited the lyrics to "I Should Be So Lucky" as poetry in London's Royal Albert Hall.
By 1997, Minogue was in a relationship with French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui, who encouraged her to develop her creativity. Inspired by a mutual appreciation of Japanese culture, they created a visual combination of "geisha and manga superheroine" for the photographs taken for Minogue's sixth album "Impossible Princess" and the video for "German Bold Italic", Minogue's collaboration with Towa Tei. She drew inspiration from the music of artists such as Shirley Manson and Garbage, Björk, Tricky and U2, and Japanese pop musicians such as Pizzicato Five and Towa Tei. The album featured collaborations with musicians including James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of the Manic Street Preachers. "Impossible Princess" garnered some negative reviews upon its release in 1997, but would be praised as Minogue's most personal and best work in retrospective reviews. In 2003, "Slant Magazine"'s Sal Cinquemani called it a "deeply personal effort" and "Minogue’s best album to date", while Evan Sawdey, from "PopMatters", described "Impossible Princess" as "one of the most crazed, damn-near perfect dance-pop albums ever created" in a 2008 review. Mostly a dance album, Minogue countered suggestions that she was trying to become an indie artist.
Acknowledging that she had attempted to escape the perceptions of her that had developed during her early career, Minogue commented that she was ready to "forget the painful criticism" and "accept the past, embrace it, use it". The music video for "Did It Again" paid homage to her earlier incarnations. Retitled "Kylie Minogue" in the UK following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it became the lowest-selling album of her career. At the end of the year, a campaign by "Virgin Radio" stated, "We've done something to improve Kylie's records: we've banned them." In Australia, the album was a success and spent 35 weeks on the album chart. Minogue's Intimate and Live tour in 1998 was extended due to demand. She gave several live performances in Australia, including the 1998 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and the opening ceremonies of Melbourne's Crown Casino, and Sydney's Fox Studios in 1999 (where she performed Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend") as well as a Christmas concert in Dili, East Timor, in association with the United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces. She played a small role in the Australian-made Molly Ringwald 2000 film "Cut".
In 1999, Minogue performed a duet with the Pet Shop Boys' on their "Nightlife" album and spent several months in Barbados performing in Shakespeare's "The Tempest". She then appeared in the film "Sample People" and recorded a cover version of Russell Morris's "The Real Thing" for the soundtrack. She signed with Parlophone in April, who wanted to re-establish Minogue as a pop artist. Her seventh studio album, "Light Years", was released on 25 September 2000. "NME" magazine called it a "fun, perfectly-formed" record, which saw Minogue "dropping her considerable concern for cool and bouncing back to her disco-pop roots". It was a commercial success, becoming Minogue's first number-one album in her native Australia. The lead single, "Spinning Around", debuted atop the UK Singles Chart in July, making her only the second artist to have a number-one single in three consecutive decades (after Madonna). Its accompanying video featured Minogue in revealing gold hotpants, which came to be regarded as a "trademark". Three other singles—"On a Night Like This", "Kids" (with Robbie Williams), and "Please Stay"—peaked in the top ten in the United Kingdom.
An elaborate art book titled "Kylie", featuring contributions by Minogue and creative director William Baker, was published by Booth-Clibborn in March 2000. At the time, she began a romantic relationship with model James Gooding. In October, Minogue performed at both the closing ceremonies of 2000 Sydney Olympics and in the opening ceremony of the Paralympics. Her performance of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" was chosen as one of the most memorable Olympic closing ceremony moments by Kate Samuelson of "TNT". The following year, she embarked on the On a Night Like This Tour, which was inspired by the style of Broadway shows and the musicals of the 1930s. She also made a brief cameo as The Green Fairy in Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!", which earned her an MTV Movie Award nomination in 2002. "Spinning Around" and "Light Years" consecutively won the ARIA Award for Best Pop Release in 2000 and 2001.
In September 2001, Minogue released "Can't Get You Out of My Head", the lead single from her eighth studio album, "Fever". It reached number one in over 40 countries and sold 5 million copies, becoming Minogue's most successful single to date. The accompanying music video featured the singer sporting an infamous hooded white jumpsuit with deep plunging neckline. The remaining singles—"In Your Eyes", "Love at First Sight" and "Come into My World"—all peaked in the top ten in Australia and the United Kingdom. Released on 1 October, "Fever" topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, eventually achieving worldwide sales in excess of six million. Dominique Leone from "Pitchfork" praised its simple and "comfortable" composition, terming it a "mature sound from a mature artist, and one that may very well re-establish Minogue for the VH1 generation".
The warm reception towards the album led to its release in the United States in February 2002 by Capitol Records, Minogue's first in 13 years. It debuted on the "Billboard" 200 at number three, her highest-charting album in the region, while peaking at number 10 on the Canadian Albums Chart.
To support the album, Minogue headlined her KylieFever2002 tour in Europe and Australia, which ran from April to August 2002. She performed several songs from the setlist in a series of Jingle Ball concerts in the United States in 2002–2003. In May 2002, Minogue and Gooding announced the end of their relationship after two and a half years. She received four accolades at the ARIA Music Awards of 2002, including Highest Selling Single and Single of the Year for "Can't Get You Out of My Head". That same year, she won her first Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist and Best International Album for "Fever". In 2003, she received her first Grammy nomination for Best Dance Recording for "Love at First Sight", before winning the award for "Come into My World" the following year, marking the first time an Australian music artist had won in a major category since Men at Work in 1983.
In November 2003, Minogue released her ninth studio album "Body Language" following an invitation-only concert, titled "Money Can't Buy", at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The album downplayed the disco style and was inspired by 1980s artists such as Scritti Politti, The Human League, Adam and the Ants and Prince, blending their styles with elements of hip hop. The sales of the album were lower than anticipated after the success of "Fever", though the first single, "Slow", was a number-one hit in the United Kingdom and Australia. Two more singles from the album were released: "Red Blooded Woman" and "Chocolate". In the US, "Slow" reached number-one on the club chart and received a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Dance Recording category. "Body Language" achieved first week sales of 43,000 and declined significantly in the second week.
In November 2004, Minogue released her second official greatest hits album entitled "Ultimate Kylie". The album yielded two singles: "I Believe in You" and "Giving You Up". "I Believe in You" was later nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Dance Recording". In March 2005, Minogue commenced her . After performing in Europe, she travelled to Melbourne, where she was diagnosed with breast cancer, forcing her to cancel the tour. She underwent surgery in May 2005 and commenced chemotherapy treatment soon after. It was announced in January 2006 that she had finished chemotherapy and the disease "had no recurrence" after the surgery. She would continue her treatment for the next months. In December 2005, Minogue released a digital-only single, "Over the Rainbow", a live recording from her Showgirl tour. Her children's book, "The Showgirl Princess", written during her period of convalescence, was published in October 2006, and her perfume, "Darling", was launched in November. The range was later augmented by eau de toilettes including Pink Sparkle, Couture and Inverse.
Minogue resumed her then cancelled tour in November 2006, under the title . Her dance routines had been reworked to accommodate her medical condition, with slower costume changes and longer breaks introduced between sections of the show to conserve her strength. The media reported that Minogue performed energetically, with the "Sydney Morning Herald" describing the show as an "extravaganza" and "nothing less than a triumph". She voiced Florence in the animated film "The Magic Roundabout", based on the television series of the same name. She finished her voice role back in 2002, before it was released in 2005 in Europe. A year later, she reprised the role and recorded the theme song for the American edition, re-titled as "Doogal", which grossed $26,691,243 worldwide.
In November 2007, Minogue released her tenth and much-discussed "comeback" album, "X". The electro-styled album included contributions from Guy Chambers, Cathy Dennis, Bloodshy & Avant and Calvin Harris. The album received some criticism for the triviality of its subject matter in light of Minogue's experiences with breast cancer. "X" and its lead single, "2 Hearts", entered at number one on the Australian albums and singles charts, respectively. In the United Kingdom, "X" initially attracted lukewarm sales, although its commercial performance eventually improved. Follow-up singles from the album, "In My Arms" and "Wow", both peaked inside the top ten of the UK Singles Chart. In the US, the album was nominated at the 2009 Grammy Awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album.
Minogue began a relationship with French actor Olivier Martinez after meeting him at the 2003 Grammy Awards ceremony. They ended their relationship in February 2007, but remained on friendly terms. Minogue was reported to have been "saddened by false [media] accusations of [Martinez's] disloyalty". She defended Martinez, and acknowledged the support he had given during her treatment for breast cancer. As part of the promotion of her album, Minogue was featured in "", a documentary filmed during 2006 and 2007 as she resumed her Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour. She also appeared in "The Kylie Show", which featured her performances as well as comedy sketches. She co-starred in the 2007 "Doctor Who" Christmas special episode, "Voyage of the Damned", as Astrid Peth. The episode was watched by 13.31 million viewers, which was the show's highest viewing figure since 1979. In May 2008, Minogue embarked on the European leg of the KylieX2008 tour, her most expensive tour to date with production costs of £10 million. The tour was generally acclaimed and sold well. She was then appointed a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the junior grade of France's highest cultural honour. In July, she was officially invested by The Prince of Wales as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She also won the "Best International Female Solo Artist" award at the 2008 BRIT Awards. In September, she made her Middle East debut as the headline act at the opening of Atlantis, The Palm, an exclusive hotel resort in Dubai, and from November, she continued her "KylieX2008" tour, taking the show to cities across South America, Asia and Australia. The tour visited 21 countries, and was considered a success, with ticket sales estimated at $70,000,000. In 2009, Minogue hosted the BRIT Awards with James Corden and Mathew Horne. She then embarked on the For You, for Me tour which was her first North American concert tour. She was also featured in the Hindi movie, "Blue", performing an A. R. Rahman song. Minogue was in a relationship with model Andrés Velencoso from 2008 to 2013.
In July 2010, Minogue released her eleventh studio album, "Aphrodite". The album featured new songwriters and producers including Stuart Price as executive producer. Price also contributed to song writing along with Minogue, Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Nerina Pallot, Pascal Gabriel, Lucas Secon, Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley and Kish Mauve. The album received favourable reviews from most music critics; Rob Sheffield from "Rolling Stone" labelled the album Minogue's "finest work since 1997's underrated "Impossible Princess"" and Tim Sendra from Allmusic commended Minogue's choice of collaborators and producers, commenting that the album is the "work of someone who knows exactly what her skills are and who to hire to help showcase them to perfection". "Aphrodite" debuted at number-one in the United Kingdom, exactly 22 years after her first number one hit in the United Kingdom. The album's lead single, "All the Lovers," was a success and became her 33rd top ten single in the United Kingdom, though subsequent singles from the album, "Get Outta My Way", "Better than Today", and "Put Your Hands Up", failed to reach the top ten of the UK Singles Chart. However, all the singles released from the album have topped the US "Billboard" Hot Dance Club Songs chart.
Minogue recorded a duet with synthpop duo Hurts on their song "Devotion", which was included on the group's album "Happiness". She was then featured on Taio Cruz's single "Higher". The result was successful, peaking inside the top 20 in several charts and reaching number one on the US Hot Dance Club Charts. At the time, Minogue also held the third spot on the chart with "Higher", her collaboration with British recording artist Taio Cruz, becoming the first artist to claim two of the top three spots at the same time in the American dance chart's history. To conclude her recordings in 2010, she released the extended play "A Kylie Christmas", which included covers of Christmas songs including "Let It Snow" and "Santa Baby". Minogue embarked on the in February 2011, travelling to Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Africa. With a stage set inspired by the birth of the love goddess Aphrodite and Grecian culture and history, it was greeted with positive reviews from critics, who praised the concept and the stage production. The tour was a commercial success, grossing a total of US$60 million and ranking at number six and 21 on the mid-year and annual Pollstar Top Concert Tours of 2011 respectively.
In March 2012, Minogue began a year-long celebration for her 25 years in the music industry, which was often called "K25". The anniversary started with her embarking on the Anti Tour in England and Australia, which featured b-sides, demos and rarities from her music catalogue. The tour was positively received for its intimate atmosphere and was a commercial success, grossing over two million dollars from four shows. She then released the single "Timebomb" in May, the greatest hits compilation album, "The Best of Kylie Minogue" in June and the singles box-set, "K25 Time Capsule" in October. She performed at various events around the world, including Sydney Mardi Gras, Queen Elizabeth II's "Diamond Jubilee Concert", and BBC Proms in the Park London 2012. Minogue released the compilation album, "The Abbey Road Sessions" in October. The album contained reworked and orchestral versions of her previous songs. It was recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios and was produced by Steve Anderson and Colin Elliot. The album received favourable reviews from music critics and debuted at number-two in the United Kingdom. The album spawned two singles, "Flower" and "On a Night Like This". Minogue returned to acting and starred in two films: a cameo appearance in the American independent film "Jack & Diane" and a lead role in the French film "Holy Motors". "Jack & Diane" opened at the Tribeca Film Festival on 20 April 2012, while "Holy Motors" opened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, which Minogue attended.
In January 2013, Minogue and her manager Terry Blamey, whom she had worked with since the start of her singing career, parted ways. The following month, she signed to Roc Nation for a management deal. In September, she was featured on Italian singer-songwriter Laura Pausini's single "Limpido", which was a number-one hit in Italy and received a nomination for "World's Best Song" at the 2013 World Music Awards. In the same month, Minogue was hired as a coach for the third series of BBC One's talent competition "The Voice UK", alongside record producer and Black Eyed Peas member, will.i.am, Kaiser Chiefs' lead singer Ricky Wilson and singer Sir Tom Jones. The show opened with 9.35 million views from the UK, a large percentage increase from the second season. It accumulated an estimated 8.10 million viewers on average. Minogue's judging and personality on the show were singled out for praise. Ed Power from "The Daily Telegraph" gave the series premiere 3 stars, praising Minogue for being "glamorous, agreeably giggly [and] a card-carrying national treasure". In November, she was hired as a coach for the third season of "The Voice Australia".
In March 2014, Minogue released her twelfth studio album, "Kiss Me Once". The album featured contributions from Sia Furler, Mike Del Rio, Cutfather, Pharrell Williams, MNEK and Ariel Rechtshaid. It peaked at number one in Australia and number two in the United Kingdom. The singles from the album, "Into the Blue" and "I Was Gonna Cancel", did not chart inside the top ten of the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 12 and number 59 respectively. In August, Minogue performed a seven-song set at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, donning a custom Jean Paul Gaultier corset. In September, she embarked on the Kiss Me Once Tour. In January 2015, Minogue appeared as a guest vocalist on Giorgio Moroder's single "Right Here, Right Now" providing her 12th number one hit on the U.S. Dance Chart on 18 April 2015.
In March, Minogue's contract with Parlophone Records ended, leaving her future music releases with Warner Music Group in Australia and New Zealand. The same month, she parted ways with Roc Nation. In April, Minogue played tech reporter Shauna in a two episode arc on the ABC Family series, "Young & Hungry". Minogue also appeared as Susan Riddick in the disaster film "San Andreas", released in May and starring Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino. In September 2015, an extended play with Fernando Garibay titled "Kylie + Garibay" was released. Garibay and Giorgio Moroder served as producers for the extended play. In November, Minogue was a featured artist on the track, "The Other Boys" by Nervo, alongside Jake Shears and Nile Rodgers. This became her 13th chart topper on the U.S Dance Chart, lifting her position in the list of artists with the most U.S. Dance Chart number ones to equal 8th alongside Whitney Houston, Enrique Iglesias and Lady Gaga. In December 2015, Minogue was the guest on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs". Her choices included "Dancing Queen" by ABBA, "Purple Rain" by Prince and "Need You Tonight" by INXS. Minogue released her first Christmas album, "Kylie Christmas" in November 2015. In 2016, she recorded the theme song "This Wheel's on Fire", from the soundtrack "". Minogue's holiday album "Kylie Christmas", was re-released in November entitled as "". In November 2015, Minogue confirmed she was dating British actor Joshua Sasse. On 20 February 2016, their engagement was announced in the "Forthcoming Marriages" section of "The Daily Telegraph", but in February 2017, Minogue confirmed the couple had ended their relationship.
In February 2017, Minogue signed a new record deal with BMG Rights Management. In December 2017, Minogue and BMG had struck a joint-deal with Mushroom Music Labels — under the sub-division label Liberator to release her new album in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Minogue worked with writers and producers for her 14th studio album, including Sky Adams and Richard Stannard, and recorded the album in London, Los Angeles and Nashville, with the latter profoundly influencing the record. Minogue's album "Golden" was released in April 2018 with "Dancing" serving as its lead single. The album debuted at number one in the UK and Australia. With this feat, she has reached the top position of the UK Albums Chart in four consecutive decades, from the 1980s to the 2010s. Tim Sendra from AllMusic labelled "Golden" a "darn bold" for an artist of Minogue's longevity, stating "The amazing thing about the album, and about Minogue, is that she pulls off the country as well as she's pulled off new wave, disco, electro, murder ballads, and everything else she's done in her long career." "Golden" also received criticism, with "Pitchfork"'s Ben Cardew claiming that it "sounds like someone playing at country music, rather than someone who understands it."
Minogue released a greatest hits compilation "" on 28 June 2019, featuring "New York City" as the lead single. The album reached number one in her native Australia and in the UK, becoming her seventh album to reach the top spot in the latter. On 30 June, Minogue made her debut at the Glastonbury Festival, fourteen years after her breast cancer diagnosis forced her to cancel her 2005 headlining slot. Performing in the Legends Slot, Minogue's set featured guest appearances from Nick Cave and Chris Martin. Her set received rave reviews from critics, with "The Guardian" declaring it a "solid-gold", "peerless" and "phenomenal". It was a big hit with fans, with Minogue's performance being the most-watched set of the BBC coverage (earning three million viewers, ahead of the nearest competitor, The Killers who received 1.4 million) and reportedly breaking records for the most attended Glastonbury set in history. Minogue also appeared in her own Christmas television special, "Kylie's Secret Night", which aired on Channel 4 in December 2019.
Minogue explained that she first became interested in pop music during her adolescence: "I first got into pop music in 1981, I'd say. It was all about Prince, Adam + the Ants, that whole New Romantic period. Prior to that, it was the Jackson 5, Donna Summer, and my dad's records – the Stones and Beatles." She would also listen to the records of Olivia Newton-John and ABBA. Minogue claimed that she "wanted to be" Newton-John while growing up. Her producer, Pete Waterman, recalled Minogue during the early years of her music career with the observation: "She was setting her sights on becoming the new Prince or Madonna ... What I found amazing was that she was outselling Madonna four to one, but still wanted to be her." Minogue came to prominence in the music scene as a bubblegum pop singer and was deemed a "product of the Stock, Aitken & Waterman Hit Factory". Musician Nick Cave, who worked with Minogue in some occasions, was a major influence on her artistic development. She told "The Guardian": "He’s definitely infiltrated my life in beautiful and profound ways." Throughout her career, Minogue's work was also influenced by Cathy Dennis, D Mob, Scritti Politti, Björk, Tricky, U2 and Pizzicato Five, among others.
Minogue has been known for her soft soprano vocal range. Tim Sendra of "AllMusic" reviewed her album "Aphrodite" and said that Minogue's "slightly nasal, girl-next-door vocals serve her needs perfectly." According to Fiona MacDonald from "Madison" magazine, Kylie "has never shied away from making some brave but questionable artistic decisions". In musical terms, Minogue has worked with many genres in pop and dance music. However, her signature music has been contemporary disco music. Her first studio albums with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman present a more bubblegum pop influence, with many critics comparing her to American recording artist Madonna. Chris True from "Allmusic", reviewed her debut "Kylie" and found her music "standard late-'80s Stock-Aitken-Waterman bubblegum", however he stated that she presented the most personality of any 1980s recording artist. He said of her third album "Rhythm of Love", from the early 1990s, "The songwriting is stronger, the production dynamic, and Kylie seems more confident vocally." At the time of her third studio album, "She began to trade in her cutesy, bubblegum pop image for a more mature one, and in turn, a more sexual one." Chris True stated that during her relationship with Michael Hutchence, "her shedding of the near-virginal façade that dominated her first two albums, began to have an effect, not only on how the press and her fans treated her, but in the evolution of her music."
From Minogue's work on her sixth studio album, "Impossible Princess", her songwriting and musical content began to change. She was constantly writing down words, exploring the form and meaning of sentences. She had written lyrics before, but called them "safe, just neatly rhymed words and that's that". Sal Cinquemani from "Slant Magazine" said that the album bears a resemblance to Madonna's "Ray of Light". He said that she took inspiration from "both the Brit-pop and electronica movements of the mid-'90s", saying that "Impossible Princess is the work of an artist willing to take risks". Her next effort, "Light Years" is a disco-influenced dance-pop record, with "AllMusic"'s Chris True calling it "Arguably one of the best disco records since the '70s". True stated that her eighth album, "Fever", "combines the disco-diva comeback of "Light Years" with simple dance rhythms". Her ninth album, "Body Language" was quite different from her musical experiments in the past as it was a "successful" attempt at broadening her sound with electro and hip-hop for instance. Incorporating styles of dance music with funk, disco and R&B, the album was listed on "Q"s "Best Albums of 2003".
Critics said Minogue's tenth record "X" did not feature enough "consistency" and Chris True called the tracks "cold, calculated dance-pop numbers." Tim Sendra of "AllMusic" said that her eleventh album "Aphrodite" "rarely strays past sweet love songs or happy dance anthems" and "the main sound is the kind of glittery disco pop that really is her strong suit." Sendra found "Aphrodite" "One of her best, in fact." Minogue's 14th studio album, "Golden" were heavily influenced by country music, although maintaining her dance-pop sensibilities. Sal Cinquemani from "Slant Magazine" wrote that ""Golden" further bolsters Minogue's reputation for taking risks—and artfully sets the stage for her inevitable disco comeback."
Minogue's efforts to be taken seriously as a recording artist were initially hindered by the perception that she had not "paid her dues" and was no more than a manufactured pop star exploiting the image she had created during her stint on "Neighbours". Minogue acknowledged this viewpoint, saying, "If you're part of a record company, I think to a degree it's fair to say that you're a manufactured product. You're a product and you're selling a product. It doesn't mean that you're not talented and that you don't make creative and business decisions about what you will and won't do and where you want to go."
In 1993, Baz Luhrmann introduced Minogue to photographer Bert Stern, notable for his work with Marilyn Monroe. Stern photographed her in Los Angeles and, comparing her to Monroe, commented that Minogue had a similar mix of vulnerability and eroticism. Throughout her career, Minogue has chosen photographers who attempt to create a new "look" for her, and the resulting photographs have appeared in a variety of magazines, from the cutting edge "The Face" to the more traditionally sophisticated "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair", making the Minogue face and name known to a broad range of people. Stylist William Baker has suggested that this is part of the reason she entered mainstream pop culture in Europe more successfully than many other pop singers who concentrate solely on selling records.
By 2000, Minogue was considered to have achieved a degree of musical credibility for having maintained her career longer than her critics had expected. Her progression from the wholesome "girl next door" to a more sophisticated performer with a flirtatious and playful persona attracted new fans. Her "Spinning Around" video led to some media outlets referring to her as "SexKylie", and sex became a stronger element in her subsequent videos. In September 2002, she was ranked 27 on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was also named one of the 100 Hottest Women of All-Time by "Men's Health" in 2013. William Baker described her status as a sex symbol as a "double edged sword", observing that "we always attempted to use her sex appeal as an enhancement of her music and to sell a record. But now it has become in danger of eclipsing what she actually is: a pop singer." After 20 years as a performer, Minogue was described as a fashion "trend-setter" and a "style icon who constantly reinvents herself".
Minogue has been inspired by and compared to Madonna throughout her career. She received negative comments that her Rhythm of Love tour in 1991 was too similar visually to Madonna's Blond Ambition World Tour, for which critics labelled her a Madonna wannabe. Writing for the "Observer Music Monthly", Rufus Wainwright described Minogue as "the anti-Madonna. Self-knowledge is a truly beautiful thing and Kylie knows herself inside out. She is what she is and there is no attempt to make quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy." Kathy McCabe for "The Telegraph" noted that Minogue and Madonna follow similar styles in music and fashion, but concluded, "Where they truly diverge on the pop-culture scale is in shock value. Minogue's clips might draw a gasp from some but Madonna's ignite religious and political debate unlike any other artist on the planet ... Simply, Madonna is the dark force; Kylie is the light force." Minogue has said of Madonna, "Her huge influence on the world, in pop and fashion, meant that I wasn't immune to the trends she created. I admire Madonna greatly but in the beginning she made it difficult for artists like me, she had done everything there was to be done", and "Madonna's the Queen of Pop, I'm the princess. I'm quite happy with that."
In January 2007, Madame Tussauds in London unveiled its fourth waxwork of Minogue; only Queen Elizabeth II has had more models created. During the same week a bronze cast of her hands was added to Wembley Arena's "Square of Fame". In 2007, a bronze statue of Minogue was unveiled at Melbourne Docklands for permanent display.
In March 2010, Minogue was declared by researchers as the "most powerful celebrity in Britain". The study examined how marketers identify celebrity and brand partnerships. Mark Husak, head of Millward Brown's UK media practice, said: "Kylie is widely accepted as an adopted Brit. People know her, like her and she is surrounded by positive buzz". In 2016, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, Minogue had a net worth of £55 million.
Minogue is regarded as a gay icon, which she has encouraged with comments including "I am not a traditional gay icon. There's been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits" and "My gay audience has been with me from the beginning ... they kind of adopted me." Her status as a gay icon has been attributed to her music, fashion sense and career longevity. Author Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis wrote about Minogue's appeal to gay men in "Strike a Pose, Forever: The Legacy of Vogue..." and observed that she "frequently incorporates camp-inflected themes in her extravaganzas, drawing mainly from the disco scene, the S/M culture, and the burlesque stage." In "Beautiful Things in Popular Culture" (2007), Marc Brennan stated that Minogue's work "provides a gorgeous form of escapism". Minogue has explained that she first became aware of her gay audience in 1988, when several drag queens performed to her music at a Sydney pub, and she later saw a similar show in Melbourne. She said that she felt "very touched" to have such an "appreciative crowd", and this encouraged her to perform at gay venues throughout the world, as well as headlining the 1994 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Minogue has one of the largest gay followings in the world.
Throughout her career, Minogue has been known for reinventing herself in fashion and musical content. In 2012, Dino Scatena of "The Sydney Morning Herald" wrote about Minogue, "A quarter of a century ago, a sequence of symbiotic events altered the fabric of Australian popular culture and set in motion the transformation of a 19-year-old soap actor from Melbourne into an international pop icon." Scatena also described her as "Australia's single most successful entertainer and a world-renowned style idol".
Pointing out the several reinventions in Minogue's image, Larissa Dubecki from "The Age" labelled her the "Mother of Reinvention", while "Entertainment Weekly"'s Ernest Macias opined: "[with] a panache for fabulous fashion, and her unequivocal disco-pop sound, Minogue has established herself as a timeless icon." Paula Joye of "The Sydney Morning Herald" wrote that "Minogue’s fusion of fashion and music has made a huge contribution to the style "zeitgeist"." Fiona MacDonald from "Madison" acknowledged Kylie as "one of the handful of singers recognised around the world by her first name alone. And yet despite becoming an international music superstar, style icon and honorary Brit, those two syllables still seem as Australian as the smell of eucalyptus or a barbeque on a hot day."
Minogue has been recognised with a number of honorific nicknames, most notably the "Princess of Pop". Jon O'Brien of AllMusic reviewed her box-set "" and stated that it "contains plenty of moments to justify her position as one of the all-time premier pop princesses." In January 2012, "NME" critics ranked her single "Can't Get You Out of My Head" at number four on their Greatest Pop Songs in History list. In February 2012, VH1 ranked Minogue at number 47 on its 100 Greatest Women in Music list, and number 49 on the 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era. Channel 4 listed her as one of the world's greatest pop stars. Minogue's work has influenced pop and dance artists including September, Diana Vickers, The Veronicas, Slayyyter and Paris Hilton. In 2007, French avant-garde guitarist Noël Akchoté released "So Lucky", featuring solo guitar versions of tunes recorded by Minogue.
Minogue has received a number of accolades, including a Grammy Award, three Brit Awards, 17 ARIA Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, two MTV Europe Music Awards and six Mo Awards, including the Australian Performer of the Year in 2001 and 2003. In 2008, she was honoured with Music Industry Trust's award for recognition of her 20-year career and was hailed as "an icon of pop and style", becoming the first female musician to receive a Music Industry Trust award. In April 2017, the Britain-Australia Society recognised Minogue with its 2016 award for outstanding contribution to the improving of relations and bilateral understanding between Britain and Australia. The citation reads: "In recognition of significant contributions to the Britain-Australia relationship as an acclaimed singer, songwriter, actor and iconic personality in both countries". The award was announced at a reception in Australia House but was personally presented the next day by Prince Philip, Patron of the Society, at Windsor Castle.
In June 2012, The Official Chart Company revealed that Minogue is the 12th best selling singer in the United Kingdom to date, and the third best selling female artist, selling over 10.1 million albums. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), all her studio albums have been certified, and with her singles as well, she has a total of 27 certified records. She has sold between 60 and 70 million records worldwide. In January 2011, Minogue received a "Guinness World Records" citation for having the most consecutive decades with top five albums in the UK, with all her albums doing so. Minogue and American singer Madonna are the only artists to have had reached the top position of the UK Albums Chart in four consecutive decades, from the 1980s to the 2010s. In 2004, she held the record for the most singles at number one in the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) singles chart, with a total of nine. In November 2011, on the 25th anniversary of the ARIA Music Awards, she was inducted by the Australian Recording Industry Association into the ARIA Hall of Fame. "The Sydney Morning Herald"'s Paula Joye declared Minogue as "the most successful Australian female recording artist of all time".
Minogue's songs have garnered some accolades throughout her career. In 2011, she made history for having two songs inside the top three on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart, with her singles "Better than Today" and "Higher" charting at one and three, respectively. In December 2016, "Billboard" ranked her as the 18th most successful dance artist of all-time. Her single "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" was named the most-played track of the 2000s. The song eventually became the third best-selling UK single and the most-played song in the UK in 2001. As of 2012, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" was the 72nd song featured on UK's Official Top 100 Biggest Selling Singles of All Time.
Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 36 in May 2005, leading to the postponement of the remainder of her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour and her withdrawal from the Glastonbury Festival. Her hospitalisation and treatment in Melbourne resulted in a brief but intense period of media coverage, particularly in Australia, where then Prime Minister John Howard issued a statement of support. As media and fans began to congregate outside the Minogue residence in Melbourne, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks warned the international media that any disruption of the Minogue family's rights under Australian privacy laws would not be tolerated.
Minogue underwent surgery on 21 May 2005 at Cabrini Hospital in Malvern and commenced chemotherapy treatment soon after. After the surgery, the disease "had no recurrence". On 8 July 2005, she made her first public appearance after surgery when she visited a children's cancer ward at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital. She returned to France where she completed her chemotherapy treatment at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif, near Paris. In January 2006, Minogue's publicist announced that she had finished chemotherapy, and her treatment continued for the next months. On her return to Australia for her concert tour, she discussed her illness and said that her chemotherapy treatment had been like "experiencing a nuclear bomb". While appearing on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in 2008, Minogue said that her cancer had originally been misdiagnosed. She commented, "Because someone is in a white coat and using big medical instruments doesn't necessarily mean they're right", but later spoke of her respect for the medical profession.
Minogue was acknowledged for the impact she made by publicly discussing her cancer diagnosis and treatment. In May 2008, the French Cultural Minister Christine Albanel said, "Doctors now even go as far as saying there is a "Kylie effect" that encourages young women to have regular checks." She has been cited as an example of cases where more women have undergone regular checks for cancer symptoms after publicity around famous people being diagnosed with cancer. Television host Giuliana Rancic cited Minogue's cancer story as "inspirational" when she too was diagnosed with cancer.
Minogue has helped fundraise on many occasions. In 1989, she participated in recording "Do They Know It's Christmas?" under the name Band Aid II to help raise money. In early 2010, Minogue along with many other artists (under the name Helping Haiti) recorded a cover version of "Everybody Hurts". The single was a fundraiser to help after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. She also spent a week in Thailand after the 2005 tsunami. During her 2011 Aphrodite World Tour, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, which was on her itinerary. She declared she would continue to tour there, stating, "I was here to do shows and I chose not to cancel, Why did I choose not to cancel? I thought long and hard about it and it wasn't an easy decision to make." While she was there, she and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard were star guests at an Australian Embassy fundraiser for the disaster. In January 2020, in response to the 2019–20 Australian bushfires, Minogue announced that she and her family were donating A$500,000 towards immediate firefighting efforts and ongoing support.
In 2008, Minogue pledged her support for a campaign to raise money for abused children, to be donated to the British charities ChildLine and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. According to the source, around $93 million was raised. She spoke out in relation to the cause, saying: "Finding the courage to tell someone about being abused is one of the most difficult decisions a child will ever have to make." In 2010 and 2012, she was involved in supporting the AIDS Support Gala, which was held by the American Foundation for Aids Research (Amfar).
Since Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis in 2005, she has been a sponsor and ambassador for the cause. In May 2010, she held a breast cancer campaign for the first time. She later spoke about the cause saying "It means so much to me to be part of this year's campaign for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer. I wholeheartedly support their efforts to raise funds for the vital work undertaken by Breakthrough Breast Cancer." For the cause, she "posed in a silk sheet emblazoned with the distinctive target logo of Fashion Targets Breast Cancer" for photographer Mario Testino. In April 2014, Minogue had launched a new campaign entitled One Note Against Cancer, which is a charity organisation to help cancer research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16894 |
Knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity.
The background of knighthood can be traced back to the Greek "hippeis" (ἱππεῖς) and Roman "eques" of classical antiquity.
In the Early Middle Ages in Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors. During the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior. Often, a knight was a vassal who served as an elite fighter, a bodyguard or a mercenary for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback. Knighthood in the Middle Ages was closely linked with horsemanship (and especially the joust) from its origins in the 12th century until its final flowering as a fashion among the high nobility in the Duchy of Burgundy in the 15th century. This linkage is reflected in the etymology of "chivalry", "cavalier" and related terms. In that sense, the special prestige accorded to mounted warriors in Christendom finds a parallel in the "furusiyya" in the Islamic world.
In the Late Middle Ages, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete. Yet, the titles remained in many countries. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature, particularly the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, and the Matter of Britain, relating to the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
Today, a number of orders of knighthood continue to exist in Christian Churches, as well as in several historically Christian countries and their former territories, such as the Roman Catholic Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Protestant Order of Saint John, as well as the English Order of the Garter, the Swedish Royal Order of the Seraphim, and the Order of St. Olav. Each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state, monarch, or prelate to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement, as in the British honours system, often for service to the Church or country. The modern female equivalent in English is Dame.
The word "knight", from Old English "cniht" ("boy" or "servant"), is a cognate of the German word "Knecht" ("servant, bondsman, vassal"). This meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages (cf Old Frisian "kniucht", Dutch "knecht", Danish "knægt", Swedish "knekt", Norwegian "knekt", Middle High German "kneht", all meaning "boy, youth, lad"). Middle High German had the phrase "guoter kneht", which also meant knight; but this meaning was in decline by about 1200.
The meaning of "cniht" changed over time from its original meaning of "boy" to "household retainer". Ælfric's homily of St. Swithun describes a mounted retainer as a "cniht". While "cnihtas" might have fought alongside their lords, their role as household servants features more prominently in the Anglo-Saxon texts. In several Anglo-Saxon wills "cnihtas" are left either money or lands. In his will, King Æthelstan leaves his cniht, Aelfmar, eight hides of land.
A "rādcniht", "riding-servant", was a servant on horseback.
A narrowing of the generic meaning "servant" to "military follower of a king or other superior" is visible by 1100. The specific military sense of a knight as a mounted warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years' War. The verb "to knight" (to make someone a knight) appears around 1300; and, from the same time, the word "knighthood" shifted from "adolescence" to "rank or dignity of a knight".
An Equestrian (Latin, from "eques" "horseman", from "equus" "horse") was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. This class is often translated as "knight"; the medieval knight, however, was called "miles" in Latin (which in classical Latin meant "soldier", normally infantry).
In the later Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, "equus", was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin "caballus", sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish "caballos". From "caballus" arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the (French-derived) English "cavalier": Italian "cavaliere", Spanish "caballero", French "chevalier" (whence "chivalry"), Portuguese "cavaleiro", and Romanian "cavaler". The Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English "rider": German "Ritter", and Dutch and Scandinavian "ridder". These words are derived from Germanic "rīdan", "to ride", in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root "reidh-".
In ancient Rome there was a knightly class "Ordo Equestris" (order of mounted nobles). Some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, and some armies, such as those of the Ostrogoths, were mainly cavalry. However, it was the Franks who generally fielded armies composed of large masses of infantry, with an infantry elite, the comitatus, which often rode to battle on horseback rather than marching on foot. When the armies of the Frankish ruler Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Arab invasion at the Battle of Tours in 732, the Frankish forces were still largely infantry armies, with elites riding to battle but dismounting to fight.
In the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or "miles" in Latin. The first knights appeared during the reign of Charlemagne in the 8th century. As the Carolingian Age progressed, the Franks were generally on the attack, and larger numbers of warriors took to their horses to ride with the Emperor in his wide-ranging campaigns of conquest. At about this time the Franks increasingly remained on horseback to fight on the battlefield as true cavalry rather than mounted infantry, with the discovery of the stirrup, and would continue to do so for centuries afterwards. Although in some nations the knight returned to foot combat in the 14th century, the association of the knight with mounted combat with a spear, and later a lance, remained a strong one. The older Carolingian ceremony of presenting a young man with weapons influenced the emergence of knighthood ceremonies, in which a noble would be ritually given weapons and declared to be a knight, usually amid some festivities.These mobile mounted warriors made Charlemagne's far-flung conquests possible, and to secure their service he rewarded them with grants of land called benefices. These were given to the captains directly by the Emperor to reward their efforts in the conquests, and they in turn were to grant benefices to their warrior contingents, who were a mix of free and unfree men. In the century or so following Charlemagne's death, his newly empowered warrior class grew stronger still, and Charles the Bald declared their fiefs to be hereditary. The period of chaos in the 9th and 10th centuries, between the fall of the Carolingian central authority and the rise of separate Western and Eastern Frankish kingdoms (later to become France and Germany respectively) only entrenched this newly landed warrior class. This was because governing power and defense against Viking, Magyar and Saracen attack became an essentially local affair which revolved around these new hereditary local lords and their "demesnes".
Clerics and the Church often opposed the practices of the Knights because of their abuses against woman and civilians, and many such as St Bernard, were convinced that the Knights served the devil and not God and needed reforming.
In the course of the 12th century knighthood became a social rank, with a distinction being made between "milites gregarii" (non-noble cavalrymen) and "milites nobiles" (true knights). As the term "knight" became increasingly confined to denoting a social rank, the military role of fully armoured cavalryman gained a separate term, "man-at-arms". Although any medieval knight going to war would automatically serve as a man-at-arms, not all men-at-arms were knights. The first military orders of knighthood were the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and the Knights Hospitaller, both founded shortly after the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Order of Saint Lazarus (1100), Knights Templars (1118) and the Teutonic Knights (1190). At the time of their foundation, these were intended as monastic orders, whose members would act as simple soldiers protecting pilgrims. It was only over the following century, with the successful conquest of the Holy Land and the rise of the crusader states, that these orders became powerful and prestigious.
The great European legends of warriors such as the paladins, the Matter of France and the Matter of Britain popularized the notion of chivalry among the warrior class. The ideal of chivalry as the ethos of the Christian warrior, and the transmutation of the term "knight" from the meaning "servant, soldier", and of "chevalier" "mounted soldier", to refer to a member of this ideal class, is significantly influenced by the Crusades, on one hand inspired by the military orders of monastic warriors, and on the other hand also cross-influenced by Islamic (Saracen) ideals of "furusiyya".
The institution of knights was already well-established by the 10th century. While the knight was essentially a title denoting a military office, the term could also be used for positions of higher nobility such as landholders. The higher nobles grant the vassals their portions of land (fiefs) in return for their loyalty, protection, and service. The nobles also provided their knights with necessities, such as lodging, food, armour, weapons, horses, and money. The knight generally held his lands by military tenure which was measured through military service that usually lasted 40 days a year. The military service was the "quid pro quo" for each knight's fief. Vassals and lords could maintain any number of knights, although knights with more military experience were those most sought after. Thus, all petty nobles intending to become prosperous knights needed a great deal of military experience. A knight fighting under another's banner was called a "knight bachelor" while a knight fighting under his own banner was a "knight banneret".
A knight had to be born of nobility – typically sons of knights or lords. In some cases commoners could also be knighted as a reward for extraordinary military service. Children of the nobility were cared for by noble foster-mothers in castles until they reached age seven.
The seven-year-old boys were given the title of "page" and turned over to the care of the castle's lords. They were placed on an early training regime of hunting with huntsmen and falconers, and academic studies with priests or chaplains. Pages then become assistants to older knights in battle, carrying and cleaning armour, taking care of the horses, and packing the baggage. They would accompany the knights on expeditions, even into foreign lands. Older pages were instructed by knights in swordsmanship, equestrianism, chivalry, warfare, and combat (but using wooden swords and spears).
When the boy turned 15, he became a "squire". In a religious ceremony, the new squire swore on a sword consecrated by a bishop or priest, and attended to assigned duties in his lord's household. During this time the squires continued training in combat and were allowed to own armour (rather than borrowing it).Squires were required to master the “"seven points of agilities"” – riding, swimming and diving, shooting different types of weapons, climbing, participation in tournaments, wrestling, fencing, long jumping, and dancing – the prerequisite skills for knighthood. All of these were even performed while wearing armour.
Upon turning 21, the squire was eligible to be knighted.
The accolade or knighting ceremony was usually held during one of the great feasts or holidays, like Christmas or Easter, and sometimes at the wedding of a noble or royal. The knighting ceremony usually involved a ritual bath on the eve of the ceremony and a prayer vigil during the night. On the day of the ceremony, the would-be knight would swear an oath and the master of the ceremony would dub the new knight on the shoulders with a sword. Squires, and even soldiers, could also be conferred direct knighthood early if they showed valor and efficiency for their service; such acts may include deploying for an important quest or mission, or protecting a high diplomat or a royal relative in battle.
Knights were expected, above all, to fight bravely and to display military professionalism and courtesy. When knights were taken as prisoners of war, they were customarily held for ransom in somewhat comfortable surroundings. This same standard of conduct did not apply to non-knights (archers, peasants, foot-soldiers, etc.) who were often slaughtered after capture, and who were viewed during battle as mere impediments to knights' getting to other knights to fight them.
Chivalry developed as an early standard of professional ethics for knights, who were relatively affluent horse owners and were expected to provide military services in exchange for landed property. Early notions of chivalry entailed loyalty to one's liege lord and bravery in battle, similar to the values of the Heroic Age. During the Middle Ages, this grew from simple military professionalism into a social code including the values of gentility, nobility and treating others reasonably. In "The Song of Roland" (c. 1100), Roland is portrayed as the ideal knight, demonstrating unwavering loyalty, military prowess and social fellowship. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" (c. 1205), chivalry had become a blend of religious duties, love and military service. Ramon Llull's "Book of the Order of Chivalry" (1275) demonstrates that by the end of the 13th century, chivalry entailed a litany of very specific duties, including riding warhorses, jousting, attending tournaments, holding Round Tables and hunting, as well as aspiring to the more æthereal virtues of "faith, hope, charity, justice, strength, moderation and loyalty."
Knights of the late medieval era were expected by society to maintain all these skills and many more, as outlined in Baldassare Castiglione's "The Book of the Courtier", though the book's protagonist, Count Ludovico, states the "first and true profession" of the ideal courtier "must be that of arms." "Chivalry", derived from the French word "chevalier" ('cavalier'), simultaneously denoted skilled horsemanship and military service, and these remained the primary occupations of knighthood throughout the Middle Ages.
Chivalry and religion were mutually influenced during the period of the Crusades. The early Crusades helped to clarify the moral code of chivalry as it related to religion. As a result, Christian armies began to devote their efforts to sacred purposes. As time passed, clergy instituted religious vows which required knights to use their weapons chiefly for the protection of the weak and defenseless, especially women and orphans, and of churches.
In peacetime, knights often demonstrated their martial skills in tournaments, which usually took place on the grounds of a castle. Knights can parade their armour and banner to the whole court as the tournament commenced. Medieval tournaments were made up of martial sports called "hastiludes", and were not only a major spectator sport but also played as a real combat simulation. It usually ended with many knights either injured or even killed. One contest was a free-for-all battle called a "melee", where large groups of knights numbering hundreds assembled and fought one another, and the last knight standing was the winner. The most popular and romanticized contest for knights was the "joust". In this competition, two knights charge each other with blunt wooden lances in an effort to break their lance on the opponent's head or body or unhorse them completely. The loser in these tournaments had to turn his armour and horse over to the victor. The last day was filled with feasting, dancing and minstrel singing.
Besides formal tournaments, they were also unformalized judicial duels done by knights and squires to end various disputes. Countries like Germany, Britain and Ireland practiced this tradition. Judicial combat was of two forms in medieval society, the feat of arms and chivalric combat. The feat of arms were done to settle hostilities between two large parties and supervised by a judge. The chivalric combat was fought when one party's honor was disrespected or challenged and the conflict could not be resolved in court. Weapons were standardized and must be of the same caliber. The duel lasted until the other party was too weak to fight back and in early cases, the defeated party were then subsequently executed. Examples of these brutal duels were the judicial combat known as the Combat of the Thirty in 1351, and the trial by combat fought by Jean de Carrouges in 1386. A far more chivalric duel which became popular in the Late Middle Ages was the "pas d'armes" or "passage of arms". In this hastilude, a knight or a group of knights would claim a bridge, lane or city gate, and challenge other passing knights to fight or be disgraced. If a lady passed unescorted, she would leave behind a glove or scarf, to be rescued and returned to her by a future knight who passed that way.
One of the greatest distinguishing marks of the knightly class was the flying of coloured banners, to display power and to distinguish knights in battle and in tournaments. Knights are generally "armigerous" (bearing a coat of arms), and indeed they played an essential role in the development of heraldry. As heavier armour, including enlarged shields and enclosed helmets, developed in the Middle Ages, the need for marks of identification arose, and with coloured shields and surcoats, coat armoury was born. Armorial rolls were created to record the knights of various regions or those who participated in various tournaments.
Knights and the ideals of knighthood featured largely in medieval and Renaissance literature, and have secured a permanent place in literary romance. While chivalric romances abound, particularly notable literary portrayals of knighthood include "The Song of Roland", "Cantar de Mio Cid", The Twelve of England, Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale", Baldassare Castiglione's "The Book of the Courtier", and Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote", as well as Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" and other Arthurian tales (Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae", the Pearl Poet's "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", etc.).
Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("History of the Kings of Britain"), written in the 1130s, introduced the legend of King Arthur, which was to be important to the development of chivalric ideals in literature. Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" ("The Death of Arthur"), written in 1469, was important in defining the ideal of chivalry, which is essential to the modern concept of the knight, as an elite warrior sworn to uphold the values of faith, loyalty, courage, and honour.
Instructional literature was also created. Geoffroi de Charny's "Book of Chivalry" expounded upon the importance of Christian faith in every area of a knight's life, though still laying stress on the primarily military focus of knighthood.
In the early Renaissance greater emphasis is laid upon courtliness. The ideal courtier—the chivalrous knight—of Baldassarre Castiglione's "The Book of the Courtier" became a model of the ideal virtues of nobility. Castiglione's tale took the form of a discussion among the nobility of the court of the Duke of Urbino, in which the characters determine that the ideal knight should be renowned not only for his bravery and prowess in battle, but also as a skilled dancer, athlete, singer and orator, and he should also be well-read in the humanities and classical Greek and Latin literature.
Later Renaissance literature, such as Miguel de Cervantes's "Don Quixote", rejected the code of chivalry as unrealistic idealism. The rise of Christian humanism in Renaissance literature demonstrated a marked departure from the chivalric romance of late medieval literature, and the chivalric ideal ceased to influence literature over successive centuries until it saw some pockets of revival in post-Victorian literature.
By the end of the 16th century, knights were becoming obsolete as countries started creating their own professional armies that were quicker to train, cheaper and easier to mobilize. The advancement of high-powered firearms eradicated the use of plate armour, as the time it took to train soldiers with guns was much less compared to that of the knight. The cost of equipment was also significantly lower, and guns had a reasonable chance to easily penetrate a knight's armour. In the 14th century the use of infantrymen armed with pikes and fighting in close formation also proved effective against heavy cavalry, such as during the Battle of Nancy, when Charles the Bold and his armoured cavalry were decimated by Swiss pikemen. As the feudal system came to an end, lords saw no further use of knights. Many landowners found the duties of knighthood too expensive and so contented themselves with the use of squires. Mercenaries also became an economic alternative to knights when conflicts arose.
Armies of the time started adopting a more realistic approach to warfare than the honor-bound code of chivalry. Soon, the remaining knights were absorbed into professional armies. Although they had a higher rank than most soldiers because of their valuable lineage, they lost their distinctive identity that previously set them apart from common soldiers. Some knightly orders survived into modern times. They adopted newer technology while still retaining their age-old chivalric traditions. Examples include the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights.
In continental Europe different systems of hereditary knighthood have existed or do exist. "Ridder", Dutch for "knight", is a hereditary noble title in the Netherlands. It is the lowest title within the nobility system and ranks below that of "Baron" but above "Jonkheer" (the latter is not a title, but a Dutch honorific to show that someone belongs to the untitled nobility). The collective term for its holders in a certain locality is the Ridderschap (e.g. Ridderschap van Holland, Ridderschap van Friesland, etc.). In the Netherlands no female equivalent exists. Before 1814, the history of nobility is separate for each of the eleven provinces that make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In each of these, there were in the early Middle Ages a number of feudal lords who often were just as powerful, and sometimes more so than the rulers themselves. In old times, no other title existed but that of knight. In the Netherlands only 10 knightly families are still extant, a number which steadily decreases because in that country ennoblement or incorporation into the nobility is not possible anymore.
Likewise "Ridder", Dutch for "knight", or the equivalent French "Chevalier" is a hereditary noble title in Belgium. It is the second lowest title within the nobility system above "Écuyer" or "Jonkheer/Jonkvrouw" and below "Baron". Like in the Netherlands, no female equivalent to the title exists. Belgium still does have about 232 registered knightly families.
The German and Austrian equivalent of an hereditary knight is a "Ritter". This designation is used as a title of nobility in all German-speaking areas. Traditionally it denotes the second lowest rank within the nobility, standing above "Edler" (noble) and below "Freiherr" (baron). For its historical association with warfare and the landed gentry in the Middle Ages, it can be considered roughly equal to the titles of "Knight" or "Baronet".
In the Kingdom of Spain, the Royal House of Spain grants titles of knighthood to the successor of the throne. This knighthood title known as Order of the Golden Fleece is among the most prestigious and exclusive Chivalric Orders. This Order can also be granted to persons not belonging to the Spanish Crown, as the former Emperor of Japan Akihito, the current Queen of United Kingdom Elizabeth II or the important Spanish politician of the Spanish democratic transition Adolfo Suárez, among others.
The Royal House of Portugal historically bestowed hereditary knighthoods to holders of the highest ranks in the Royal Orders. Today, the head of the Royal House of Portugal Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza bestows hereditary knighthoods for extraordinary acts of sacrifice and service to the Royal House. There are very few hereditary knights and they are entitled to wear a breast star with the crest of the House of Braganza.
In France, the hereditary knighthood existed in regions formerly under Holy Roman Empire control. One family ennobled with that title is the house of Hauteclocque (by letters patents of 1752), even if its most recent members used a pontifical title of count.
Italy and Poland also had the hereditary knighthood that existed within the nobility system.
There are traces of the Continental system of hereditary knighthood in Ireland. Notably all three of the following belong to the Hiberno-Norman FitzGerald dynasty, created by the Earls of Desmond, acting as Earls Palatine, for their kinsmen.
Another Irish family were the O'Shaughnessys, who were created knights in 1553 under the policy of surrender and regrant (first established by Henry VIII of England). They were attainted in 1697 for participation on the Jacobite side in the Williamite wars.
Since 1611, the British Crown has awarded a hereditary title in the form of the baronetcy. Like knights, baronets are accorded the title "Sir". Baronets are not peers of the Realm, and have never been entitled to sit in the House of Lords, therefore like knights they remain commoners in the view of the British legal system. However, unlike knights, the title is hereditary and the recipient does not receive an accolade. The position is therefore more comparable with hereditary knighthoods in continental European orders of nobility, such as "ritter", than with knighthoods under the British orders of chivalry. However, unlike the continental orders, the British baronetcy system was a modern invention, designed specifically to raise money for the Crown with the purchase of the title.
Other orders were established in the Iberian peninsula, under the influence of the orders in the Holy Land and the Crusader movement of the Reconquista:
After the Crusades, the military orders became idealized and romanticized, resulting in the late medieval notion of chivalry, as reflected in the Arthurian romances of the time. The creation of chivalric orders was fashionable among the nobility in the 14th and 15th centuries, and this is still reflected in contemporary honours systems, including the term "order" itself. Examples of notable orders of chivalry are:
From roughly 1560, purely honorific orders were established, as a way to confer prestige and distinction, unrelated to military service and chivalry in the more narrow sense. Such orders were particularly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and knighthood continues to be conferred in various countries:
There are other monarchies and also republics that also follow this practice. Modern knighthoods are typically conferred in recognition for services rendered to society, which are not necessarily martial in nature. The British musician Elton John, for example, is a Knight Bachelor, thus entitled to be called Sir Elton. The female equivalent is a "Dame", for example Dame Julie Andrews.
In the United Kingdom, honorific knighthood may be conferred in two different ways:
The first is by membership of one of the "pure" Orders of Chivalry such as the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle and the dormant Order of Saint Patrick, of which all members are knighted. In addition, many British Orders of Merit, namely the Order of the Bath, the Order of St Michael and St George, the Royal Victorian Order and the Order of the British Empire are part of the British honours system, and the award of their highest ranks (Knight/Dame Commander and Knight/Dame Grand Cross), comes together with an honorific knighthood, making them a cross between orders of chivalry and orders of merit. By contrast, membership of other British Orders of Merit, such as the Distinguished Service Order, the Order of Merit and the Order of the Companions of Honour does not confer a knighthood.
The second is being granted honorific knighthood by the British sovereign without membership of an order, the recipient being called Knight Bachelor.
In the British honours system the knightly style of "Sir" and its female equivalent "Dame" are followed by the given name only when addressing the holder. Thus, Sir Elton John should be addressed as "Sir Elton", not "Sir John" or "Mr John". Similarly, actress Dame Judi Dench should be addressed as "Dame Judi", not "Dame Dench" or "Ms Dench".
Wives of knights, however, are entitled to the honorific pre-nominal "Lady" before their husband's surname. Thus Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife was formally styled "Lady McCartney" (rather than "Lady Paul McCartney" or "Lady Heather McCartney"). The style "Dame Heather McCartney" could be used for the wife of a knight; however, this style is largely archaic and is only used in the most formal of documents, or where the wife is a Dame in her own right (such as Dame Norma Major, who gained her title six years before her husband Sir John Major was knighted). The husbands of Dames have no honorific pre-nominal, so Dame Norma's husband remained John Major until he received his own knighthood. Since the reign of Edward VII a clerk in holy orders in the Church of England has not normally received the accolade on being appointed to a degree of knighthood. He receives the insignia of his honour and may place the appropriate letters after his name or title but he may not be called Sir and his wife may not be called Lady. This custom is not observed in Australia and New Zealand, where knighted Anglican clergymen routinely use the title "Sir". Ministers of other Christian Churches are entitled to receive the accolade. For example, Sir Norman Cardinal Gilroy did receive the accolade on his appointment as Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1969. A knight who is subsequently ordained does not lose his title. A famous example of this situation was The Revd Sir Derek Pattinson, who was ordained just a year after he was appointed Knight Bachelor, apparently somewhat to the consternation of officials at Buckingham Palace. A woman clerk in holy orders may be made a Dame in exactly the same way as any other woman since there are no military connotations attached to the honour. A clerk in holy orders who is a baronet is entitled to use the title Sir.
Outside the British honours system it is usually considered improper to address a knighted person as 'Sir' or 'Dame'. Some countries, however, historically "did" have equivalent honorifics for knights, such as Cavaliere in Italy (e.g. "Cavaliere" Benito Mussolini), and Ritter in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (e.g. Georg "Ritter" von Trapp").
State Knighthoods in the Netherlands are issued in three orders, the Order of William, the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and the Order of Orange Nassau. Additionally there remain a few hereditary knights in the Netherlands.
In Belgium, honorific knighthood (not hereditary) can be conferred by the King on particularly meritorious individuals such as scientists or eminent businessmen, or for instance to astronaut Frank De Winne, the second Belgian in space. This practice is similar to the conferral of the dignity of Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom. In addition, there still are a number of hereditary knights in Belgium (see below).
In France and Belgium, one of the ranks conferred in some Orders of Merit, such as the Légion d'Honneur, the Ordre National du Mérite, the Ordre des Palmes académiques and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and the Order of Leopold, Order of the Crown and Order of Leopold II in Belgium, is that of "Chevalier" (in French) or "Ridder" (in Dutch), meaning Knight.
In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth the monarchs tried to establish chivalric orders but the hereditary lords who controlled the Union did not agree and managed to ban such assemblies. They feared the King would use Orders to gain support for absolutist goals and to make formal distinctions among the peerage which could lead to its legal breakup into two separate classes, and that the King would later play one against the other and eventually limit the legal privileges of hereditary nobility. But finally in 1705 King managed to establish the Order of the White Eagle which remains Poland's most prestigious order of that kind. The head of state (now the President as the acting Grand Master) confers knighthoods of the Order to distinguished citizens, foreign monarchs and other heads of state. The Order has its Chapter. There were no particular honorifics that would accompany a knight's name as historically all (or at least by far most) of its members would be royals or hereditary lords anyway. So today, a knight is simply referred to as "Name Surname, knight of the White Eagle (Order)".
Women were appointed to the Order of the Garter almost from the start. In all, 68 women were appointed between 1358 and 1488, including all consorts. Though many were women of royal blood, or wives of knights of the Garter, some women were neither. They wore the garter on the left arm, and some are shown on their tombstones with this arrangement. After 1488, no other appointments of women are known, although it is said that the Garter was conferred upon Neapolitan poet Laura Bacio Terricina, by King Edward VI. In 1638, a proposal was made to revive the use of robes for the wives of knights in ceremonies, but this did not occur. Queens consort have been made Ladies of the Garter since 1901 (Queens Alexandra in 1901, Mary in 1910 and Elizabeth in 1937). The first non-royal woman to be made Lady Companion of the Garter was The Duchess of Norfolk in 1990, the second was The Baroness Thatcher in 1995 (post-nominal: LG). On 30 November 1996, Lady Fraser was made Lady of the Thistle, the first non-royal woman (post-nominal: LT). (See Edmund Fellowes, "Knights of the Garter", 1939; and Beltz: "Memorials of the Order of the Garter"). The first woman to be granted a knighthood in modern Britain seems to have been H.H. Nawab Sikandar Begum Sahiba, Nawab Begum of Bhopal, who became a Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (GCSI) in 1861, at the foundation of the order. Her daughter received the same honor in 1872, as well as her granddaughter in 1910. The order was open to "princes and chiefs" without distinction of gender. The first European woman to have been granted an order of knighthood was Queen Mary, when she was made a Knight Grand Commander of the same order, by special statute, in celebration of the Delhi Durbar of 1911. She was also granted a damehood in 1917 as a Dame Grand Cross, when the Order of the British Empire was created (it was the first order explicitly open to women). The Royal Victorian Order was opened to women in 1936, and the Orders of the Bath and Saint Michael and Saint George in 1965 and 1971 respectively.
Medieval French had two words, chevaleresse and chevalière, which were used in two ways: one was for the wife of a knight, and this usage goes back to the 14th century. The other was possibly for a female knight. Here is a quote from Menestrier, a 17th-century writer on chivalry: "It was not always necessary to be the wife of a knight in order to take this title. Sometimes, when some male fiefs were conceded by special privilege to women, they took the rank of chevaleresse, as one sees plainly in Hemricourt where women who were not wives of knights are called chevaleresses." Modern French orders of knighthood include women, for example the Légion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor) since the mid-19th century, but they are usually called chevaliers. The first documented case is that of Angélique Brûlon (1772–1859), who fought in the Revolutionary Wars, received a military disability pension in 1798, the rank of 2nd lieutenant in 1822, and the Legion of Honor in 1852. A recipient of the Ordre National du Mérite recently requested from the order's Chancery the permission to call herself "chevalière," and the request was granted (AFP dispatch, Jan 28, 2000).
As related in "Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See" by H. E. Cardinale (1983), the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded by two Bolognese nobles Loderingo degli Andalò and Catalano di Guido in 1233, and approved by Pope Alexander IV in 1261. It was the first religious order of knighthood to grant the rank of militissa to women. However, this order was suppressed by Sixtus V in 1558.
At the initiative of Catherine Baw in 1441, and 10 years later of Elizabeth, Mary, and Isabella of the house of Hornes, orders were founded which were open exclusively to women of noble birth, who received the French title of chevalière or the Latin title of equitissa. In his Glossarium (s.v. militissa), Du Cange notes that still in his day (17th century), the female canons of the canonical monastery of St. Gertrude in Nivelles (Brabant), after a probation of 3 years, are made knights (militissae) at the altar, by a (male) knight called in for that purpose, who gives them the accolade with a sword and pronounces the usual words.
To honour those women who defended Tortosa against an attack by the Moors, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, created the Order of the Hatchet ("Orden de la Hacha") in 1149. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16897 |
Kara Sea
The Kara Sea (, "Karskoye more") is part of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. It is named after the Kara River (flowing into Baydaratskaya Bay), which is now relatively insignificant but which played an important role in the Russian conquest of northern Siberia. The Kara River name is derived from a Nenets word meaning "hummocked ice".
The Kara Sea's northern limit is marked geographically by a line running from Cape Kohlsaat in Graham Bell Island, Franz Josef Land, to Cape Molotov (Arctic Cape), the northernmost point of Komsomolets Island in Severnaya Zemlya.
The Kara Sea is roughly long and wide with an area of around and a mean depth of .
Its main ports are Novy Port and Dikson and it is important as a fishing ground although the sea is ice-bound for all but two months of the year. Significant discoveries of petroleum and natural gas, the East-Prinovozemelsky field, an extension of the West Siberian Oil Basin, have been made but have not yet been developed. In 2014, US government sanctions resulted in Exxon having until September 26 to discontinue its operations in the Kara Sea.
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Kara Sea as follows:
There are many islands and island groups in the Kara Sea. Unlike the other marginal seas of the Arctic, where most islands lie along the coasts, in the Kara Sea many islands, like the Arkticheskiy Institut Islands, the Izvesti Tsik Islands, the Kirov Islands, Uedineniya or Lonely Island, Vize Island, and Voronina Island are located in the open sea of its central regions.
The largest group in the Kara Sea is by far the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, with five large subgroups and over ninety islands. Other important islands in the Kara Sea are Bely Island, Dikson Island, Taymyr Island, the Kamennyye Islands and Oleni Island. Despite the high latitude all islands are unglaciated except for Ushakov Island at the extreme northern limit of the Kara Sea.
Water circulation patterns in the Kara Sea are complex. The Kara Sea tends to be sea ice covered between September and May , and between May and August heavily influenced by freshwater run-off (roughly 1200 km3 yr-1 ) from the Russian rivers (e.g., Ob, Yenisei, Pyasina, Pur, and Taz). The Kara Sea is also affected by the water inflow from the Barents Sea, which brings 0.6 Sv in August and 2.6 Sv in December. The advected water originates from the Atlantic, but it was cooled and mixed with freshwater in the Barents Sea before it reaches the Kara Sea . Simulations with the Hamburg shelf ocean model (HAMSOM) suggest that no typical water current pattern consists in the Kara Sea throughout the year. Depending on the freshwater run-off, the dominant wind patterns, and the sea ice formation, the water currents change .
The Kara Sea was formerly known as Oceanus Scythicus or Mare Glaciale and it appears with these names in 16th century maps. Since it is closed by ice most of the year it remained largely unexplored until the late nineteenth century.
In 1556 Stephen Borough sailed in the "Searchthrift" to try to reach the Ob River, but he was stopped by ice and fog at the entrance to the Kara Sea. Not until 1580 did another English expedition, under Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, attempt its passage. They too failed to penetrate it, and England lost interest in searching for the Northeast Passage.
In 1736–1737 Russian Admiral Stepan Malygin undertook a voyage from Dolgy Island in the Barents Sea. The two ships in this early expedition were the "Perviy", under Malygin's command and the "Vtoroy" under Captain A. Skuratov. After entering the little-explored Kara Sea, they sailed to the mouth of the Ob River. Malygin took careful observations of these hitherto almost unknown areas of the Russian Arctic coastline. With this knowledge he was able to draw the first somewhat accurate map of the Arctic shores between the Pechora River and the Ob River.
In 1878, Finnish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld on ship "Vega" sailed across the Kara Sea from Gothenburg, along the coast of Siberia, and despite the ice packs, got to 180° longitude by early September. Frozen in for the winter in the Chukchi Sea, Nordenskiöld waited and bartered with the local Chukchi people. The following July, the Vega was freed from the ice, and continued to Yokohama, Japan. He became the first to force the Northeast Passage. The largest group of islands in the Kara Sea, the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, has been named in his honour. The year 1912 was a tragic one for Russian explorers in the Kara Sea. In that fateful year unbroken consolidated ice blocked the way for the Northern Sea Route and three expeditions that had to cross the Kara Sea became trapped and failed: Sedov's on vessel "St. Foka", Brusilov's on the "St. Anna", and Rusanov's on the "Gercules". Georgy Sedov intended to reach Franz Josef Land on ship, leave a depot over there, and sledge to the pole. Due to the heavy ice the vessel could only reach Novaya Zemlya the first summer and wintered in Franz Josef Land. In February 1914 Sedov headed to the North Pole with two sailors and three sledges, but he fell ill and died on Rudolf Island. Georgy Brusilov attempted to navigate the Northeast Passage, was trapped in the Kara Sea, and drifted northward for more than two years reaching latitude 83° 17' N. Thirteen men, headed by Valerian Albanov, left the vessel and started across the ice to Franz Josef Land, but only Albanov and one sailor (Alexander Konrad) survived after a gruesome three-month ordeal. The survivors brought the ship log of "St. Anna", the map of her drift, and daily meteorological records, but the destiny of those who stayed on board remains unknown. In the same year the expedition of Vladimir Rusanov was lost in the Kara Sea. The prolonged absence of those three expeditions stirred public attention, and a few small rescue expeditions were launched, including Jan Nagórski's five air flights over the sea and ice from the NW coast of Novaya Zemlya.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the scale and scope of exploration of the Kara Sea increased greatly as part of the work of developing the Northern Sea Route. Polar stations, of which five already existed in 1917, increased in number, providing meteorologic, ice reconnaissance, and radio facilities. By 1932 there were 24 stations, by 1948 about 80, and by the 1970s more than 100. The use of icebreakers and, later, aircraft as platforms for scientific work were developed. In 1929 and 1930 the Icebreaker Sedov carried groups of scientists to Severnaya Zemlya, the last major piece of unsurveyed territory in the Soviet Arctic; the archipelago was completely mapped under Georgy Ushakov between 1930 and 1932.
Particularly worth noting are three cruises of the Icebreaker "Sadko", which went farther north than most; in 1935 and 1936 the last unexplored areas in the northern Kara Sea were examined and small and elusive Ushakov Island was discovered.
In the summer of 1942, German Kriegsmarine warships and submarines entered the Kara Sea to destroy as many Russian vessels as possible. This naval campaign was named "Operation Wunderland". Its success was limited by the presence of ice floes, as well as bad weather and fog. These effectively protected the Soviet ships, preventing the damage that could have been inflicted on the Soviet fleet under fair weather conditions.
In October 2010, the Russian government awarded a license to Russian oil company Rosneft for developing the East-Prinovozemelsky oil and gas structure in the Kara Sea.
There is concern about radioactive contamination from nuclear waste the former Soviet Union dumped in the sea and the effect this will have on the marine environment. According to an official "White Paper" report compiled and released by the Russian government in March 1993, the Soviet Union dumped six nuclear submarine reactors and ten nuclear reactors into the Kara Sea between 1965–1988. Solid high and low-level wastes unloaded from Northern Fleet nuclear submarines during reactor refuelings, were dumped in the Kara Sea, mainly in the shallow fjords of Novaya Zemlya, where the depths of the dumping sites range from 12 to 135 meters, and in the Novaya Zemlya Trough at depths of up to 380 meters. Liquid low-level wastes were released in the open Barents and Kara Seas. A subsequent appraisal by the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that releases are low and localized from the 16 naval reactors (reported by the IAEA as having come from seven submarines and the icebreaker "Lenin") which were dumped at five sites in the Kara Sea. Most of the dumped reactors had suffered an accident.
The Soviet submarine K-27 was scuttled in Stepovogo Bay with its two reactors filled with spent nuclear fuel. At a seminar in February 2012 it was revealed that the reactors on board the submarine could re-achieve criticality and explode (a buildup of heat leading to a steam explosion vs. nuclear). The catalogue of waste dumped at sea by the Soviets, according to documents seen by Bellona, includes some 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radioactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.
The Great Arctic State Nature Reserve—the largest nature reserve of Russia—was founded on May 11, 1993 by Resolution No. 431 of the Government of the Russian Federation (RF). The Kara Sea Islands section (4,000 km²) of the Great Arctic Nature Reserve includes: the Sergei Kirov Archipelago, the Voronina Island, the Izvestiy TSIK Islands, the Arctic Institute Islands, the Svordrup Island, Uedineniya (Ensomheden) and a number of smaller islands. This section represents rather fully the natural and biological diversity of Arctic sea islands of the eastern part of the Kara Sea.
Nearby, the Franz Josef Land and Severny Island in northern Novaya Zemlya are also registered as a sanctuary, the Russian Arctic National Park. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16898 |
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr.; April 16, 1947) is an American former professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers. During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. A member of six NBA championship teams as a player and two more as an assistant coach, Abdul-Jabbar twice was voted NBA Finals MVP. In 1996, he was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. NBA coach Pat Riley and players Isiah Thomas and Julius Erving have called him the greatest basketball player of all time.
After winning 71 consecutive basketball games on his high school team in New York City, Alcindor was recruited by Jerry Norman, the assistant coach of UCLA, where he played for coach John Wooden on three consecutive national championship teams and was a record three-time MVP of the NCAA Tournament. Drafted with the first overall pick by the one-season-old Bucks franchise in the 1969 NBA draft, Alcindor spent six seasons in Milwaukee. After leading the Bucks to its first NBA championship at age 24 in 1971, he took the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Using his trademark "skyhook" shot, he established himself as one of the league's top scorers. In 1975, he was traded to the Lakers, with whom he played the final 14 seasons of his career and won five additional NBA championships. Abdul-Jabbar's contributions were a key component in the "Showtime" era of Lakers basketball. Over his 20-year NBA career, his teams succeeded in making the playoffs 18 times and got past the first round 14 times; his teams reached the NBA Finals on 10 occasions.
At the time of his retirement at age 42 in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA's all-time leader in points scored (38,387), games played (1,560), minutes played (57,446), field goals made (15,837), field goal attempts (28,307), blocked shots (3,189), defensive rebounds (9,394), career wins (1,074), and personal fouls (4,657). He remains the all-time leader in points scored, field goals made, and career wins. He is ranked third all-time in both rebounds and blocked shots. In 2007, ESPN voted him the greatest center of all time, in 2008, they named him the "greatest player in college basketball history", and in 2016, they named him the second best player in NBA history (behind Michael Jordan). Abdul-Jabbar has also been an actor, a basketball coach, and a best-selling author. In 2012, he was selected by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be a U.S. global cultural ambassador. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. was born in New York City, the only child of Cora Lillian, a department store price checker, and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr., a transit police officer and jazz musician. He grew up in the Dyckman Street projects in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. Alcindor was unusually large and tall from a young age. At birth he weighed and was long, and by the age of nine he was already tall. By the eighth grade (age 13–14) he had grown to and could already slam dunk a basketball.
Alcindor began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments when he was in high school, where he led coach Jack Donahue's Power Memorial Academy team to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 71-game winning streak, and a 79–2 overall record. This earned him a nickname—""The tower from Power"". His 2,067 total points were a New York City high school record. The team won the national high school boys basketball championship when Alcindor was in 10th and 11th grade and was runner-up his senior year. Alcindor had a strained relationship with his coach. In his 2017 book "Coach Wooden and Me", Abdul-Jabbar relates an incident where Donahue called him a nigger.
Alcindor did not play during his first year at UCLA because the "freshman rule" was in effect, though his prowess was already well known. Now tall, he made his debut as a sophomore in 1966 and received national coverage: "Sports Illustrated" described him as "The New Superstar" after he scored 56 points in his first game, which set a UCLA single-game record. He was the main contributor to the team's three-year record of 88 wins and only two losses: one to the University of Houston in which Alcindor had an eye injury, and the other to crosstown rival USC who played a "stall game" (i.e., there was no shot clock in those days, so a team could hold the ball as long as it wanted before attempting to score).
During his college career, Alcindor was twice named Player of the Year (1967, 1969); was a three-time First Team All-American (1967–1969); played on three NCAA basketball champion teams (1967, 1968 and 1969); was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament three times and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969.
In 1967 and 1968, he also won USBWA College Player of the Year, which later became the Oscar Robertson Trophy. Alcindor became the only player to win the Helms Foundation Player of the Year award three times. The 1965–66 UCLA Bruin team was the preseason #1. On November 27, 1965, the freshman team, led by Alcindor, defeated the varsity 75–60 in the first game in the new Pauley Pavilion. Alcindor scored 31 points and had 21 rebounds in what was a good indication of things to come. After the game, the UCLA varsity was #1 in the country but #2 on campus. If the "freshman rule" had not been in effect at that time, UCLA would have had a much better chance of winning the 1966 National Championship.
Alcindor had considered transferring to Michigan because of unfulfilled recruiting promises. UCLA player Willie Naulls introduced Alcindor and teammate Lucius Allen to athletic booster Sam Gilbert, who convinced the pair to remain at UCLA.
The dunk was banned in college basketball after the 1967 season, primarily because of Alcindor's dominant use of the shot. The rule was not rescinded until the 1976–77 season, which was shortly after Wooden's retirement.
During his junior year, Alcindor suffered a scratched left cornea on January 12, 1968, in a game against Cal when he was struck by Tom Henderson in a rebound battle. He would miss the next two games against Stanford and Portland. This happened right before the showdown game against Houston. His cornea would again be scratched during his pro career, which subsequently caused him to wear goggles for eye protection.
During the summer of 1968, Alcindor took the "shahada" twice and converted to Sunni Islam. He adopted the Arabic name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, though he did not begin using it publicly until 1971. He boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics by deciding not to try out for the United States Men's Olympic Basketball team, who went on to easily win the gold medal. Alcindor's decision to stay home during the 1968 Games was in protest of the unequal treatment of African-Americans in the United States.
Alcindor was one of only four players who started on three NCAA championship teams; the others all played for Wooden at UCLA: Henry Bibby, Curtis Rowe and Lynn Shackelford. At the time, the NBA did not allow college underclassmen to declare early for the draft. He completed his studies and earned a Bachelor of Arts with a major in history in 1969. In his free time, he practiced martial arts. He studied Jeet Kune Do under Bruce Lee.
On January 20, 1968, Alcindor and the UCLA Bruins faced coach Guy Lewis's Houston Cougars in the first-ever nationally televised regular-season college basketball game, with 52,693 in attendance at the Astrodome. Cougar forward Elvin Hayes scored 39 points and had 15 rebounds, while Alcindor, who suffered from a scratch on his left cornea, was held to just 15 points as Houston won 71–69. The Bruins' 47-game winning streak ended in what has been called the "Game of the Century". Hayes and Alcindor had a rematch in the semi-finals of the NCAA Tournament, where UCLA, with a healthy Alcindor, defeated Houston 101–69 en route to the national championship. UCLA limited Hayes, who was averaging 37.7 points per game, to only ten points. Wooden credited his assistant, Jerry Norman, for devising the diamond-and-one defense that contained Hayes. "Sports Illustrated" ran a cover story on the game and used the headline: "Lew's Revenge: The Rout of Houston."
As of the 2011–12 season, he still holds or shares a number of individual records at UCLA:
The Harlem Globetrotters offered Alcindor $1 million to play for them, but he declined and was picked first in the 1969 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, who were in only their second season of existence. The Bucks won a coin-toss with the Phoenix Suns for first pick. He was also chosen first overall in the 1969 American Basketball Association draft by the New York Nets. The Nets believed that they had the upper hand in securing Alcindor's services because he was from New York; however, when Alcindor told both the Bucks and the Nets that he would accept only one offer from each team, the Nets bid too low. Sam Gilbert negotiated the contract along with Los Angeles businessman Ralph Shapiro at no charge. After Alcindor chose the Milwaukee Bucks' offer of $1.4 million, the Nets offered a guaranteed $3.25 million. Alcindor declined the offer, saying, "A bidding war degrades the people involved. It would make me feel like a flesh peddler, and I don't want to think like that."
Alcindor's presence enabled the 1969–70 Bucks to claim second place in the NBA's Eastern Division with a 56–26 record (improved from 27–55 the previous year). On February 21, 1970, he scored 51 points in a 140-127 win over the SuperSonics. Alcindor was an instant star, ranking second in the league in scoring (28.8 ppg) and third in rebounding (14.5 rpg), for which he was awarded the title of NBA Rookie of the Year. In the series-clinching game against the 76ers, he recorded 46 points and 25 rebounds. With that, he joins Wilt Chamberlain as the only rookies to record at least 40 points and 25 rebounds in a playoff game in their rookie season. Until Jayson Tatum in 2018, Alcindor would be the only rookie to record 10 or more games of 20+ points scored during the playoffs.
The next season, the Bucks acquired All-Star guard Oscar Robertson. Milwaukee went on to record the best record in the league with 66 victories in the 1970–71 season, including a then-record 20 straight wins. Alcindor was awarded his first of six NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, along with his first scoring title (31.7 ppg). He also led the league in total points, with 2,596. In the playoffs, the Bucks went 12–2 (including a four-game sweep of the Baltimore Bullets in the NBA Finals), and won the championship, while Alcindor was named Finals MVP. He posted 27 points, 12 rebounds and 7 assists in Game 4 of the finals series. On May 1, 1971, the day after the Bucks won the NBA championship, he adopted the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (, "Karīm Abd al-Jabbār"), its translation roughly "noble one, servant of the Almighty [i.e., servant of Allah]". He had converted to Islam while at UCLA.
Abdul-Jabbar remained a dominant force for the Bucks. The following year, he repeated as scoring champion with (34.8 ppg and 2,822 total points) and was named NBA Most Valuable Player. He helped the Bucks to repeat as division leaders for four straight years. In 1974, Abdul-Jabbar won his third MVP Award in five years and was among the top five NBA players in scoring (27.0 ppg, third), rebounding (14.5 rpg, fourth), blocked shots (283, second), and field goal percentage (.539, second).
Abdul-Jabbar remained relatively injury-free throughout his NBA career, but he twice broke one of his hands. The first incident occurred during a pre-season game in 1974, when he was bumped hard and got his eye scratched; this angered him enough to punch the basket support . He returned after missing the first 16 games of the season and started to wear protective goggles. In the second incident, he broke his hand during the opening game of the 1977–78 season. Two minutes into the game, Abdul-Jabbar punched Milwaukee's Kent Benson in retaliation for an overly aggressive elbow; the punch broke Benson's jaw. As a result of the injury to his hand, Abdul-Jabbar was out for two months, and the league decided not to suspend him.
Although Abdul-Jabbar always spoke well of Milwaukee and its fans, he said that being in the Midwest did not fit his cultural needs. In October 1974, he requested a trade to either the New York Knicks or Los Angeles.
In 1975, the Lakers acquired Abdul-Jabbar and reserve center Walt Wesley from the Bucks for center Elmore Smith, guard Brian Winters, and rookie "blue chippers" Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman. In the 1975–76 season, his first with the Lakers, he had a dominating season, averaging 27.7 points per game and leading the league in rebounding, blocked shots, and minutes played. His 1,111 defensive rebounds remains the NBA single-season record (defensive rebounds were not recorded prior to the 1973–74 season). He earned his fourth MVP award, but missed the post-season for the second straight year.
Once he joined the Lakers, Abdul-Jabbar began wearing his trademark goggles (he briefly ditched them in the 1979–80 season). Years of battling under NBA backboards, and being hit and scratched in the face in the process, had taken their toll on his eyes and he developed corneal erosion syndrome, where the eyes begin to dry out easily and cease to produce moisture. He missed one game in the 1986–87 season when his eyes dried out and swelled.
In the 1976–77 season, Abdul-Jabbar had another strong performance. He led the league in field goal percentage, finished second in rebounds and blocked shots, and third in points per game. He helped lead the Lakers to the best record in the NBA, and he won his record-tying fifth MVP award. In the playoffs, the Lakers beat the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference semi-finals, setting up a confrontation with the Portland Trail Blazers. The result was a memorable matchup, pitting Abdul-Jabbar against a young, injury-free Bill Walton. Although Abdul-Jabbar dominated the series statistically, Walton and the Trail Blazers (who were experiencing their first-ever run in the playoffs) swept the Lakers, behind Walton's skillful passing and leadership.
Abdul-Jabbar's play remained strong during the next two seasons, being named to the All-NBA Second Team twice, the All-Defense First Team once, and the All-Defense Second Team once. The Lakers, however, continued to be stymied in the playoffs, being eliminated by the Seattle SuperSonics in both 1978 and 1979.
In 1979, the Lakers acquired first overall draft pick Magic Johnson. The trade and draft paved the way for a Laker dynasty as they went on to become the most dominant team of the 1980s, appearing in the finals eight times and winning five NBA championships. Individually, while Abdul-Jabbar was not the dominant center he had been in the 1970s, he experienced a number of highlight moments. Among them were his record sixth MVP award in 1980, four more All-NBA First Team designations, two more All-Defense First Team designations, the 1985 Finals MVP, and on April 5, 1984 breaking Wilt Chamberlain's record for most career points. Later in his career, he bulked up to about , to be able to withstand the strain of playing the highly physical center position into his early 40s.
While in Los Angeles, Abdul-Jabbar started doing yoga in 1976 to improve his flexibility, and was notable for his physical fitness regimen. He says, "There is no way I could have played as long as I did without yoga."
In 1983, Abdul-Jabbar's house burned down. Many of his belongings, including his beloved jazz LP collection of about 3,000 albums, were destroyed. Many Lakers fans sent and brought him albums, which he found uplifting.
On June 28, 1989, Abdul-Jabbar was 42 years old when he announced that he would retire at the end of the season after 20 years in the NBA. On his "retirement tour" he received standing ovations at games, home and away and gifts ranging from a yacht that said "Captain Skyhook" to framed jerseys from his basketball career to an Afghan rug. In his biography "My Life", Magic Johnson recalls that many Lakers and Celtics legends participated in Abdul-Jabbar's farewell game. Every player wore Abdul-Jabbar's trademark goggles and had to try a skyhook at least once, which led to comic results. The Lakers made the NBA Finals in each of Abdul-Jabbar's final three seasons, defeating Boston in 1987, and Detroit in 1988. The Lakers lost to the Pistons in a four-game sweep in his final season.
At the time of his retirement, Abdul-Jabbar held the record for most games played by a single player in the NBA; this would later be broken by Robert Parish. He also was the all-time record holder for most points (38,387), most field goals made (15,837), and most minutes played (57,446).
Abdul-Jabbar had been interested in coaching since his retirement, and given the influence that he exerted on the league during his playing days, he thought that the opportunity would present itself. However, during his playing years, Abdul-Jabbar had developed a reputation for being introverted and sullen. He did not speak to the press, which led to the impression that he disliked journalists. In his biography "My Life", Magic Johnson recalls instances when Abdul-Jabbar brushed him off when he was a ball boy and asked him for an autograph. Abdul-Jabbar also froze out reporters who gave him a too-enthusiastic handshake or even hugged him, and he refused to stop reading the newspaper while giving an interview.
Abdul-Jabbar believes that his reticence, whether through disdain for the press or simply because of introversion, contributed to the dearth of coaching opportunities offered to him by the NBA. In his words, he said he had a mindset he could not overcome, and proceeded through his career oblivious to the effect his reticence may have had on his future coaching prospects. Abdul-Jabbar said: "I didn't understand that I also had affected people that way and that's what it was all about. I always saw it like they were trying to pry. I was way too suspicious and I paid a price for it." Since he began lobbying for a coaching position in 1995, he has managed to obtain only low-level assistant and scouting jobs in the NBA, and a head coaching position only in a minor professional league.
Abdul-Jabbar has worked as an assistant for the Los Angeles Clippers and the Seattle SuperSonics, helping mentor, among others, their young centers, Michael Olowokandi and Jerome James. Abdul-Jabbar was the head coach of the Oklahoma Storm of the United States Basketball League in 2002, leading the team to the league's championship that season, but he failed to land the head coaching position at Columbia University a year later. He then worked as a scout for the New York Knicks. He returned to the Lakers as a special assistant coach to Phil Jackson for six seasons (2005–2011). Early on, he mentored their young center, Andrew Bynum. Abdul-Jabbar also served as a volunteer coach at Alchesay High School on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Whiteriver, Arizona in 1998.
In 2016, he performed a tribute to friend Muhammad Ali along with Chance the Rapper. He is also co-author of a comic book published by Titan Comics entitled "Mycroft Holmes and the Apocalypse Handbook".
On offense, Abdul-Jabbar was a dominant low-post threat. In contrast to other low-post specialists like Wilt Chamberlain, Artis Gilmore or Shaquille O'Neal, Abdul-Jabbar was a relatively slender player, standing tall but only weighing (though in his latter years the Lakers listed Abdul-Jabbar's weight as ). However, he made up for his relative lack of bulk by showing textbook finesse, strength and was famous for his ambidextrous skyhook shot. It contributed to his high .559 field goal accuracy, making him the eighth most accurate scorer of all time and a feared clutch shooter. Abdul-Jabbar was also quick enough to run the Showtime fast break led by Magic Johnson and was well-conditioned, standing on the hardwood an average 36.8 minutes. In contrast to other big men, Abdul-Jabbar also could reasonably hit his free throws, finishing with a career 72% average.
Abdul-Jabbar maintained a dominant presence on defense. He was selected to the NBA All-Defensive Team eleven times. He frustrated opponents with his superior shot-blocking ability and denied an average of 2.6 shots a game. After the pounding he endured early in his career, his rebounding average fell to between six or eight a game in his latter years.
As a teammate, Abdul-Jabbar exuded natural leadership and was affectionately called "Cap" or "Captain" by his colleagues. He had an even temperament, which Riley said made him coachable. A strict fitness regime made him one of the most durable players of all time. In the NBA, his 20 seasons and 1,560 games are performances surpassed only by former Celtics center Robert Parish.
Abdul-Jabbar was well known for his trademark "skyhook", a hook shot in which he bent his entire body (rather than just the arm) like a straw in one fluid motion to raise the ball and then release it at the highest point of his arm's arching motion. Combined with his long arms and great height, the skyhook was difficult for a defender to block without committing a goaltending violation. As a right-handed player, he was stronger shooting the skyhook with his right hand than he was with his left, although he was adept at shooting it with either hand, making it a reliable and feared offensive weapon. According to Abdul-Jabbar, he learned the move in fifth grade after practicing with the Mikan Drill and soon learned to value it, as it was "the only shot I could use that didn't get smashed back in my face".
Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA's all-time leading scorer with 38,387 points, and he won a league-record six MVP awards. He earned six championship rings, two Finals MVP awards, 15 NBA First or Second Teams, a record 19 NBA All-Star call-ups and averaging 24.6 points, 11.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.6 blocks per game. He is ranked as the NBA's third leading all-time rebounder (17,440). He is also the third all-time in registered blocks (3,189), which is even more impressive because this stat had not been recorded until the fourth year of his career (1974).
Abdul-Jabbar combined dominance during his career peak with the longevity and sustained excellence of his later years. He credited Bruce Lee with teaching him "the discipline and spirituality of martial arts, which was greatly responsible for me being able to play competitively in the NBA for 20 years with very few injuries." After claiming his sixth and final MVP in 1980, Abdul-Jabbar continued to average above 20 points in the following six seasons, including 23 points per game in his 17th season at age 38. He made the NBA's 35th Anniversary Team, and was named one of its 50 greatest players of all time in 1996. Abdul-Jabbar is regarded as one of the best centers ever, and league experts and basketball legends frequently mentioned him when considering the greatest player of all time. Former Lakers coach Pat Riley once said, "Why judge anymore? When a man has broken records, won championships, endured tremendous criticism and responsibility, why judge? Let's toast him as the greatest player ever." Isiah Thomas remarked, "If they say the numbers don't lie, then Kareem is the greatest ever to play the game." Julius Erving in 2013 said, "In terms of players all-time, Kareem is still the number one guy. He's the guy you gotta start your franchise with." In 2015, ESPN named Abdul-Jabbar the best center in NBA history, and ranked him No. 2 behind Michael Jordan among the greatest NBA players ever. While Jordan's shots were enthralling and considered unfathomable, Abdul-Jabbar's skyhook appeared automatic, and he himself called the shot "unsexy".
An episode of "Black Journal" produced by WNET and broadcast on May 2, 1972, features Kareem Abdul Jabbar discussing his boycott of the 1968 Olympics to his practice of the Islamic religion.
Playing in Los Angeles facilitated Abdul-Jabbar's trying his hand at acting.
He made his film debut in Bruce Lee's 1972 film "Game of Death", in which his character Hakim fights Billy Lo (played by Lee).
In 1980, he played co-pilot Roger Murdock in "Airplane!". Abdul-Jabbar has a scene in which a little boy looks at him and remarks that he is in fact Abdul-Jabbar—spoofing the appearance of football star Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch as an airplane pilot in the 1957 drama that served as the inspiration for "Airplane!", "Zero Hour!". Staying in character, Abdul-Jabbar states that he is merely Roger Murdock, an airline co-pilot, but the boy continues to insist that Abdul-Jabbar is "the greatest", but that, according to his father, he doesn't "work hard on defense" and "never really tries, except during the playoffs". This causes Abdul-Jabbar's character to snap, "The hell I don't!", then grab the boy and snarl he has "[heard] that crap ever since ... UCLA", he "busts his buns every night" and the boy should tell his "old man to drag [Bill] Walton and [Bob] Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes". When Murdock loses consciousness later in the film, he collapses at the controls wearing Abdul-Jabbar's goggles and yellow Lakers' shorts.
Abdul-Jabbar has had numerous other television and film appearances, often playing himself. He has had roles in movies such as "Fletch", "Troop Beverly Hills" and "Forget Paris", and television series such as "Full House", "Living Single", "Amen", "Everybody Loves Raymond", "Martin", "Diff'rent Strokes" (his height humorously contrasted with that of diminutive child star Gary Coleman), "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", "Scrubs", "21 Jump Street", "Emergency!", "Man from Atlantis", and "New Girl". Abdul-Jabbar played a genie in a lamp in a 1984 episode of "Tales from the Darkside". He also played himself on the February 10, 1994 episode of the sketch comedy television series "In Living Color".
He also appeared in the television version of Stephen King's "The Stand", played the Archangel of Basketball in "Slam Dunk Ernest", and had a brief non-speaking cameo appearance in "BASEketball". Abdul-Jabbar was also the co-executive producer of the 1994 TV film "Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story". He has also made appearances on "The Colbert Report", in a 2006 skit called "HipHopKetball II: The ReJazzebration Remix '06" and in 2008 as a stage manager who is sent out on a mission to find Nazi gold. Abdul-Jabbar also voiced himself in a 2011 episode of "The Simpsons" titled "Love Is a Many Strangled Thing". He had a recurring role as himself on the NBC series "Guys with Kids", which aired from 2012 to 2013. On Al Jazeera English he expressed his desire to be remembered not just as a player, but somebody who had many talents and used them.
Abdul-Jabbar was selected to appear in the 2013 ABC reality series "Splash", a celebrity diving competition.
Abdul-Jabbar has also created the 2011 documentary "On the Shoulders of Giants", based on the all-black basketball team New York Renaissance.
Abdul-Jabbar has also appeared with Robert Hays (Ted Striker) in a 2014 "Airplane!" parody commercial promoting Wisconsin tourism. In 2015, he appeared in an HBO documentary on his life, "Kareem: Minority of One".
In April 2018, Abdul-Jabbar was announced as one of the celebrities who competed on season 26 of "Dancing with the Stars". He was partnered with professional dancer Lindsay Arnold.
In February 2019, he appeared in season 12 episode 16 of "The Big Bang Theory", "The D&D Vortex".
In September 2018, Abdul-Jabbar was announced as one of the writers for the July 2019 revival of "Veronica Mars".
Abdul-Jabbar is the executive producer of the 2020 History channel's "Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution".
Abdul-Jabbar is also a best-selling author and cultural critic. His first book, his autobiography "Giant Steps", was written in 1983 with co-author Peter Knobler. (The book's title is an homage to jazz great John Coltrane, referring to his album "Giant Steps".) Others include "On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance", co-written with Raymond Obstfeld, and "Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, World War II's Forgotten Heroes", co-written with Anthony Walton, which is a history of an all-black armored unit that served with distinction in Europe.
Abdul-Jabbar has also been a regular contributor to discussions about issues of race and religion, among other topics, in national magazines and on television. He has written a regular column for "Time", for example, and he appeared on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, January 25, 2015, to talk about a recent column, which pointed out that Islam should not be blamed for the actions of violent extremists, just as Christianity has not been blamed for the actions of violent extremists who profess Christianity. When asked about being Muslim, he said: "I don't have any misgiving about my faith. I'm very concerned about the people who claim to be Muslims that are murdering people and creating all this mayhem in the world. That is not what Islam is about, and that should not be what people think of when they think about Muslims. But it's up to all of us to do something about all of it."
In November 2014, Abdul-Jabbar published an essay in "Jacobin" magazine calling for just compensation for college athletes, writing, "in the name of fairness, we must bring an end to the indentured servitude of college athletes and start paying them what they are worth."
In 2007, Abdul-Jabbar participated in the national UCLA alumni commercial entitled "My Big UCLA Moment". The UCLA commercial is featured on YouTube.
On February 10, 2011, Abdul-Jabbar debuted his film "On the Shoulders of Giants", documenting the tumultuous journey of the famed yet often-overlooked Harlem Renaissance professional basketball team, at Science Park High School in Newark, New Jersey. The event was simulcast live throughout the school, city, and state.
Commenting on Donald Trump's 2017 travel ban, he strongly condemned it, saying, "The absence of reason and compassion is the very definition of pure evil because it is a rejection of our sacred values, distilled from millennia of struggle."
In January 2012, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Abdul-Jabbar had accepted a position as a cultural ambassador for the United States. During the announcement press conference, Abdul-Jabbar commented on the historical legacy of African-Americans as representatives of U.S. culture: "I remember when Louis Armstrong first did it back for President Kennedy, one of my heroes. So it's nice to be following in his footsteps." As part of this role, Abdul-Jabbar has traveled to Brazil to promote education for local youths.
Former President Barack Obama announced in his last days of office that he has appointed Abdul-Jabbar along with Gabrielle Douglas & Carli Lloyd to the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition.
In January 2017, Abdul-Jabbar was appointed to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee by United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. According to the United States Mint, Abdul-Jabbar is a keen coin collector whose interest in the life of Alexander Hamilton had led him into the hobby. He resigned in 2018 due to what the Mint described as "increasing personal obligations".
Abdul-Jabbar met Habiba Abdul-Jabbar (born Janice Brown) at a Lakers game during his senior year at UCLA. They eventually married and together had three children: daughters Habiba and Sultana and son Kareem Jr, who played basketball at Western Kentucky after attending Valparaiso. Abdul-Jabbar and Janice divorced in 1978. He has another son, Amir, with Cheryl Pistono. Another son, Adam, made an appearance on the TV sitcom "Full House" with him.
At age 24 in 1971, he converted to Islam and became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which means "noble one, servant of the Almighty." He was named by Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. Abdul-Jabbar purchased and donated 7700 16th Street NW, a house in Washington, D.C., for Khaalis to use as the Hanafi Madh-Hab Center. Eventually, Kareem "found that [he] disagreed with some of Hamaas' teachings about the Quran, and [they] parted ways." He then studied the Quran on his own, and “emerged from this pilgrimage with my beliefs clarified and my faith renewed.”
Abdul-Jabbar has spoken about the thinking that was behind his name change when he converted to Islam. He stated that he was "latching on to something that was part of my heritage, because many of the slaves who were brought here were Muslims. My family was brought to America by a French planter named Alcindor, who came here from Trinidad in the 18th century. My people were Yoruba, and their culture survived slavery... My father found out about that when I was a kid, and it gave me all I needed to know that, hey, I was somebody, even if nobody else knew about it. When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. And that's a terrible burden on black people, because they don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted."
In 1998, Abdul-Jabbar reached a settlement after he sued Miami Dolphins running back Karim Abdul-Jabbar (now Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, born Sharmon Shah) because he felt Karim was sponging off the name he made famous by having the Abdul-Jabbar moniker and number 33 on his Dolphins jersey. As a result, the younger Abdul-Jabbar had to change his jersey nameplate to simply "Abdul" while playing for the Dolphins. The football player had also been an athlete at UCLA.
Abdul-Jabbar suffers from migraines, and his use of cannabis to reduce the symptoms has had legal ramifications.
In November 2009, Abdul-Jabbar announced that he was suffering from a form of leukemia, Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. The disease was diagnosed in December 2008, but Abdul-Jabbar said his condition could be managed by taking oral medication daily, seeing his specialist every other month and having his blood analyzed regularly. He expressed in a 2009 press conference that he did not believe that the illness would stop him from leading a normal life. Abdul-Jabbar is now a spokesman for Novartis, the company that produces his cancer medication, Gleevec.
In February 2011, Abdul-Jabbar announced via Twitter that his leukemia was gone and he was "100% cancer free". A few days later, he clarified his misstatement. "You're never really cancer-free and I should have known that", Abdul-Jabbar said. "My cancer right now is at an absolute minimum".
In April 2015, Abdul-Jabbar was admitted to hospital when he was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. Later that week, on his 68th birthday, he underwent quadruple coronary bypass surgery at the UCLA Medical Center.
In 2011, Abdul-Jabbar was awarded the Double Helix Medal for his work in raising awareness for cancer research. Also in 2011, Abdul-Jabbar received an honorary degree from New York Institute of Technology. In late 2016, Abdul-Jabbar was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16899 |
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), often referred to in English as the Nationalist Party or Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in Taiwan, i.e. the Republic of China, based in Taipei. Formed in 1919, the KMT was the sole ruling party of the Republic of China from 1928 to 2000 and is currently an opposition political party in the Legislative Yuan.
The predecessor of the Kuomintang, the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui), was one of the major advocates of the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the subsequent revolt in 1911 and proclamation of the Republic of China. The KMT was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen shortly after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. Sun was the provisional President, but he ceded the presidency to Yuan Shikai. Yuan's death in 1916 led to the nation's disintegration in the Warlord Era. Sun deputed Chiang Kai-shek to form the National Revolutionary Army and launch the Northern Expedition that unified much of mainland China and established the capital at Nanjing. During the following Nanjing decade China achieved substantial economic growth and social progress, but the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) was disastrous. After the loss of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949) to the Communist Party of China the KMT retreated to Taiwan where it continued to govern as an authoritarian one-party state. The Nationalist government retained China's United Nations seat until 1971.
Taiwan ceased to be a single-party state in 1986 under President Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son, and political reforms beginning in the 1990s under President Lee Teng-hui loosened the KMT's grip on power. Nevertheless, the KMT remains one of Taiwan's main political parties, with Ma Ying-jeou, elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, being the seventh KMT member to hold the office of the presidency. In the 2016 general and presidential election, the KMT was defeated in both elections and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained control of both the Legislative Yuan and the presidency, Tsai Ing-wen being elected President.
The party's guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, advocated by Sun Yat-sen. The KMT is a member of the International Democrat Union. Together with the People First Party and New Party, the KMT forms what is known as the Taiwanese Pan-Blue Coalition which supports eventual unification with the mainland. However, the KMT has been forced to moderate its stance by advocating the political and legal "status quo" of modern Taiwan as political realities make the reunification of China unlikely. The KMT holds to the one-China policy in that it officially considers that there is only one China, but that the Republic of China rather than the People's Republic of China is its legitimate government under the 1992 Consensus. To ease tensions with the PRC, the KMT has since 2008 endorsed the Three Noes policy as defined by Ma Ying-jeou, namely no unification, no independence and no use of force.
The KMT traces its ideological and organizational roots to the work of Sun Yat-sen, a proponent of Chinese nationalism and democracy who founded Revive China Society at the capital of the Republic of Hawaii, Honolulu on 24 November 1894. In 1905, Sun joined forces with other anti-monarchist societies in Tokyo, Empire of Japan to form the Tongmenghui on 20 August 1905, a group committed to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a republic style government.
The group planned and supported the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the founding of the Republic of China on 1 January 1912. However, Sun did not have military power and ceded the provisional presidency of the republic to Yuan Shikai, who arranged for the abdication of Puyi, the last Emperor, on 12 February.
On 25 August 1912, the Nationalist Party was established at the Huguang Guild Hall in Peking, where Tongmenghui and five smaller pro-revolution parties merged to contest the first national elections. Sun was chosen as the party chairman with Huang Xing as his deputy.
The most influential member of the party was the third ranking Song Jiaoren, who mobilized mass support from gentry and merchants for the Nationalists to advocate a constitutional parliamentary democracy. The party opposed constitutional monarchists and sought to check the power of Yuan. The Nationalists won an overwhelming majority of the first National Assembly election in December 1912.
However, Yuan soon began to ignore the parliament in making presidential decisions. Song Jiaoren was assassinated in Shanghai in 1913. Members of the Nationalists led by Sun Yat-sen suspected that Yuan was behind the plot and thus staged the Second Revolution in July 1913, a poorly planned and ill-supported armed rising to overthrow Yuan, and failed. Yuan, claiming subversiveness and betrayal, expelled adherents of the KMT from the parliament. Yuan dissolved the Nationalists in November (whose members had largely fled into exile in Japan) and dismissed the parliament early in 1914.
Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor in December 1915. While exiled in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party on 8 July 1914, but many of his old revolutionary comrades, including Huang Xing, Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin and Chen Jiongming, refused to join him or support his efforts in inciting armed uprising against Yuan. To join the Revolutionary Party, members had to take an oath of personal loyalty to Sun, which many old revolutionaries regarded as undemocratic and contrary to the spirit of the revolution. As a result, he became largely sidelined within the Republican movement during this period.
Sun returned to China in 1917 to establish a military junta at Canton to oppose the Beiyang government, but was soon forced out of office and exiled to Shanghai. There, with renewed support, he resurrected the KMT on 10 October 1919, under the name Kuomintang of China () and established its headquarters in Canton in 1920.
In 1923, the KMT and its Canton government accepted aid from the Soviet Union after being denied recognition by the western powers. Soviet advisers—the most prominent of whom was Mikhail Borodin, an agent of the Comintern—arrived in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, establishing a Leninist party structure that lasted into the 1990s. The Communist Party of China (CPC) was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the KMT, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their separate party identities, forming the First United Front between the two parties. Mao Zedong and early members of the CPC also joined the KMT in 1923.
Soviet advisers also helped the KMT to set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques, and in 1923 Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun's lieutenants from the Tongmenghui days, was sent to Moscow for several months' military and political study. At the first party congress in 1924 in Kwangchow, Kwangtung, (Guangzhou, Guangdong) which included non-KMT delegates such as members of the CPC, they adopted Sun's political theory, which included the Three Principles of the People – nationalism, democracy and people's livelihood.
When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the political leadership of the KMT fell to Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, respectively the left-wing and right-wing leaders of the party. However, the real power was in the hands of Chiang Kai-shek, who was in near complete control of the military as the superintendent of the Whampoa Military Academy. With their military superiority, KMT confirmed their rule on Canton, the provincial capital of Kwangtung. The Guangxi warlords pledged loyalty to the KMT. The KMT now became a rival government in opposition to the warlord Beiyang government based in Peking.
Chiang assumed leadership of the KMT on 6 July 1926. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, whom he admired greatly and who forged all his political, economic, and revolutionary ideas primarily from what he had learned in Hawaii and indirectly through British Hong Kong and Empire of Japan under Meiji Restoration, Chiang knew relatively little about the West. He also studied in Japan, but he was firmly rooted in his ancient Han Chinese identity and was steeped in Chinese culture. As his life progressed, he became increasingly attached to ancient Chinese culture and traditions. His few trips to the West confirmed his pro-ancient Chinese outlook and he studied the ancient Chinese classics and ancient Chinese history assiduously.
Chiang was also particularly committed to Sun's idea of "political tutelage". Sun believed that the only hope for a unified and better China lies in a military conquest, followed by a period of political tutelage that would culminate in the transition to democracy. Using this ideology, Chiang built himself into the dictator of the Republic of China, both in the Chinese mainland and when the national government was relocated to Taiwan.
Following the death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the KMT leader and launched the Northern Expedition to defeat the northern warlords and unite China under the party. With its power confirmed in the southeast, the Nationalist Government appointed Chiang Kai-shek commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), and the Northern Expedition to suppress the warlords began. Chiang had to defeat three separate warlords and two independent armies. Chiang, with Soviet supplies, conquered the southern half of China in nine months.
A split erupted between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT, which threatened the Northern Expedition. Wang Jing Wei, who led the KMT leftist allies, took the city of Wuhan in January 1927. With the support of the Soviet agent Mikhail Borodin, Wang declared the National Government as having moved to Wuhan. Having taken Nanking in March, Chiang halted his campaign and prepared a violent break with Wang and his communist allies. Chiang's expulsion of the CPC and their Soviet advisers, marked by the Shanghai massacre on 12 April, led to the beginning of the Chinese Civil War. Wang finally surrendered his power to Chiang. Joseph Stalin ordered the Chinese Communist Party to obey the KMT leadership. Once this split had been healed, Chiang resumed his Northern Expedition and managed to take Shanghai.
During the Nanking Incident in March 1927, the NRA stormed the consulates of the United States, United Kingdom (UK) and Empire of Japan, looted foreign properties and almost assassinated the Japanese consul. An American, two British, one French, an Italian and a Japanese were killed. These looters also stormed and seized millions of dollars worth of British concessions in Hankou, refusing to hand them back to the UK. Both Nationalists and Communist soldiers within the army participated in the rioting and looting of foreign residents in Nanking.
NRA took Peking in 1928. The city was the internationally recognized capital, even when it was previously controlled by warlords. This event allowed the KMT to receive widespread diplomatic recognition in the same year. The capital was moved from Peking to Nanking, the original capital of the Ming dynasty, and thus a symbolic purge of the final Qing elements. This period of KMT rule in China between 1927 and 1937 was relatively stable and prosperous and is still known as the Nanjing decade.
After the Northern Expedition in 1928, the Nationalist government under the KMT declared that China had been exploited for decades under the unequal treaties signed between the foreign powers and the Qing Dynasty. The KMT government demanded that the foreign powers renegotiate the treaties on equal terms.
Before the Northern Expedition, the KMT began as a heterogeneous group advocating American-inspired federalism and provincial autonomy. However, the KMT under Chiang's leadership aimed at establishing a centralized one-party state with one ideology. This was even more evident following Sun's elevation into a cult figure after his death. The control by one single party began the period of "political tutelage", whereby the party was to lead the government while instructing the people on how to participate in a democratic system. The topic of reorganizing the army, brought up at a military conference in 1929, sparked the Central Plains War. The cliques, some of them former warlords, demanded to retain their army and political power within their own territories. Although Chiang finally won the war, the conflicts among the cliques would have a devastating effect on the survival of the KMT. Muslim Generals in Kansu waged war against the Guominjun in favor of the KMT during the conflict in Gansu in 1927–1930.
Although the Second Sino-Japanese War officially broke out in 1937, Japanese aggression started in 1931 when they staged the Mukden Incident and occupied Manchuria. At the same time, the CPC had been secretly recruiting new members within the KMT government and military. Chiang was alarmed by the expansion of the communist influence. He believed that to fight against foreign aggression, the KMT must solve its internal conflicts first, so he started his second attempt to exterminate CPC members in 1934. With the advice from German military advisors, the KMT forced the Communists to withdraw from their bases in southern and central China into the mountains in a massive military retreat known as the Long March. Less than 10% of the communist army survived the long retreat to Shaanxi province, but they re-established their military base quickly with aid from the Soviet Union.
The KMT was also known to have used terror tactics against suspected communists, through the use of a secret police force, who were employed to maintain surveillance on suspected communists and political opponents. In "The Birth of Communist China", C.P. Fitzgerald describes China under the rule of the KMT thus: "the Chinese people groaned under a regime Fascist in every quality except efficiency."
Zhang Xueliang, who believed that the Japanese invasion was a greater threat, was persuaded by the CPC to take Chiang hostage during the Xi'an Incident in 1937 and forced Chiang to agree to an alliance with them in the total war against the Japanese. However, in many situations the alliance was in name only; after a brief period of cooperation, the armies began to fight the Japanese separately, rather than as coordinated allies. Conflicts between KMT and CPC were still common during the war, and documented claims abound of CPC attacks upon the KMT forces and vice versa.
While the KMT army sustained heavy casualties fighting the Japanese, the CPC expanded its territory by guerrilla tactics within Japanese occupied regions, leading some claims that the CPC often refused to support the KMT troops, choosing to withdraw and let the KMT troops take the brunt of Japanese attacks.
Japan surrendered in 1945, and Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China on 25 October of that year. The brief period of celebration was soon shadowed by the possibility of a civil war between the KMT and CPC. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan just before it surrendered and occupied Manchuria, the north eastern part of China. The Soviet Union denied the KMT army the right to enter the region and allowed the CPC to take control of the Japanese factories and their supplies.
Full-scale civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists erupted in 1946. The Communist Chinese armies, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), previously a minor faction, grew rapidly in influence and power due to several errors on the KMT's part. First, the KMT reduced troop levels precipitously after the Japanese surrender, leaving large numbers of able-bodied, trained fighting men who became unemployed and disgruntled with the KMT as prime recruits for the PLA. Second, the KMT government proved thoroughly unable to manage the economy, allowing hyperinflation to result. Among the most despised and ineffective efforts it undertook to contain inflation was the conversion to the gold standard for the national treasury and the Chinese gold yuan in August 1948, outlawing private ownership of gold, silver and foreign exchange, collecting all such precious metals and foreign exchange from the people and issuing the Gold Standard Scrip in exchange. As most farmland in the north were under CPC's control, the cities governed by the KMT lacked food supply and this added to the hyperinflation. The new scrip became worthless in only ten months and greatly reinforced the nationwide perception of the KMT as a corrupt or at best inept entity. Third, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his forces to defend the urbanized cities. This decision gave CPC a chance to move freely through the countryside. At first, the KMT had the edge with the aid of weapons and ammunition from the United States (US). However, with the country suffering from hyperinflation, widespread corruption and other economic ills, the KMT continued to lose popular support. Some leading officials and military leaders of the KMT hoarded material, armament and military-aid funding provided by the US. This became an issue which proved to be a hindrance of its relationship with US government. US President Harry S. Truman wrote that "the Chiangs, the Kungs and the Soongs (were) all thieves", having taken $750 million in US aid.
At the same time, the suspension of American aid and tens of thousands of deserted or decommissioned soldiers being recruited to the PLA cause tipped the balance of power quickly to the CPC side, and the overwhelming popular support for the CPC in most of the country made it all but impossible for the KMT forces to carry out successful assaults against the Communists.
By the end of 1949, the CPC controlled almost all of mainland China, as the KMT retreated to Taiwan with a significant amount of China's national treasures and 2 million people, including military forces and refugees. Some party members stayed in the mainland and broke away from the main KMT to found the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, which still currently exists as one of the eight minor registered parties of the People's Republic of China.
In 1895, Formosa (now called Taiwan), including the Penghu islands, became a Japanese colony via the Treaty of Shimonoseki following the First Sino-Japanese War.
After Japan's defeat at the end of World War II in 1945, General Order No. 1 instructed Japan to surrender its troops in Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek. On 25 October 1945, KMT general Chen Yi acted on behalf of the Allied Powers to accept Japan's surrender and proclaimed that day as Taiwan Retrocession Day.
Tensions between the local Taiwanese and mainlanders from Mainland China increased in the intervening years, culminating in a flashpoint on 27 February 1947 in Taipei when a dispute between a female cigarette vendor and an anti-smuggling officer in front of Tianma Tea House triggered civil disorder and protests that would last for days. The uprising turned bloody and was shortly put down by the ROC Army in the February 28 Incident. As a result of the 28 February Incident in 1947, Taiwanese people endured what is called the "White Terror", a KMT-led political repression that resulted in the death or disappearance of over 30,000 Taiwanese intellectuals, activists, and people suspected of opposition to the KMT.
Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949, the commanders of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) believed that Kinmen and Matsu had to be taken before a final assault on Taiwan. The KMT fought the Battle of Guningtou on 25–27 October 1949 and stopped the PLA invasion. The KMT headquarter was set up on 10 December 1949 at No. 11 Zhongshan South Road. In 1950, Chiang took office in Taipei under the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion. The provision declared martial law in Taiwan and halted some democratic processes, including presidential and parliamentary elections, until the mainland could be recovered from the CPC. The KMT estimated it would take 3 years to defeat the Communists. The slogan was "prepare in the first year, start fighting in the second, and conquer in the third year." Chiang also initiated the Project National Glory to retake back the mainland in 1965, but was eventually dropped in July 1972 after many unsuccessful attempts.
However, various factors, including international pressure, are believed to have prevented the KMT from militarily engaging the CPC full-scale. The KMT backed Muslim insurgents formerly belonging to the National Revolutionary Army during the KMT Islamic insurgency in 1950–1958 in Mainland China. A cold war with a couple of minor military conflicts was resulted in the early years. The various government bodies previously in Nanjing, that were re-established in Taipei as the KMT-controlled government, actively claimed sovereignty over all China. The Republic of China in Taiwan retained China's seat in the United Nations until 1971.
Until the 1970s, the KMT successfully pushed ahead with land reforms, developed the economy, implemented a democratic system in a lower level of the government, improved relations between Taiwan and the mainland and created the Taiwan economic miracle. However, the KMT controlled the government under a one-party authoritarian state until reforms in the late 1970s through the 1990s. The ROC in Taiwan was once referred to synonymously with the KMT and known simply as Nationalist China after its ruling party. In the 1970s, the KMT began to allow for "supplemental elections" in Taiwan to fill the seats of the aging representatives in the National Assembly.
Although opposition parties were not permitted, Tangwai ("outside the KMT") representatives were tolerated. In the 1980s, the KMT focused on transforming the government from a single-party system to a multi-party democratic one and embracing "Taiwanization". With the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on 28 September 1986, the KMT started competing against the DPP in Parliamentary elections.
In 1991, martial law ceased when President Lee Teng-hui terminated the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion. All parties started to be allowed to compete at all levels of elections, including the presidential election. Lee Teng-hui, the ROC's first democratically elected President and the leader of the KMT during the 1990s, announced his advocacy of "special state-to-state relations" with the PRC. The PRC associated this idea with Taiwan independence.
The KMT faced a split in 1993 that led to the formation of the New Party in August 1993, alleged to be a result of Lee's "corruptive ruling style". The New Party has, since the purging of Lee, largely reintegrated into the KMT. A much more serious split in the party occurred as a result of the 2000 Presidential election. Upset at the choice of Lien Chan as the party's presidential nominee, former party Secretary-General James Soong launched an independent bid, which resulted in the expulsion of Soong and his supporters and the formation of the People First Party (PFP) on 31 March 2000. The KMT candidate placed third behind Soong in the elections. After the election, Lee's strong relationship with the opponent became apparent. To prevent defections to the PFP, Lien moved the party away from Lee's pro-independence policies and became more favorable toward Chinese reunification. This shift led to Lee's expulsion from the party and the formation of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) by Lee supporters on 24 July 2001.
Prior to this, the party's voters had defected to both the PFP and TSU, and the KMT did poorly in the December 2001 legislative elections and lost its position as the largest party in the Legislative Yuan. However, the party did well in the 2002 local government mayoral and council election with Ma Ying-jeou, its candidate for Taipei mayor, winning reelection by a landslide and its candidate for Kaohsiung mayor narrowly losing but doing surprisingly well. Since 2002, the KMT and PFP have coordinated electoral strategies. In 2004, the KMT and PFP ran a joint presidential ticket, with Lien running for president and Soong running for vice-president.
The loss of the presidential election of 2004 to DPP President Chen Shui-bian by merely over 30,000 votes was a bitter disappointment to party members, leading to large scale rallies for several weeks protesting alleged electoral fraud and the "odd circumstances" of the shooting of President Chen. However, the fortunes of the party were greatly improved when the KMT did well in the legislative elections held in December 2004 by maintaining its support in southern Taiwan achieving a majority for the Pan-Blue Coalition.
Soon after the election, there appeared to be a falling out with the KMT's junior partner, the People First Party and talk of a merger seemed to have ended. This split appeared to widen in early 2005, as the leader of the PFP, James Soong appeared to be reconciling with President Chen Shui-Bian and the Democratic Progressive Party. Many PFP members including legislators and municipal leaders have defected to the KMT, and the PFP is seen as a fading party.
In 2005, Ma Ying-jeou became KMT chairman defeating speaker Wang Jin-pyng in the first public election for KMT chairmanship. The KMT won a decisive victory in the 3-in-1 local elections of December 2005, replacing the DPP as the largest party at the local level. This was seen as a major victory for the party ahead of legislative elections in 2007. There were elections for the two municipalities of the ROC, Taipei and Kaohsiung on December 2006. The KMT won a clear victory in Taipei, but lost to the DPP in the southern city of Kaohsiung by the slim margin of 1,100 votes.
On 13 February 2007, Ma was indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of allegedly embezzling approximately NT$11 million (US$339,000), regarding the issue of "special expenses" while he was mayor of Taipei. Shortly after the indictment, he submitted his resignation as KMT chairman at the same press conference at which he formally announced his candidacy for ROC President. Ma argued that it was customary for officials to use the special expense fund for personal expenses undertaken in the course of their official duties. In December 2007, Ma was acquitted of all charges and immediately filed suit against the prosecutors. In 2008, the KMT won a landslide victory in the Republic of China Presidential Election on 22 March 2008. The KMT fielded former Taipei mayor and former KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou to run against the DPP's Frank Hsieh. Ma won by a margin of 17% against Hsieh. Ma took office on 20 May 2008, with Vice-Presidential candidate Vincent Siew, and ended 8 years of the DPP presidency. The KMT also won a landslide victory in the 2008 legislative elections, winning 81 of 113 seats, or 71.7% of seats in the Legislative Yuan. These two elections gave the KMT firm control of both the executive and legislative yuans.
On 25 June 2009, President Ma launched his bid to regain KMT's leadership and registered as the sole candidate for the election of the KMT chairmanship. On 26 July, Ma won 93.87% of the vote, becoming the new chairman of the KMT, taking office on 17 October 2009. This officially allows Ma to be able to meet with Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and other PRC delegates, as he is able to represent the KMT as leader of a Chinese political party, rather than as head-of-state of a political entity unrecognized by the PRC.
On 29 November 2014, the KMT suffered a heavy loss in the local election to the DPP, winning only 6 municipalities and counties, down from 14 in the previous election in 2009 and 2010. Ma Ying-jeou subsequently resigned from the party chairmanship on 3 December and replaced by acting Chairman Wu Den-yih. Chairmanship election was held on 17 January 2015 and Eric Chu was elected to become the new chairman. He was inaugurated on 19 February.
As the ruling party on Taiwan, the KMT amassed a vast business empire of banks, investment companies, petrochemical firms, and television and radio stations, thought to have made it the world's richest political party, with assets once estimated to be around US$2–10 billion. Although this war chest appeared to help the KMT until the mid-1990s, it later led to accusations of corruption (often referred to as "black gold").
After 2000, the KMT's financial holdings appeared to be more of a liability than a benefit, and the KMT started to divest itself of its assets. However, the transactions were not disclosed and the whereabouts of the money earned from selling assets (if it has gone anywhere) is unknown. There were accusations in the 2004 presidential election that the KMT retained assets that were illegally acquired. During the 2000–2008 DPP presidency, a law was proposed by the DPP in the Legislative Yuan to recover illegally acquired party assets and return them to the government. However, due to the DPP's lack of control of the legislative chamber at the time, it never materialised.
The KMT also acknowledged that part of its assets were acquired through extra-legal means and thus promised to "retro-endow" them to the government. However, the quantity of the assets which should be classified as illegal are still under heated debate. DPP, in its capacity as ruling party from 2000 to 2008, claimed that there is much more that the KMT has yet to acknowledge. Also, the KMT actively sold assets under its title to quench its recent financial difficulties, which the DPP argues is illegal. Former KMT chairman Ma Ying-Jeou's position is that the KMT will sell some of its properties at below market rates rather than return them to the government and that the details of these transactions will not be publicly disclosed.
In 2006, the KMT sold its headquarters at 11 Zhongshan South Road in Taipei to Evergreen Group for NT$2.3 billion (US$96 million). The KMT moved into a smaller building on Bade Road in the eastern part of the city.
In July 2014, the KMT reported total assets of NT$26.8 billion (US$892.4 million) and interest earnings of NT$981.52 million for the year of 2013, making it one of the richest political parties in the world.
In August 2016, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is set up by the ruling DPP government to investigate KMT party assets acquired during the martial law period and recover those that were determined to be illegally acquired.
In December 2003, then-KMT chairman (present chairman emeritus) and presidential candidate Lien Chan initiated what appeared to some to be a major shift in the party's position on the linked questions of Chinese reunification and Taiwan independence. Speaking to foreign journalists, Lien said that while the KMT was opposed to "immediate independence", it did not wish to be classed as "pro-reunificationist" either.
At the same time, Wang Jin-pyng, speaker of the Legislative Yuan and the Pan-Blue Coalition's campaign manager in the 2004 presidential election, said that the party no longer opposed Taiwan's "eventual independence". This statement was later clarified as meaning that the KMT opposes any immediate decision on unification and independence and would like to have this issue resolved by future generations. The KMT's position on the cross-strait relations was redefined as hoping to remain in the current neither-independent-nor-united situation.
However, there had been a warming of relations between the Pan-Blue Coalition and the PRC, with prominent members of both the KMT and PFP in active discussions with officials on the mainland. In February 2004, it appeared that KMT had opened a campaign office for the Lien-Soong ticket in Shanghai targeting Taiwanese businessmen. However, after an adverse reaction in Taiwan, the KMT quickly declared that the office was opened without official knowledge or authorization. In addition, the PRC issued a statement forbidding open campaigning in the mainland and formally stated that it had no preference as to which candidate won and cared only about the positions of the winning candidate.
In 2005, then-party chairman Lien Chan announced that he was to leave his office. The two leading contenders for the position included Ma Ying-jeou and Wang Jin-pyng. On 5 April 2005, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou said he wished to lead the opposition KMT with Wang Jin-pyng. On 16 July 2005, Ma was elected as KMT chairman in the first contested leadership in KMT's 93-year history. Some 54% of the party's 1.04 million members cast their ballots. Ma garnered 72.4% of vote share, or 375,056 votes, against Wang's 27.6%, or 143,268 votes. After failing to convince Wang to stay on as a vice chairman, Ma named holdovers Wu Po-hsiung, Chiang Pin-kung and Lin Cheng-chi (), as well as long-time party administrator and strategist John Kuan as vice-chairmen. All appointments were approved by a hand count of party delegates.
On 28 March 2005, thirty members of the KMT, led by vice-chairman Chiang Pin-kung, arrived in mainland China. This marked the first official visit by the KMT to the mainland since it was defeated by communist forces in 1949 (although KMT members including Chiang had made individual visits in the past). The delegates began their itinerary by paying homage to the revolutionary martyrs of the Tenth Uprising at Huanghuagang. They subsequently flew to the former ROC capital of Nanjing to commemorate Sun Yat-sen. During the trip, the KMT signed a 10-points agreement with the CPC. The opponents regarded this visit as the prelude of the third KMT-CPC cooperation, after the First and Second United Front. Weeks afterwards, in May 2005, Chairman Lien Chan visited the mainland and met with Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. This marked the first meeting between leaders of the KMT and CPC after the end of Chinese Civil War in 1949. No agreements were signed because incumbent Chen Shui-bian's government threatened to prosecute the KMT delegation for treason and violation of ROC laws prohibiting citizens from collaborating with CPC.
Support for the KMT in Taiwan encompasses a wide range of social groups but is largely determined by age. KMT support tends to be higher in northern Taiwan and in urban areas, where it draws its backing from big businesses due to its policy of maintaining commercial links with mainland China. As of 2020 only 3% of KMT members are under 40 years of age.
The KMT also has some support in the labor sector because of the many labor benefits and insurance implemented while the KMT was in power. The KMT traditionally has strong cooperation with military officers, teachers, and government workers. Among the ethnic groups in Taiwan, the KMT has stronger support among mainlanders and their descendants, for ideological reasons, and among Taiwanese aboriginals. The support for the KMT generally tend to be stronger in majority-Hakka and Mandarin-speaking counties of Taiwan, in contrast to the Hokkien-majority southwestern counties that tend to support the Democratic Progressive Party.
The deep-rooted hostility between Aboriginals and (Taiwanese) Hoklo, and the Aboriginal communities effective KMT networks, contribute to Aboriginal skepticism towards the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Aboriginals' tendency to vote for the KMT. Aboriginals have criticized politicians for abusing the "indigenization" movement for political gains, such as aboriginal opposition to the DPP's "rectification" by recognizing the Taroko for political reasons, with the majority of mountain townships voting for Ma Ying-jeou. In 2005 the Kuomintang displayed a massive photo of the anti-Japanese Aboriginal leader Mona Rudao at its headquarters in honor of the 60th anniversary of Taiwan's retrocession from Japan to the Republic of China.
For social issues, the KMT doesn't take an official position on same-sex marriage, though most members of legislative committees, mayor of cities, and the most recent presidential candidate (Han Kuo-yu) oppose. The party also have small faction to support same-sex marriage which mainly come from Taipei metropolitan area and young KMT supporters. The opposition to same-sex marriage comes mostly from Christian groups, who wield significant political influence especially within the KMT.
The Kuomintang's constitution designated Sun Yat-sen as party president. After his death, the Kuomintang opted to keep that language in its constitution to honor his memory forever. The party has since been headed by a director-general (1927–1975) and a chairman (since 1975), positions which officially discharge the functions of the president.
The KMT is organized as such:
The KMT was a nationalist revolutionary party which had been supported by the Soviet Union. It was organized on the Leninist principle of democratic centralism.
The KMT had several influences upon its ideology by revolutionary thinking. The KMT and Chiang Kai-shek used the words feudal and counterrevolutionary as synonyms for evil and backwardness, and they proudly proclaimed themselves to be revolutionaries. Chiang called the warlords feudalists, and he also called for feudalism and counterrevolutionaries to be stamped out by the KMT. Chiang showed extreme rage when he was called a warlord, because of the word's negative and feudal connotations. Ma Bufang was forced to defend himself against the accusations, and stated to the news media that his army was a part of "National army, people's power".
Chiang Kai-shek, the head of the KMT, warned the Soviet Union and other foreign countries about interfering in Chinese affairs. He was personally angry at the way China was treated by foreigners, mainly by the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States. He and his New Life Movement called for the crushing of Soviet, Western, American and other foreign influences in China. Chen Lifu, a CC Clique member in the KMT, said "Communism originated from Soviet imperialism, which has encroached on our country." It was also noted that "the white bear of the North Pole is known for its viciousness and cruelty".
The Blue Shirts Society, a fascist paramilitary organization within the KMT that modeled itself after Mussolini's blackshirts, was anti-foreign and anti-communist, and it stated that its agenda was to expel foreign (Japanese and Western) imperialists from China, crush Communism, and eliminate feudalism. In addition to being anticommunist, some KMT members, like Chiang Kai-shek's right-hand man Dai Li were anti-American, and wanted to expel American influence.
KMT leaders across China adopted nationalist rhetoric. The Chinese Muslim general Ma Bufang of Qinghai presented himself as a Chinese nationalist to the people of China, fighting against British imperialism, to deflect criticism by opponents that his government was feudal and oppressed minorities like Tibetans and Buddhist Mongols. He used his Chinese nationalist credentials to his advantage to keep himself in power.
The KMT pursued a sinicization policy, it was stated that "the time had come to set about the business of making all natives either turn Chinese or get out" by foreign observers of KMT policy. It was noted that "Chinese colonization" of "Mongolia and Manchuria" led "to a conviction that the day of the barbarian was finally over".
KMT branch in Guangxi province, led by the New Guangxi Clique of Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren, implemented anti-imperialist, anti-religious, and anti-foreign policies. During the Northern Expedition, in 1926 in Guangxi, Muslim General Bai Chongxi led his troops in destroying most of the Buddhist temples and smashing idols, turning the temples into schools and KMT headquarters. Bai led an anti-foreign wave in Guangxi, attacking American, European, and other foreigners and missionaries, and generally making the province unsafe for non-natives. Westerners fled from the province, and some Chinese Christians were also attacked as imperialist agents.
The leaders clashed with Chiang Kai-shek, which led to the Central Plains War where Chiang defeated the clique.
KMT had a left wing and a right wing, the left being more radical in its pro-Soviet policies, but both wings equally persecuted merchants, accusing them of being counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries. The right wing under Chiang Kai-shek prevailed, and continued radical policies against private merchants and industrialists, even as they denounced communism.
One of the Three Principles of the People of KMT, Mínshēng, was defined as socialism by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He defined this principle of saying in his last days "its socialism and its communism". The concept may be understood as social welfare as well. Sun understood it as an industrial economy and equality of land holdings for the Chinese peasant farmers. Here he was influenced by the American thinker Henry George (see Georgism) and German thinker Karl Marx; the land value tax in Taiwan is a legacy thereof. He divided livelihood into four areas: food, clothing, housing, and transportation; and planned out how an ideal (Chinese) government can take care of these for its people.
KMT was referred to having a socialist ideology. "Equalization of land rights" was a clause included by Dr. Sun in the original Tongmenhui. KMT's revolutionary ideology in the 1920s incorporated unique Chinese Socialism as part of its ideology.
The Soviet Union trained KMT revolutionaries in the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. In the West and in the Soviet Union, Chiang was known as the "Red General". Movie theaters in the Soviet Union showed newsreels and clips of Chiang, at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University Portraits of Chiang were hung on the walls, and in the Soviet May Day Parades that year, Chiang's portrait was to be carried along with the portraits of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and other socialist leaders.
KMT attempted to levy taxes upon merchants in Canton, and the merchants resisted by raising an army, the Merchant's volunteer corps. Dr. Sun initiated this anti-merchant policy, and Chiang Kai-shek enforced it, Chiang led his army of Whampoa Military Academy graduates to defeat the merchant's army. Chiang was assisted by Soviet advisors, who supplied him with weapons, while the merchants were supplied with weapons from the Western countries.
KMT were accused of leading a "Red Revolution" in Canton. The merchants were conservative and reactionary, and their Volunteer Corp leader Chen Lianbao was a prominent comprador trader.
The merchants were supported by the foreign, western Imperialists such as the British, who led an international flotilla to support them against Dr. Sun. Chiang seized the western supplied weapons from the merchants, and battled against them. A KMT General executed several merchants, and KMT formed a Soviet inspired Revolutionary Committee. The British Communist party congratulated Dr. Sun for his war against foreign imperialists and capitalists.
In 1948, KMT again attacked the merchants of Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek sent his son Chiang Ching-kuo to restore economic order. Ching-kuo copied Soviet methods, which he learned during his stay there, to start a social revolution by attacking middle-class merchants. He also enforced low prices on all goods to raise support from the proletariat.
As riots broke out and savings were ruined, bankrupting shop owners, Ching-kuo began to attack the wealthy, seizing assets and placing them under arrest. The son of the gangster Du Yuesheng was arrested by him. Ching-kuo ordered KMT agents to raid the Yangtze Development Corporation's warehouses, which was privately owned by H.H. Kung and his family. H.H. Kung's wife was Soong Ai-ling, the sister of Soong Mei-ling who was Ching-kuo's stepmother. H.H. Kung's son David was arrested, the Kung's responded by blackmailing the Chiang's, threatening to release information about them, eventually he was freed after negotiations, and Ching-kuo resigned, ending the terror on the Shanghainese merchants.
KMT also promotes government-owned corporations. KMT founder Sun Yat-sen, was heavily influenced by the economic ideas of Henry George, who believed that the rents extracted from natural monopolies or the usage of land belonged to the public. Dr. Sun argued for Georgism and emphasized the importance of a mixed economy, which he termed "The Principle of Minsheng" in his Three Principles of the People.
"The railroads, public utilities, canals, and forests should be nationalized, and all income from the land and mines should be in the hands of the State. With this money in hand, the State can therefore finance the social welfare programs."
KMT Muslim Governor of Ningxia, Ma Hongkui promoted state-owned monopolies. His government had a company, Fu Ning Company, which had a monopoly over commerce and industry in Ningxia.
Corporations such as CSBC Corporation, Taiwan, CPC Corporation, Taiwan and Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation are owned by the state in the Republic of China.
Marxists also existed in KMT. They viewed the Chinese revolution in different terms than the CPC, claiming that China already went past its feudal stage and in a stagnation period rather than in another mode of production. These Marxists in KMT opposed the CPC ideology.
KMT used traditional Chinese religious ceremonies, the souls of party martyrs who died fighting for KMT and the revolution and the party founder Sun Yat-sen were sent to heaven according to KMT. Chiang Kai-shek believed that these martyrs witnessed events on earth from heaven.
The KMT backed the New Life Movement, which promoted Confucianism, and it was also against westernization. KMT leaders also opposed the May Fourth Movement. Chiang Kai-shek, as a nationalist, and Confucianist, was against the iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement. He viewed some western ideas as foreign, as a Chinese nationalist, and that the introduction of western ideas and literature that the May Fourth Movement wanted was not welcome. He and Sun Yat-sen criticized these May Fourth intellectuals for corrupting morals of youth.
KMT also incorporated Confucianism in its jurisprudence. It pardoned Shi Jianqiao for murdering Sun Chuanfang, because she did it in revenge since Sun executed her father Shi Congbin, which was an example of filial piety to one's parents in Confucianism. KMT encouraged filial revenge killings and extended pardons to those who performed them.
KMT purged China's education system of Western ideas, introducing Confucianism into the curriculum. Education came under the total control of state, which meant, in effect, the KMT, via the Ministry of Education. Military and political classes on KMT's "Three Principles of the People" were added. Textbooks, exams, degrees and educational instructors were all controlled by the state, as were all universities.
Chiang Ching-kuo, appointed as KMT director of Secret Police in 1950, was educated in the Soviet Union, and initiated Soviet style military organization in the Republic of China Armed Forces, reorganizing and Sovietizing the political officer corps, surveillance, and KMT activities were propagated throughout the whole of the armed forces. Opposed to this was Sun Li-jen, who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute. Chiang Ching-kuo then arrested Sun Li-jen, charging him of conspiring with the American CIA of plotting to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and KMT, Sun was placed under house arrest in 1955.
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was initially pro-ROC and mainly consisted of KMT members who joined as an alternative and were also in opposition to the Malayan Communist Party, supporting the KMT in China by funding them with the intention of reclaiming the Chinese mainland from the communists.
The Tibet Improvement Party was founded by Pandatsang Rapga, a pro-ROC and pro-KMT Khampa revolutionary, who worked against the 14th Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Lhasa. Rapga borrowed Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People doctrine and translated his political theories into the Tibetan language, hailing it as the best hope for Asian peoples against imperialism. Rapga stated that "the Sanmin Zhuyi was intended for all peoples under the domination of foreigners, for all those who had been deprived of the rights of man. But it was conceived especially for the Asians. It is for this reason that I translated it. At that time, a lot of new ideas were spreading in Tibet," during an interview in 1975 by Dr. Heather Stoddard. He wanted to destroy the feudal government in Lhasa, in addition to modernizing and secularizing Tibetan society. The ultimate goal of the party was the overthrow of the Dalai Lama's regime, and the creation of a Tibetan Republic which would be an autonomous Republic within the ROC. Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT funded the party and their efforts to build an army to battle the Dalai Lama's government. KMT was extensively involved in the Kham region, recruiting the Khampa people to both oppose the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government, fight the Communist Red Army, and crush the influence of local Chinese warlords who did not obey the central government.
The KMT assisted the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang party which translates literally into Chinese (; ) as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. When it was established, it was based on the Chinese KMT and was pro Chinese. The Chinese KMT helped the party, known as the VNQDD, set up headquarters in Canton and Yunnan, to aid their anti imperialist struggle against the French occupiers of Indo China and against the Vietnamese Communist Party. It was the first revolutionary nationalist party to be established in Vietnam, before the communist party. The KMT assisted VNQDD with funds and military training.
The VNQDD was founded with KMT aid in 1925, they were against Ho Chi Minh's Viet Nam Revolutionary Youth League. When the VNQDD fled to China after the failed uprising against the French, they settled in Yunnan and Canton, in two different branches. The VNQDD existed as a party in exile in China for 15 years, receiving help, militarily and financially, and organizationally from the Chinese KMT. The two VNQDD parties merged into a single organization, the Canton branch removed the word "revolutionary" from the party name. Lu Han, a KMT official in Nanjing, who was originally from Yunnan, was contacted by the VNQDD, and the KMT Central Executive Committee and Military made direct contact with VNQDD for the first time, the party was reestablished in Nanjing with KMT help.
The Chinese KMT used the VNQDD for its own interests in south China and Indo China. General Zhang Fakui (Chang Fa-kuei), who based himself in Guangxi, established the Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi meaning "Viet Nam Revolutionary League" in 1942, which was assisted by the VNQDD to serve the KMT's aims. The Chinese Yunnan provincial army, under the KMT, occupied northern Vietnam after the Japanese surrender in 1945, the VNQDD tagging alone, opposing Ho Chi Minh's communist party. The Viet Nam Revolutionary League was a union of various Vietnamese nationalist groups, run by the pro Chinese VNQDD. Its stated goal was for unity with China under the Three Principles of the People, created by KMT founder Dr. Sun and opposition to Japanese and French Imperialists. The Revolutionary League was controlled by Nguyen Hai Than, who was born in China and could not speak Vietnamese. General Zhang shrewdly blocked the Communists of Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh from entering the league, as his main goal was Chinese influence in Indo China. The KMT utilized these Vietnamese nationalists during World War II against Japanese forces.
A KMT left-winger, General Chang Fa-kuei worked with Nguyen Hai Than, a VNQDD member, against French Imperialists and Communists in Indo China. General Chang Fa-kuei planned to lead a Chinese army invasion of Tonkin in Indochina to free Vietnam from French control, and to get Chiang Kai-shek's support. The VNQDD opposed the government of Ngo Dinh Diem during the Vietnam War.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1977 the party dissolved and was refounded in 1991 as People's Action Party of Vietnam.
On 30 November 1958, the establishment of the Ryukyu Guomindang took place. Tsugumasa Kiyuna headed its predecessor party, the Ryukyuan separatist Ryukyu Revolutionary Party which was backed by the Kuomintang in Taiwan.
The Pro-Kuomintang camp is a political alignment in Hong Kong. It generally pledges allegiance to the Kuomintang.
One of these members, the 123 Democratic Alliance, dissolved in 2000 due to the lack of financial support from the Taiwan government, after the Presidential election.
Ma Fuxiang founded Islamic organizations sponsored by KMT, including the China Islamic Association ().
KMT Muslim General Bai Chongxi was Chairman of the Chinese Islamic National Salvation Federation. The Muslim Chengda school and Yuehua publication were supported by the Nationalist Government, and they supported KMT.
The Chinese Muslim Association was also sponsored by KMT, and it evacuated from the mainland to Taiwan with the party. The Chinese Muslim Association owns the Taipei Grand Mosque which was built with funds from KMT.
The Yihewani (Ikhwan al Muslimun a.k.a. Muslim brotherhood) was the predominant Muslim sect backed by KMT. Other Muslim sects, like the Xidaotang were also supported by the KMT. The Chinese Muslim brotherhood became a Chinese nationalist organization and supported KMT rule. Brotherhood Imams like Hu Songshan ordered Muslims to pray for the Nationalist Government, salute KMT flags during prayer, and listen to nationalist sermons.
KMT considers all minorities to be members of the Chinese nation. Former KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek considered all the minority peoples of China, including the Hui, as descendants of Yellow Emperor, the Yellow Emperor and semi mythical founder of the Chinese nation. Chiang considered all the minorities to belong to the Chinese Nation Zhonghua Minzu and he introduced this into KMT ideology, which was propagated into the educational system of the Republic of China, and the Constitution of the ROC considered Chiang's ideology to be true. In Taiwan, the President performs a ritual honoring the Yellow Emperor, while facing west, in the direction of the Chinese mainland.
KMT kept the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission for dealing with Mongolian And Tibetan affairs. A Muslim, Ma Fuxiang, was appointed as its chairman.
KMT was known for sponsoring Muslim students to study abroad at Muslim universities like Al Azhar and it established schools especially for Muslims, Muslim KMT warlords like Ma Fuxiang promoted education for Muslims. KMT Muslim Warlord Ma Bufang built a girls' school for Muslim girls in Linxia City which taught modern secular education.
Tibetans and Mongols refused to allow other ethnic groups like Kazakhs to participate in the Kokonur ceremony in Qinghai, but the KMT Muslim General Ma Bufang allowed them to participate.
Chinese Muslims were among the most hardline KMT members. Ma Chengxiang was a Muslim and a KMT member, and refused to surrender to the Communists.
KMT incited anti Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang sentiments among Chinese Muslims and Mongols, encouraging for them to topple their rule during the Central Plains War.
Masud Sabri, a Uyghur was appointed as Governor of Xinjiang by KMT, as was the Tatar Burhan Shahidi and the Uyghur Yulbars Khan.
The Muslim General Ma Bufang also put KMT symbols on his mansion, the Ma Bufang Mansion along with a portrait of party founder Dr. Sun Yatsen arranged with KMT flag and the Republic of China flag.
General Ma Bufang and other high ranking Muslim Generals attended the Kokonuur Lake Ceremony where the God of the Lake was worshipped, and during the ritual, the Chinese national anthem was sung, all participants bowed to a Portrait of KMT founder Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and the God of the Lake was also bowed to, and offerings were given to him by the participants, which included the Muslims. This cult of personality around KMT leader and KMT was standard in all meetings. Sun Yat-sen's portrait was bowed to three times by KMT party members. Dr. Sun's portrait was arranged with two flags crossed under, the KMT flag and the flag of the Republic of China.
KMT also hosted conferences of important Muslims like Bai Chongxi, Ma Fuxiang, and Ma Liang. Ma Bufang stressed "racial harmony" as a goal when he was Governor of Qinghai.
In 1939, Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Ma Fuliang were sent on a mission by KMT to the Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Syria to gain support for the Chinese War against Japan, they also visited Afghanistan in 1940 and contacted Muhammad Amin Bughra, they asked him to come to Chongqing, the capital of the Nationalist Government. Bughra was arrested by the British in 1942 for spying, and KMT arranged for Bughra's release. He and Isa Yusuf worked as editors of KMT Muslim publications. Ma Tianying () (1900–1982) led the 1939 mission which had 5 other people including Isa and Fuliang.
KMT is anti-separatist. During its rule on mainland China, it crushed Uyghur and Tibetan separatist uprisings. KMT claims sovereignty over Mongolia and Tuva as well as the territories of the modern People's Republic and Republic of China.
KMT Muslim General Ma Bufang waged war on the invading Tibetans during the Sino-Tibetan War with his Muslim army, and he repeatedly crushed Tibetan revolts during bloody battles in Qinghai provinces. Ma Bufang was fully supported by President Chiang Kai-shek, who ordered him to prepare his Muslim army to invade Tibet several times and threatened aerial bombardment on the Tibetans. With support from KMT, Ma Bufang repeatedly attacked the Tibetan area of Golog seven times during the KMT Pacification of Qinghai, eliminating thousands of Tibetans.
General Ma Fuxiang, the chairman of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission stated that Mongolia and Tibet were an integral part of the Republic of China, arguing:
Our Party [the Guomindang] takes the development of the weak and small and resistance to the strong and violent as our sole and most urgent task. This is even more true for those groups which are not of our kind [Ch. fei wo zulei zhe]. Now the people of Mongolia and Tibet are closely related to us, and we have great affection for one another: our common existence and common honor already have a history of over a thousand years. [...] Mongolia and Tibet's life and death are China's life and death. China absolutely cannot cause Mongolia and Tibet to break away from China's territory, and Mongolia and Tibet cannot reject China to become independent. At this time, there is not a single nation on earth except China that will sincerely develop Mongolia and Tibet.
Under orders from Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek, the Hui General Ma Bufang, Governor of Qinghai (1937–1949), repaired Yushu airport to prevent Tibetan separatists from seeking independence. Ma Bufang also crushed Mongol separatist movements, abducting the Genghis Khan Shrine and attacking Tibetan Buddhist Temples like Labrang, and keeping a tight control over them through the Kokonur God ceremony.
During the Kumul Rebellion, KMT 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) crushed a separatist Uyghur First East Turkestan Republic, delivering it a fatal blow at the Battle of Kashgar (1934). The Muslim General Ma Hushan pledged allegiance to KMT and crushed another Uyghur revolt at Charkhlik Revolt.
During the Ili Rebellion, KMT fought against Uyghur separatists and the Soviet Union, and against Mongolia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16903 |
Kabbalah
Kabbalah (, literally "reception, tradition" or "correspondence") is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist in Judaism is called a "Mequbbāl" (). The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its religious origin as an integral part of Judaism, to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah). Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God–the mysterious "Ein Sof" (, "The Infinite")– and the mortal, finite universe (God's creation). It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.
Jewish Kabbalists originally developed their own transmission of sacred texts within the realm of Jewish tradition, and often use classical Jewish scriptures to explain and demonstrate its mystical teachings. These teachings are held by followers in Judaism to define the inner meaning of both the Hebrew Bible and traditional rabbinic literature and their formerly concealed transmitted dimension, as well as to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances. One of the fundamental kabbalistic texts, the "Zohar", was first published in the 13th century, and the almost universal form adhered to in modern Judaism is Lurianic Kabbalah.
Traditional practitioners believe its earliest origins pre-date world religions, forming the primordial blueprint for Creation's philosophies, religions, sciences, arts, and political systems. Historically, Kabbalah emerged after earlier forms of Jewish mysticism, in 12th- to 13th-century Spain and Southern France, and was reinterpreted during the Jewish mystical renaissance of 16th-century Ottoman Palestine. Isaac Luria is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah; Lurianic Kabbalah was popularised in the form of Hasidic Judaism from the 18th century onwards. During the 20th century, academic interest in Kabbalistic texts led primarily by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem has inspired the development of historical research on Kabbalah in the field of Judaic studies.
According to the "Zohar", a foundational text for kabbalistic thought, Torah study can proceed along four levels of interpretation (exegesis). These four levels are called "pardes" from their initial letters (PRDS , orchard).
Kabbalah is considered by its followers as a necessary part of the study of Torah – the study of Torah (the "Tanakh" and rabbinic literature) being an inherent duty of observant Jews.
Modern academic-historical study of Jewish mysticism reserves the term "kabbalah" to designate the particular, distinctive doctrines that textually emerged fully expressed in the Middle Ages, as distinct from the earlier Merkabah mystical concepts and methods. According to this descriptive categorisation, both versions of Kabbalistic theory, the medieval-Zoharic and the early-modern Lurianic Kabbalah together comprise the "Theosophical" tradition in Kabbalah, while the "Meditative-Ecstatic Kabbalah" incorporates a parallel inter-related Medieval tradition. A third tradition, related but more shunned, involves the magical aims of "Practical Kabbalah". Moshe Idel, for example, writes that these 3 basic models can be discerned operating and competing throughout the whole history of Jewish mysticism, beyond the particular Kabbalistic background of the Middle Ages. They can be readily distinguished by their basic intent with respect to God:
According to traditional belief, early kabbalistic knowledge was transmitted orally by the Patriarchs, prophets, and sages ("hakhamim" in Hebrew), eventually to be "interwoven" into Jewish religious writings and culture. According to this view, early kabbalah was, in around the 10th century BCE, an open knowledge practiced by over a million people in ancient Israel. Foreign conquests drove the Jewish spiritual leadership of the time (the Sanhedrin) to hide the knowledge and make it secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.
It is hard to clarify with any degree of certainty the exact concepts within kabbalah. There are several different schools of thought with very different outlooks; however, all are accepted as correct. Modern halakhic authorities have tried to narrow the scope and diversity within kabbalah, by restricting study to certain texts, notably Zohar and the teachings of Isaac Luria as passed down through Hayyim ben Joseph Vital. However, even this qualification does little to limit the scope of understanding and expression, as included in those works are commentaries on Abulafian writings, "Sefer Yetzirah", Albotonian writings, and the "Berit Menuhah", which is known to the kabbalistic elect and which, as described more recently by Gershom Scholem, combined ecstatic with theosophical mysticism. It is therefore important to bear in mind when discussing things such as the "sephirot" and their interactions that one is dealing with highly abstract concepts that at best can only be understood intuitively.
From the Renaissance onwards Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish culture, where they were studied and translated by Christian Hebraists and Hermetic occultists. The syncretic traditions of Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabalah developed independently of Judaic Kabbalah, reading the Jewish texts as universalist ancient wisdom preserved from the Gnostic traditions of antiquity. Both adapted the Jewish concepts freely from their Jewish understanding, to merge with multiple other theologies, religious traditions and magical associations. With the decline of Christian Cabala in the Age of Reason, Hermetic Qabalah continued as a central underground tradition in Western esotericism. Through these non-Jewish associations with magic, alchemy and divination, Kabbalah acquired some popular occult connotations forbidden within Judaism, where Jewish theurgic Practical Kabbalah was a minor, permitted tradition restricted for a few elite. Today, many publications on Kabbalah belong to the non-Jewish New Age and occult traditions of Cabala, rather than giving an accurate picture of Judaic Kabbalah. Instead, academic and traditional Jewish publications now translate and study Judaic Kabbalah for wide readership.
According to the traditional understanding, Kabbalah dates from Eden. It came down from a remote past as a revelation to elect Tzadikim (righteous people), and, for the most part, was preserved only by a privileged few. Talmudic Judaism records its view of the proper protocol for teaching this wisdom, as well as many of its concepts, in the "Talmud", Tractate "Hagigah", 11b-13a, "One should not teach ... the Act of Creation in pairs, nor the Act of the Chariot to an individual, unless he is wise and can understand the implications himself etc."
Contemporary scholarship suggests that various schools of Jewish esotericism arose at different periods of Jewish history, each reflecting not only prior forms of mysticism, but also the intellectual and cultural milieu of that historical period. Answers to questions of transmission, lineage, influence, and innovation vary greatly and cannot be easily summarised.
Originally, Kabbalistic knowledge was believed to be an integral part of the Oral Torah, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai around the 13th century BCE according to its followers; although some believe that Kabbalah began with Adam.
For a few centuries the esoteric knowledge was referred to by its aspect practice—meditation Hitbonenut (), Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's Hitbodedut (), translated as "being alone" or "isolating oneself", or by a different term describing the actual, desired goal of the practice—prophecy (""NeVu'a"" ). Kabbalistic scholar Aryeh Kaplan traces the origins of medieval Kabbalistic meditative methods to their inheritance from orally transmitted remnants of the Biblical Prophetic tradition, and reconstructs their terminology and speculated techniques.
From the 5th century BCE, when the works of the Tanakh were edited and canonised and the secret knowledge encrypted within the various writings and scrolls ("Megilot"), esoteric knowledge became referred to as "Ma'aseh Merkavah" () and "Ma'aseh B'reshit" (), respectively "the act of the Chariot" and "the act of Creation". Merkabah mysticism alluded to the encrypted knowledge, and meditation methods within the book of the prophet Ezekiel describing his vision of the "Divine Chariot". B'reshit mysticism referred to the first chapter of Genesis () in the Torah that is believed to contain secrets of the creation of the universe and forces of nature. These terms received their later historical documentation and description in the second chapter of the Talmudic tractate "Hagigah" from the early centuries CE.
Confidence in new Prophetic revelation closed after the Biblical return from Babylon in Second Temple Judaism, shifting to canonisation and exegesis of Scripture after Ezra the Scribe. Lesser level prophecy of Ruach Hakodesh remained, with angelic revelations, esoteric heavenly secrets, and eschatological deliverance from Greek and Roman oppression of Apocalyptic literature among early Jewish proto-mystical circles, such as the Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls community of Qumran. Early Jewish mystical literature inherited the developing concerns and remnants of Prophetic and Apocalyptic Judaisms.
When read by later generations of Kabbalists, the Torah's description of the creation in the Book of Genesis reveals mysteries about God himself, the true nature of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden (), the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (), and the Tree of Life (), as well as the interaction of these supernatural entities with the Serpent (), which leads to disaster when they eat the forbidden fruit (), as recorded in Genesis 3.
The Bible provides ample additional material for mythic and mystical speculation. The prophet Ezekiel's visions in particular attracted much mystical speculation, as did Isaiah's Temple vision—the Book of Isaiah, Ch. 6. Jacob's vision of the ladder to heaven provided another example of esoteric experience. Moses' encounters with the Burning bush and God on Mount Sinai are evidence of mystical events in the Torah that form the origin of Jewish mystical beliefs.
The 72 letter name of God which is used in Jewish mysticism for meditation purposes is derived from the Hebrew verbal utterance Moses spoke in the presence of an angel, while the Sea of Reeds parted, allowing the Hebrews to escape their approaching attackers. The miracle of the Exodus, which led to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and the Jewish Orthodox view of the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai, preceded the creation of the first Jewish nation approximately three hundred years before King Saul.
In early Rabbinic Judaism (the early centuries of the 1st millennium CE), the terms "Ma'aseh Bereshit" ("Works of Creation") and "Ma'aseh Merkabah" ("Works of the Divine Throne/Chariot") clearly indicate the Midrashic nature of these speculations; they are really based upon Genesis 1 and Ezekiel 1:4–28, while the names "Sitrei Torah" (Hidden aspects of the Torah) (Talmud "Hag." 13a) and "Razei Torah" (Torah secrets) ("Ab." vi. 1) indicate their character as secret lore. An additional term also expanded Jewish esoteric knowledge, namely "Chochmah Nistara" (Hidden wisdom).
Talmudic doctrine forbade the public teaching of esoteric doctrines and warned of their dangers. In the Mishnah (Hagigah 2:1), rabbis were warned to teach the mystical creation doctrines only to one student at a time. To highlight the danger, in one Jewish aggadic ("legendary") anecdote, four prominent rabbis of the Mishnaic period (1st century CE) are said to have visited the Orchard (that is, Paradise, "pardes", Hebrew: lit., "orchard"):
In notable readings of this legend, only Rabbi Akiba was fit to handle the study of mystical doctrines. The "Tosafot", medieval commentaries on the Talmud, say that the four sages "did not go up literally, but it appeared to them as if they went up". On the other hand, Louis Ginzberg, writes in the "Jewish Encyclopedia" (1901–1906) that the journey to paradise "is to be taken literally and not allegorically".
In contrast to the Kabbalists, Maimonides interprets "pardes" as philosophy and not mysticism.
The mystical methods and doctrines of Hekhalot (Heavenly "Chambers") and Merkabah (Divine "Chariot") texts, named by modern scholars from these repeated motifs, lasted from the 1st century BCE through to the 10th century CE, before giving way to the documented manuscript emergence of Kabbalah. Initiates were said to "descend the chariot", possibly a reference to internal introspection on the Heavenly journey through the spiritual realms. The ultimate aim was to arrive before the transcendent awe, rather than nearness, of the Divine. The mystical protagonists of the texts are famous Talmudic Sages of Rabbinic Judaism, either pseudepigraphic or documenting remnants of a developed tradition. From the 8th to 11th centuries, the Hekhalot texts, and the proto-Kabbalistic early cosmogonic "Sefer Yetzirah" ("Book of Creation") made their way into European Jewish circles. A controversial esoteric work from associated literature describing a cosmic Anthropos, "Shi'ur Qomah", was interpreted allegorically by subsequent Kabbalists in their meditation on the Sephirot Divine Persona.
Another, separate influential mystical, theosophical, and pious movement, shortly before the arrival there of Kabbalistic theory, was the "Hasidei Ashkenaz" (חסידי אשכנז) or Medieval German Pietists from 1150 to 1250. This ethical-ascetic movement with elite theoretical and Practical Kabbalah speculations arose mostly among a single scholarly family, the Kalonymus family of the French and German Rhineland. Its Jewish ethics of saintly self-sacrifice influenced Ashkenazi Jewry, Musar literature and later emphases of piety in Judaism.
Modern scholars have identified several mystical brotherhoods that functioned in Europe starting in the 12th century. Some, such as the "Iyyun Circle" and the "Unique Cherub Circle", were truly esoteric, remaining largely anonymous. The first documented historical emergence of Theosophical Kabbalistic doctrine occurred among Jewish Sages of Provence and Languedoc in southern France in the latter 1100s, with the appearance or consolidation of the mysterious work the "Bahir" (Book of "Brightness"), a midrash describing God's sephirot attributes as a dynamic interacting hypostatic drama in the Divine realm, and the school of Isaac the Blind (1160–1235) among critics of the rationalist influence of Maimonides. From there Kabbalah spread to Catalonia in north-east Spain around the central Rabbinic figure of Nahmanides (the "Ramban") (1194–1270) in the early 1200s, with a Neoplatonic orientation focused on the upper sephirot. Subsequently Kabbalistic doctrine reached its fullest classic expression among Castilian Kabbalists from the latter 1200s, with the "Zohar" (Book of "Splendor") literature, concerned with cosmic healing of gnostic dualities between the lower, revealed male and female attributes of God.
Rishonim ("Elder Sages") of exoteric Judaism who were deeply involved in Kabbalistic activity, gave the Kabbalah wide scholarly acceptance, including Nahmanides and Bahya ben Asher ("Rabbeinu Behaye") (died 1340), whose classic commentaries on the Torah reference Kabbalistic esotericism.
Many Orthodox Jews reject the idea that Kabbalah underwent significant historical development or change such as has been proposed above. After the composition known as the Zohar was presented to the public in the 13th century, the term "Kabbalah" began to refer more specifically to teachings derived from, or related to, the "Zohar". At an even later time, the term began to generally be applied to Zoharic teachings as elaborated upon by Isaac Luria (the Arizal). Historians generally date the start of Kabbalah as a major influence in Jewish thought and practice with the publication of the Zohar and climaxing with the spread of the Lurianic teachings. The majority of Haredi Jews accept the Zohar as the representative of the "Ma'aseh Merkavah" and "Ma'aseh B'reshit" that are referred to in Talmudic texts.
Contemporary with the Zoharic efflorescence of Spanish Theosophical-Theurgic Kabbalah, Spanish exilarch Abraham Abulafia developed his own alternative, Maimonidean system of Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah meditation, each consolidating aspects of a claimed inherited mystical tradition from Biblical times. This was the classic time when various different interpretations of an esoteric meaning to Torah were articulated among Jewish thinkers. Abulafia interpreted Theosophical Kabbalah's Sephirot Divine attributes, not as supernal hypostases which he opposed, but in psychological terms. Instead of influencing harmony in the divine real by theurgy, his meditative scheme aimed for mystical union with God, drawing down prophetic influx on the individual. He saw this meditation using Divine Names as a superior form of Kabbalistic ancient tradition. His version of Kabbalah, followed in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, remained a marginal stream to mainstream Theosophical Kabbalah development. Abulafian elements were later incorporated into the 16th century theosophical Kabbalistic systemisations of Moses Cordovero and Hayim Vital. Through them, later Hasidic Judaism incorporated elements of unio mystica and psychological focus from Abulafia.
Following the upheavals and dislocations in the Jewish world as a result of anti-Judaism during the Middle Ages, and the national trauma of the expulsion from Spain in 1492, closing the Spanish Jewish flowering, Jews began to search for signs of when the long-awaited Jewish Messiah would come to comfort them in their painful exiles. In the 16th century, the community of Safed in the Galilee became the centre of Jewish mystical, exegetical, legal and liturgical developments. The Safed mystics responded to the Spanish expulsion by turning Kabbalistic doctrine and practice towards a messianic focus. Moses Cordovero (The "RAMAK" 1522–1570) and his school popularized the teachings of the Zohar which had until then been only a restricted work. Cordovero's comprehensive works achieved the first (quasi-rationalistic) of Theosophical Kabbalah's two systemisations, harmonising preceding interpretations of the Zohar on its own apparent terms. The author of the "Shulkhan Arukh" (the normative Jewish "Code of Law"), Yosef Karo (1488–1575), was also a scholar of Kabbalah who kept a personal mystical diary. Moshe Alshich wrote a mystical commentary on the Torah, and Shlomo Alkabetz wrote Kabbalistic commentaries and poems.
The messianism of the Safed mystics culminated in Kabbalah receiving its biggest transformation in the Jewish world with the explication of its new interpretation from Isaac Luria (The "ARI" 1534–1572), by his disciples Hayim Vital and Israel Sarug. Both transcribed Luria's teachings (in variant forms) gaining them widespread popularity, Sarug taking Lurianic Kabbalah to Europe, Vital authoring the latterly canonical version. Luria's teachings came to rival the influence of the Zohar and Luria stands, alongside Moses de Leon, as the most influential mystic in Jewish history. Lurianic Kabbalah gave Theosophical Kabbalah its second, complete (supra-rational) of two systemisations, reading the Zohar in light of its most esoteric sections (the "Idrot"), replacing the broken Sephirot attributes of God with rectified Partzufim (Divine Personas), embracing reincarnation, repair, and the urgency of cosmic Jewish messianism dependent on each person's soul tasks.
From the European Renaissance on, Judaic Kabbalah became a significant influence in non-Jewish culture, fully divorced from the separately evolving Judaic tradition. Kabbalah received the interest of Christian Hebraist scholars and occultists, who freely syncretised and adapted it to diverse non-Jewish spiritual traditions and belief systems of Western esotericism. Christian Cabalists from the 15th-18th centuries adapted what they saw as ancient Biblical wisdom to Christian theology, while Hermeticism lead to Kabbalah's incorporation into Western magic through Hermetic Qabalah. Presentations of Kabbalah in occult and New Age books on Kabbalah bear little resemblance to Judaic Kabbalah.
The Rabbinic ban on studying Kabbalah in Jewish society was lifted by the efforts of the 16th-century kabbalist Avraham Azulai (1570–1643).
The question, however, is whether the ban ever existed in the first place. Concerning the above quote by Avraham Azulai, it has found many versions in English, another is this
The lines concerning the year 1490 are also missing from the Hebrew edition of "Hesed L'Avraham", the source work that both of these quote from. Furthermore, by Azulai's view the ban was lifted thirty years before his birth, a time that would have corresponded with Haim Vital's publication of the teaching of Isaac Luria. Moshe Isserles understood there to be only a minor restriction, in his words, "One's belly must be full of meat and wine, discerning between the prohibited and the permitted." He is supported by the Bier Hetiv, the Pithei Teshuva as well as the Vilna Gaon. The Vilna Gaon says, "There was never any ban or enactment restricting the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah. Any who says there is has never studied Kabbalah, has never seen PaRDeS, and speaks as an ignoramus."
The Kabbalah of the Sefardi (Iberian Peninsula) and Mizrahi (Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus) Torah scholars has a long history. Kabbalah in various forms was widely studied, commented upon, and expanded by North African, Turkish, Yemenite, and Asian scholars from the 16th century onward. It flourished among Sefardic Jews in Tzfat (Safed), Israel even before the arrival of Isaac Luria. Yosef Karo, author of the "Shulchan Arukh" was part of the Tzfat school of Kabbalah. Shlomo Alkabetz, author of the hymn "Lekhah Dodi", taught there.
His disciple Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (or Cordoeiro) authored "Pardes Rimonim", an organised, exhaustive compilation of kabbalistic teachings on a variety of subjects up to that point. Cordovero headed the academy of Tzfat until his death, when Isaac Luria rose to prominence. Rabbi Moshe's disciple Eliyahu De Vidas authored the classic work, "Reishit Chochma", combining kabbalistic and "mussar" (moral) teachings. Chaim Vital also studied under Cordovero, but with the arrival of Luria became his main disciple. Vital claimed to be the only one authorised to transmit the Ari's teachings, though other disciples also published books presenting Luria's teachings.
The Oriental Kabbalist tradition continues until today among Sephardi and Mizrachi Hakham sages and study circles. Among leading figures were the Yemenite Shalom Sharabi (1720–1777) of the Beit El Synagogue, the Jerusalemite Hida (1724–1806), the Baghdad leader Ben Ish Chai (1832–1909), and the Abuhatzeira dynasty.
One of the most innovative theologians in early-modern Judaism was Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609) known as the "Maharal of Prague". Many of his written works survive and are studied for their unusual combination of the mystical and philosophical approaches in Judaism. While conversant in Kabbalistic learning, he expresses Jewish mystical thought in his own individual approach without reference to Kabbalistic terms. The Maharal is most well known in popular culture for the legend of the golem of Prague, associated with him in folklore. However, his thought influenced Hasidism, for example being studied in the introspective Przysucha school. During the 20th century, Isaac Hutner (1906–1980) continued to spread the Maharal's works indirectly through his own teachings and publications within the non-Hasidic yeshiva world.
The spiritual and mystical yearnings of many Jews remained frustrated after the death of Isaac Luria and his disciples and colleagues. No hope was in sight for many following the devastation and mass killings of the pogroms that followed in the wake of the Chmielnicki Uprising (1648–1654), the largest single massacre of Jews until the Holocaust, and it was at this time that a controversial scholar by the name of Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) captured the hearts and minds of the Jewish masses of that time with the promise of a newly minted messianic Millennialism in the form of his own personage.
His charisma, mystical teachings that included repeated pronunciations of the holy Tetragrammaton in public, tied to an unstable personality, and with the help of his greatest enthusiast, Nathan of Gaza, convinced the Jewish masses that the Jewish Messiah had finally come. It seemed that the esoteric teachings of Kabbalah had found their "champion" and had triumphed, but this era of Jewish history unravelled when Zevi became an apostate to Judaism by converting to Islam after he was arrested by the Ottoman Sultan and threatened with execution for attempting a plan to conquer the world and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Unwilling to give up their messianic expectations, a minority of Zevi's Jewish followers converted to Islam along with him.
Many of his followers, known as Sabbatians, continued to worship him in secret, explaining his conversion not as an effort to save his life but to recover the sparks of the holy in each religion, and most leading rabbis were always on guard to root them out. The Dönmeh movement in modern Turkey is a surviving remnant of the Sabbatian schism. Theologies developed by leaders of Sabbatian movements dealt with antinomian redemption of the realm of impurity through sin, based on Lurianic theory. Moderate views reserved this dangerous task for the divine messiah Sabbatai Zevi alone, while his followers remained observant Jews. Radical forms spoke of the messianic transcendence of Torah, and required Sabbatean followers to emulate him, either in private or publicly.
Due to the chaos caused in the Jewish world, the rabbinic prohibition against studying Kabbalah established itself firmly within the Jewish religion. One of the conditions allowing a man to study and engage himself in the Kabbalah was to be at least forty years old. This age requirement came about during this period and is not Talmudic in origin but rabbinic. Many Jews are familiar with this ruling, but are not aware of its origins. Moreover, the prohibition is not halakhic in nature. According to Moses Cordovero, halakhically, one must be of age twenty to engage in the Kabbalah. Many famous kabbalists, including the ARI, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Yehuda Ashlag, were younger than twenty when they began.
The Sabbatian movement was followed by that of the Frankists, disciples of Jacob Frank (1726–1791), who eventually became an apostate to Judaism by apparently converting to Catholicism. Frank took the Sabbatean impulse to its nihilistic end, declaring himself part of a messianic trinity along with his daughter, and that breaking all of Torah was its fulfilment. This era of disappointment did not stem the Jewish masses' yearnings for "mystical" leadership.
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707–1746), based in Italy, was a precocious Talmudic scholar who deduced a need for the public teaching and study of Kabbalah. He established a yeshiva for Kabbalah study and actively recruited students. He wrote copious manuscripts in an appealing clear Hebrew style, all of which gained the attention of both admirers and rabbinical critics, who feared another "Shabbetai Zevi" (false messiah) in the making. His rabbinical opponents forced him to close his school, hand over and destroy many of his most precious unpublished kabbalistic writings, and go into exile in the Netherlands. He eventually moved to the Land of Israel. Some of his most important works, such as "Derekh Hashem", survive and serve as a gateway to the world of Jewish mysticism.
Elijah of Vilna (Vilna Gaon) (1720–1797), based in Lithuania, had his teachings encoded and publicised by his disciples, such as Chaim Volozhin's posthumously published the mystical-ethical work "Nefesh HaChaim". He staunchly opposed the new Hasidic movement and warned against their public displays of religious fervour inspired by the mystical teachings of their rabbis. Although the Vilna Gaon did not look with favor on the Hasidic movement, he did not prohibit the study and engagement in the Kabbalah. This is evident from his writings in the "Even Shlema". "He that is able to understand secrets of the Torah and does not try to understand them will be judged harshly, may God have mercy". (The Vilna Gaon, "Even Shlema", 8:24). "The Redemption will only come about through learning Torah, and the essence of the Redemption depends upon learning Kabbalah" (The Vilna Gaon, "Even Shlema", 11:3).
In the Oriental tradition of Kabbalah, Shalom Sharabi (1720–1777) from Yemen was a major esoteric clarifier of the works of the Ari. The Beit El Synagogue, "yeshivah of the kabbalists", which he came to head, was one of the few communities to bring Lurianic meditation into communal prayer.
In the 20th century, Yehuda Ashlag (1885—1954) in Mandate Palestine became a leading esoteric kabbalist in the traditional mode, who translated the Zohar into Hebrew with a new approach in Lurianic Kabbalah.
Israel ben Eliezer Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), founder of Hasidism in the area of the Ukraine, spread teachings based on Lurianic Kabbalah, but adapted to a different aim of immediate psychological perception of Divine Omnipresence amidst the mundane. The emotional, ecstatic fervour of early Hasidism developed from previous Nistarim circles of mystical activity, but instead sought communal revival of the common folk by reframing Judaism around the central principle of devekut (mystical cleaving to God) for all. This new approach turned formerly esoteric elite kabbalistic theory into a popular social mysticism movement for the first time, with its own doctrines, classic texts, teachings and customs. From the Baal Shem Tov sprang the wide ongoing schools of Hasidic Judaism, each with different approaches and thought. Hasidism instituted a new concept of Tzadik leadership in Jewish mysticism, where the elite scholars of mystical texts now took on a social role as embodiments and intercessors of Divinity for the masses. With the 19th-century consolidation of the movement, leadership became dynastic.
Among later Hasidic schools Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810), the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, revitalised and further expanded the latter's teachings, amassing a following of thousands in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. In a unique amalgam of Hasidic and "Mitnaged" approaches, Rebbe Nachman emphasised study of both Kabbalah and serious Torah scholarship to his disciples. His teachings also differed from the way other Hasidic groups were developing, as he rejected the idea of hereditary Hasidic dynasties and taught that each Hasid must "search for the "tzaddik" ('saintly/righteous person')" for himself and within himself.
The Habad-Lubavitch intellectual school of Hasidism broke away from General-Hasidism's emotional faith orientation, by making the mind central as the route to the internal heart. Its texts combine what they view as rational investigation with explanation of Kabbalah through articulating unity in a common Divine essence. In recent times, the messianic element latent in Hasidism has come to the fore in Habad.
The Jewish Haskalah enlightenment movement from the late 1700s renewed an ideology of rationalism in Judaism, giving birth to critical Judaic scholarship. It presented Judaism in apologetic terms, stripped of mysticism and myth, in line with Jewish emancipation. Many foundational historians of Judaism such as Heinrich Graetz, criticised Kabbalah as a foreign import that compromised historical Judaism. In the 20th century Gershom Scholem overturned Jewish historiography, presenting the centrality of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah to historical Judaism, and their subterranean life as the true creative renewing spirit of Jewish thought and culture. His influence contributed to the flourishing of Jewish mysticism academia today, its impact on wider intellectual currents, and the contribution of mystical spirituality in modernist Jewish denominations today. Traditionalist Kabbalah and Hasidism, meanwhile, continued outside the academic interest in it.
Jewish mysticism has influenced the thought of some major Jewish theologians, philosophers, writers and thinkers in the 20th century, outside of Kabbalistic or Hasidic traditions. The first Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook was a mystical thinker who drew heavily on Kabbalistic notions through his own poetic terminology. His writings are concerned with fusing the false divisions between sacred and secular, rational and mystical, legal and imaginative. Students of Joseph B. Soloveitchik, figurehead of American Modern Orthodox Judaism have read the influence of Kabbalistic symbols in his philosophical works. Neo-Hasidism, rather than Kabbalah, shaped Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Conservative Judaism. Lurianic symbols of Tzimtzum and Shevirah have informed Holocaust theologians. Gershom Scholem's central academic influence on reshaping Jewish historiography in favour of myth and imagination, made historical arcane Kabbalah of relevance to wide intellectual discourse in the 20th century. Moshe Idel traces the influences of Kabbalistic and Hasidic concepts on diverse thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka, Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano, Paul Celan and George Steiner. Harold Bloom has seen Kabbalistic hermeneutics as the paradigm for western literary criticism. Sanford Drob discusses the direct and indirect influence of Kabbalah on the depth psychologies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as well as modern and postmodern philosophers, in his project to develop new intellectual relevance and open dialogue for kabbalah. The interaction of Kabbalah with modern physics, as with other mystical traditions, has generated its own literature. Traditional Kabbalist Yitzchak Ginsburgh brings esoteric dimensions of advanced kabbalistic symmetry into relationship with mathematics and the sciences, including renaming the elementary particles of Quantum theory with Kabbalistic Hebrew names, and developing kabbalistic approaches to debates in Evolutionary theory.
The nature of the divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God: (a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless divine simplicity beyond revelation, and (b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which he creates and sustains and relates to mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as "Ein/Ayn Sof" (אין סוף "the infinite/endless", literally "there is no end"). Of the impersonal "Ein Sof" nothing can be grasped. However the second aspect of divine emanations, are accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual and physical existence, reveal the divine immanently, and are bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, emanations mystically revealing the concealed mystery from within the Godhead.
As a term describing the Infinite Godhead beyond Creation, Kabbalists viewed the "Ein Sof" itself as too sublime to be referred to directly in the Torah. It is not a Holy Name in Judaism, as no name could contain a revelation of the Ein Sof. Even terming it "No End" is an inadequate representation of its true nature, the description only bearing its designation in relation to Creation. However, the Torah does narrate God speaking in the first person, most memorably the first word of the Ten Commandments, a reference without any description or name to the simple Divine essence (termed also "Atzmus Ein Sof" - Essence of the Infinite) beyond even the duality of Infinitude/Finitude. In contrast, the term Ein Sof describes the Godhead as Infinite lifeforce first cause, continuously keeping all Creation in existence. The Zohar reads the first words of Genesis, "BeReishit Bara Elohim – In the beginning God created", as ""With" (the level of) "Reishit (Beginning)" (the Ein Sof) "created Elohim" (God's manifestation in creation)":
The structure of emanations has been described in various ways: Sephirot (divine attributes) and Partzufim (divine "faces"), Ohr (spiritual light and flow), Names of God and the supernal Torah, Olamot (Spiritual Worlds), a Divine Tree and Archetypal Man, Angelic Chariot and Palaces, male and female, enclothed layers of reality, inwardly holy vitality and external Kelipot shells, 613 channels ("limbs" of the King) and the divine Souls of Man. These symbols are used to describe various levels and aspects of Divine manifestation, from the "Pnimi" (inner) dimensions to the "Hitzoni" (outer). It is solely in relation to the emanations, certainly not the Ein Sof Ground of all Being, that Kabbalah uses anthropomorphic symbolism to relate psychologically to divinity. Kabbalists debated the validity of anthropomorphic symbolism, between its disclosure as mystical allusion, versus its instrumental use as allegorical metaphor; in the language of the Zohar, symbolism "touches yet does not touch" its point.
The "Sephirot" (also spelled "sefirot"; singular "sefirah") are the ten emanations and attributes of God with which he continually sustains the existence of the universe. The Zohar and other Kabbalistic texts elaborate on the emergence of the sephirot from a state of concealed potential in the "Ein Sof" until their manifestation in the mundane world. In particular, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as "the Ramak"), describes how God emanated the myriad details of finite reality out of the absolute unity of Divine light via the ten sephirot, or vessels.
Comparison of the Ramak's counting with Luria's, describes dual rational and unconscious aspects of Kabbalah. Two metaphors are used to describe the "sephirot", their theocentric manifestation as the Trees of Life and Knowledge, and their anthropocentric correspondence in man, exemplified as Adam Kadmon. This dual-directional perspective embodies the cyclical, inclusive nature of the divine flow, where alternative divine and human perspectives have validity. The central metaphor of man allows human understanding of the sephirot, as they correspond to the psychological faculties of the soul, and incorporate masculine and feminine aspects after Genesis 1:27 ("God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them"). Corresponding to the last "sefirah" in Creation is the indwelling shekhinah (Feminine Divine Presence). Downward flow of divine Light in Creation forms the supernal Four Worlds; Atziluth, Beri'ah, Yetzirah and Assiah manifesting the dominance of successive sephirot towards action in this world. The acts of man unite or divide the Heavenly masculine and feminine aspects of the sephirot, their anthropomorphic harmony completing Creation. As the spiritual foundation of Creation, the sephirot correspond to the names of God in Judaism and the particular nature of any entity.
According to Lurianic cosmology, the "sephirot" correspond to various levels of creation (ten "sephirot" in each of the Four Worlds, and four worlds within each of the larger four worlds, each containing ten "sephirot", which themselves contain ten "sephirot", to an infinite number of possibilities), and are emanated from the Creator for the purpose of creating the universe. The "sephirot" are considered revelations of the Creator's will ("ratzon"), and they should not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways the one God reveals his will through the Emanations. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.
Divine creation by means of the Ten Sephirot is an ethical process. They represent the different aspects of Morality. Loving-Kindness is a possible moral justification found in Chessed, and Gevurah is the Moral Justification of Justice and both are mediated by Mercy which is Rachamim. However, these pillars of morality become immoral once they become extremes. When Loving-Kindness becomes extreme it can lead to sexual depravity and lack of Justice to the wicked. When Justice becomes extreme, it can lead to torture and the Murder of innocents and unfair punishment.
"Righteous" humans ("tzadikim") ascend these ethical qualities of the ten "sephirot" by doing righteous actions. If there were no righteous humans, the blessings of God would become completely hidden, and creation would cease to exist. While real human actions are the "Foundation" ("Yesod") of this universe ("Malchut"), these actions must accompany the conscious intention of compassion. Compassionate actions are often impossible without faith ("Emunah"), meaning to trust that God always supports compassionate actions even when God seems hidden. Ultimately, it is necessary to show compassion toward oneself too in order to share compassion toward others. This "selfish" enjoyment of God's blessings but only in order to empower oneself to assist others is an important aspect of "Restriction", and is considered a kind of golden mean in kabbalah, corresponding to the "sefirah" of Adornment (Tiferet) being part of the "Middle Column".
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, wrote "Tomer Devorah" ("Palm Tree of Deborah"), in which he presents an ethical teaching of Judaism in the kabbalistic context of the ten "sephirot". "Tomer Devorah" has become also a foundational Musar text.
Both Rationalist Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah developed among the elite thinkers of medieval Spanish Jewry, but the austere intellectual sublimation of Judaism by the philosophers remained, by their own admission, accessible and appealing to restricted intellectually questioning circles. In contrast, while intuitive kabbalistic creativity was confined to esoteric circles, kabbalah deliberately appealed to wide reaches of the Jewish people in their popular piety, as its profoundly psychological depth theory incorporated the mythic, imaginative, sexual, and demonic in human experience.
Kabbalah describes Man as the inner dimension of all Spiritual and Physical Realms (with angels the outer aspect), from the verses "Let us make man in our image, after our (the angels) likeness... And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them... Then the LORD (Divine Essence) God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living (Divine) soul." (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7). Kabbalists equated the final Sephirah "Malkuth" (Kingdom) with the indwelling Feminine Divine immanent Presence of God throughout Creation, adapting for it the previous Rabbinic term "Shekhinah" (Divine Presence), but lending the concept new hypostatic and sexual interpretation (Earlier Biblical Wisdom literature describes Wisdom as a feminine manifestation of God). The fallen, exiled state of Creation by man exiles the Shekhinah into captivity among the Kelipot forces of impurity, awaiting redemption Above by man Below. Nachman of Breslov saw this archetype in fairy tales of the world, but in disordered narrative. His Kabbalistic tales rearrange the symbols to free the Divine Queen for reunion with "The Holy One Blessed Be He".
The most esoteric Idrot sections of the classic Zohar make reference to hypostatic male and female "Partzufim" (Divine Personas) displacing the Sephirot, manifestations of God in particular Anthropomorphic symbolic personalities based on Biblical esoteric exegesis and midrashic narratives. Lurianic Kabbalah places these at the centre of our existence, rather than earlier Kabbalah's Sephirot, which Luria saw as broken in Divine crisis. Contemporary cognitive understanding of the Partzuf symbols relates them to Jungian archetypes of the collective unconscious, reflecting a psychologised progression from youth to sage in therapeutic healing back to the infinite Ein Sof/Unconscious, as Kabbalah is simultaneously both theology and psychology.
Medieval Kabbalists believed that all things are linked to God through these emanations, making all levels in creation part of one great, gradually descending chain of being. Through this any lower creation reflects its particular roots in Supernal Divinity. Kabbalists agreed with the Divine transcendence described by Jewish philosophy, but as only referring to the Ein Sof unknowable Godhead. They reinterpreted the Theistic philosophical concept of "Creation from Nothing", replacing God's creative act with Panentheistic continual "Self-Emmanation by the mystical Ayin Nothingness/No-thing" sustaining all spiritual and physical realms as successively more corporeal garments, veils and condensations of Divine immanence. The innumerable levels of descent divide into Four comprehensive spiritual worlds, "Atziluth" ("Closeness" - Divine Wisdom), "Beriah" ("Creation" -Divine Understanding), "Yetzirah" ("Formation" - Divine Emotions), "Assiah" ("Action" - Divine Activity), with a preceding Fifth World "Adam Kadmon" ("Primordial Man" - Divine Will) sometimes excluded due to its sublimity. Together the whole spiritual heavens form the Divine Persona/Anthropos.
Hasidic thought extends the Divine immanence of Kabbalah by holding that God is all that really exists, all else being completely undifferentiated from God's perspective. This view can be defined as acosmic monistic panentheism. According to this philosophy, God's existence is higher than anything that this world can express, yet he includes all things of this world within his Divine reality in perfect unity, so that the Creation effected no change in him at all. This paradox as seen from dual human and divine perspectives is dealt with at length in Chabad texts.
Among problems considered in the Hebrew Kabbalah is the theological issue of the nature and origin of evil. In the views of some Kabbalists this conceives "evil" as a "quality of God", asserting that negativity enters into the essence of the Absolute. In this view it is conceived that the Absolute needs evil to "be what it is", i.e., to exist. Foundational texts of Medieval Kabbalism conceived evil as a demonic parallel to the holy, called the "Sitra Achra" (the "Other Side"), and the "Kelipot/Qliphoth" (the "Shells/Husks") that cover and conceal the holy, are nurtured from it, and yet also protect it by limiting its revelation. Scholem termed this element of the Spanish Kabbalah a "Jewish gnostic" motif, in the sense of dual powers in the divine realm of manifestation. In a radical notion, the root of evil is found within the 10 holy Sephirot, through an imbalance of Gevurah, the power of "Strength/Judgement/Severity".
Gevurah is necessary for Creation to exist as it counterposes Chesed ("loving-kindness"), restricting the unlimited divine bounty within suitable vessels, so forming the Worlds. However, if man sins (actualising impure judgement within his soul), the supernal Judgement is reciprocally empowered over the Kindness, introducing disharmony among the Sephirot in the divine realm and exile from God throughout Creation. The demonic realm, though illusory in its holy origin, becomes the real apparent realm of impurity in lower Creation. In the Zohar, the sin of Adam and Eve (who embodied Adam Kadmon below) took place in the spiritual realms. Their sin was that they separated the Tree of knowledge (10 sefirot within Malkuth, representing Divine immanence), from the Tree of life within it (10 sefirot within Tiferet, representing Divine transcendence). This introduced the false perception of duality into lower creation, an external Tree of Death nurtured from holiness, and an Adam Belial of impurity. In Lurianic Kabbalah, evil originates from a primordial shattering of the sephirot of God's Persona before creation of the stable spiritual worlds, mystically represented by the 8 Kings of Edom (the derivative of Gevurah) "who died" before any king reigned in Israel from Genesis 36. In the divine view from above within Kabbalah, emphasised in Hasidic Panentheism, the appearance of duality and pluralism below dissolves into the absolute Monism of God, psychologising evil. Though impure below, what appears as evil derives from a divine blessing too high to be contained openly. The mystical task of the righteous in the Zohar is to reveal this concealed Divine Oneness and absolute good, to "convert bitterness into sweetness, darkness into light".
Kabbalistic doctrine gives man the central role in Creation, as his soul and body correspond to the supernal divine manifestations. In the Christian Kabbalah this scheme was universalised to describe "harmonia mundi", the harmony of Creation within man. In Judaism, it gave a profound spiritualisation of Jewish practice. While the kabbalistic scheme gave a radically innovative, though conceptually continuous, development of mainstream Midrashic and Talmudic rabbinic notions, kabbalistic thought underscored and invigorated conservative Jewish observance. The esoteric teachings of kabbalah gave the traditional mitzvot observances the central role in spiritual creation, whether the practitioner was learned in this knowledge or not. Accompanying normative Jewish observance and worship with elite mystical kavanot intentions gave them theurgic power, but sincere observance by common folk, especially in the Hasidic popularisation of kabbalah, could replace esoteric abilities. Many kabbalists were also leading legal figures in Judaism, such as Nachmanides and Joseph Karo.
Medieval kabbalah elaborates particular reasons for each Biblical mitzvah, and their role in harmonising the supernal divine flow, uniting masculine and feminine forces on High. With this, the feminine Divine presence in this world is drawn from exile to the Holy One Above. The 613 mitzvot are embodied in the organs and soul of man. Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates this in the more inclusive scheme of Jewish messianic rectification of exiled divinity. Jewish mysticism, in contrast to Divine transcendence rationalist human-centred reasons for Jewish observance, gave Divine-immanent providential cosmic significance to the daily events in the worldly life of man in general, and the spiritual role of Jewish observance in particular.
The Kabbalah posits that the human soul has three elements, the "nefesh", "ru'ach", and "neshamah". The "nefesh" is found in all humans, and enters the physical body at birth. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature. The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but can be developed over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually. A common way of explaining the three parts of the soul is as follows:
The Raaya Meheimna, a section of related teachings spread throughout the Zohar, discusses fourth and fifth parts of the human soul, the "chayyah" and "yehidah" (first mentioned in the Midrash Rabbah). Gershom Scholem writes that these "were considered to represent the sublimest levels of intuitive cognition, and to be within the grasp of only a few chosen individuals". The Chayyah and the Yechidah do not enter into the body like the other three—thus they received less attention in other sections of the "Zohar".
Both rabbinic and kabbalistic works posit that there are a few additional, non-permanent states of the soul that people can develop on certain occasions. These extra souls, or extra states of the soul, play no part in any afterlife scheme, but are mentioned for completeness:
Reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul after death, was introduced into Judaism as a central esoteric tenet of Kabbalah from the Medieval period onwards, called Gilgul neshamot ("cycles of the soul"). The concept does not appear overtly in the Hebrew Bible or classic rabbinic literature, and was rejected by various Medieval Jewish philosophers. However, the Kabbalists explained a number of scriptural passages in reference to Gilgulim. The concept became central to the later Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, who systemised it as the personal parallel to the cosmic process of rectification. Through Lurianic Kabbalah and Hasidic Judaism, reincarnation entered popular Jewish culture as a literary motif.
"Tzimtzum" (Constriction/Concentration) is the primordial cosmic act whereby God "contracted" His infinite light, leaving a "void" into which the light of existence was poured. This allowed the emergence of independent existence that would not become nullified by the pristine Infinite Light, reconciling the unity of the "Ein Sof" with the plurality of creation. This changed the first creative act into one of withdrawal/exile, the antithesis of the ultimate Divine Will. In contrast, a new emanation after the Tzimtzum shone into the vacuum to begin creation, but led to an initial instability called "Tohu" (Chaos), leading to a new crisis of "Shevirah" (Shattering) of the sephirot vessels. The shards of the broken vessels fell down into the lower realms, animated by remnants of their divine light, causing primordial exile within the Divine Persona before the creation of man. Exile and enclothement of higher divinity within lower realms throughout existence requires man to complete the "Tikkun olam" (Rectification) process. Rectification Above corresponds to the reorganization of the independent sephirot into relating "Partzufim" (Divine Personas), previously referred to obliquely in the Zohar. From the catastrophe stems the possibility of self-aware Creation, and also the "Kelipot" (Impure Shells) of previous Medieval kabbalah. The metaphorical anthropomorphism of the partzufim accentuates the sexual unifications of the redemption process, while Gilgul reincarnation emerges from the scheme. Uniquely, Lurianism gave formerly private mysticism the urgency of Messianic social involvement.
According to interpretations of Luria, the catastrophe stemmed from the "unwillingness" of the residue imprint after the Tzimtzum to relate to the new vitality that began creation. The process was arranged to shed and harmonise the Divine Infinity with the latent potential of evil. The creation of Adam would have redeemed existence, but his sin caused new shevirah of Divine vitality, requiring the Giving of the Torah to begin Messianic rectification. Historical and individual history becomes the narrative of reclaiming exiled Divine sparks.
Kabbalistic thought extended Biblical and Midrashic notions that God enacted Creation through the Hebrew language and through the Torah into a full linguistic mysticism. In this, every Hebrew letter, word, number, even accent on words of the Hebrew Bible contain Jewish mystical meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, and it teaches the hermeneutic methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings. Names of God in Judaism have further prominence, though infinite meaning turns the whole Torah into a Divine name. As the Hebrew name of things is the channel of their lifeforce, parallel to the sephirot, so concepts such as "holiness" and "mitzvot" embody ontological Divine immanence, as God can be known in manifestation as well as transcendence. The infinite potential of meaning in the Torah, as in the "Ein Sof", is reflected in the symbol of the two trees of the Garden of Eden; the Torah of the Tree of Knowledge is the external, finite Halachic Torah, enclothed within which the mystics perceive the unlimited infinite plurality of meanings of the Torah of the Tree of Life. In Lurianic terms, each of the 600,000 root souls of Israel find their own interpretation in Torah, as "God, the Torah and Israel are all One".
As early as the 1st century BCE Jews believed that the Torah and other canonical texts contained encoded messages and hidden meanings. Gematria is one method for discovering its hidden meanings. Each letter in Hebrew also represents a number; Hebrew, unlike many other languages, never developed a separate numerical alphabet. By converting letters to numbers, Kabbalists were able to find a hidden meaning in each word. This method of interpretation was used extensively by various schools.
In contemporary interpretation of kabbalah, Sanford Drob makes cognitive sense of this linguistic mythos by relating it to postmodern philosophical concepts described by Jacques Derrida and others, where all reality embodies narrative texts with infinite plurality of meanings brought by the reader. In this dialogue, kabbalah survives the nihilism of Deconstruction by incorporating its own Lurianic "Shevirah", and by the dialectical paradox where man and God imply each other.
The founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, privileged an intellectual view of the nature of Kabbalistic symbols as dialectic Theosophical speculation. In contrast, contemporary scholarship of Moshe Idel and Elliot R. Wolfson has opened a phenomenological understanding of the mystical nature of Kabbalistic experience, based on a close reading of the historical texts. Wolfson has shown that among the closed elite circles of mystical activity, medieval Theosophical Kabbalists held that an intellectual view of their symbols was secondary to the experiential. In the context of medieval Jewish philosophical debates on the role of imagination in Biblical prophecy, and essentialist versus instrumental kabbalistic debates about the relation of sephirot to God, they saw contemplation on the sephirot as a vehicle for prophecy. Judaism's ban on physical iconography, along with anthropomorphic metaphors for Divinity in the Hebrew Bible and midrash, enabled their internal visualisation of the Divine sephirot Anthropos in imagination. Disclosure of the aniconic in iconic internal psychology, involved sublimatory revelation of Kabbalah's sexual unifications. Previous academic distinction between "Theosophical" versus Abulafian "Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah" overstated their division of aims, which revolved around visual versus verbal/auditory views of prophecy. In addition, throughout the history of Judaic Kabbalah, the greatest mystics claimed to receive new teachings from Elijah the Prophet, the souls of earlier sages (a purpose of Lurianic meditation prostrated on the graves of Talmudic Tannaim, Amoraim and Kabbalists), the soul of the mishnah, ascents during sleep, heavenly messengers, etc. A tradition of parapsychology abilities, psychic knowledge, and theurgic intercessions in heaven for the community is recounted in the hagiographic works "Praises of the Ari", "Praises of the Besht", and in many other Kabbalistic and Hasidic tales. Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts are concerned to apply themselves from exegesis and theory to spiritual practice, including prophetic drawing of new mystical revelations in Torah. The mythological symbols Kabbalah uses to answer philosophical questions, themselves invite mystical contemplation, intuitive apprehension and psychological engagement.
In bringing Theosophical Kabbalah into contemporary intellectual understanding, using the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and psychology, Sanford Drob shows philosophically how every symbol of the Kabbalah embodies the simultaneous dialectical paradox of mystical "Coincidentia oppositorum", the conjoining of two opposite dualities. Thus the Infinite Ein Sof is above the duality of "Yesh/Ayin Being/Non-Being" transcending Existence/Nothingness ("Becoming" into Existence through the souls of Man who are the inner dimension of all spiritual and physical worlds, yet simultaneously the Infinite Divine generative lifesource beyond Creation that continuously keeps everything spiritual and physical in existence); Sephirot bridge the philosophical problem of the One and the Many; Man is both Divine (Adam Kadmon) and human (invited to project human psychology onto Divinity to understand it); Tzimtzum is both illusion and real from Divine and human perspectives; evil and good imply each other (Kelipah draws from Divinity, good arises only from overcoming evil); Existence is simultaneously partial (Tzimtzum), broken (Shevirah), and whole (Tikun) from different perspectives; God experiences Himself as Other through Man, Man embodies and completes (Tikun) the Divine Persona Above. In Kabbalah's reciprocal Panentheism, Theism and Atheism/Humanism represent two incomplete poles of a mutual dialectic that imply and include each other's partial validity. This was expressed by the Chabad Hasidic thinker Aaron of Staroselye, that the truth of any concept is revealed only in its opposite.
By expressing itself using symbols and myth that transcend single interpretations, Theosophical Kabbalah incorporates aspects of philosophy, Jewish theology, psychology and unconscious depth psychology, mysticism and meditation, Jewish exegesis, theurgy, and ethics, as well as overlapping with theory from magical elements. Its symbols can be read as questions which are their own existentialist answers (the Hebrew sephirah Chokhmah-Wisdom, the beginning of Existence, is read etymologically by Kabbalists as the question "Koach Mah?" the "Power of What?"). Alternative listings of the Sephirot start with either Keter (Unconscious Will/Volition), or Chokhmah (Wisdom), a philosophical duality between a Rational or Supra-Rational Creation, between whether the Mitzvot Judaic observances have reasons or transcend reasons in Divine Will, between whether study or good deeds is superior, and whether the symbols of Kabbalah should be read as primarily metaphysical intellectual cognition or Axiology values. Messianic redemption requires both ethical Tikkun olam and contemplative Kavanah. Sanford Drob sees every attempt to limit Kabbalah to one fixed dogmatic interpretation as necessarily bringing its own Deconstruction (Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates its own Shevirah self shattering; the Ein Sof transcends all of its infinite expressions; the infinite mystical Torah of the Tree of Life has no/infinite interpretations). The infinite axiology of the Ein Sof One, expressed through the Plural Many, overcomes the dangers of nihilism, or the antinomian mystical breaking of Jewish observance alluded to throughout Kabbalistic and Hasidic mysticisms.
Like the rest of the rabbinic literature, the texts of kabbalah were once part of an ongoing oral tradition, though, over the centuries, much of the oral tradition has been written down.
Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira (born c. 170 BCE) warns against it, saying: "You shall have no business with secret things". Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken and resulted in mystical literature, the first being the Apocalyptic literature of the second and first pre-Christian centuries and which contained elements that carried over to later kabbalah.
Throughout the centuries since, many texts have been produced, among them the ancient descriptions of "Sefer Yetzirah", the "Heichalot" mystical ascent literature, the "Bahir", "Sefer Raziel HaMalakh" and the "Zohar", the main text of Kabbalistic exegesis. Classic mystical Bible commentaries are included in fuller versions of the "Mikraot Gedolot" (Main Commentators). Cordoveran systemisation is presented in "Pardes Rimonim", philosophical articulation in the works of the Maharal, and Lurianic rectification in "Etz Chayim". Subsequent interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah was made in the writings of Shalom Sharabi, in "Nefesh HaChaim" and the 20th-century "Sulam". Hasidism interpreted kabbalistic structures to their correspondence in inward perception. The Hasidic development of kabbalah incorporates a successive stage of Jewish mysticism from historical kabbalistic metaphysics.
The first modern-academic historians of Judaism, the "Wissenschaft des Judentums" school of the 19th century, framed Judaism in solely rational terms in the emancipatory Haskalah spirit of their age. They opposed kabbalah and restricted its significance from Jewish historiography. In the mid-20th century, it was left to Gershom Scholem to overturn their stance, establishing the flourishing present-day academic investigation of Jewish mysticism, and making Heichalot, Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts the objects of scholarly critical-historical study. In Scholem's opinion, the mythical and mystical components of Judaism were at least as important as the rational ones, and he thought that they, rather than the exoteric Halakha or intellectualist Jewish philosophy, were the living subterranean stream in historical Jewish development that periodically broke out to renew the Jewish spirit and social life of the community. Scholem's magisterial "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" (1941) among his seminal works, though representing scholarship and interpretations that have subsequently been challenged and revised within the field, remains the only academic survey studying all main historical periods of Jewish mysticism
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been a centre of this research, including Scholem and Isaiah Tishby, and more recently Joseph Dan, Yehuda Liebes, Rachel Elior, and Moshe Idel. Scholars across the eras of Jewish mysticism in America and Britain have included Alexander Altmann, Arthur Green, Lawrence Fine, Elliot Wolfson, Daniel Matt, Louis Jacobs and Ada Rapoport-Albert.
Moshe Idel has opened up research on the Ecstatic Kabbalah alongside the theosophical, and has called for new multi-disciplinary approaches, beyond the philological and historical that have dominated until now, to include phenomenology, psychology, anthropology and comparative studies.
Historians have noted that most claims for the authority of kabbalah involve an argument of the antiquity of authority (see, e.g., Joseph Dan's discussion in his "Circle of the Unique Cherub"). As a result, virtually all early foundational works pseudepigraphically claim, or are ascribed, ancient authorship. For example, "Sefer Raziel HaMalach", an astro-magical text partly based on a magical manual of late antiquity, "Sefer ha-Razim", was, according to the kabbalists, transmitted by the angel Raziel to Adam after he was evicted from Eden. Another famous work, the early "Sefer Yetzirah", is dated back to the patriarch Abraham. This tendency toward pseudepigraphy has its roots in apocalyptic literature, which claims that esoteric knowledge such as magic, divination and astrology was transmitted to humans in the mythic past by the two angels, Aza and Azaz'el (in other places, Azaz'el and Uzaz'el) who fell from heaven (see Genesis 6:4).
As well as ascribing ancient origins to texts, and reception of Oral Torah transmission, the greatest and most innovative Kabbalists claimed mystical reception of direct personal divine revelations, by heavenly mentors such as Elijah the Prophet, the souls of Talmudic sages, prophetic revelation, soul ascents on high, etc. On this basis Arthur Green speculates, that while the "Zohar" was written by a circle of Kabbalists in medieval Spain, they may have believed they were channeling the souls and direct revelations from the earlier mystic circle of Shimon bar Yochai in 2nd century Galilee depicted in the Zohar's narrative. Academics have compared the Zohar mystic circle of Spain with the romanticised wandering mystic circle of Galilee described in the text. Similarly, Isaac Luria gathered his disciples at the traditional Idra assembly location, placing each in the seat of their former reincarnations as students of Shimon bar Yochai.
Although Kabbalah propounds the Unity of God, one of the most serious and sustained criticisms is that it may lead away from monotheism, and instead promote dualism, the belief that there is a supernatural counterpart to God. The dualistic system holds that there is a good power versus an evil power. There are two primary models of Gnostic-dualistic cosmology: the first, which goes back to Zoroastrianism, believes creation is ontologically divided between good and evil forces; the second, found largely in Greco-Roman metaphysics like Neo-Platonism, argues that the universe knew a primordial harmony, but that a cosmic disruption yielded a second, evil dimension to reality. This second model influenced the cosmology of the Kabbalah.
According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sephirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.
While God may seem to exhibit dual natures (masculine-feminine, compassionate-judgmental, creator-creation), all adherents of Kabbalah have consistently stressed the ultimate unity of God. For example, in all discussions of Male and Female, the hidden nature of God exists above it all without limit, being called the Infinite or the "No End" ("Ein Sof")—neither one nor the other, transcending any definition. The ability of God to become hidden from perception is called "Restriction" (Tzimtzum). Hiddenness makes creation possible because God can become "revealed" in a diversity of limited ways, which then form the building blocks of creation.
Kabbalistic texts, including the "Zohar", appear to affirm dualism, as they ascribe all evil to the separation from holiness known as the Sitra Achra ("the other side") which is opposed to "Sitra D'Kedushah", or the Side of Holiness. The "left side" of divine emanation is a negative mirror image of the "side of holiness" with which it was locked in combat. ["Encyclopaedia Judaica", Volume 6, "Dualism", p. 244]. While this evil aspect exists within the divine structure of the Sephirot, the "Zohar" indicates that the Sitra Ahra has no power over "Ein Sof", and only exists as a necessary aspect of the creation of God to give man free choice, and that evil is the consequence of this choice. It is not a supernatural force opposed to God, but a reflection of the inner moral combat within mankind between the dictates of morality and the surrender to one's basic instincts.
David Gottlieb notes that many Kabbalists hold that the concepts of, e.g., a Heavenly Court or the Sitra Ahra are only given to humanity by God as a working model to understand His ways within our own epistemological limits. They reject the notion that a satan or angels actually exist. Others hold that non-divine spiritual entities were indeed created by God as a means for exacting his will.
According to Kabbalists, humans cannot yet understand the infinity of God. Rather, there is God as revealed to humans (corresponding to Zeir Anpin), and the rest of the infinity of God as remaining hidden from human experience (corresponding to Arich Anpin). One reading of this theology is monotheistic, similar to panentheism; another reading of the same theology is that it is dualistic. Gershom Scholem writes:
According to Isaac Luria (1534–72) and other commentators on the Zohar, righteous Gentiles do not have this demonic aspect and are in many ways similar to Jewish souls. A number of prominent Kabbalists, e.g., Pinchas Eliyahu of Vilna, the author of "Sefer ha-Brit", held that only some marginal elements in the humanity represent these demonic forces. On the other hand, the souls of Jewish heretics have much more satanic energy than the worst of idol worshippers; this view is popular in some Hasidic circles, especially Satmar Hasidim.
On the other hand, many prominent Kabbalists rejected this idea and believed in essential equality of all human souls. Menahem Azariah da Fano (1548–1620), in his book "Reincarnations of souls", provides many examples of non-Jewish Biblical figures being reincarnated into Jews and vice versa; the contemporary Habad rabbi and mystic Dov Ber Pinson teaches that distinctions between Jews and non-Jews in works such as the Tanya are not to be understood as literally referring to the external properties of a person (what religious community they are born into), but rather as referring to the properties of souls as they can be re-incarnated in any religious community.
But one point of view is represented by the Hasidic work "Tanya" (1797), in order to argue that Jews have a different character of soul: while a non-Jew, according to the author Shneur Zalman of Liadi (born 1745), can achieve a high level of spirituality, similar to an angel, his soul is still fundamentally different in character, but not value, from a Jewish one. A similar view is found in "Kuzari", an early medieval philosophical book by Yehuda Halevi (1075–1141 AD).
Another prominent Habad rabbi, Abraham Yehudah Khein (born 1878), believed that spiritually elevated Gentiles have essentially Jewish souls, "who just lack the formal conversion to Judaism", and that unspiritual Jews are "Jewish merely by their birth documents". The great 20th-century Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag viewed the terms "Jews" and "Gentile" as different levels of perception, available to every human soul.
David Halperin argues that the collapse of Kabbalah's influence among Western European Jews over the course of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the cognitive dissonance they experienced between the negative perception of Gentiles found in some exponents of Kabbalah, and their own positive dealings with non-Jews, which were rapidly expanding and improving during this period due to the influence of the Enlightenment.
However, a number of renowned Kabbalists claimed the exact opposite, stressing universality of all human souls and providing universal interpretations of the Kabbalistic tradition, including its Lurianic version. In their view, Kabbalah transcends the borders of Judaism and can serve as a basis of inter-religious theosophy and a universal religion. Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a prominent Lithuanian-Galician Kabbalist of the 18th century and a moderate proponent of the Haskalah, called for brotherly love and solidarity between all nations, and believed that Kabbalah can empower everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, with prophetic abilities.
The works of Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1570–1635) are full of references to Gentile mystical philosophers. Such approach was particularly common among the Renaissance and post-Renaissance Italian Jews. Late medieval and Renaissance Italian Kabbalists, such as Yohanan Alemanno, David Messer Leon and Abraham Yagel, adhered to humanistic ideals and incorporated teachings of various Christian and pagan mystics.
A prime representative of this humanist stream in Kabbalah was Elijah Benamozegh, who explicitly praised Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, as well as a whole range of ancient pagan mystical systems. He believed that Kabbalah can reconcile the differences between the world religions, which represent different facets and stages of the universal human spirituality. In his writings, Benamozegh interprets the New Testament, Hadith, Vedas, Avesta and pagan mysteries according to the Kabbalistic theosophy.
For a different perspective, see Wolfson. He provides numerous examples from the 17th to the 20th centuries, which would challenge the view of Halperin cited above as well as the notion that "modern Judaism" has rejected or dismissed this "outdated aspect" of the religion and, he argues, there are still Kabbalists today who harbor this view. He argues that, while it is accurate to say that many Jews do and would find this distinction offensive, it is inaccurate to say that the idea has been totally rejected in all circles. As Wolfson has argued, it is an ethical demand on the part of scholars to continue to be vigilant with regard to this matter and in this way the tradition can be refined from within.
However, as explained above, many well known Kabbalists rejected the literal interpretation of these seemingly discriminatory views. They argued that the term "Jew" was to be interpreted metaphorically, as referring to the spiritual development of the soul, rather than the superficial denomination of the individual, and they added a chain of intermediary states between "Jews" and idol worshippers, or spiritualised the very definition of "Jews" and "non-Jews" and argued that a soul can be re-incarnated in different communities (whether Jewish or not) as much as within a single one.
The idea that there are ten divine "sephirot" could evolve over time into the idea that "God is One being, yet in that One being there are Ten" which opens up a debate about what the "correct beliefs" in God should be, according to Judaism. The early Kabbalists debated the relationship of the Sephirot to God, adopting a range of essentialist versus instrumental views. Modern Kabbalah, based on the 16th century systemisations of Cordovero and Isaac Luria, takes an intermediate position: the instrumental vessels of the sephirot are created, but their inner light is from the undifferentiated Ohr Ein Sof essence.
The pre-Kabbalistic Saadia Gaon teaches in his book Emunot v'Deot that Jews who believe in reincarnation have adopted a non-Jewish belief.
Maimonides (12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly "Shi'ur Qomah" whose starkly anthropomorphic vision of God he considered heretical. Maimonides, a centrally important medieval sage of Judaism, lived at the time of the first emergence of Kabbalah. Modern scholarship views the systemisation and publication of their historic oral doctrine by Kabbalists, as a move to rebut the threat on Judaic observance by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical Guide of the Perplexed. They objected to Maimonides equating the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah secrets of the Torah with Aristotelean physics and metaphysics in that work and in his legal Mishneh Torah, teaching that their own Theosophy, centred on an esoteric metaphysics of traditional Jewish practice, is the Torah's true inner meaning.
The Kabbalist medieval rabbinic sage Nachmanides (13th century), classic debater against Maimonidean rationalism, provides background to many kabbalistic ideas. An entire book entitled "Gevuras Aryeh" was authored by Yaakov Yehuda Aryeh Leib Frenkel and originally published in 1915, specifically to explain and elaborate on the kabbalistic concepts addressed by Nachmanides in his classic commentary to the Five books of Moses.
Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, in the spirit of his father Maimonides, Saadiah Gaon, and other predecessors, explains at length in his "Milḥamot HaShem" that God is in no way literally within time or space nor physically outside time or space, since time and space simply do not apply to his being whatsoever, emphasising the Monotheist Oneness of Divine transcendence unlike any worldly conception. Kabbalah's Panentheism expressed by Moses Cordovero and Hasidic thought, agrees that G-d's essence transcends all expression, but holds in contrast that existence is a manifestation of God's Being, descending immanently through spiritual and physical condensations of the divine light. By incorporating the pluralist many within God, God's Oneness is deepened to exclude the true existence of anything but God. In Hasidic Panentheism, the world is acosmic from the Divine view, yet real from its own perspective.
Around the 1230s, Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote an epistle (included in his "Milḥemet Mitzvah") against his contemporaries, the early Kabbalists, characterizing them as blasphemers who even approach heresy. He particularly singled out the Sefer Bahir, rejecting the attribution of its authorship to the "tanna" R. Neḥunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content as truly heretical.
Leone di Modena, a 17th-century Venetian critic of Kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity seems to resemble the kabbalistic doctrine of the "sephirot". This was in response to the belief that some European Jews of the period addressed individual "sephirot" in their prayers, although the practice was apparently uncommon. Apologists explained that Jews may have been praying "for" and not necessarily "to" the aspects of Godliness represented by the "sephirot". In contrast to Christianity, Kabbalists declare that one prays only "to Him (God's Essence, male solely by metaphor in Hebrew's gendered grammer), not to his attributes (sephirot or any other Divine manifestations or forms of incarnation)". Kabbalists directed their prayers to God's essence through the channels of particular sephirot using kavanot Divine names intentions. To pray to a manifestation of God introduces false division among the sephirot, disrupting their absolute unity, dependence and dissolving into the transcendent Ein Sof; the sephirot descend throughout Creation, only appearing from man's perception of God, where God manifests by any variety of numbers.
Yaakov Emden (1697–1776), himself an Orthodox Kabbalist who venerated the Zohar, concerned to battle Sabbatean misuse of Kabbalah, wrote the "Mitpaḥath Sfarim" ("Veil of the Books"), an astute critique of the Zohar in which he concludes that certain parts of the Zohar contain heretical teaching and therefore could not have been written by Shimon bar Yochai. He also expressed the extremely unconventional view, contrary to all evidence, that the pious Maimonides could not have written the "Guide of the Perplexed", which must have been the work of an unknown heretic.
Emden's Kabbalist contemporary the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) early modern Rabbinic sage, held the Zohar and Luria in deep reverence, critically emending classic Judaic texts from historically accumulated errors by his acute acumen and scholarly belief in the perfect unity of Kabbalah revelation and Rabbinic Judaism. Though a Lurianic Kabbalist, his commentaries sometimes chose Zoharic interpretation over Luria when he felt the matter lent itself to a more exoteric view. Although proficient in mathematics and sciences and recommending their necessity for understanding Talmud, he had no use for canonical medieval Jewish philosophy, declaring that Maimonides had been "misled by the accursed philosophy" in denying belief in the external occult matters of demons, incantations and amulets.
Views of Kabbalists regarding Jewish philosophy varied from those who appreciated Maimonidean and other classic medieval philosophical works, integrating them with Kabbalah and seeing profound human philosophical and Divine kabbalistic wisdoms as compatible, to those who polemicised against religious philosophy during times when it became overly rationalist and dogmatic. A dictum commonly cited by Kabbalists, "Kabbalah begins where Philosophy ends", can be read as either appreciation or polemic. Moses of Burgos (late 13th century) declared, "these philosophers whose wisdom you are praising end where we begin". Moses Cordovero appreciated the influence of Maimonides in his quasi-rational systemisation. From its inception, the Theosophical Kabbalah became permeated by terminology adapted from philosophy and given new mystical meanings, such as its early integration with the Neoplatonism of Ibn Gabirol and use of Aristotelian terms of Form over Matter.
Pinchas Giller and Adin Steinsaltz write that Kabbalah is best described as the inner part of traditional Jewish religion, the official metaphysics of Judaism, that was essential to normative Judaism until fairly recently. With the decline of Jewish life in medieval Spain, it displaced rationalist Jewish philosophy until the modern rise of Haskalah enlightenment, receiving a revival in our postmodern age. While Judaism always maintained a minority tradition of religious rationalist criticism of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem writes that Lurianic Kabbalah was the last theology that was near predominant in Jewish life. While Lurianism represented the elite of esoteric Kabbalism, its mythic-messianic divine drama and personalisation of reincarnation captured the popular imagination in Jewish folklore and in the Sabbatean and Hasidic social movements. Giller notes that the former Zoharic-Cordoverian classic Kabbalah represented a common exoteric popular view of Kabbalah, as depicted in early modern Musar literature.
In contemporary Orthodox Judaism there is dispute as to the status of the Zohar's and Isaac Luria's (the Arizal) Kabbalistic teachings. While a portion of Modern Orthodox, followers of the Dor De'ah movement, and many students of the Rambam reject Arizal's Kabbalistic teachings, as well as deny that the "Zohar" is authoritative or from Shimon bar Yohai, all three of these groups accept the existence and validity of the Talmudic "Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah" mysticism. Their disagreement concerns whether the Kabbalistic teachings promulgated today are accurate representations of those esoteric teachings to which the Talmud refers. The mainstream Haredi (Hasidic, Lithuanian, Oriental) and Religious Zionist Jewish movements revere Luria and the Kabbalah, but one can find both rabbis who sympathize with such a view, while disagreeing with it, as well as rabbis who consider such a view heresy. The Haredi Eliyahu Dessler and Gedaliah Nadel maintained that it is acceptable to believe that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai and that it had a late authorship. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg mentioned the possibility of Christian influence in the Kabbalah with the "Kabbalistic vision of the Messiah as the redeemer of all mankind" being "the Jewish counterpart to Christ."
Modern Orthodox Judaism, representing an inclination to rationalism, embrace of academic scholarship, and the individual's autonomy to define Judaism, embodies a diversity of views regarding Kabbalah from a Neo-Hasidic spirituality to Maimonist anti-Kabbalism. In a book to help define central theological issues in Modern Orthodoxy, Michael J. Harris writes that the relationship between Modern Orthodoxy and mysticism has been under-discussed. He sees a deficiency of spirituality in Modern Orthodoxy, as well as the dangers in a fundamentalist adoption of Kabbalah. He suggests the development of neo-Kabbalistic adaptions of Jewish mysticism compatible with rationalism, offering a variety of precedent models from past thinkers ranging from the mystical inclusivism of Abraham Isaac Kook to a compartmentalisation between Halakha and mysticism.
Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ, a 20th-century Yemenite Jewish leader and Chief Rabbi of Yemen, spearheaded the Dor De'ah ("generation of knowledge") movement to counteract the influence of the Zohar and modern Kabbalah. He authored critiques of mysticism in general and Lurianic Kabbalah in particular; his magnum opus was Milḥamoth ha-Shem ("Wars of Hashem") against what he perceived as neo-platonic and gnostic influences on Judaism with the publication and distribution of the Zohar since the 13th Century. Rabbi Yiḥyah founded yeshivot, rabbinical schools, and synagogues that featured a rationalist approach to Judaism based on the Talmud and works of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides (Rambam).
Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), an ultra-rationalist Modern Orthodox philosopher and brother of Nechama Leibowitz, publicly shared views expressed in Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ's book "Milḥamoth HaShem" against mysticism. For example, Leibowitz called Kabbalah "a collection of "pagan superstitions" and "idol worship" in remarks given after receiving the Yakir Yerushalayim Award (English: worthy citizen of Jerusalem) in 1990. In modern times, rationalists holding similar views as those of the Dor De'ah movement have described themselves as "talmide ha-Rambam" (disciples of Maimonides) rather than as being aligned with Dor De'ah, and are more theologically aligned with the rationalism of Modern Orthodox Judaism than with Orthodox Ḥasidic or Ḥaredi communities.
Kabbalah tended to be rejected by most Jews in the Conservative and Reform movements, though its influences were not completely eliminated. While it was generally not studied as a discipline, the Kabbalistic "Kabbalat Shabbat" service remained part of liberal liturgy, as did the "Yedid Nefesh" prayer. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America is reputed to have introduced a lecture by Scholem on Kabbalah with a statement that Kabbalah itself was "nonsense", but the academic study of Kabbalah was "scholarship". This view became popular among many Jews, who viewed the subject as worthy of study, but who did not accept Kabbalah as teaching literal truths.
According to Bradley Shavit Artson (Dean of the Conservative Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in the American Jewish University)
However, in the late 20th century and early 21st century there has been a revival in interest in Kabbalah in all branches of liberal Judaism. The Kabbalistic 12th-century prayer "Anim Zemirot" was restored to the new Conservative "Sim Shalom" "siddur", as was the "B'rikh Shmeh" passage from the Zohar, and the mystical "Ushpizin" service welcoming to the "Sukkah" the spirits of Jewish forbearers. "Anim Zemirot" and the 16th-century mystical poem "Lekhah Dodi" reappeared in the Reform Siddur "Gates of Prayer" in 1975. All rabbinical seminaries now teach several courses in Kabbalah—in Conservative Judaism, both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles have full-time instructors in Kabbalah and "Hasidut", Eitan Fishbane and Pinchas Giller, respectively. In Reform Judaism, Sharon Koren teaches at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Reform rabbis like Herbert Weiner and Lawrence Kushner have renewed interest in Kabbalah among Reform Jews. At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the only accredited seminary that has curricular requirements in Kabbalah, Joel Hecker is the full-time instructor teaching courses in Kabbalah and Hasidut.
According to Artson:
The Reconstructionist movement, under the leadership of Arthur Green in the 1980s and 1990s, and with the influence of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, brought a strong openness to Kabbalah and hasidic elements that then came to play prominent roles in the Kol ha-Neshamah siddur series.
Teaching of classic esoteric kabbalah texts and practice remained traditional until recent times, passed on in Judaism from master to disciple, or studied by leading rabbinic scholars. This changed in the 20th century, through conscious reform and the secular openness of knowledge. In contemporary times kabbalah is studied in four very different, though sometimes overlapping, ways:
The two, unrelated organisations that translate the mid-20th-century teachings of Yehuda Ashlag into a contemporary universalist message, have given kabbalah a public cross-religious profile:
Other prominent Jewish universalist organisations:
From the early 20th century, Neo-Hasidism expressed a modernist or non-Orthodox Jewish interest in Jewish mysticism, becoming influential among Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionalist Jewish denominations from the 1960s, and organised through the Jewish Renewal and Chavurah movements. The writings and teachings of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Green, Lawrence Kushner, Herbert Weiner and others, has sought a critically selective, non-fundamentalist neo- Kabbalistic and Hasidic study and mystical spirituality among modernist Jews. The contemporary proliferation of scholarship by Jewish mysticism academia has contributed to critical adaptions of Jewish mysticism. Arthur Green's translations from the religious writings of Hillel Zeitlin conceive the latter to be a precursor of contemporary Neo-Hasidism. Reform rabbi Herbert Weiner's "Nine and a Half Mystics: The Kabbala Today" (1969), a travelogue among Kabbalists and Hasidim, brought perceptive insights into Jewish mysticism to many Reform Jews. Leading Reform philosopher Eugene Borowitz described the Orthodox Hasidic Adin Steinsaltz ("The Thirteen Petalled Rose") and Aryeh Kaplan as major presenters of Kabbalistic spirituality for modernists today.
Since the 18th century, Jewish mystical development has continued in Hasidic Judaism, turning kabbalah into a social revival with texts that internalise mystical thought. Among different schools, Chabad-Lubavitch and Breslav with related organisations, give outward looking spiritual resources and textual learning for secular Jews. The Intellectual Hasidism of Chabad most emphasises the spread and understanding of kabbalah through its explanation in Hasidic thought, articulating the Divine meaning within kabbalah through human rational analogies, uniting the spiritual and material, esoteric and exoteric in their Divine source:
The writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (1864–1935), first chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine and visionary, incorporate kabbalistic themes through his own poetic language and concern with human and divine unity. His influence is in the Religious-Zionist community, who follow his aim that the legal and imaginative aspects of Judaism should interfuse: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16905 |
Kagoshima
Kagoshima Prefecture (also known as the Satsuma Domain) was the center of the territory of the Shimazu clan for many centuries. It was a busy political and commercial port city throughout the medieval period and into the Edo period (1603–1868) when it formally became the capital of the Shimazu's fief, the Satsuma Domain. The official emblem is a modification of the Shimazu's kamon designed to resemble the character 市 ("shi", "city"). Satsuma remained one of the most powerful and wealthiest domains in the country throughout the period, and though international trade was banned for much of this period, the city remained quite active and prosperous. It served not only as the political center for Satsuma, but also for the semi-independent vassal kingdom of Ryūkyū; Ryūkyūan traders and emissaries frequented the city, and a special Ryukyuan embassy building was established to help administer relations between the two polities and to house visitors and emissaries. Kagoshima was also a significant center of Christian activity in Japan prior to the imposition of bans against that religion in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Kagoshima was bombarded by the British Royal Navy in 1863 to punish the "daimyō" of Satsuma for the murder of Charles Lennox Richardson on the Tōkaidō highway the previous year and its refusal to pay an indemnity in compensation.
Kagoshima was the birthplace and scene of the last stand of Saigō Takamori, a legendary figure in Meiji Era Japan in 1877 at the end of the Satsuma Rebellion.
Japan's industrial revolution is said to have started here, stimulated by the young students' train station. Seventeen young men of Satsuma broke the Tokugawa ban on foreign travel, traveling first to England and then the United States before returning to share the benefits of the best of Western science and technology. A statue was erected outside the train station as a tribute to them.
Kagoshima was also the birthplace of Tōgō Heihachirō. After naval studies in England between 1871 and 1878, Togo's role as Chief Admiral of the Grand Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Russo-Japanese War made him a legend in Japanese military history, and earned him the nickname 'Nelson of the Orient' in Britain. He led the Grand Fleet to two startling victories in 1904 and 1905, completely destroying Russia as a naval power in the East, and thereby contributing to the failed revolution in Russia in 1905.
The Japanese diplomat Sadomitsu Sakoguchi revolutionized Kagoshima's environmental economic plan with his dissertation on water pollution and orange harvesting.
The 1914 eruption of the volcano across the bay from the city spread ash throughout the municipality, but relatively little disruption ensued.
The name "Kagoshima" (鹿児島) literally means "deer child island" or "young-deer island".
On the night of June 17, 1945 the 314th bombardment wing of the Army Air Corps (120 B-29s) dropped 809.6 tons of incendiary and cluster bombs destroying of Kagoshima (44.1 percent of the built-up area). Kagoshima was targeted because of its largely expanded naval port as well as its position as a railway terminus. A single B-29 was lost to unknown circumstances. Area bombing was chosen over precision bombing because of the cloudy weather over Japan during the middle of June. The planes were forced to navigate and bomb entirely by radar.
Japanese intelligence predicted that the Allied Forces would assault Kagoshima and the Ariake Bay areas of southern Kyushu to gain naval and air-bases to strike Tokyo.
Kagoshima City is approximately 40 minutes from Kagoshima Airport, and features shopping districts and malls located wide across the city. Transportation options in the city include the "Shinkansen" (bullet train), local train, city trams, buses, and ferries to-and-from Sakurajima. The large and modern Kagoshima City Aquarium, situated near a shopping district known as "Dolphin Port" and the Sakurajima Ferry Terminal, was established in 1997 along the docks and offers a direct view of Sakurajima. One of the best places to view the city (and Sakurajima) is from the Amuran Ferris wheel atop of Amu Plaza Kagoshima, and the shopping center attached to the central Kagoshima-Chūō Station. Just outside the city is the early-Edo Period Sengan-en Japanese Garden. The garden was originally a villa belonging to the Shimazu clan and is still maintained by descendants today. Outside the garden grounds is a Satsuma "kiriko" cut-glass factory where visitors are welcome to view the glass blowing and cutting processes, and the Shoko Shūseikan Museum, which was built in 1865 and registered as a National Historic Site in 1959. The former Shuseikan industrial complex and the former machine factory were submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage as part of a group list titled "Modern Industrial Heritage Sites in Kyushu and Yamaguchi Prefecture".
Kagoshima has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfa"), possessing the highest year average temperature and winter average temperature in mainland Japan. It is marked by mild, relatively dry winters; warm, humid springs; hot, humid summers; and mild, relatively dry autumns.
As of 1 January 2020, Kagoshima City has an estimated population of 595,049 and a population density of 1,087 persons per km². The total area is . According to the April 2014 issue of the Kagoshima Prefectural Summary by the Kagoshima Prefecture Department of Planning and Promotion, the population of the prefecture at large was 1,680,319. The city's total area nearly doubled between 2003 and 2005 as a result of five towns: the towns of Kōriyama and Matsumoto (both from Hioki District) the town of Kiire (from Ibusuki District) and the towns of Sakurajima and Yoshida (both from Kagoshima District). All areas were merged into Kagoshima City on 1 November 2004.
Kagoshima Prefecture has a distinct and rich food culture. The warm weather and diverse environments allow for the agriculture and aquaculture of Kagoshima to thrive and gain nationwide and worldwide recognition for unique and quality products. Numerous restaurants around Kagoshima feature Satsuma Province local cuisine. Popular cuisine incorporating local agriculture include "kibinago sashimi" (silver-striped herring), "buri" Amberjack, "kampachi" yellowtail, "Black Label Products" such as "kuro-ushi" Wagyu beef, "kuro-buta" Berkshire pork dishes, and "kuro-Satsuma jidori" chicken (sometimes served as raw, chicken "sashimi"); smoked eel, keihan, and "miki" (fermented rice milk consumed among residents of the Amami Islands).
"Satsuma-age", or deep-fried fish cake, comes in great variety in Kagoshima. Though the deep-fried fishcake can be found throughout the country, the Satsuma Domain (modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture) is commonly believed to be the birthplace of the snack. It is said, though, the concept was introduced from the Ryūkyū Kingdom (modern-day Okinawa Prefecture) by Satsuma Lord, Nariakira Shimazu.
There are many types of sweets produced in Kagoshima Prefecture. has produced some of Japan's most popular and timeless sweets such as , , and green tea-flavored Hyōroku mochi, Minami "shirokuma" shaved ice desserts, etc. Traditional treats outside of Seika Food Co., Ltd. products include "karukan" (sweet cakes made from steamed yams and rice flour), "jambo-mochi", "kokutō" brown sugar from the Amami Islands, "getanha" brown sugar cake, etc.
In 1559, at in a carpenter wrote atop a wooden board "the Shintō Priest of this shrine is too stingy to offer me showing an early love for the spirits. Kagoshima Prefecture is officially recognized (by the World Trade Organization) as the home to one of the most traditional beverages of Japan, "shōchū". In Kagoshima there are 113+ distilleries, producing about 1,500 highly acclaimed brands, placing Kagoshima in the top for production quantity and shipment. While visiting Kagoshima, one may notice labels reading . "Honkaku-shōchū" is a distilled beverage produced with traditional skills using ingredients such as natural spring water, sweet potatoes, locally grown sugar cane, and grains. There is a variety of "honkaku-shōchū" including , "shōchū" distilled from sweet potatoes), , distilled from barley), , distilled from rice), etc. Another type of "shōchū" is , "shōchū" distilled with brown sugar). "Shōchū" has long gained international favor and has come to be comparable to Bordeaux for wine, Scotch for whiskey, and Cognac for brandy. Also, the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture are the only areas sanctioned to bear the label of "kokutō-shōchū".
Today, Kagoshima is home to a distinctive dialect of Japanese known as or , differing from the usual Kyushu dialects with its pronunciations of the yotsugana.
All lines are operated by Kyushu Railway Company (JR Kyushu)
Kagoshima Airport in Kirishima ( NE of Kagoshima)
Kagoshima was one of the host cities of the official 1998 Women's Volleyball World Championship. Kagoshima is home to Kagoshima United. They play their home games at Kagoshima Kamoike Stadium.
Kagoshima is twinned with:
1st Family Head- Shimazu Tadahisa – Japanese daimyō, founder of the Shimazu clan, a son of Minamoto no Yoritomo. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16910 |
Kajang
Kajang (Jawi: كاجڠ; ; Tamil: காஜாங்) is a town in southeastern Selangor, Malaysia. It is located 20 km southeast of downtown Kuala Lumpur, in the coterminous mukim (commune) of Kajang in the Hulu Langat District.
Kajang is about half an hour's drive from Kuala Lumpur's central business district, primarily through Jalan Cheras and the Grand Saga Expressway; both routes are part of the national highway 1 system.
Kajang town is located on the eastern banks of the Langat River. It is surrounded by Cheras, Semenyih, Bangi, Putrajaya and Serdang (clockwise).
In recent years, a few townships were developed in Kajang, such as Taman Prima Saujana, Sungai Chua and Taman Kajang Perdana (Kajang Highlands). High-end developments in Kajang include Twin Palms, Sri Banyan, Country Heights, Jade Hills, TTDI Groove, Tropicana Heights and Prima Paramount.
Areas surrounding these townships are accessible via the SILK Expressway.
Kajang, along with much of Hulu Langat District, is governed by the Kajang Municipal Council.
The name of Kajang has multiple possible origins:
The area is believed to have been explored by the Temuan people since 1580. This tribe named Kajang based on an abundant type of screw pine that is used to make roofs.
A member of Ujong River named Batin Berenggai Besi, built huts on the river bank in the area by using a type of screw pine for building the cascading (Kajang) nailed roof. This convinced him that the place is suitable for settlement.
The meaning of the word 'Kajang' in Mendailingese is 'housed/sheltered'. Meanwhile, in Buginese, it is 'battle or quarrel'. These factions once clashed in one of the hilly areas facing the current railway station, because of the misunderstanding of the word 'Kajang'. The incident occurred when both groups fled to the Langat River from the civil war in Klang, between 1867 and 1873. After the incident, the place was named Kajang.
In another source, Kajang was opened by Toh Lili, who came from Riau in 1776. He was the follower of Sultan Mohamed Shah Ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Ibrahim Shah from Riau. With the Sultan's permission, he and six friends opened the land for paddy cultivation at Bukit Sungai Merbau and opened the Merbau River mine, now known as Kajang.
Raja Alang from the Mandailing tribe migrated to Malaya in the early 1800s with a group of followers. The group sailed into Malaya through Kuala Sungai Langat. After days of sailing, they sheltered or 'berkajang' in an area now called Mandailing Road. Some of the followers of Raja Alang explored the area of Kampung Batu 14. Their place was then named by Alang.
The first settlement in Kajang came in 1709. In 1807, Kajang was founded after the Klang War. Because of its central location, it was made the district capital of Hulu Langat.
Kajang as a modern town owes its rise in particular to the coffee estates which were opened up around it in the 1890s. One of the famous coffee estates were Inch Kenneth Estate managed by the Kindersley brothers, who were among the first to plant rubber in the country on a commercial basis. Another was Perang Besar (Great War) Estate, opened by some British ex-servicemen led by Colonel Henry Gough, who was the pioneer of bud-grafting of rubber trees in the country.
Kajang was granted municipal status on 1 January 1997. Previously it was under the jurisdiction of the Hulu Langat District Council ("Majlis Daerah Hulu Langat", MDHL).
Kajang's population of 342,657 is 60.4% Malay, 19.3% Chinese, 9.7% Indians, and 10.6% other ethnic groups.
Kajang's main population centres are Sg. Sikamat, Taman Saujana Impian, Sg. Kantan, Sg. Jelok, Sg. Ramal, Sungai Chua, Jalan Reko, Jalan Bukit, Taman Jenaris, Taman Prima Saujana, Taman Kantan Permai, Taman Kajang Perdana, Taman Sri Ramal, Taman Kajang Prima, Bandar Teknologi Kajang, Hillpark and Bandar Baru Bangi.
Sungai Sikamat area is celebrating its 100 years foundation in 2019.
The centre of Kajang is Old Town. Most of the colonial-era buildings were constructed around the 1920s to 1930s. The architecture of these shophouses is a combination of traditional Chinese and European designs. The ground floor was used mostly for commercial activities and the upper floor as the family living quarters.
One of Kajang's landmarks is Kajang Stadium which is situated in the heart of the town. The stadium can accommodate up to 5,000 people and is used throughout the year for the community soccer competitions.
Another landmark is the Kajang Jamek Mosque, which is recognisable by its bright yellow facade.
Kajang is served by a network of tolled expressways and federal highways.
Highway 1, the premier north–south federal highway of Peninsular Malaysia, runs through downtown Kajang and then southwards until Johor Bahru. A stretch of highway 1 is concurrent with the Cheras–Kajang Expressway E7 between Cheras Sentral Mall and Taman Koperasi CUEPACS. The Kajang Dispersal Link Expressway E18 starts in Seri Kembangan, which then runs through Balakong and then forms a beltway around downtown Kajang before ending near Bangi. It is the main ring road for Kajang. PLUS Expressway E2 exit 210 serves the vicinity of Kajang and Bangi. From Ampang Jaya, one can reach Kajang with state routes B62 and B52.
Kajang railway station is the principal rail station of Kajang. It is an interchange station between the MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang Line, KTM Seremban Line and KTM ETS. The station is the southern terminal of the MRT line.
Kajang station, though so named, does not directly serve downtown Kajang; Stadium Kajang MRT is located in the actual downtown area, along with Sungai Jernih MRT.
Kajang is famous for its "sate", a form of skewered barbecued meat. Informally, Kajang is known as the "Sate Town."
The Malaysia Prison Complex ("Kompleks Penjara Kajang"), headquarters of the Prison Department of Malaysia is in Kajang.
Kajang has multiple shopping complexes. The Billion Shopping Center formerly in Kajang town and now it is relocated to Bandar Teknologi Kajang. Other shopping centres located are Metro Plaza Kajang, Metro Point and Kompleks Kota Kajang. Metro Avenue is a new shopping district located opposite SMJK Yu Hua Kajang and Kajang High School.
Public hospitals are free and found within and around Kajang town, including Hospital Kajang, Hospital Serdang and Hospital Putrajaya. Private medical centres function 24 hours and include facilities such as Poliklinik MUC @Metro Point, Klinik Mediviron Prima Saujana, Kajang Plaza Medical Centre (KPMC) and KPJ Kajang Specialist Hospital.
The Hulu Langat District Police Headquarters are located in the town centre. Other services include a post office, government clinics, a stadium, food court and a wet market. Federal government agencies with their branch in Kajang include the National Registration Department, Immigration Department, Transportation Department, and Hulu Langat Education Office
Kajang is the starting point for MRT Sungai Buloh - Kajang with 4 stations within this town. The stations are Stesen Kajang, Stadium Kajang, Sungai Jernih and Simpang Balak.
Kajang is home to institutions of higher learning, which includes:
After the Malaysian general election, in 2018, became part of the parliamentary constituency in the Dewan Rakyat of the Malaysian Parliament. The seat is held by Ong Kian Ming from PH-DAP.
In the Selangor State Legislative Assembly, Kajang is one of three state seats within the Bangi parliamentary district; the other two are and . The incumbent Assemblyperson for Kajang is Hee Loy Sian from PH-PKR.
Until 9 May 2018, Kajang was part of the parliamentary constituency in the Dewan Rakyat of the Malaysian Parliament.
In the Selangor State Legislative Assembly, Kajang was one of three state seats within the Hulu Langat parliamentary district; the other two were and . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16911 |
Karl Benz
Karl Friedrich Benz or Carl Friedrich Benz (; 25 November 1844 – 4 April 1929) was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent Motorcar from 1885 is considered the first practical automobile. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886.
Karl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant, on 25 November 1844 in Mühlburg, now a borough of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, which is part of modern (Germany), to Josephine Vaillant and a locomotive driver, Johann Georg Benz, whom she married a few months later. According to German law, the child acquired the name "Benz" by legal marriage of his parents Benz and Vaillant. When he was two years old, his father died of pneumonia, and his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father.
Despite living in near poverty, his mother strove to give him a good education. Benz attended the local Grammar School in Karlsruhe and was a prodigious student. In 1853, at the age of nine he started at the scientifically oriented Lyceum. Next he studied at the Poly-Technical University under the instruction of Ferdinand Redtenbacher.
Benz had originally focused his studies on locksmithing, but he eventually followed his father's steps toward locomotive engineering. On 30 September 1860, at age 15, he passed the entrance exam for mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe, which he subsequently attended. Benz graduated 9 July 1864 aged 19.
Following his formal education, Benz had seven years of professional training in several companies, but did not fit well in any of them. The training started in Karlsruhe with two years of varied jobs in a mechanical engineering company.
He then moved to Mannheim to work as a draftsman and designer in a scales factory. In 1868 he went to Pforzheim to work for a bridge building company "Gebrüder Benckiser Eisenwerke und Maschinenfabrik". Finally, he went to Vienna for a short period to work at an iron construction company.
In 1871, at the age of twenty-seven, Karl Benz joined August Ritter in launching the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop in Mannheim, later renamed Factory for Machines for Sheet-metal Working.
The enterprise's first year went very badly. Ritter turned out to be unreliable, and the business's tools were impounded. The difficulty was overcome when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, bought out Ritter's share in the company using her dowry.
On 20 July 1872, Karl Benz and Bertha Ringer married. They had five children: Eugen (1873), Richard (1874), Clara (1877), Thilde (1882), and Ellen (1890).
Despite the business misfortunes, Karl Benz led in the development of new engines in the early factory he and his wife owned. To get more revenues, in 1878 he began to work on new patents. First, he concentrated all his efforts on creating a reliable petrol two-stroke engine. Benz finished his two-stroke engine on 31 December 1879, New Year's Eve, and was granted a patent for it in 28 June 1880.
Karl Benz showed his real genius, however, through his successive inventions registered while designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine. Benz soon patented the speed regulation system, the ignition using sparks with battery, the spark plug, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator.
Problems arose again when the banks at Mannheim demanded that Bertha and Karl Benz's enterprise be incorporated due to the high production costs it maintained. The Benzes were forced to improvise an association with photographer Emil Bühler and his brother (a cheese merchant), to get additional bank support. The company became the joint-stock company "Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim" in 1882.
After all the necessary incorporation agreements, Benz was unhappy because he was left with merely five percent of the shares and a modest position as director. Worst of all, his ideas weren't considered when designing new products, so he withdrew from that corporation just one year later, in 1883.
Benz's lifelong hobby brought him to a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim owned by Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger. In 1883, the three founded a new company producing industrial machines: "Benz & Companie Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik", usually referred to as "Benz & Cie." Quickly growing to twenty-five employees, it soon began to produce static gas engines as well.
The success of the company gave Benz the opportunity to indulge in his old passion of designing a "horseless carriage". Based on his experience with, and fondness for, bicycles, he used similar technology when he created an automobile. It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones)
with a four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignition and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. Power was transmitted by means of two roller chains to the rear axle. Karl Benz finished his creation in 1885 and named it ""Benz Patent Motorwagen"".
It was the first automobile entirely designed as such to generate its own power, not simply a motorized stage coach or horse carriage, which is why Karl Benz was granted his patent and is regarded as its inventor.
The Motorwagen was patented on 29 January 1886 as DRP-37435: "automobile fueled by gas". The 1885 version was difficult to control, leading to a collision with a wall during a public demonstration. The first successful tests on public roads were carried out in the early summer of 1886. The next year Benz created the Motorwagen Model 2, which had several modifications, and in 1889, the definitive Model 3 with wooden wheels was introduced, showing at the Paris Expo the same year.
Benz began to sell the vehicle (advertising it as ""Benz Patent Motorwagen"") in the late summer of 1888, making it the first commercially available automobile in history. The second customer of the Motorwagen was a Parisian bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger, who had already been building Benz engines under license from Karl Benz for several years. Roger added the Benz automobiles (many built in France) to the line he carried in Paris and initially most were sold there.
The early 1888 version of the Motorwagen had only two gears and could not climb hills unaided. This limitation was rectified after Bertha Benz made her famous trip driving one of the vehicles a great distance and suggested to her husband the addition of a third gear for climbing hills. In the course of this trip she also invented brake pads.
The world's first ever long distance automobile trip was undertaken by Bertha Benz using a Model 3. On the morning of 5 August 1888 Bertha – supposedly without the knowledge of her husband – took the vehicle on a trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother, taking her sons Eugen and Richard with her. In addition to having to locate pharmacies along the way to refuel, she repaired various technical and mechanical problems. One of these included the invention of brake lining; after some longer downhill slopes she ordered a shoemaker to nail leather onto the brake blocks. Bertha Benz and sons finally arrived at nightfall, announcing the achievement to Karl by telegram. It had been her intention to demonstrate the feasibility of using the Benz Motorwagen for travel and to generate publicity in the manner now referred to as live marketing. Today, the event is celebrated every two years in Germany with an antique automobile rally.
In 2008, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route was officially approved as a route of the industrial heritage of mankind, because it follows Bertha Benz's tracks of the world's first long-distance journey by automobile in 1888. The public can now follow the 194 km of signposted route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back. The return trip – which didn't go through Heidelberg – was along a different, slightly shorter route, as shown on the maps of the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.
Benz's Model 3 made its wide-scale debut to the world in the 1889 World's Fair in Paris; about twenty-five Motorwagens were built between 1886 and 1893.
The great demand for static internal combustion engines forced Karl Benz to enlarge the factory in Mannheim, and in 1886 a new building located on Waldhofstrasse (operating until 1908) was added. "Benz & Cie." had grown in the interim from 50 employees in 1889 to 430 in 1899.
During the last years of the nineteenth century, "Benz" was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899.
Because of its size, in 1899, "Benz & Cie." became a joint-stock company with the arrival of Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, who came aboard as members of the Board of Management. Ganß worked in the commercialization department, which is somewhat similar to marketing in contemporary corporations.
The new directors recommended that Benz should create a less expensive automobile suitable for mass production. In 1893, Karl Benz created the "Victoria", a two-passenger automobile with a engine, which could reach the top speed of and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering. The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893.
The Benz "Velo" also participated in the world's first automobile race, the 1894 Paris to Rouen, where Émile Roger finished 14th, after covering the in 10 hours 01-minute at an average speed of .
In 1895, Benz designed the first truck with an internal combustion engine in history. Benz also built the first motor buses in history in 1895, for the "Netphener" bus company.
In 1896, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first flat engine. It had horizontally opposed pistons, a design in which the corresponding pistons reach top dead centre simultaneously, thus balancing each other with respect to momentum. Flat engines with four or fewer cylinders are most commonly called boxer engines, "boxermotor" in German, and also are known as "horizontally opposed engines". This design is still used by Porsche, Subaru, and some high performance engines used in racing cars. In motorcycles, the most famous boxer engine is found in BMW Motorrad, though the boxer engine design was used in many other models, including Victoria, Harley-Davidson XA, Zündapp, Wooler, Douglas Dragonfly, Ratier, Universal, IMZ-Ural, Dnepr, Gnome et Rhône, Chang Jiang, Marusho, and the Honda Gold Wing.
Although Gottlieb Daimler died in March 1900—and there is no evidence that Benz and Daimler knew each other nor that they knew about each other's early achievements—eventually, competition with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Stuttgart began to challenge the leadership of Benz & Cie. In October 1900, the main designer of DMG, Wilhelm Maybach, built the engine that would later be used in the "Mercedes-35hp" of 1902. The engine was built to the specifications of Emil Jellinek under a contract for him to purchase thirty-six vehicles with the engine, and for him to become a dealer of the special series. Jellinek stipulated the new engine be named Daimler-"Mercedes" (for his daughter). Maybach would quit DMG in 1907, but he designed the model and all of the important changes. After testing, the first was delivered to Jellinek on 22 December 1900. Jellinek continued to make suggestions for changes to the model and obtained good results racing the automobile in the next few years, encouraging DMG to engage in commercial production of automobiles, which they did in 1902.
Benz countered with "Parsifil", introduced in 1903 with a vertical twin engine that achieved a top speed of . Then, without consulting Benz, the other directors hired some French designers.
France was a country with an extensive automobile industry based on Maybach's creations. Because of this action, after difficult discussions, Karl Benz announced his retirement from design management on 24 January 1903, although he remained as director on the Board of Management through its merger with DMG in 1926 and, remained on the board of the new Daimler-Benz corporation until his death in 1929.
He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1984 and the European Automotive Hall of Fame.
Benz's sons Eugen and Richard left Benz & Cie. in 1903, but Richard returned to the company in 1904 as the designer of passenger vehicles.
That year, sales of Benz & Cie. reached 3,480 automobiles, and the company remained the leading manufacturer of automobiles.
Along with continuing as a director of Benz & Cie., Karl Benz would soon found another company, "C. Benz Söhne", (with his son Eugen and closely held within the family), a privately held company for manufacturing automobiles. The brand name used the first initial of the French variant of Benz's first name, "Carl".
In 1909, the "Blitzen Benz" was built in Mannheim by Benz & Cie. The bird-beaked vehicle had a 21.5-liter (1312ci), engine, and on 9 November 1909 in the hands of Victor Hémery of France, the land speed racer at Brooklands, set a record of 226.91 km/h (141.94 mph), said to be "faster than any plane, train, or automobile" at the time, a record that was not exceeded for ten years by any other vehicle. It was transported to several countries, including the United States, to establish multiple records of this achievement.
Karl Benz, Bertha Benz, and their son, Eugen, moved east of Mannheim to live in nearby Ladenburg, and solely with their own capital, founded the private company, C. Benz Sons (German: "Benz Söhne") in 1906, producing automobiles and gas engines. The latter type was replaced by petrol engines because of lack of demand.
This company never issued stocks publicly, building its own line of automobiles independently from Benz & Cie., which was located in Mannheim. The "Benz Sons" automobiles were of good quality and became popular in London as taxis.
In 1912, Karl Benz liquidated all of his shares in Benz Sons and left the family-held company in Ladenburg to Eugen and Richard, but he remained as a director of Benz & Cie.
During a birthday celebration for him in his home town of Karlsruhe on 25 November 1914, the seventy-year-old Karl Benz was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, the "Karlsruhe University", thereby becoming—Dr. Ing. h. c. Karl Benz.
Almost from the very beginning of the production of automobiles, participation in sports car racing became a major method to gain publicity for manufacturers. At first, the production models were raced and the Benz "Velo" participated in the first automobile race: Paris to Rouen 1894. Later, investment in developing racecars for motorsports produced returns through sales generated by the association of the name of the automobile with the winners. Unique race vehicles were built at the time such as the first mid-engine and aerodynamically designed, "Tropfenwagen", a "teardrop" body introduced at the 1923 European Grand Prix at Monza.
In the last production year of the "Benz Sons" company, 1923, three hundred and fifty units were built. During the following year, 1924, Karl Benz built two additional 8/25 hp units of the automobile manufactured by this company, tailored for his personal use, which he never sold; they are still preserved.
The German economic crisis worsened. In 1923 "Benz & Cie." produced only 1,382 units in Mannheim, and "DMG" made only 1,020 in Stuttgart. The average cost of an automobile was 25 million marks because of rapid inflation. Negotiations between the two companies resumed and in 1924 they signed an "Agreement of Mutual Interest" valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized design, production, purchasing, sales, and advertising—marketing their automobile models jointly—although keeping their respective brands.
On 28 June 1926, Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the "Daimler-Benz" company, baptizing all of its automobiles, "Mercedes-Benz", honoring the most important model of the DMG automobiles, the 1902 "Mercedes 35 hp", along with the Benz name. The name of that DMG model had been selected after ten-year-old Mercédès Jellinek, the daughter of Emil Jellinek who had set the specifications for the new model. Between 1900 and 1909 he was a member of DMG's board of management, however had resigned long before the merger.
Karl Benz was a member of the new "Daimler-Benz" board of management for the remainder of his life. A new logo was created in 1926, consisting of a three pointed star (representing Daimler's motto: ""engines for land, air, and water"") surrounded by traditional laurels from the Benz logo, and the brand of all of its automobiles was labeled "Mercedes-Benz". Model names would follow the brand name in the same convention as today.
The next year, 1927, the number of units sold tripled to 7,918 and the diesel line was launched for truck production. In 1928, the "Mercedes-Benz SSK" was presented.
On 4 April 1929, Karl Benz died at home in Ladenburg at the age of eighty-four from a bronchial inflammation. Until her death on 5 May 1944, Bertha Benz continued to reside in their last home. Members of the family resided in the home for thirty more years. The Benz home now has been designated as historic and is used as a scientific meeting facility for a nonprofit foundation, the "Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation", that honors both Bertha and Karl Benz for their roles in the history of automobiles.
In 2011, a dramatized television movie about the life of Karl and Bertha Benz was made named "Carl & Bertha" which premiered on 11 May and was aired by Das Erste on 23 May. A trailer of the movie and a "making of" special were released on YouTube. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16912 |
Ceiba pentandra
Ceiba pentandra is a tropical tree of the order Malvales and the family Malvaceae (previously separated in the family Bombacaceae), native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, northern South America, and (as the variety "C. pentandra" var "guineensis") to tropical west Africa. A somewhat smaller variety is found throughout southern Asia and the East Indies. Kapok is a name used in English speaking countries for both the tree and the cotton-like fluff obtained from its seed pods. In Spanish speaking countries the tree is commonly known as "ceiba". The tree is cultivated for the seed fibre, particularly in south-east Asia, and is also known as the Java cotton, Java kapok, silk-cotton, samauma, or ceiba.
The tree grows to as confirmed by climbing and tape drop with reports of Kapoks up to . Trunks can often be up to in diameter above the extensive buttress roots. The very largest individuals, however, can be thick or more above the buttresses.
The buttress roots can be clearly seen in photographs extending up the trunk of some specimens and extending out from the trunk as much as and then continuing below ground to a total length of
The trunk and many of the larger branches are often crowded with large simple thorns. These major branches, usually 4 to 6 in number, can be up to thick and form a crown of foliage as much as in width. The palmate leaves are composed of 5 to 9 leaflets, each up to long.
The trees produce several hundred pods containing seeds surrounded by a fluffy, yellowish fibre that is a mix of lignin and cellulose.
The referenced reports make it clear that C. pentandra is among the largest trees in the world.
The commercial tree is most heavily cultivated in the rainforests of Asia, notably in Java (hence its nicknames), the Philippines, Malaysia, and Hainan Island in China, as well as in South America.
The flowers are an important source of nectar and pollen for honey bees and bats.
Bats are the primary pollinators of the night-blooming flowers.
Native tribes along the Amazon River harvest the fibre to wrap around their blowgun darts. The fibres create a seal that allows the pressure to force the dart through the tube.
The fibre is light, very buoyant, resilient, resistant to water, but very flammable. The process of harvesting and separating the fibre is labour-intensive and manual. It is difficult to spin, but is used as an alternative to down as filling in mattresses, pillows, upholstery, zafus, and stuffed toys such as teddy bears, and for insulation. It was previously much used in life jackets and similar devices until synthetic materials largely replaced the fibre. The seeds produce an oil that is used locally in soap and can be used as fertilizer.
"Ceiba pentandra" bark decoction has been used as a diuretic, as an aphrodisiac, and to treat headache, as well as type II diabetes. It is used as an additive in some versions of the psychedelic drink Ayahuasca.
A vegetable oil can be pressed from the seeds. The oil has a yellow colour and a pleasant, mild odour and taste, resembling cottonseed oil. It becomes rancid quickly when exposed to air. Kapok oil is produced in India, Indonesia and Malaysia. It has an iodine value of 85–100; this makes it a nondrying oil, which means that it does not dry out significantly when exposed to air. The oil has some potential as a biofuel and in paint preparation.
The tree is a sacred symbol in Maya mythology.
According to the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago, the Castle of the Devil is a huge "C. pentandra" growing deep in the forest in which Bazil the demon of death was imprisoned by a carpenter. The carpenter tricked the devil into entering the tree in which he carved seven rooms, one above the other, into the trunk. Folklore claims that Bazil still resides in that tree.
Most masks coming from Burkina Faso, especially those of Bobo and Mossi people, are carved from "C. pentandra" timber.
"Ceiba pentandra" is the national emblem of Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Equatorial Guinea. It appears on the coat of arms and flag of Equatorial Guinea.
The Cotton Tree (Sierra Leone) is a landmark in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone, and is considered a symbol of freedom for the slaves that immigrated there.
The old name of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon is named after this kapok, Vietnamese called 'Bong gon' | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16913 |
Kyushu
In the 8th-century Taihō Code reforms, Dazaifu was established as a special administrative term for the region.
, Kyushu has a population of 12,970,479 and covers .
The island is mountainous, and Japan's most active volcano, Mt Aso at , is on Kyushu. There are many other signs of tectonic activity, including numerous areas of hot springs. The most famous of these are in Beppu, on the east shore, and around Mt. Aso, in central Kyushu. The island is separated from Honshu by the Kanmon Straits. Kyushu is the nearest to the Asian continent which made it the gateway to Japan.
The name "Kyūshū" comes from the nine ancient provinces of Saikaidō situated on the island: Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hizen, Higo, Buzen, Bungo, Hyūga, Osumi, and Satsuma.
Today's is a politically defined region that consists of the seven prefectures on the island of Kyushu (which also includes the former Tsushima and Iki as part of Nagasaki), plus Okinawa Prefecture to the south:
Kyushu has 10.3 percent of the population of Japan. Most of Kyushu's population is concentrated along the northwest, in the cities of Fukuoka and Kitakyushu, with population corridors stretching southwest into Sasebo and Nagasaki and south into Kumamoto and Kagoshima. Except for Oita and Miyazaki, the eastern seaboard shows a general decline in population.
Kyushu is described as a stronghold of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Parts of Kyushu have a subtropical climate, particularly Miyazaki prefecture and Kagoshima prefecture. Major agricultural products are rice, tea, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and soy; also, silk is widely produced. The island is noted for various types of porcelain, including Arita, Imari, Satsuma, and Karatsu. Heavy industry is concentrated in the north around Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, Nagasaki, and Oita and includes chemicals, automobiles, semiconductors, and metal processing.
In 2010, the graduate employment rate in the region was the lowest nationwide, at 88.9%.
Besides the volcanic area of the south, there are significant mud hot springs in the northern part of the island, around Beppu. The springs are the site of occurrence of certain extremophile microorganisms, which are capable of surviving in extremely hot environments.
Major universities and colleges in Kyushu:
The island is linked to the larger island of Honshu by the Kanmon Tunnels, which carry both the San'yō Shinkansen and non-Shinkansen trains of the Kyushu Railway Company, as well as vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle traffic. The Kanmon Bridge also connects the island with Honshu. Railways on the island are operated by the Kyushu Railway Company, and Nishitetsu Railway. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16914 |
KAB-500KR
The KAB-500Kr (Correctable air bomb - 500 kg) is an electro-optical TV-guided fire and forget bomb developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1980s. It remains in service with the CIS and various export customers.
The KAB-500Kr is analogous to the American GBU-15 weapon. It uses a standard Soviet/Russian FAB-500 general-purpose bomb, with a nominal weight of , as a warhead, adding a low-light television seeker and guidance fins to turn it into a guided, unpowered glide bomb.
The bomb is long and weighs , of which is a hardened, armor-piercing warhead capable of penetrating up to of reinforced concrete. The weapon's seeker can lock onto a target at ranges of up to , depending on visibility. The KAB-500-OD variant is equipped with a fuel-air explosive warhead. The technology of KAB-500Kr is also used for larger bombs, such as KAB-1500Kr based on the 1500 kg class FAB-1500 iron bomb.
There is also training bomb KAB-500Kr-U
The KAB-500S-E is a version with satellite guidance | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16915 |
KAB-500L
The KAB-500L is a laser-guided bomb developed by the Soviet Air Force. It remains in service with the CIS and post-Soviet Russian Air Force.
The KAB-500L is a standard FAB-500 general-purpose bomb, which has a nominal weight of , fitted with a semi-active laser seeker and guidance fins, turning it into an unpowered guided bomb.
The KAB-500L is long and weighs . Its warhead makes up of the total weight, of which roughly 50% is blast-effect high explosive. Russian sources credit it with a CEP of . The technology of KAB-500L is also used for larger bombs, such as the KAB-1500L family.
It is also deployed by the Indian Air Force. The primary launch platform is Su-30MKI.
KAB-500S-E is a Precision-Guided Munition (PGM) whose guidance system is based on GLONASS. The weapon can be dropped from aircraft flying at an altitude from 500 meters to 5000 meters and with an airspeed of 500–1150 km/h. The CEP is 7–12 meters. These bombs were used for the first time in the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in September 2015. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16916 |
Kamov Ka-50
The Kamov Ka-50 "Black Shark" (, English: kitefin shark, NATO reporting name: Hokum A) is a Russian single-seat attack helicopter with the distinctive coaxial rotor system of the Kamov design bureau. It was designed in the 1980s and adopted for service in the Russian army in 1995. It is manufactured by the Progress company in Arsenyev. It is used as a heavily armed scout helicopter. It is the world's first operational helicopter with a rescue ejection system.
During the late 1990s, Kamov and Israel Aerospace Industries developed a tandem-seat cockpit version, the Kamov Ka-50-2 "Erdogan" (, ), to compete in Turkey's attack helicopter competition. Kamov also designed another two-seat variant, the Kamov Ka-52 "Alligator" (, NATO reporting name: Hokum B).
The Ka-50 is the production version of the V-80Sh-1 prototype. Production of the attack helicopter was ordered by the Soviet Council of Ministers on 14 December 1987. Development of the helicopter was first reported in the West in 1984, while the first photograph appeared in 1989. During operational testing from 1985 to 1986, the workload on the pilot was found to be similar to that of a fighter-bomber pilot, such that the pilot could perform both flying and navigation duties.
Like other Kamov helicopters, it features Kamov's characteristic coaxial contra-rotating rotor system, which removes the need for the entire tail rotor assembly and improves the aircraft's aerobatic qualities—it can perform loops, rolls and "the funnel" (circle-strafing), where the aircraft maintains a line-of-sight to the target while flying circles of varying altitude, elevation and airspeed around it. The omission of the tail rotor is a qualitative advantage, because the torque-countering tail rotor can use up to 30% of engine power. The Ka-50's entire transmission presents a comparatively small target to ground fire.
For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda (transl. Star) K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter. Before the rocket in the ejection seat deploys, the rotor blades are blown away by explosive charges in the rotor disc and the canopy is jettisoned.
Following initial flight testing and system tests, the Council ordered the first batch of helicopters in 1990. The attack helicopter was first described publicly as the "Ka-50" in March 1992 at a symposium in the United Kingdom. The helicopter was unveiled at the Mosaeroshow '92 at Zhukovskiy in August 1992. The following month, the second production example made its foreign debut at the Farnborough Airshow, where it was displayed with an image of a werewolf on its rudder—gaining the popular nickname "Werewolf". The fifth prototype, painted black, played the title role in the movie "Чёрная акула" (Black Shark), which made the Ka-50 known by its current nickname.
In November 1993, four production helicopters were flown to the Army Aviation Combat Training Centre at Torzhok to begin field trials. The president of the Russian Federation authorized the fielding of the Ka-50 with the Russian Army on 28 August 1995. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a severe drop in defense procurement. This resulted in only a dozen Ka-50s delivered, instead of the planned several hundred to replace the Mil Mi-24.
The single-seat configuration was considered undesirable by NATO. The first two Ka-50 prototypes had false windows painted on them, which successfully misled the first western reports of the aircraft in the mid-1980s, to the point of some analysts even concluding that its primary mission was as an air superiority aircraft for hunting and killing NATO attack helicopters, an alarming but expected Soviet move by NATO planners following the recent J-CATCH program evaluation.
The Ka-50 and its modifications have been chosen as the special forces' support helicopter, while the Mil Mi-28 has become the main army's gunship. The production of Ka-50 was recommenced in 2006. In 2009, the Russian Air Force received three units built from incomplete airframes dating from the mid-1990s.
From the time the Ka-50 was ordered in 1987, it was known that the limited night-time capability of the original version would have to be upgraded to meet night attack requirements. Initially, Ka-50N was meant to be fitted with the Merkury Low-Light TV (LLTV) system. Due to lack of funding, the system was late and experienced reliability and capability issues. As a result, focus shifted to forward looking infrared (FLIR) systems. Kamov drafted a design in 1993 that included the Shkval-N sighting system with an infrared sensor. Many variants were tried. On some, the original Shkval was supplemented by a thermal imaging system, while others saw a complete replacement by the Samshit day-and-night system (also used on Ka-52). Some of the imagers included in the trials were manufactured by the French SAGEM and Thomson companies. Kamov was forced to consider foreign analogues as a temporary replacement for domestic imaging systems because of their slow development.
Trials led to two "final" versions: Ka-50N "Night Shark" (, "velvet belly lanternshark") and Ka-50Sh (, "ball"; because of the spherical FLIR turret). The first Ka-50Sh, which was the 8th pre-production aircraft, Bort 018, first flew on 4 March 1997. The Kamov company and Black Shark logos were displayed on the endplate fins and the vertical tail. It featured the Samshit-50 system installed within a 640 mm (25 in) diameter sphere under the nose. Shkval system was moved to the nose cone area. Neither of the Ka-50 night-attack versions has entered full production.
In the early 1980s, while comparative tests of the V-80 (Ka-50 prototype) and the Mi-28 were being conducted, the Kamov design team came up with a proposal to develop a dedicated helicopter to conduct battlefield reconnaissance, provide target designation, support and coordinate group attack helicopter operations. However, the economic hardships that hit the nation in the late 1980s hampered this new development program. This prompted Kamov's Designer General to choose a modified version of Ka-50 on which to install the reconnaissance and target designation system. The modified "Black Shark" required a second crew member to operate the optronics/radar reconnaissance suite. Kamov decided to use side-by-side seating arrangement, due to the verified improvements in co-operation between the crew members. This twin-seat version was designated Ka-52.
In comparison to the original Ka-50, it has a "softer" nose profile and a radar system with two antennas—mast-mounted for aerial targets and nose-mounted for ground targets. Day-and-night TV/thermal sighting system in two spherical turrets (one over the cockpit and the second under the nose) are also fitted. The Ka-52 has the side-mounted cannon of the original Ka-50. It features six wing-mounted hardpoints compared to four on the Ka-50. To keep the weight and performance on par with that of the Ka-50, the armor and the capacity of the cannon magazine/feed were reduced. Also some flight parameters deteriorated: rate of climb dropped from 10 to 8 m/s and maximum positive load factor became 3.0 g. Most of the problems were solved by installing the new VK-2500 engine. The Ka-52 is approved for day, night and adverse weather conditions.
Manufacturing of the first Ka-52 airframe began in mid-1996. Series production was started in autumn 2008. , the 696th Instructor and Research Helicopter Regiment, based at Torzhok Air Base, is operating eight helicopters, in varying degrees of capability and/or modification, for research and development. In December 2010, four new, series-production Kamov Ka-52s were delivered to the Air Base of the 344th Centre for Combat Training and Aircrew Conversion.
The first phase of the official tests (ГСИ) was completed in December 2008 and after that permission was given for the production of an experimental batch for phase 2 (ГСИ, including fire tests and the search for targets)
Serial production of the Ka-52 began at the Progress Arsenyev Aviation Company plant in Arsenyev, Primorsky Krai by end of the 2008. After the completion of the state trials, the Ka-52 entered service in May 2011 with first operational units joining the Russian Air Force the same month. Under previous State Defense Procurement Plans, the Russian Armed Forces was to receive 2 experimental and 24 serial Ka-52s by 2012. The second long-term contract worth of 120 billion rubbles signed in 2011, is to provide the Russian Air Force in total with 146 Ka-52 helicopters until 2020. In February 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defence expressed an interest to purchase additional 114 Ka-52s within the new State Armament Program for 2018–2027.
In 2015, Egypt signed a deal for the purchase of 46 Ka-52 helicopters, the contract is expected to be carried out in full by 2020. Russian Helicopters started producing its first export models in early 2017, the overall production was doubled in order to meet new demands. The first batch of 3 Ka-52 attack helicopters was delivered to Egypt in July 2017, with a second batch of another 3 helicopters being delivered in August. By year-end 2017, Egypt had received 19 Ka-52s.
Egypt's helicopter is a modified version of the basic Ka-52 Alligator that serves in the Russian Air Force. Unlike the basic model, the Egyptian Ka-52 utilizes anti-corrosion materials and has a reinforced fuselage structure. It received new landing gear and wheels, designed for the increased takeoff weight of the helicopter. The Egyptian model features updated avionics and a new cooling system for operating in hot climate. Dmitry Rogozin, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia on defense and space industry, proposed to name it the "Nile Crocodile".
The helicopter is equipped with the new OES-52 electro-optical observation and laser targeting system, replacing the standard GOES-451 mounted under the nose. The new optronic system began development in 2011 as a collaboration between Kamov and Sagem, and is based on the French company's STRIX sighting System. The OES-52 provides greater range of target detection and recognition.
The helicopter features the Arbalet-52 Dual-band coherent pulse radar, which has an Earth mapping range of 32 km and a detection range of 25 km for ground targets and 15 km for aerial targets.
The "Nile Crocodiles" will receive President-S airborne defense systems for protection against guided missiles. The system includes both radar and laser warning receivers, MAW sensors, chaff/flare dispensers, in addition to ECM and DIRCM jammers. Egyptian Ka-52s feature two new DIRCM sets installed on either side of the fuselage, which are different from the standard L370-5 sets.
Egypt plans to arm its Ka-52s with Russian anti-tank guided missiles. The Air Force has chosen two types of missiles; namely the Vikhr and the Ataka laser-guided missiles.
Mistral class amphibious assault ships, ordered by the Russian Defense Ministry, were to contain rotary-wing assets, formed into aviation groups. Each of these groups was planned to include eight attack and eight assault/transport helicopters. The Ka-52K "Katran" (, 'mud shark'), a navalised derivative of the Ka-52, has been selected as the new ship-borne attack type for the Russian Naval Aviation. Its features include folding rotor blades, folding wings and life-support systems for the crew members, who will fly in immersion suits. The fuselage and systems receive special anti-corrosion treatment and a new fire-control radar will be capable of operating in "Sea Mode" and of supporting anti-ship missiles. Russian Naval Aviation will need at least 40 Ka-52Ks, the first of which was tentatively slated to enter squadron service by early 2015, coinciding with the delivery of the first carrier. The first of four Ka-52Ks ordered for the Russian Navy flew on the 7 March 2015; the Navy also has option on a further 28 helicopters. In total, 4 pre-series Ka-52K are currently operated and used for testing by the Russian Navy.
However, following the Russian annexation of Crimea the sale of the Mistrals was cancelled and they have since been sold to Egypt. Russia won the Egyptian tender for providing deck helicopters Ka-52K for the Egyptian Mistral carriers. Pre-contract work is underway, including final agreement on the helicopter's technical concept and other financial conditions.
In 1997, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in cooperation with the Kamov bureau entered the Ka-50-2 "Erdoğan" in a Turkish design competition for a $4 billion contract for 145 (later changed to 50) combat helicopters.
The Ka-50-2 is a tandem cockpit variant of the Ka-50. It featured a modern, Israeli-made "glass cockpit" avionics and a turret-mounted folding (for landing clearance) 30 mm cannon instead of the fixed cannon on the Ka-50. It features combat-proven avionics and advanced anti-tank guided missiles for a high level of combat effectiveness. The helicopter has excellent flight performance, and high combat survivability due to its coaxial rotor technology. It is equipped with IAI's flexible modular avionics suite, which can be readily tailored to meet the TLF's operational requirements and provides growth potential.
IAI and Kamov performed flights of the variant with IAI's Core Avionics. These flights demonstrated the helicopter's "glass cockpit" with multifunctional displays and Control and Display Unit (CDU) driven by centralized mission computers. Also tested were its flight navigation and the operation of the Helicopter Multi-Mission Optronic Stabilized Payload (HMOSP) targeting system. The demonstration flights included night mission capability demonstrations using Night Vision Goggles (NVG) and the day/night targeting system.
Turkey initially selected an improved version of the Bell AH-1 SuperCobra over the Erdogan, Eurocopter Tiger, AH-64 Apache, Denel Rooivalk, and A129 Mangusta. In the end, the contract was awarded to the A129 in 2007.
The Ka-50 and its two-seat version Ka-52 are high-performance combat helicopters with day and night capability, high survivability and fire power, to defeat air targets and heavily armoured tanks armed with air defence weapons. It was designed to be small, fast and agile to improve survivability and lethality.
The coaxial rotor design provides a hovering ceiling of 4,000 m and vertical rate of climb of 10 m a second at an altitude of 2,500 m. The rotor blades are made from polymer materials. The coaxial-rotor configuration results in moments of inertia values relative to vertical and lateral axes between 1.5 and two times less than the values found in single-rotor helicopters with tail rotors. Absence of the tail rotor enables the helicopter to perform flat turns within the entire flight speed range. A maximum vertical load factor of 3.5 g combined with low moments of inertia give the Ka-50 a high level of agility. Flight systems include inertial navigation system (INS), autopilot and head-up display (HUD). Sensors include forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and terrain-following radar.
The Kamov Ka-50 is also fitted with an electronic radio and sighting-piloting-navigating system allowing flights at day and night in VFR and IFR weather conditions. The novelty of this avionics is based on the system of precise target designation with digital coded communication system, which ensures the exchange of information (precise enemy coordinates) between helicopters flying far apart from each other as well as with ground command posts. The Ka-52 is also equipped with a "Phazotron" cockpit radio-locator, allowing flights in adverse meteorological conditions and at night. The necessary information acquired by this radio-locator is transferred to the cockpit's multi-functional display screen. For conducting a fight, both pilots are equipped with range-finders built-in their helmets and they can use night vision eyepieces for night flights.
For its own protection, Ka-50 is fitted with a radar warning receiver, electronic warfare system and chaff and flare dispenser. The dispensers are placed in aerodynamic containers fitted at wings’ ends. Each casing (container) contains two dispensers with 32 x 26 mm countermeasures each. The whole system works on principle of evaluated response based on infrared or electronic impulse irradiation. Extensive all-round armour installed in the cockpit protects the pilot against 12.7 mm armour-piercing bullets and 23 mm projectile fragments. The rotor blades are rated to withstand several hits of ground-based automatic weapons.
Other survivability features include twin-engine design for redundancy, protection for vital aircraft systems, and crash absorbing land gear and fuselage. Also, the coaxial main rotor configuration does not require tail rotor, which can improve survivability.
It is the world's first operational helicopter with a rescue ejection system, which allows the pilot to escape at all altitudes and speeds. The K-37-800 rocket-assisted ejection system is manufactured by the Zvezda Research and Production Enterprise Joint Stock Company in the Moscow region.
The aircraft has one Shipunov 2A42. It has selective fire, and a dual-feed, which allows for a cyclic rate of fire between 200 and 800 rounds per minute. This autocannon is mounted near the centre of fuselage and carries 460 high-fragmentation, explosive incendiary, or armour-piercing rounds. The type of ammunition is also selected by the pilot during flight. The integrated 30 mm cannon is semi-rigidly fixed on the helicopter's side, movable only slightly in elevation and azimuth. Semi-rigid mounting improves the cannon's accuracy, giving the 30 mm a longer practical range and better hit ratio at medium ranges than with a free-turning turret mount.
The fire control system automatically shares all target information in real time, allowing one helicopter to engage a target spotted by another aircraft, and the system can also input target information from ground-based forward scouts with personnel-carried target designation gear.
A substantial load of weapons can be carried on four external hardpoints under the stub wings, plus two on the wingtips, a total of some 2,000 kg (depending on the mix). The pylons can be tilted up to 10-degree downward. Fuel tanks may be mounted on a suspension point, whenever necessary.
Anti-tank armament comprises twelve laser-guided Vikhr anti-tank missiles (transl. Vortex or whirlwind), with a maximum range of some 8 km. The laser guidance is reported to be virtually jam-proof and the system features automatic guidance to target, enabling evasive action immediately after missile launch, alternatively it can also use Ataka laser-guided anti-tank missiles.
Kamov-52K can be armed with Hermes-A anti-tank guided missiles.
Ka-50/52 can also carry several rocket pods, including the S-13 and S-8 rockets. The "dumb" rocket pods could be upgraded to laser guided with the proposed Ugroza system.
Ka-50 took part in the Russian Army's operations against separatists in the Chechen Republic during the Second Chechen War. In December 2000, a pair of production Ka-50s arrived to the area. With the Ka-50s was a Ka-29 to provide reconnaissance and target designation. On 6 January 2001, the Ka-50 used live weapons against a real enemy for the first time. On 9 January, at the entry into a mountain gorge in the area of a settlement named Komsomolskoye, a single Ka-50 accompanied by an Mi-24 used S-8 unguided rockets to destroy a warehouse full of ammunition belonging to Chechen insurgents. On 6 February, in the forest-covered mountain area to the south of the village of Tsentoroj, the strike group composed of two Ka-50s and the sole Ka-29 discovered and, from a range of 3 km, destroyed a fortified camp of insurgents using two "9K121 Vikhr" guided missiles. 14 February, saw a similar strike group carrying out a "hunting" mission in the area of Oak-Yurt and Hatun. In difficult conditions, pilots found and destroyed eight targets. These missions tested the type's airframe, as well as its on-board systems and armament. Its successful performance in difficult, mountainous terrain once again confirmed the usefulness of the many advanced features of the Ka-50's design, including its power and maneuverability.
Ka-52 helicopters were spotted being deployed in support of the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in 2015, various sources stating they were involved in defense of the Russian base in Latakia, providing escort for search and rescue helicopters, and supporting Russian special forces. For the first time, Ka-52s were seen near the town of Al-Qaryatayn, recaptured in early April 2016 from ISIS. They took part in the 2017 Palmyra offensive. On 12 August 2017, they took part in a Syrian paratroopers operation conducting a reconnaissance-strike mission.
On 5 May 2018, a Ka-52 crashed near Mayadin due to a technical failure, according to some sources.
It has participated in a number of exercises, including "Boundary 2004" in the Edelweiss mountain range in Kyrgyzstan during August 2004. The "Shark" demonstrated its advantages by operating at a high altitude and an air temperature of more than 30 °C. A Ka-50 provided cover for the landing of troops and then worked on the ground targets using its cannons and rockets.
India issued a request for proposal for 22 attack helicopters for the Indian Air Force in May 2008. The Ka-50, the Mil Mi-28, and the Eurocopter Tiger were the front-runners for this order as of October 2008. The tender though was eventually cancelled and later India announced a new tender, with revised conditions. Russia again offered the Mi-28N and Ka-52.
The Russian Air Force has accepted 12 Ka-52 helicopters for operational service in 2011, and the total number of completed Ka-52s was already 65 units. 20 Ka-52 aircraft were located at the 575th Airbase Chernigovsky District, Eastern Military District. 16 were at 393rd "Sevastopol" Airbase Korenovsk, Southern Military District, 12 were transferred to newly formed 15th Army Aviation Brigade of the Western Military District at the airport of Ostrov, 8 – Torzhok 344th Centre for Combat Training and Flight Personnel Training. Five test aircraft are owned by JSC "Kamov"; two machines were lost in accidents. The Ka-52 was displayed to the international community at the 2013 Paris Air Show.
In 2013, the AAC "Progress" has completed the contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, signed in 2009, and would begin the next long-term contract for supplying 143 Ka-52, worth about 120 billion rubles (≈US$3.5 bln).
In June 2015, Sergei Kornev, the head of Rosoboronexport's delegation, said that Russia has signed its first contracts on the export of Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters. "We have the Ka-52 in its export model and we have contracts for it, and it's already being spun because it has a good, firm future" he said at the airshow outside Paris. Kornev did not specify the volume of contracts or with whom they were signed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16917 |
Kenny Dalglish
Sir Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish (born 4 March 1951) is a Scottish former football player and manager. During his career he made 322 appearances for Celtic and 502 for Liverpool and earned a record 102 full caps for the Scotland national team scoring 30 goals, also a joint-record. Dalglish won the Ballon d'Or Silver Award in 1983, the PFA Players' Player of the Year in 1983, and the FWA Footballer of the Year in 1979 and 1983. In 2009, "FourFourTwo" named Dalglish the greatest striker in post-war British football, and in 2006, he topped a Liverpool fans' poll of "100 Players Who Shook the Kop". He has been inducted into both the Scottish and English Football Halls of Fame.
Dalglish began his career with Celtic in 1971, going on to win four Scottish league championships, four Scottish Cups and one Scottish League Cup with the club. In 1977, Liverpool manager Bob Paisley paid a British transfer record of £440,000 to bring Dalglish to Liverpool. His years at Liverpool were among the club's most successful periods, as he won six English league championships, the FA Cup, four League Cups, five FA Charity Shields, three European Cups and one European Super Cup. In international football, Dalglish made 102 appearances and scored 30 goals for Scotland between 1971 and 1986, becoming their most capped player and joint-leading goalscorer (with Denis Law).
Dalglish became player-manager of Liverpool in 1985 after the resignation of Joe Fagan, winning a further three First Divisions, two FA Cups and four FA Charity Shields, before resigning in 1991. Eight months later, Dalglish made a return to football management with Blackburn Rovers, whom he led from the Second Division to win the Premier League in 1995. Soon afterwards, he stepped down as manager to become Director of Football at the club, before leaving altogether in 1996. In January 1997, Dalglish took over as manager at Newcastle United. Newcastle finished as runners-up in the Premier League during his first season, but they only finished 13th in 1997–98, which led to his dismissal the following season. Dalglish went on to be appointed Director of Football at Celtic in 1999, and later manager, where he won the Scottish League Cup before an acrimonious departure the following year.
Between 2000 and 2010, Dalglish focused on charitable concerns, founding The Marina Dalglish Appeal with his wife to raise money for cancer care. In January 2011, Dalglish returned to Liverpool for a spell as caretaker manager after the dismissal of Roy Hodgson, becoming the permanent manager in May 2011. Despite winning the League Cup which earned them a place in the UEFA Europa League, and reaching the FA Cup Final, Liverpool only finished 8th in the Premier League, and Dalglish was dismissed in May 2012. In October 2013, Dalglish returned to Anfield as a non-executive director, and Anfield's Centenary Stand was renamed after him in May 2017.
Dalglish, the son of an engineer, was born in Dalmarnock in the East End of Glasgow, and was brought up in Milton in the north of the city. He moved to the docklands of Govan, near Ibrox, home of Rangers, when he was 15, and he grew up supporting Rangers.
Dalglish attended Miltonbank Primary School in Milton and started out as a goalkeeper. He then attended High Possil Senior Secondary School, where he won the inter-schools five-a-side and the inter-year five-a-side competitions. He won the Scottish Cup playing for Glasgow Schoolboys and Glasgow Schools, and was then selected for the Scottish schoolboys team that went undefeated in a Home Nations Victory Shield tournament. In 1966, Dalglish had unsuccessful trials at West Ham and Liverpool.
Dalglish signed a professional contract with Celtic in May 1967. The club's manager Jock Stein sent his assistant Sean Fallon to see Dalglish and his parents at their home, which had Rangers-related pictures on the walls. In his first season Dalglish was loaned out to Cumbernauld United, for whom he scored 37 goals. During this time he also worked as an apprentice joiner. Stein wanted Dalglish to spend a second season on loan at Cumbernauld, but the youngster wanted to turn professional. Dalglish got his wish, and became a regular member of the highly rated Celtic reserve team that became known as the Quality Street Gang, due to it having a large number of future Scottish internationals, including Danny McGrain, George Connelly, Lou Macari, and David Hay. Dalglish made his first-team competitive debut for Celtic in a Scottish League Cup quarter-final tie against Hamilton Academical on 25 September 1968, coming on as a second-half substitute in a 4–2 win.
He spent the 1968–69 season playing for the reserves, scored just four goals in 17 games. The following season, he changed his position, moving into midfield, He enjoyed a good season playing from midfield as he helped them to the league and cup double, scoring 19 goals in 31 games. Stein put Dalglish in the starting XI for the first team in a league match against Raith Rovers on 4 October 1969. Celtic won 7–1 but Dalglish didn't score, nor did he score in the next three first-team games he played in during the 1969–70 season.
Dalglish continued his goalscoring form in the reserves into the next season, scoring 23 goals. A highlight of his season came in the Reserve Cup Final against Rangers. Dalglish scored one goal in a 4–1 win in the first leg, then in the second leg scored a hat-trick in a 6–1 win to clinch the cup. Still not a first-team regular, Dalglish was in the stands when the Ibrox disaster occurred at an Old Firm match in January 1971, when 66 Rangers fans died. On 17 May 1971, he played for Celtic against Kilmarnock in a testimonial match for the Rugby Park club's long serving midfielder, Frank Beattie. Dalglish scored six goals for Celtic in a 7–2 win.
The 1971–72 season saw Dalglish finally establish himself in the Celtic first team, scoring 29 goals in 53 games and helping Celtic win their seventh consecutive league title. Dalglish also played in Celtic's 6–1 win over Hibernian in the 1972 Scottish Cup Final. In 1972–73 Dalglish was Celtic's leading scorer, with 39 goals in all competitions, and saw Celtic win the league championship. Celtic won a league and cup double in 1973–74 and reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. The ties against Atlético Madrid were acrimonious, and Dalglish described the first leg in Glasgow where the Spanish side had three players sent off as "without doubt the worst game I have ever played in as far as violence is concerned."
Dalglish was made Celtic captain in the 1975–76 season, during which Celtic failed to win a trophy for the first time in 12 years. Stein had been badly injured in a car crash and missed most of that season while recovering from his injuries. Celtic won another league and cup double in 1976–77, with Dalglish scoring 27 goals in all competitions. On 10 August 1977, after making 320 appearances and scoring 167 goals for Celtic, Dalglish was signed by Liverpool manager Bob Paisley for a British transfer fee record of £440,000 (£ today). The deal was unpopular with the Celtic fans, and Dalglish was booed by the crowd when he returned to Celtic Park in August 1978 to play in a testimonial match for Stein.
Dalglish was signed to replace Kevin Keegan, and quickly settled into his new club. He made his debut on 13 August 1977 in the season opener at Wembley, in the 1977 FA Charity Shield against Manchester United. He scored his first goal for Liverpool in his league debut a week later on 20 August, against Middlesbrough. Dalglish also scored three days later on his Anfield debut in a 2–0 victory over Newcastle United, and he scored Liverpool's sixth goal when they beat Keegan's Hamburg 6–0 in the second leg of the 1977 European Super Cup. By the end of his first season with Liverpool, Dalglish had played 62 times and scored 31 goals, including the winning goal in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley against Bruges.
In his second season Dalglish recorded a personal best of 21 league goals for the club, and he was also named Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year. He did not miss a league game for Liverpool until the 1980–81 season, when he appeared in 34 out of 42 league games and scored only eight goals as Liverpool finished fifth in the league, but still won the European Cup and Football League Cup. He recovered his goal-scoring form the following season, and was an ever-present player in the league once again, scoring 13 goals as Liverpool became league champions for the 13th time, and the third time since Dalglish's arrival. It was also around this time that he began to form a potent strike partnership with Ian Rush; Dalglish began to play just off Rush, "running riot in the extra space afforded to him in the hole". Dalglish was voted PFA Players' Player of the Year for the 1982–83 season, during which he scored 18 league goals as Liverpool retained their title. From 1983 Dalglish became less prolific as a goalscorer, though he remained a regular player.
After becoming player-manager on the retirement of Joe Fagan in the 1985 close season, Dalglish selected himself for just 21 First Division games in 1985–86 as Liverpool won the double, but he started the FA Cup final win over Everton. On the last day of the league season, his goal in a 1–0 away win over Chelsea gave Liverpool their 16th league title. Dalglish had a personally better campaign in the 1986–87 season, scoring six goals in 18 league appearances, but by then he was committed to giving younger players priority for a first-team place.
With the sale of Ian Rush to Juventus in 1987, Dalglish formed a new striker partnership of new signings John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley for the 1987–88 season, and he played only twice in a league campaign which saw Liverpool gain their 17th title. Dalglish did not play in Liverpool's 1988–89 campaign, and he made his final league appearance on 5 May 1990 as a substitute against Derby. At 39, he was one of the oldest players ever to play for Liverpool. His final goal had come three years earlier, in a 3–0 home league win over Nottingham Forest on 18 April 1987.
Tommy Docherty gave Dalglish his debut for the Scottish national side as a substitute in the 1–0 Euro 1972 qualifier victory over Belgium on 10 November 1971 at Pittodrie. Dalglish scored his first goal for Scotland a year later on 15 November 1972 in the 2–0 World Cup qualifier win over Denmark at Hampden Park. Scotland would go on to qualify for the final tournament and he was part of Scotland's 1974 World Cup squad in West Germany. He started in all three games as Scotland was eliminated during the group stages despite not losing any of their three games.
In 1976, Dalglish scored the winning goal for Scotland at Hampden Park against England, by nutmegging Ray Clemence. A year later Dalglish scored against the same opponents and goalkeeper at Wembley, in another 2–1 win. Dalglish went on to play in both the 1978 World Cup in Argentina where he started in all of Scotland's games – scoring against eventual runners-up the Netherlands in a famous 3–2 win – and the 1982 World Cup in Spain, scoring against New Zealand. On both occasions Scotland failed to get past the group stage. Dalglish was selected for the 22-man squad travelling to Mexico for the 1986 World Cup, but had to withdraw due to injury.
In total, Dalglish played 102 times for Scotland (a national record) and he scored 30 goals (also a national record, which matched that set by Denis Law). His final appearance for Scotland, after 15 years as a full international, was on 12 November 1986 at Hampden Park in a Euro 1988 qualifying game against Luxembourg, which Scotland won 3–0. His 30th and final international goal had been two years earlier, on 14 November 1984, in a 3–1 win over Spain in a World Cup qualifier, also at Hampden Park.
After the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 and Joe Fagan's subsequent resignation as manager, Dalglish became player-manager of Liverpool. In his first season in charge in 1985–86, he guided the club to its first "double". Liverpool achieved this by winning the League Championship by two points over Everton (Dalglish himself scored the winner in a 1–0 victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge to secure the title on the final day of the season), and the FA Cup by beating Everton in the final.
The 1986–87 season was trophyless for Liverpool. They lost 2–1 to Arsenal in the League Cup final at Wembley. Before the 1987–88 season, Dalglish signed two new players: striker Peter Beardsley from Newcastle and winger John Barnes from Watford. He had already purchased goalscorer John Aldridge from Oxford United (a replacement for Ian Rush, who was moving to Italy) in the spring of 1987 and early into the new campaign, bought Oxford United midfielder Ray Houghton. The new-look Liverpool side shaped by Dalglish topped the league for almost the entire season, and had a run of 37 matches unbeaten in all competitions (including 29 in the league; 22 wins and 7 draws) from the beginning of the season to 21 February 1988, when they lost to Everton in the league. Liverpool were crowned champions with four games left to play, having suffered just two defeats from 40 games. However, Dalglish's side lost the 1988 FA Cup Final to underdogs Wimbledon.
In the summer of 1988, Dalglish re-signed Ian Rush. Liverpool beat Everton 3–2 after extra time in the second all-Merseyside FA Cup final in 1989, but was deprived of a second Double in the final game of the season, when Arsenal secured a last-minute goal to take the title from Liverpool. In the 1989–90 season Liverpool won their third league title under Dalglish. They missed out on the Double and a third successive FA Cup final appearance when they lost 4–3 in extra-time to Crystal Palace in an FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park. At the end of the season Dalglish received his third Manager of the Year award. Dalglish resigned as manager of Liverpool on 22 February 1991, two days after a 4–4 draw with rivals Everton in an FA Cup fifth round tie at Goodison Park, in which Liverpool surrendered the lead four times. At the time of his resignation, the club were three points ahead in the league and still in contention for the FA Cup.
Dalglish was the manager of Liverpool at the time of the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989. The disaster claimed 94 lives on the day, with the final death toll reaching 96. Dalglish attended many funerals of the victims – including four in one day. – and his presence in the aftermath of the disaster has been described as "colossal and heroic". Dalglish broke a twenty-year silence about the disaster in March 2009, expressing regret that the police and the FA did not consider delaying the kick-off of the match. During the Hillsborough Memorial Service on 15 April 2011, Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram announced he would submit an Early Day Motion to have Dalglish knighted, "not only for his outstanding playing and managerial career, but also the charity work he has done with his wife, Marina, for breast cancer support and what he did after Hillsborough. It is common knowledge it affected him deeply".
Dalglish returned to management in October 1991, at Second Division Blackburn Rovers. By the turn of 1992 they were top of the Second Division, and then suffered a dip in form before recovering to qualify for the playoffs, during which Dalglish led Blackburn into the new Premier League by beating Leicester City 1–0 in the Second Division Play-off final at Wembley. The resulting promotion meant that Blackburn were back in the top flight of English football for the first time since 1966. In the 1992 close season, Dalglish signed Southampton's Alan Shearer for a British record fee of £3.5 million. Despite a serious injury which ruled Shearer out for half the season, Dalglish achieved fourth position with the team in the first year of the new Premier League. The following year, Dalglish failed in an attempt to sign Roy Keane. Blackburn finished two positions higher the following season, as runners-up to Manchester United. By this time, Dalglish had added England internationals Tim Flowers and David Batty to his squad.
At the start of the 1994–95 season Dalglish paid a record £5 million for Chris Sutton, with whom Shearer formed an effective strike partnership. By the last game of the season, both Blackburn and Manchester United were in contention for the title. Blackburn had to travel to Liverpool, and Manchester United faced West Ham United in London. Blackburn lost 2–1, but still won the title since United failed to win in London. The title meant that Dalglish was only the fourth football manager in history to lead two different clubs to top-flight league championships in England, after Tom Watson, Herbert Chapman and Brian Clough. Dalglish became Director of Football at Blackburn in June 1995. He left the club at the end of the 1995–96 season after a disappointing campaign under his replacement, Ray Harford.
Following his departure from Blackburn Dalglish was appointed for a brief spell as an "international talent scout" at his boyhood club Rangers. He was reported as having played a central role in the signing of Chile international Sebastián Rozental.
In January 1997, Dalglish was appointed manager of Premier League side Newcastle United on a three-and-a-half-year contract, taking over from Kevin Keegan. Dalglish guided the club from fourth position to a runner-up spot in May and a place in the new format of the following season's UEFA Champions League. He then broke up the team which had finished second two years running, selling popular players like Peter Beardsley, Lee Clark, Les Ferdinand and David Ginola and replacing them with ageing stars like John Barnes (34), Ian Rush (36) and Stuart Pearce (35), as well as virtual unknowns like Des Hamilton and Garry Brady. He also made some good long-term signings like Gary Speed and Shay Given. The 1997–98 campaign saw Newcastle finish in only 13th place and, despite Dalglish achieving some notable successes during the season (including a 3–2 UEFA Champions League win over Barcelona and an FA Cup final appearance against Arsenal), he was dismissed by Freddie Shepherd after two draws in the opening two games of the subsequent 1998–99 season, and replaced by former Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit. One commentator from "The Independent" has since written, "His 20 months at Newcastle United are the only part of Kenny Dalglish's career that came anywhere near failure".
In June 1999 he was appointed director of football operations at Celtic, with his former Liverpool player John Barnes appointed as head coach. Barnes was dismissed in February 2000 and Dalglish took charge of the first team on an interim basis. He guided them to the Scottish League Cup final, where they beat Aberdeen 2–0 at Hampden Park. Dalglish was dismissed in June 2000, after the appointment of Martin O'Neill as manager. After a brief legal battle, Dalglish accepted a settlement of £600,000 from Celtic.
In April 2009 Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez invited Dalglish to take up a role at the club's youth academy. The appointment was confirmed in July 2009, and Dalglish was also made the club's ambassador. Following Benítez's departure from Liverpool in June 2010, Dalglish was asked to help find a replacement, and in July Fulham's Roy Hodgson was appointed manager.
A poor run of results at the start of the 2010–11 season led to Liverpool fans calling for Dalglish's return as manager as early as October 2010, and with no subsequent improvement in Liverpool's results up to the end of the year (during which time the club was bought by New England Sports Ventures), Hodgson left Liverpool and Dalglish was appointed caretaker manager on 8 January 2011. Dalglish's first game in charge was on 9 January 2011 at Old Trafford against Manchester United in the 3rd round of the FA Cup, which Liverpool lost 1–0. Dalglish's first league game in charge was against Blackpool on 12 January 2011; Liverpool lost 2–1. After the game, Dalglish admitted that Liverpool faced "a big challenge".
Shortly after his appointment, Dalglish indicated he would like the job on a permanent basis if it was offered to him, and on 19 January the Liverpool chairman Tom Werner stated that the club's owners would favour this option. On 22 January 2011, Dalglish led Liverpool to their first win since his return, against Wolves at Molineux. After signing Andy Carroll from Newcastle for a British record transfer fee of £35 million and Luis Suárez from Ajax for £22.8 million at the end of January (in the wake of Fernando Torres's sale to Chelsea for £50 million), some journalists noted that Dalglish had begun to assert his authority at the club. Following a 1–0 victory against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in February 2011, described by Alan Smith as "a quite brilliant display in terms of discipline and spirit" and a "defensive masterplan" by David Pleat, Henry Winter wrote, "it can only be a matter of time before he [Dalglish] is confirmed as long-term manager".
On 12 May 2011, Liverpool announced that Dalglish had been given a three-year contract. His first official match in charge was 2–0 defeat to Harry Redknapp's Spurs at Anfield. Dalglish's second stint in charge at Anfield proved controversial at times. The Scot defended Luis Suárez in the wake of the striker's eight-match ban for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra when the teams met in October 2011. After the Uruguayan's apparent refusal to shake Evra's hand in the return fixture in February 2012, an apology from both player and manager came only after the intervention of the owners.
In February 2012, Dalglish led Liverpool to their first trophy in six years, with victory in the 2011–12 Football League Cup. In the same season he also led Liverpool to the 2012 FA Cup Final where they lost 2–1 to Chelsea. Despite the success in domestic cups, Liverpool finished eighth in the league, their worst showing in the league since 1994, failing to qualify for Europe's Champions League for a third straight season. Following the end of the season, Liverpool dismissed Dalglish on 16 May 2012.
In October 2013, Dalglish returned to Liverpool as a non-executive director.
On 13 October 2017, Anfield's Centenary Stand was officially renamed the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand in recognition of his unique contribution to the club.
Dalglish has been married to Marina since 26 November 1974. The couple have four children, Kelly, Paul, Lynsey and Lauren. Kelly has worked as a football presenter for BBC Radio 5 Live and Sky Sports. Paul followed in his father's footsteps as a footballer, playing in the Premier League and Scottish Premiership before traveling to the United States to play for the Houston Dynamo in Major League Soccer. He retired in 2008 and became a coach, spending time as head coach of Ottawa Fury FC and Miami FC in the second-division leagues of North America. Dalglish's wife Marina was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2003, but was treated at Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool and recovered. She later launched a charity to fund new cancer treatment equipment for UK hospitals.
Dalglish was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1985 New Year Honours for services to football. In 2018 he was knighted for services to football, charity and the City of Liverpool. He dedicated the award to former Celtic and Liverpool coaches Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley stating that he was "Humbled" and "A wee bit embarrassed". He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to football, charity and the City of Liverpool.
In early April 2020, while in hospital for treatment for an unrelated condition, Dalglish was found to be positive for COVID-19, though asymptomatic.
In 2004, Dalglish and his wife founded the charity "The Marina Dalglish Appeal" to raise money to help treat cancer. Dalglish has participated in a number of events to raise money for the charity, including a replay of the 1986 FA Cup Final. In June 2007 a Centre for Oncology at Aintree University Hospital was opened, after the charity had raised £1.5 million. Dalglish often competes in the annual "Gary Player Invitational Tournament", a charity golfing event which raises money for children's causes around the world. On 1 July 2011, Dalglish was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Ulster, for services to football and charity.
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Knowledge representation and reasoning
Knowledge representation and reasoning (KR², KR&R) is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to representing information about the world in a form that a computer system can utilize to solve complex tasks such as diagnosing a medical condition or having a dialog in a natural language. Knowledge representation incorporates findings from psychology about how humans solve problems and represent knowledge in order to design formalisms that will make complex systems easier to design and build. Knowledge representation and reasoning also incorporates findings from logic to automate various kinds of "reasoning", such as the application of rules or the relations of sets and subsets.
Examples of knowledge representation formalisms include semantic nets, systems architecture, frames, rules, and ontologies. Examples of automated reasoning engines include inference engines, theorem provers, and classifiers.
The earliest work in computerized knowledge representation was focused on general problem solvers such as the General Problem Solver (GPS) system developed by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon in 1959. These systems featured data structures for planning and decomposition. The system would begin with a goal. It would then decompose that goal into sub-goals and then set out to construct strategies that could accomplish each subgoal.
In these early days of AI, general search algorithms such as A* were also developed. However, the amorphous problem definitions for systems such as GPS meant that they worked only for very constrained toy domains (e.g. the "blocks world"). In order to tackle non-toy problems, AI researchers such as Ed Feigenbaum and Frederick Hayes-Roth realized that it was necessary to focus systems on more constrained problems.
These efforts led to the cognitive revolution in psychology and to the phase of AI focused on knowledge representation that resulted in expert systems in the 1970s and 80s, production systems, frame languages, etc. Rather than general problem solvers, AI changed its focus to expert systems that could match human competence on a specific task, such as medical diagnosis.
Expert systems gave us the terminology still in use today where AI systems are divided into a Knowledge Base with facts about the world and rules and an inference engine that applies the rules to the knowledge base in order to answer questions and solve problems. In these early systems the knowledge base tended to be a fairly flat structure, essentially assertions about the values of variables used by the rules.
In addition to expert systems, other researchers developed the concept of frame-based languages in the mid-1980s. A frame is similar to an object class: It is an abstract description of a category describing things in the world, problems, and potential solutions. Frames were originally used on systems geared toward human interaction, e.g. understanding natural language and the social settings in which various default expectations such as ordering food in a restaurant narrow the search space and allow the system to choose appropriate responses to dynamic situations.
It was not long before the frame communities and the rule-based researchers realized that there was synergy between their approaches. Frames were good for representing the real world, described as classes, subclasses, slots (data values) with various constraints on possible values. Rules were good for representing and utilizing complex logic such as the process to make a medical diagnosis. Integrated systems were developed that combined Frames and Rules. One of the most powerful and well known was the 1983 Knowledge Engineering Environment (KEE) from Intellicorp. KEE had a complete rule engine with forward and backward chaining. It also had a complete frame based knowledge base with triggers, slots (data values), inheritance, and message passing. Although message passing originated in the object-oriented community rather than AI it was quickly embraced by AI researchers as well in environments such as KEE and in the operating systems for Lisp machines from Symbolics, Xerox, and Texas Instruments.
The integration of Frames, rules, and object-oriented programming was significantly driven by commercial ventures such as KEE and Symbolics spun off from various research projects. At the same time as this was occurring, there was another strain of research which was less commercially focused and was driven by mathematical logic and automated theorem proving. One of the most influential languages in this research was the KL-ONE language of the mid-'80s. KL-ONE was a frame language that had a rigorous semantics, formal definitions for concepts such as an Is-A relation. KL-ONE and languages that were influenced by it such as Loom had an automated reasoning engine that was based on formal logic rather than on IF-THEN rules. This reasoner is called the classifier. A classifier can analyze a set of declarations and infer new assertions, for example, redefine a class to be a subclass or superclass of some other class that wasn't formally specified. In this way the classifier can function as an inference engine, deducing new facts from an existing knowledge base. The classifier can also provide consistency checking on a knowledge base (which in the case of KL-ONE languages is also referred to as an Ontology).
Another area of knowledge representation research was the problem of common sense reasoning. One of the first realizations learned from trying to make software that can function with human natural language was that humans regularly draw on an extensive foundation of knowledge about the real world that we simply take for granted but that is not at all obvious to an artificial agent. Basic principles of common sense physics, causality, intentions, etc. An example is the frame problem, that in an event driven logic there need to be axioms that state things maintain position from one moment to the next unless they are moved by some external force. In order to make a true artificial intelligence agent that can converse with humans using natural language and can process basic statements and questions about the world, it is essential to represent this kind of knowledge. One of the most ambitious programs to tackle this problem was Doug Lenat's Cyc project. Cyc established its own Frame language and had large numbers of analysts document various areas of common sense reasoning in that language. The knowledge recorded in Cyc included common sense models of time, causality, physics, intentions, and many others.
The starting point for knowledge representation is the "knowledge representation hypothesis" first formalized by Brian C. Smith in 1985:
Any mechanically embodied intelligent process will be structural ingredients that a) we as external observers naturally take to represent a propositional account of the knowledge that the overall process exhibits, and b) independent of such external semantic attribution, play a formal but causal and essential role in engendering the behavior that manifests that knowledge.
Currently one of the most active areas of knowledge representation research are projects associated with the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web seeks to add a layer of semantics (meaning) on top of the current Internet. Rather than indexing web sites and pages via keywords, the Semantic Web creates large ontologies of concepts. Searching for a concept will be more effective than traditional text only searches. Frame languages and automatic classification play a big part in the vision for the future Semantic Web. The automatic classification gives developers technology to provide order on a constantly evolving network of knowledge. Defining ontologies that are static and incapable of evolving on the fly would be very limiting for Internet-based systems. The classifier technology provides the ability to deal with the dynamic environment of the Internet.
Recent projects funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have integrated frame languages and classifiers with markup languages based on XML. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides the basic capability to define classes, subclasses, and properties of objects. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) provides additional levels of semantics and enables integration with classification engines.
Knowledge-representation is a field of artificial intelligence that focuses on designing computer representations that capture information about the world that can be used to solve complex problems.
The justification for knowledge representation is that conventional procedural code is not the best formalism to use to solve complex problems. Knowledge representation makes complex software easier to define and maintain than procedural code and can be used in expert systems.
For example, talking to experts in terms of business rules rather than code lessens the semantic gap between users and developers and makes development of complex systems more practical.
Knowledge representation goes hand in hand with automated reasoning because one of the main purposes of explicitly representing knowledge is to be able to reason about that knowledge, to make inferences, assert new knowledge, etc. Virtually all knowledge representation languages have a reasoning or inference engine as part of the system.
A key trade-off in the design of a knowledge representation formalism is that between expressivity and practicality. The ultimate knowledge representation formalism in terms of expressive power and compactness is First Order Logic (FOL). There is no more powerful formalism than that used by mathematicians to define general propositions about the world. However, FOL has two drawbacks as a knowledge representation formalism: ease of use and practicality of implementation. First order logic can be intimidating even for many software developers. Languages which do not have the complete formal power of FOL can still provide close to the same expressive power with a user interface that is more practical for the average developer to understand. The issue of practicality of implementation is that FOL in some ways is too expressive. With FOL it is possible to create statements (e.g. quantification over infinite sets) that would cause a system to never terminate if it attempted to verify them.
Thus, a subset of FOL can be both easier to use and more practical to implement. This was a driving motivation behind rule-based expert systems. IF-THEN rules provide a subset of FOL but a very useful one that is also very intuitive. The history of most of the early AI knowledge representation formalisms; from databases to semantic nets to theorem provers and production systems can be viewed as various design decisions on whether to emphasize expressive power or computability and efficiency.
In a key 1993 paper on the topic, Randall Davis of MIT outlined five distinct roles to analyze a knowledge representation framework:
Knowledge representation and reasoning are a key enabling technology for the Semantic Web. Languages based on the Frame model with automatic classification provide a layer of semantics on top of the existing Internet. Rather than searching via text strings as is typical today, it will be possible to define logical queries and find pages that map to those queries. The automated reasoning component in these systems is an engine known as the classifier. Classifiers focus on the subsumption relations in a knowledge base rather than rules. A classifier can infer new classes and dynamically change the ontology as new information becomes available. This capability is ideal for the ever-changing and evolving information space of the Internet.
The Semantic Web integrates concepts from knowledge representation and reasoning with markup languages based on XML. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides the basic capabilities to define knowledge-based objects on the Internet with basic features such as Is-A relations and object properties. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) adds additional semantics and integrates with automatic classification reasoners.
In 1985, Ron Brachman categorized the core issues for knowledge representation as follows:
In the early years of knowledge-based systems the knowledge-bases were fairly small. The knowledge-bases that were meant to actually solve real problems rather than do proof of concept demonstrations needed to focus on well defined problems. So for example, not just medical diagnosis as a whole topic, but medical diagnosis of certain kinds of diseases.
As knowledge-based technology scaled up, the need for larger knowledge bases and for modular knowledge bases that could communicate and integrate with each other became apparent. This gave rise to the discipline of ontology engineering, designing and building large knowledge bases that could be used by multiple projects. One of the leading research projects in this area was the Cyc project. Cyc was an attempt to build a huge encyclopedic knowledge base that would contain not just expert knowledge but common sense knowledge. In designing an artificial intelligence agent, it was soon realized that representing common sense knowledge, knowledge that humans simply take for granted, was essential to make an AI that could interact with humans using natural language. Cyc was meant to address this problem. The language they defined was known as CycL.
After CycL, a number of ontology languages have been developed. Most are declarative languages, and are either frame languages, or are based on first-order logic. Modularity—the ability to define boundaries around specific domains and problem spaces—is essential for these languages because as stated by Tom Gruber, "Every ontology is a treaty- a social agreement among people with common motive in sharing." There are always many competing and differing views that make any general purpose ontology impossible. A general purpose ontology would have to be applicable in any domain and different areas of knowledge need to be unified.
There is a long history of work attempting to build ontologies for a variety of task domains, e.g., an ontology for liquids, the lumped element model widely used in representing electronic circuits (e.g.,), as well as ontologies for time, belief, and even programming itself. Each of these offers a way to see some part of the world.
The lumped element model, for instance, suggests that we think of circuits in terms of components with connections between them, with signals flowing instantaneously along the connections. This is a useful view, but not the only possible one. A different ontology arises if we need to attend to the electrodynamics in the device: Here signals propagate at finite speed and an object (like a resistor) that was previously viewed as a single component with an I/O behavior may now have to be thought of as an extended medium through which an electromagnetic wave flows.
Ontologies can of course be written down in a wide variety of languages and notations (e.g., logic, LISP, etc.); the essential information is not the form of that language but the content, i.e., the set of concepts offered as a way of thinking about the world. Simply put, the important part is notions like connections and components, not the choice between writing them as predicates or LISP constructs.
The commitment made selecting one or another ontology can produce a sharply different view of the task at hand. Consider the difference that arises in selecting the lumped element view of a circuit rather than the electrodynamic view of the same device. As a second example, medical diagnosis viewed in terms of rules (e.g., MYCIN) looks substantially different from the same task viewed in terms of frames (e.g., INTERNIST). Where MYCIN sees the medical world as made up of empirical associations connecting symptom to disease, INTERNIST sees a set of prototypes, in particular prototypical diseases, to be matched against the case at hand. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16920 |
Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context
Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context (KARNAC) is a system being developed in the United States for use in profiling different categories of terrorist attacks to determine the components of possible future terrorist incidents.
Information for KARNAC is generally to be derived from structured, semi-structured and unstructured databases. This would include information derived from gun registrations, driver's licenses, residential and criminal records, as well as the Internet, newspapers and county records.
For example, the system might raise an alert if someone attempted to buy components for bomb making, hired a car and rented a hotel room near the White House. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16921 |
Genetics
Genetics is a branch of biology concerned with the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.
Though heredity had been observed for millennia, Gregor Mendel, a scientist and Augustinian friar working in the 19th century, was the first to study genetics scientifically. Mendel studied "trait inheritance", patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring. He observed that organisms (pea plants) inherit traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene.
Trait inheritance and molecular inheritance mechanisms of genes are still primary principles of genetics in the 21st century, but modern genetics has expanded beyond inheritance to studying the function and behavior of genes. Gene structure and function, variation, and distribution are studied within the context of the cell, the organism (e.g. dominance), and within the context of a population. Genetics has given rise to a number of subfields, including molecular genetics, epigenetics and population genetics. Organisms studied within the broad field span the domains of life (archaea, bacteria, and eukarya).
Genetic processes work in combination with an organism's environment and experiences to influence development and behavior, often referred to as nature versus nurture. The intracellular or extracellular environment of a living cell or organism may switch gene transcription on or off. A classic example is two seeds of genetically identical corn, one placed in a temperate climate and one in an arid climate (lacking sufficient waterfall or rain). While the average height of the two corn stalks may be genetically determined to be equal, the one in the arid climate only grows to half the height of the one in the temperate climate due to lack of water and nutrients in its environment.
The word "genetics" stems from the ancient Greek ' meaning "genitive"/"generative", which in turn derives from ' meaning "origin".
The observation that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. The modern science of genetics, seeking to understand this process, began with the work of the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th century.
Prior to Mendel, Imre Festetics, a Hungarian noble, who lived in Kőszeg before Mendel, was the first who used the word "genetics." He described several rules of genetic inheritance in his work "The genetic law of the Nature" (Die genetische Gesätze der Natur, 1819). His second law is the same as what Mendel published. In his third law, he developed the basic principles of mutation (he can be considered a forerunner of Hugo de Vries).
Other theories of inheritance preceded Mendel's work. A popular theory during the 19th century, and implied by Charles Darwin's 1859 "On the Origin of Species", was blending inheritance: the idea that individuals inherit a smooth blend of traits from their parents. Mendel's work provided examples where traits were definitely not blended after hybridization, showing that traits are produced by combinations of distinct genes rather than a continuous blend. Blending of traits in the progeny is now explained by the action of multiple genes with quantitative effects. Another theory that had some support at that time was the inheritance of acquired characteristics: the belief that individuals inherit traits strengthened by their parents. This theory (commonly associated with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck) is now known to be wrong—the experiences of individuals do not affect the genes they pass to their children, although evidence in the field of epigenetics has revived some aspects of Lamarck's theory. Other theories included the pangenesis of Charles Darwin (which had both acquired and inherited aspects) and Francis Galton's reformulation of pangenesis as both particulate and inherited.
Modern genetics started with Mendel's studies of the nature of inheritance in plants. In his paper ""Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden"" ("Experiments on Plant Hybridization"), presented in 1865 to the "Naturforschender Verein" (Society for Research in Nature) in Brünn, Mendel traced the inheritance patterns of certain traits in pea plants and described them mathematically. Although this pattern of inheritance could only be observed for a few traits, Mendel's work suggested that heredity was particulate, not acquired, and that the inheritance patterns of many traits could be explained through simple rules and ratios.
The importance of Mendel's work did not gain wide understanding until 1900, after his death, when Hugo de Vries and other scientists rediscovered his research. William Bateson, a proponent of Mendel's work, coined the word "genetics" in 1905 (the adjective "genetic", derived from the Greek word "genesis"—γένεσις, "origin", predates the noun and was first used in a biological sense in 1860). Bateson both acted as a mentor and was aided significantly by the work of other scientists from Newnham College at Cambridge, specifically the work of Becky Saunders, Nora Darwin Barlow, and Muriel Wheldale Onslow. Bateson popularized the usage of the word "genetics" to describe the study of inheritance in his inaugural address to the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in London in 1906.
After the rediscovery of Mendel's work, scientists tried to determine which molecules in the cell were responsible for inheritance. In 1900, Nettie Stevens began studying the mealworm. Over the next 11 years, she discovered that females only had the X chromosome and males had both X and Y chromosomes. She was able to conclude that sex is a chromosomal factor and is determined by the male. In 1911, Thomas Hunt Morgan argued that genes are on chromosomes, based on observations of a sex-linked white eye mutation in fruit flies. In 1913, his student Alfred Sturtevant used the phenomenon of genetic linkage to show that genes are arranged linearly on the chromosome.
Although genes were known to exist on chromosomes, chromosomes are composed of both protein and DNA, and scientists did not know which of the two is responsible for inheritance. In 1928, Frederick Griffith discovered the phenomenon of transformation (see Griffith's experiment): dead bacteria could transfer genetic material to "transform" other still-living bacteria. Sixteen years later, in 1944, the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment identified DNA as the molecule responsible for transformation. The role of the nucleus as the repository of genetic information in eukaryotes had been established by Hämmerling in 1943 in his work on the single celled alga "Acetabularia". The Hershey–Chase experiment in 1952 confirmed that DNA (rather than protein) is the genetic material of the viruses that infect bacteria, providing further evidence that DNA is the molecule responsible for inheritance.
James Watson and Francis Crick determined the structure of DNA in 1953, using the X-ray crystallography work of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins that indicated DNA has a helical structure (i.e., shaped like a corkscrew). Their double-helix model had two strands of DNA with the nucleotides pointing inward, each matching a complementary nucleotide on the other strand to form what look like rungs on a twisted ladder. This structure showed that genetic information exists in the sequence of nucleotides on each strand of DNA. The structure also suggested a simple method for replication: if the strands are separated, new partner strands can be reconstructed for each based on the sequence of the old strand. This property is what gives DNA its semi-conservative nature where one strand of new DNA is from an original parent strand.
Although the structure of DNA showed how inheritance works, it was still not known how DNA influences the behavior of cells. In the following years, scientists tried to understand how DNA controls the process of protein production. It was discovered that the cell uses DNA as a template to create matching messenger RNA, molecules with nucleotides very similar to DNA. The nucleotide sequence of a messenger RNA is used to create an amino acid sequence in protein; this translation between nucleotide sequences and amino acid sequences is known as the genetic code.
With the newfound molecular understanding of inheritance came an explosion of research. A notable theory arose from Tomoko Ohta in 1973 with her amendment to the neutral theory of molecular evolution through publishing the nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution. In this theory, Ohta stressed the importance of natural selection and the environment to the rate at which genetic evolution occurs. One important development was chain-termination DNA sequencing in 1977 by Frederick Sanger. This technology allows scientists to read the nucleotide sequence of a DNA molecule. In 1983, Kary Banks Mullis developed the polymerase chain reaction, providing a quick way to isolate and amplify a specific section of DNA from a mixture. The efforts of the Human Genome Project, Department of Energy, NIH, and parallel private efforts by Celera Genomics led to the sequencing of the human genome in 2003.
At its most fundamental level, inheritance in organisms occurs by passing discrete heritable units, called genes, from parents to offspring. This property was first observed by Gregor Mendel, who studied the segregation of heritable traits in pea plants. In his experiments studying the trait for flower color, Mendel observed that the flowers of each pea plant were either purple or white—but never an intermediate between the two colors. These different, discrete versions of the same gene are called alleles.
In the case of the pea, which is a diploid species, each individual plant has two copies of each gene, one copy inherited from each parent. Many species, including humans, have this pattern of inheritance. Diploid organisms with two copies of the same allele of a given gene are called homozygous at that gene locus, while organisms with two different alleles of a given gene are called heterozygous.
The set of alleles for a given organism is called its genotype, while the observable traits of the organism are called its phenotype. When organisms are heterozygous at a gene, often one allele is called dominant as its qualities dominate the phenotype of the organism, while the other allele is called recessive as its qualities recede and are not observed. Some alleles do not have complete dominance and instead have incomplete dominance by expressing an intermediate phenotype, or codominance by expressing both alleles at once.
When a pair of organisms reproduce sexually, their offspring randomly inherit one of the two alleles from each parent. These observations of discrete inheritance and the segregation of alleles are collectively known as Mendel's first law or the Law of Segregation.
Geneticists use diagrams and symbols to describe inheritance. A gene is represented by one or a few letters. Often a "+" symbol is used to mark the usual, non-mutant allele for a gene.
In fertilization and breeding experiments (and especially when discussing Mendel's laws) the parents are referred to as the "P" generation and the offspring as the "F1" (first filial) generation. When the F1 offspring mate with each other, the offspring are called the "F2" (second filial) generation. One of the common diagrams used to predict the result of cross-breeding is the Punnett square.
When studying human genetic diseases, geneticists often use pedigree charts to represent the inheritance of traits. These charts map the inheritance of a trait in a family tree.
Organisms have thousands of genes, and in sexually reproducing organisms these genes generally assort independently of each other. This means that the inheritance of an allele for yellow or green pea color is unrelated to the inheritance of alleles for white or purple flowers. This phenomenon, known as "Mendel's second law" or the "law of independent assortment," means that the alleles of different genes get shuffled between parents to form offspring with many different combinations. (Some genes do not assort independently, demonstrating genetic linkage, a topic discussed later in this article.)
Often different genes can interact in a way that influences the same trait. In the Blue-eyed Mary ("Omphalodes verna"), for example, there exists a gene with alleles that determine the color of flowers: blue or magenta. Another gene, however, controls whether the flowers have color at all or are white. When a plant has two copies of this white allele, its flowers are white—regardless of whether the first gene has blue or magenta alleles. This interaction between genes is called epistasis, with the second gene epistatic to the first.
Many traits are not discrete features (e.g. purple or white flowers) but are instead continuous features (e.g. human height and skin color). These complex traits are products of many genes. The influence of these genes is mediated, to varying degrees, by the environment an organism has experienced. The degree to which an organism's genes contribute to a complex trait is called heritability. Measurement of the heritability of a trait is relative—in a more variable environment, the environment has a bigger influence on the total variation of the trait. For example, human height is a trait with complex causes. It has a heritability of 89% in the United States. In Nigeria, however, where people experience a more variable access to good nutrition and health care, height has a heritability of only 62%.
The molecular basis for genes is deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA is composed of a chain of nucleotides, of which there are four types: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). Genetic information exists in the sequence of these nucleotides, and genes exist as stretches of sequence along the DNA chain. Viruses are the only exception to this rule—sometimes viruses use the very similar molecule RNA instead of DNA as their genetic material. Viruses cannot reproduce without a host and are unaffected by many genetic processes, so tend not to be considered living organisms.
DNA normally exists as a double-stranded molecule, coiled into the shape of a double helix. Each nucleotide in DNA preferentially pairs with its partner nucleotide on the opposite strand: A pairs with T, and C pairs with G. Thus, in its two-stranded form, each strand effectively contains all necessary information, redundant with its partner strand. This structure of DNA is the physical basis for inheritance: DNA replication duplicates the genetic information by splitting the strands and using each strand as a template for synthesis of a new partner strand.
Genes are arranged linearly along long chains of DNA base-pair sequences. In bacteria, each cell usually contains a single circular genophore, while eukaryotic organisms (such as plants and animals) have their DNA arranged in multiple linear chromosomes. These DNA strands are often extremely long; the largest human chromosome, for example, is about 247 million base pairs in length. The DNA of a chromosome is associated with structural proteins that organize, compact, and control access to the DNA, forming a material called chromatin; in eukaryotes, chromatin is usually composed of nucleosomes, segments of DNA wound around cores of histone proteins. The full set of hereditary material in an organism (usually the combined DNA sequences of all chromosomes) is called the genome.
DNA is most often found in the nucleus of cells, but Ruth Sager helped in the discovery of nonchromosomal genes found outside of the nucleus. In plants, these are often found in the chloroplasts and in other organisms, in the mitochondria. These nonchromosomal genes can still be passed on by either partner in sexual reproduction and they control a variety of hereditary characteristics that replicate and remain active throughout generations.
While haploid organisms have only one copy of each chromosome, most animals and many plants are diploid, containing two of each chromosome and thus two copies of every gene. The two alleles for a gene are located on identical loci of the two homologous chromosomes, each allele inherited from a different parent.
Many species have so-called sex chromosomes that determine the gender of each organism. In humans and many other animals, the Y chromosome contains the gene that triggers the development of the specifically male characteristics. In evolution, this chromosome has lost most of its content and also most of its genes, while the X chromosome is similar to the other chromosomes and contains many genes. This being said, Mary Frances Lyon discovered that there is X-chromosome inactivation during reproduction to avoid passing on twice as many genes to the offspring. Lyon's discovery led to the discovery of other things including X-linked diseases. The X and Y chromosomes form a strongly heterogeneous pair.
When cells divide, their full genome is copied and each daughter cell inherits one copy. This process, called mitosis, is the simplest form of reproduction and is the basis for asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction can also occur in multicellular organisms, producing offspring that inherit their genome from a single parent. Offspring that are genetically identical to their parents are called clones.
Eukaryotic organisms often use sexual reproduction to generate offspring that contain a mixture of genetic material inherited from two different parents. The process of sexual reproduction alternates between forms that contain single copies of the genome (haploid) and double copies (diploid). Haploid cells fuse and combine genetic material to create a diploid cell with paired chromosomes. Diploid organisms form haploids by dividing, without replicating their DNA, to create daughter cells that randomly inherit one of each pair of chromosomes. Most animals and many plants are diploid for most of their lifespan, with the haploid form reduced to single cell gametes such as sperm or eggs.
Although they do not use the haploid/diploid method of sexual reproduction, bacteria have many methods of acquiring new genetic information. Some bacteria can undergo conjugation, transferring a small circular piece of DNA to another bacterium. Bacteria can also take up raw DNA fragments found in the environment and integrate them into their genomes, a phenomenon known as transformation. These processes result in horizontal gene transfer, transmitting fragments of genetic information between organisms that would be otherwise unrelated. Natural bacterial transformation occurs in many bacterial species, and can be regarded as a sexual process for transferring DNA from one cell to another cell (usually of the same species). Transformation requires the action of numerous bacterial gene products, and its primary adaptive function appears to be repair of DNA damages in the recipient cell.
The diploid nature of chromosomes allows for genes on different chromosomes to assort independently or be separated from their homologous pair during sexual reproduction wherein haploid gametes are formed. In this way new combinations of genes can occur in the offspring of a mating pair. Genes on the same chromosome would theoretically never recombine. However, they do, via the cellular process of chromosomal crossover. During crossover, chromosomes exchange stretches of DNA, effectively shuffling the gene alleles between the chromosomes. This process of chromosomal crossover generally occurs during meiosis, a series of cell divisions that creates haploid cells. Meiotic recombination, particularly in microbial eukaryotes, appears to serve the adaptive function of repair of DNA damages.
The first cytological demonstration of crossing over was performed by Harriet Creighton and Barbara McClintock in 1931. Their research and experiments on corn provided cytological evidence for the genetic theory that linked genes on paired chromosomes do in fact exchange places from one homolog to the other.
The probability of chromosomal crossover occurring between two given points on the chromosome is related to the distance between the points. For an arbitrarily long distance, the probability of crossover is high enough that the inheritance of the genes is effectively uncorrelated. For genes that are closer together, however, the lower probability of crossover means that the genes demonstrate genetic linkage; alleles for the two genes tend to be inherited together. The amounts of linkage between a series of genes can be combined to form a linear linkage map that roughly describes the arrangement of the genes along the chromosome.
Genes generally express their functional effect through the production of proteins, which are complex molecules responsible for most functions in the cell. Proteins are made up of one or more polypeptide chains, each of which is composed of a sequence of amino acids, and the DNA sequence of a gene (through an RNA intermediate) is used to produce a specific amino acid sequence. This process begins with the production of an RNA molecule with a sequence matching the gene's DNA sequence, a process called transcription.
This messenger RNA molecule is then used to produce a corresponding amino acid sequence through a process called translation. Each group of three nucleotides in the sequence, called a codon, corresponds either to one of the twenty possible amino acids in a protein or an instruction to end the amino acid sequence; this correspondence is called the genetic code. The flow of information is unidirectional: information is transferred from nucleotide sequences into the amino acid sequence of proteins, but it never transfers from protein back into the sequence of DNA—a phenomenon Francis Crick called the central dogma of molecular biology.
The specific sequence of amino acids results in a unique three-dimensional structure for that protein, and the three-dimensional structures of proteins are related to their functions. Some are simple structural molecules, like the fibers formed by the protein collagen. Proteins can bind to other proteins and simple molecules, sometimes acting as enzymes by facilitating chemical reactions within the bound molecules (without changing the structure of the protein itself). Protein structure is dynamic; the protein hemoglobin bends into slightly different forms as it facilitates the capture, transport, and release of oxygen molecules within mammalian blood.
A single nucleotide difference within DNA can cause a change in the amino acid sequence of a protein. Because protein structures are the result of their amino acid sequences, some changes can dramatically change the properties of a protein by destabilizing the structure or changing the surface of the protein in a way that changes its interaction with other proteins and molecules. For example, sickle-cell anemia is a human genetic disease that results from a single base difference within the coding region for the β-globin section of hemoglobin, causing a single amino acid change that changes hemoglobin's physical properties. Sickle-cell versions of hemoglobin stick to themselves, stacking to form fibers that distort the shape of red blood cells carrying the protein. These sickle-shaped cells no longer flow smoothly through blood vessels, having a tendency to clog or degrade, causing the medical problems associated with this disease.
Some DNA sequences are transcribed into RNA but are not translated into protein products—such RNA molecules are called non-coding RNA. In some cases, these products fold into structures which are involved in critical cell functions (e.g. ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA). RNA can also have regulatory effects through hybridization interactions with other RNA molecules (e.g. microRNA).
Although genes contain all the information an organism uses to function, the environment plays an important role in determining the ultimate phenotypes an organism displays. The phrase "nature and nurture" refers to this complementary relationship. The phenotype of an organism depends on the interaction of genes and the environment. An interesting example is the coat coloration of the Siamese cat. In this case, the body temperature of the cat plays the role of the environment. The cat's genes code for dark hair, thus the hair-producing cells in the cat make cellular proteins resulting in dark hair. But these dark hair-producing proteins are sensitive to temperature (i.e. have a mutation causing temperature-sensitivity) and denature in higher-temperature environments, failing to produce dark-hair pigment in areas where the cat has a higher body temperature. In a low-temperature environment, however, the protein's structure is stable and produces dark-hair pigment normally. The protein remains functional in areas of skin that are coldersuch as its legs, ears, tail and faceso the cat has dark hair at its extremities.
Environment plays a major role in effects of the human genetic disease phenylketonuria. The mutation that causes phenylketonuria disrupts the ability of the body to break down the amino acid phenylalanine, causing a toxic build-up of an intermediate molecule that, in turn, causes severe symptoms of progressive intellectual disability and seizures. However, if someone with the phenylketonuria mutation follows a strict diet that avoids this amino acid, they remain normal and healthy.
A common method for determining how genes and environment ("nature and nurture") contribute to a phenotype involves studying identical and fraternal twins, or other siblings of multiple births. Identical siblings are genetically the same since they come from the same zygote. Meanwhile, fraternal twins are as genetically different from one another as normal siblings. By comparing how often a certain disorder occurs in a pair of identical twins to how often it occurs in a pair of fraternal twins, scientists can determine whether that disorder is caused by genetic or postnatal environmental factors. One famous example involved the study of the Genain quadruplets, who were identical quadruplets all diagnosed with schizophrenia.
However, such tests cannot separate genetic factors from environmental factors affecting fetal development.
The genome of a given organism contains thousands of genes, but not all these genes need to be active at any given moment. A gene is expressed when it is being transcribed into mRNA and there exist many cellular methods of controlling the expression of genes such that proteins are produced only when needed by the cell. Transcription factors are regulatory proteins that bind to DNA, either promoting or inhibiting the transcription of a gene. Within the genome of "Escherichia coli" bacteria, for example, there exists a series of genes necessary for the synthesis of the amino acid tryptophan. However, when tryptophan is already available to the cell, these genes for tryptophan synthesis are no longer needed. The presence of tryptophan directly affects the activity of the genes—tryptophan molecules bind to the tryptophan repressor (a transcription factor), changing the repressor's structure such that the repressor binds to the genes. The tryptophan repressor blocks the transcription and expression of the genes, thereby creating negative feedback regulation of the tryptophan synthesis process.
Differences in gene expression are especially clear within multicellular organisms, where cells all contain the same genome but have very different structures and behaviors due to the expression of different sets of genes. All the cells in a multicellular organism derive from a single cell, differentiating into variant cell types in response to external and intercellular signals and gradually establishing different patterns of gene expression to create different behaviors. As no single gene is responsible for the development of structures within multicellular organisms, these patterns arise from the complex interactions between many cells.
Within eukaryotes, there exist structural features of chromatin that influence the transcription of genes, often in the form of modifications to DNA and chromatin that are stably inherited by daughter cells. These features are called "epigenetic" because they exist "on top" of the DNA sequence and retain inheritance from one cell generation to the next. Because of epigenetic features, different cell types grown within the same medium can retain very different properties. Although epigenetic features are generally dynamic over the course of development, some, like the phenomenon of paramutation, have multigenerational inheritance and exist as rare exceptions to the general rule of DNA as the basis for inheritance.
During the process of DNA replication, errors occasionally occur in the polymerization of the second strand. These errors, called mutations, can affect the phenotype of an organism, especially if they occur within the protein coding sequence of a gene. Error rates are usually very low—1 error in every 10–100 million bases—due to the "proofreading" ability of DNA polymerases. Processes that increase the rate of changes in DNA are called mutagenic: mutagenic chemicals promote errors in DNA replication, often by interfering with the structure of base-pairing, while UV radiation induces mutations by causing damage to the DNA structure. Chemical damage to DNA occurs naturally as well and cells use DNA repair mechanisms to repair mismatches and breaks. The repair does not, however, always restore the original sequence. A particularly important source of DNA damages appears to be reactive oxygen species produced by cellular aerobic respiration, and these can lead to mutations.
In organisms that use chromosomal crossover to exchange DNA and recombine genes, errors in alignment during meiosis can also cause mutations. Errors in crossover are especially likely when similar sequences cause partner chromosomes to adopt a mistaken alignment; this makes some regions in genomes more prone to mutating in this way. These errors create large structural changes in DNA sequenceduplications, inversions, deletions of entire regionsor the accidental exchange of whole parts of sequences between different chromosomes (chromosomal translocation).
Mutations alter an organism's genotype and occasionally this causes different phenotypes to appear. Most mutations have little effect on an organism's phenotype, health, or reproductive fitness. Mutations that do have an effect are usually detrimental, but occasionally some can be beneficial. Studies in the fly "Drosophila melanogaster" suggest that if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, about 70 percent of these mutations will be harmful with the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial.
Population genetics studies the distribution of genetic differences within populations and how these distributions change over time. Changes in the frequency of an allele in a population are mainly influenced by natural selection, where a given allele provides a selective or reproductive advantage to the organism, as well as other factors such as mutation, genetic drift, genetic hitchhiking, artificial selection and migration.
Over many generations, the genomes of organisms can change significantly, resulting in evolution. In the process called adaptation, selection for beneficial mutations can cause a species to evolve into forms better able to survive in their environment. New species are formed through the process of speciation, often caused by geographical separations that prevent populations from exchanging genes with each other.
By comparing the homology between different species' genomes, it is possible to calculate the evolutionary distance between them and when they may have diverged. Genetic comparisons are generally considered a more accurate method of characterizing the relatedness between species than the comparison of phenotypic characteristics. The evolutionary distances between species can be used to form evolutionary trees; these trees represent the common descent and divergence of species over time, although they do not show the transfer of genetic material between unrelated species (known as horizontal gene transfer and most common in bacteria).
Although geneticists originally studied inheritance in a wide range of organisms, researchers began to specialize in studying the genetics of a particular subset of organisms. The fact that significant research already existed for a given organism would encourage new researchers to choose it for further study, and so eventually a few model organisms became the basis for most genetics research. Common research topics in model organism genetics include the study of gene regulation and the involvement of genes in development and cancer.
Organisms were chosen, in part, for convenience—short generation times and easy genetic manipulation made some organisms popular genetics research tools. Widely used model organisms include the gut bacterium "Escherichia coli", the plant "Arabidopsis thaliana", baker's yeast ("Saccharomyces cerevisiae"), the nematode "Caenorhabditis elegans", the common fruit fly ("Drosophila melanogaster"), and the common house mouse ("Mus musculus").
Medical genetics seeks to understand how genetic variation relates to human health and disease. When searching for an unknown gene that may be involved in a disease, researchers commonly use genetic linkage and genetic pedigree charts to find the location on the genome associated with the disease. At the population level, researchers take advantage of Mendelian randomization to look for locations in the genome that are associated with diseases, a method especially useful for multigenic traits not clearly defined by a single gene. Once a candidate gene is found, further research is often done on the corresponding (or homologous) genes of model organisms. In addition to studying genetic diseases, the increased availability of genotyping methods has led to the field of pharmacogenetics: the study of how genotype can affect drug responses.
Individuals differ in their inherited tendency to develop cancer, and cancer is a genetic disease. The process of cancer development in the body is a combination of events. Mutations occasionally occur within cells in the body as they divide. Although these mutations will not be inherited by any offspring, they can affect the behavior of cells, sometimes causing them to grow and divide more frequently. There are biological mechanisms that attempt to stop this process; signals are given to inappropriately dividing cells that should trigger cell death, but sometimes additional mutations occur that cause cells to ignore these messages. An internal process of natural selection occurs within the body and eventually mutations accumulate within cells to promote their own growth, creating a cancerous tumor that grows and invades various tissues of the body.
Normally, a cell divides only in response to signals called growth factors and stops growing once in contact with surrounding cells and in response to growth-inhibitory signals. It usually then divides a limited number of times and dies, staying within the epithelium where it is unable to migrate to other organs. To become a cancer cell, a cell has to accumulate mutations in a number of genes (three to seven). A cancer cell can divide without growth factor and ignores inhibitory signals. Also, it is immortal and can grow indefinitely, even after it makes contact with neighboring cells. It may escape from the epithelium and ultimately from the primary tumor. Then, the escaped cell can cross the endothelium of a blood vessel and get transported by the bloodstream to colonize a new organ, forming deadly metastasis. Although there are some genetic predispositions in a small fraction of cancers, the major fraction is due to a set of new genetic mutations that originally appear and accumulate in one or a small number of cells that will divide to form the tumor and are not transmitted to the progeny (somatic mutations). The most frequent mutations are a loss of function of p53 protein, a tumor suppressor, or in the p53 pathway, and gain of function mutations in the Ras proteins, or in other oncogenes.
DNA can be manipulated in the laboratory. Restriction enzymes are commonly used enzymes that cut DNA at specific sequences, producing predictable fragments of DNA. DNA fragments can be visualized through use of gel electrophoresis, which separates fragments according to their length.
The use of ligation enzymes allows DNA fragments to be connected. By binding ("ligating") fragments of DNA together from different sources, researchers can create recombinant DNA, the DNA often associated with genetically modified organisms. Recombinant DNA is commonly used in the context of plasmids: short circular DNA molecules with a few genes on them. In the process known as molecular cloning, researchers can amplify the DNA fragments by inserting plasmids into bacteria and then culturing them on plates of agar (to isolate clones of bacteria cells—"cloning" can also refer to the various means of creating cloned ("clonal") organisms).
DNA can also be amplified using a procedure called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). By using specific short sequences of DNA, PCR can isolate and exponentially amplify a targeted region of DNA. Because it can amplify from extremely small amounts of DNA, PCR is also often used to detect the presence of specific DNA sequences.
DNA sequencing, one of the most fundamental technologies developed to study genetics, allows researchers to determine the sequence of nucleotides in DNA fragments. The technique of chain-termination sequencing, developed in 1977 by a team led by Frederick Sanger, is still routinely used to sequence DNA fragments. Using this technology, researchers have been able to study the molecular sequences associated with many human diseases.
As sequencing has become less expensive, researchers have sequenced the genomes of many organisms using a process called genome assembly, which utilizes computational tools to stitch together sequences from many different fragments. These technologies were used to sequence the human genome in the Human Genome Project completed in 2003. New high-throughput sequencing technologies are dramatically lowering the cost of DNA sequencing, with many researchers hoping to bring the cost of resequencing a human genome down to a thousand dollars.
Next-generation sequencing (or high-throughput sequencing) came about due to the ever-increasing demand for low-cost sequencing. These sequencing technologies allow the production of potentially millions of sequences concurrently. The large amount of sequence data available has created the field of genomics, research that uses computational tools to search for and analyze patterns in the full genomes of organisms. Genomics can also be considered a subfield of bioinformatics, which uses computational approaches to analyze large sets of biological data. A common problem to these fields of research is how to manage and share data that deals with human subject and personally identifiable information.
On 19 March 2015, a group of leading biologists urged a worldwide ban on clinical use of methods, particularly the use of CRISPR and zinc finger, to edit the human genome in a way that can be inherited. In April 2015, Chinese researchers reported results of basic research to edit the DNA of non-viable human embryos using CRISPR. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12266 |
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, and as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives and destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.
Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless "dénouements" (outcomes). Many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are permanently changed by their experiences. He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story, "Boule de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered his masterpiece.
Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was born on 5 August 1850 at the late-16th century Château de Miromesnil, near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) department in France. He was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, both from prosperous bourgeois families. His mother urged his father when they married in 1846 to obtain the right to use the particule or form "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant" as his family name, in order to indicate noble birth. Gustave discovered a certain Jean-Baptiste Maupassant, "conseiller-secrétaire" to the King, who was ennobled in 1752. He then obtained from the "Tribunal Civil" of Rouen by decree dated 9 July 1846 the right to style himself "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant" and this was his surname at the birth of his son Guy in 1850.
When Maupassant was 11 and his brother Hervé was five, his mother, an independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace to obtain a legal separation from her husband, who was violent towards her.
After the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept her two sons. With the father's absence, Maupassant's mother became the most influential figure in the young boy's life. She was an exceptionally well-read woman and was very fond of classical literature, particularly Shakespeare. Until the age of thirteen, Guy lived happily with his mother, at Étretat, in the Villa des Verguies, where, between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of fishing and outdoor activities. At age thirteen, his mother next placed her two sons as day boarders in a private school, the Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen—the "Institution Robineau" of Maupassant's story "La Question du Latin"—for classical studies. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion, and to judge from verses composed around this time he deplored the ecclesiastical atmosphere, its ritual and discipline. Finding the place to be unbearable, he finally got himself expelled in his next-to-last year.
In 1867, as he entered junior high school, Maupassant made acquaintance with Gustave Flaubert at Croisset at the insistence of his mother. Next year, in autumn, he was sent to the "Lycée Pierre-Corneille" in Rouen where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals. In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat.
The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870; he enlisted as a volunteer. In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. During this time his only recreation and relaxation was boating on the Seine on Sundays and holidays.
Gustave Flaubert took him under his protection and acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flaubert's home, he met Émile Zola and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, as well as many of the proponents of the realist and naturalist schools. He wrote and played himself in a comedy in 1875 (with the benediction of Flaubert), "".
In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and became a contributing editor to several leading newspapers such as "Le Figaro", "Gil Blas", "Le Gaulois" and "l'Écho de Paris". He devoted his spare time to writing novels and short stories.
In 1880 he published what is considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met with instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as "a masterpiece that will endure." This was Maupassant's first piece of short fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War, and was followed by short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".
The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of Maupassant's life. Made famous by his first short story, he worked methodically and produced two or sometimes four volumes annually. His talent and practical business sense made him wealthy.
In 1881 he published his first volume of short stories under the title of "La Maison Tellier"; it reached its twelfth edition within two years. In 1883 he finished his first novel, "Une Vie" (translated into English as "A Woman's Life"), 25,000 copies of which were sold in less than a year. His second novel "Bel Ami", which came out in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months.
His editor, Havard, commissioned him to write more stories, and Maupassant continued to produce them efficiently and frequently. At this time he wrote what many consider to be his greatest novel, "Pierre et Jean".
With a natural aversion to society, he loved retirement, solitude, and meditation. He traveled extensively in Algeria, Italy, England, Brittany, Sicily, Auvergne, and from each voyage brought back a new volume. He cruised on his private yacht "Bel-Ami", named after his novel. This life did not prevent him from making friends among the literary celebrities of his day: Alexandre Dumas, fils had a paternal affection for him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine and became devoted to the philosopher-historian.
Flaubert continued to act as his literary godfather. His friendship with the Goncourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambiance of gossip, scandal, duplicity, and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an 18th-century style salon.
Maupassant was one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians (including Charles Gounod, Alexandre Dumas, "fils", and Charles Garnier) who did not care for the Eiffel Tower. He often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of preference for the food but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile. He and forty-six other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to an elaborately irate letter of protest against the tower's construction, written to the Minister of Public Works.
Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms such as Joseph Prunier, Guy de Valmont, and Maufrigneuse (which he used from 1881 to 1885).
In his later years he developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death and paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth. It has been suggested that his brother, Hervé, also suffered from syphilis and the disease may have been congenital. On 2 January 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat, and was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died 6 July 1893.
Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing." He is buried in Section 26 of the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris.
Maupassant is considered a father of the modern short story. Literary theorist Kornelije Kvas wrote that along "with Chekhov, Maupassant is the greatest master of the short story in world literature. He is not a naturalist like Zola; to him, physiological processes do not constitute the basis of human actions, although the influence of the environment is manifested in his prose. In many respects, Maupassant’s naturalism is Schopenhauerian anthropological pessimism, as he is often harsh and merciless when it comes to depicting human nature. He owes most to Flaubert, from whom he learned to use a concise and measured style and to establish a distance towards the object of narration." He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. One of his famous short stories, "The Necklace", was imitated with a twist by both Maugham ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads") and Henry James ("Paste").
Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and "Bel-Ami" aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.
The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886.
Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as the subject for one of his essays on art: "". His stories are second only to Shakespeare in their inspiration of movie adaptations with films ranging from "Stagecoach", "Oyuki the Virgin" and "Masculine Feminine".
Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:
"I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."
William Saroyan wrote a short story about Maupassant in his 1971 book, "Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody".
Isaac Babel wrote a short story about him, “Guy de Maupassant.” It appears in "The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel" and in the story anthology "You’ve Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe."
Gene Roddenberry, in an early draft for "The Questor Tapes", wrote a scene in which the android "Questor" employs Maupassant's theory that, "the human female will open her mind to a man to whom she has opened other channels of communications." In the script Questor copulates with a woman to obtain information that she is reluctant to impart. Due to complaints from NBC executives, this part of the script was never filmed.
Michel Drach directed and co-wrote a 1982 French biographical film: "Guy de Maupassant". Claude Brasseur stars as the titular character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12274 |
Gheorghe Hagi
Gheorghe Hagi (; born 5 February 1965) is a Romanian football manager and former professional player, who played as an attacking midfielder. He is currently the owner and manager of Romanian club Viitorul Constanța. Hagi was considered one of the best players in the world during the 1980s and '90s, and is regarded by many as the greatest Romanian footballer of all time. Fans of Turkish club Galatasaray, with whom Hagi ended his career, called him ""Comandante"" ("The Commander"), while he was known as ""Regele"" ("The King") to Romanian supporters. Nicknamed "The Maradona of the Carpathians", he was a creative advanced playmaker renowned for his dribbling, technique, vision, passing and shooting.
After starting his playing career in Romania, with Farul Constanța, and subsequently featuring for Sportul Studențesc and Steaua București, he later also had spells in Spain with Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, Italy with Brescia, and Turkey, with Galatasaray; as such, Hagi is one of the few footballers to have played for both Spanish rival clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona. Throughout his club career, he won numerous titles while playing in four different countries: he won three Romanian League titles, two Cupa României titles, and the European Super Cup with Steaua București – also reaching the final of the 1988–89 European Cup –, a Supercopa de España title with Real Madrid, the Anglo-Italian Cup with Brescia, another Supercopa de España title with Barcelona, and four Süper Lig titles, two Turkish Cups, two Turkish Super Cups, the UEFA Cup, and the UEFA Super Cup with Galatasaray.
At international level, Hagi played for the Romanian national team in three FIFA World Cups, in 1990, 1994 (where he was named in the World Cup All-Star Team after helping his nation to the quarter-finals of the tournament) and 1998; as well as in three UEFA European Championships, in 1984, 1996 and 2000. He won a total of 124 caps for Romania between 1983 and 2000, making him the second-most capped Romanian player of all time, behind only Dorinel Munteanu; he is also the joint all-time leading goalscorer of the Romanian national side (alongside Adrian Mutu) with 35 goals.
Hagi is considered a hero both in his homeland and in Turkey. He was named Romanian Footballer of the Year a record seven times, and is regarded as one of the best football players of his generation. In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, Hagi was selected as the Golden Player of Romania by the Romanian Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years. In 2004, he was named by Pelé as one of the 125 Greatest Living Footballers at a FIFA Awards Ceremony. In 1999, he was ranked at number 25 in "World Soccer Magazine"s list of the 100 greatest players of the 20th century.
Following his retirement in 2001, Hagi pursued a managerial career, coaching the Romanian national team, as well as clubs in both Romania and Turkey, namely Bursaspor, Galatasaray, Politehnica Timișoara, Steaua București, and Viitorul Constanța. In 2009, he founded Romanian club Viitorul Constanța, which he has coached since 2014; he is currently both the owner and the manager of the club. Hagi also established the Gheorghe Hagi Football Academy, one of the largest football academies in Southeastern Europe.
Hagi started his career playing for the youth teams of Farul Constanța in the 1970s, before being selected by the Romanian Football Federation to join the squad of Luceafărul București in 1980, where he remained for two years. In 1982, he returned to Constanța, but one year later, aged 18, he was prepared to make the step up to play for a top team. He was originally directed to Universitatea Craiova, but chose Sportul Studențesc of Bucharest instead.
In late 1986, Hagi transferred to Steaua București as the team prepared for the European Super Cup final against Dynamo Kyiv. The original contract was for a one-game loan only, the final. However, after winning the trophy, in which Hagi scored the only goal of the match from a free kick, Steaua did not want to release him back to Sportul Studențesc and retained him. During his Steaua years (1987–1990), Hagi played 97 Liga I games, scoring 76 goals, and netted 98 goals in total in 107 appearances for the club across all competitions. With the club, he reached the European Cup semi-final in 1988, and the final in the following year, while Hagi finished as one of the competition's top scorers in the former edition of the tournament. Hagi also won three consecutive league and Cup doubles with Steaua between 1987 and 1989. His strong performances had him linked with Arrigo Sacchi's Milan, fellow Serie A club Juventus, and German side Bayern Munich, but Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist government rejected any offer.
After impressing at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, Hagi was signed by Spanish club Real Madrid on 27 June that same year; the La Liga side paid $3.5 million to Steaua București in order to acquire him. Hagi played two seasons with Real Madrid, which were largely unsuccessful, scoring 20 goals in 84 games, and only winning the Supercopa de España; some of his most memorable performances for the club included a hat-trick in a 5–0 home win over Athletic Bilbao at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, on match-day 22 of the 1991–92 season, and a 40-yard lob against Osasuna during the same campaign. He was subsequently sold to Italian side Brescia for 8 billion lira in 1992.
Hagi began the 1992–93 season with Brescia in Serie A, but after his first season, the club was relegated to Serie B. The following season, Hagi helped the club win the Anglo-Italian Cup, with Brescia defeating Notts County 1–0 in the final at Wembley, and also helped the team finish third in Serie B and earn promotion back to Serie A. After performing memorably during the 1994 World Cup, Hagi returned to Spain, and was signed by defending La Liga champions Barcelona for £2 million, where he immediately won his second Supercopa de España title; however, he later struggled to gain playing time at the club under manager Johan Cruyff.
After two years at "Barça", Hagi signed for Turkish club Galatasaray in 1996, at the age of 31. He had been the subject of a competing transfer offer from São Paulo FC. Although in the twilight of his career, at Galatasaray, he was extremely successful, and became highly popular among the Turkish supporters, due to his excellent performances for the club. Hagi was an important member of the Galatasaray team that went on to win four consecutive league titles between 1996 and 2000. In 2000, at age 35, Hagi had one of the best seasons of his career, winning every possible major title with Galatasaray that season. Most significantly, Hagi captained the club to win the 1999–2000 UEFA Cup after defeating Arsenal on penalties in the final, following a 0–0 draw; during the match, Hagi was sent off in extra-time for punching Arsenal captain Tony Adams. Consequently, Galatasaray became the first Turkish club to win a UEFA club competition title. The team's UEFA Cup triumph was immediately followed by the UEFA Super Cup title, with a historic 2–1 win against Hagi's former club Real Madrid in extra-time. The mass hysteria caused by these wins in Istanbul raised Hagi's popularity with the fans even further, and prompted former France international Luis Fernández to say, "Hagi is like wine, the older it gets, the better it is."
When he retired in 2001, Hagi was one of the most popular players in both Turkey and Romania. Hagi drew praise from the Galatasaray supporters for his performances during his time with the club, who adopted the chant "I Love You Hagi" in his honour.
Hagi made his debut for the Romania national team in 1983, against Norway, in Oslo, at the age of 18. He scored his first international goal against Northern Ireland in 1984. The following year, he was made captain for the first time, in a World Cup qualifier against the same opponent.
Although Romania failed to qualify for the 1986 World Cup, Hagi later took part at the 1990 World Cup, where he helped the team reach the round of 16, before Republic of Ireland ended their run, after winning the resulting penalty shoot-out following a 0–0 draw, with Hagi netting Romania's first spot kick. Four years later, he led the Romanian team to its best ever international performance at the 1994 World Cup, as they reached the quarter-finals, only to lose to Sweden in a penalty shoot-out once again. Hagi scored three times in the tournament, including a memorable goal in their 3–2 surprise defeat of South American powerhouse and previous runners-up Argentina. In the first of Romania's group stage matches, a 3–1 win against Colombia, Hagi provided two assists and scored one of the most memorable goals of the tournament, curling in a 40-yard lob over Colombian goalkeeper Óscar Córdoba who was caught out of position; the goal was later voted the fifth greatest World Cup goal in a FIFAworldcup.com poll. Hagi was named in the Team of the Tournament for his performances.
Four years later, he captained Romania at the 1998 World Cup; Hagi initially communicated that France '98 would be his final tournament. Romania topped their group, which featured England, Colombia, and Tunisia, and reached the round of 16, before being eliminated by Croatia. After the tournament, Hagi retired from the national team, only to change his mind after a few months and participate in UEFA Euro 2000, during which he was sent off in the 2–0 quarter-final loss against eventual runners-up Italy; this was his final international appearance.
Hagi retired from professional football in 2001, at the age of 36; that year, he was given a send-off in a testimonial game on 24 April, called "Gala Hagi," featuring a team of Romanian All-Stars against a team of international All-Stars. At the time of his retirement, his 124 caps for his country were a national record, which has since been surpassed by Dorinel Munteanu. He currently still holds the record of most goals scored for the Romanian national team, alongside Adrian Mutu, with 35.
In 2001, Hagi was named the manager of the Romania national team, replacing Ladislau Bölöni, who left the squad to coach Sporting Clube de Portugal. After failing to qualify the team for the World Cup, however, Hagi was sacked. His only notable achievement during the six months as Romania's manager was the win in Budapest against Hungary.
In 2003, Hagi took over as coach of Turkish Süper Lig side Bursaspor, but left the club after a disappointing start to the season.
Hagi then became manager of Galatasaray in 2004, leading the team to the Turkish Cup in 2005 final with 5–1 as a score against fierce rivals Fenerbahçe. His contract, however, was not renewed since his team was not able to win 2004–05 Süper Lig title over Fenerbahçe during the centennial of the club.
Steaua București sought to hire Hagi in the summer of 2005, but Hagi's requested wage could not be met by the Romanian champions, and he became manager of Politehnica Timișoara instead. However, after a string of poor results and disagreements with management, he left the club after a few months. Constanța's main stadium used to bear his name, but the name was changed after Hagi signed with Politehnica Timișoara.
From June to September 2007, Hagi coached Steaua București, had a mediocre start in the internal championship mainly due to the large number of unavailable injured players, and managed to qualify the team for the second time in line to the UEFA Champions League group stages, passing two qualifying rounds. He resigned due to a long series of conflicts with club owner Gigi Becali, which also happens to be his godson. The main reason for resigning was the owner's policy of imposing players, making the team's strategy and threats. Hagi's resigned mere hours after Steaua's first Champions League match away against Slavia Prague, a 2–1 loss.
After Frank Rijkaard was sacked as coach, Hagi signed a one and a half-year contract with Galatasaray on 21 October 2010. His official presentation was held on 22 October. His former teammate from Galatasaray Tugay Kerimoğlu assisted him in Istanbul, but he was sacked on 22 March 2011 after a series of poor results in the Süper Lig.
In September 2014, Hagi appointed himself manager of Viitorul Constanța, in addition to being the owner and charmain of the club. Successfully avoiding relegation in his first season, Viitorul went on to be the season's wonder in the 2015–16 season, finishing the first half of the regular season on 3rd place, which led Hagi to being named Romania Coach of the Year. Eventually, Viitorul finished the regular season on 4th place, earning their first play-off qualification. Viitorul finished the play-off on 5th place, but qualified for the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round due to Dinamo București's insolvency. In their first European match, Viitorul were defeated 0–5 by Gent at the Ghelamco Arena, and were eliminated after a 0–0 home draw.
Viitorul won their maiden league title, being 2016–17 Liga I champions after a 1–0 home victory over CFR Cluj; they finished the play-off with 44 points, same as Steaua București, but on a better head-to-head record after a 3–1 home victory over Steaua. As a result, Hagi won his second Romania Coach of the Year award.
A talented left-footed attacking midfielder, Hagi's playing style was frequently compared with Diego Maradona's throughout his career, due to his technical ability as well as his temperamental character and leadership; as a youth, he was mainly inspired by compatriots Anghel Iordănescu and Ion Dumitru. A quick, highly creative, and mobile advanced playmaker, Hagi was also tactically versatile, and capable of playing in several midfield and offensive positions on either wing or through the middle, due to his ability with both feet, despite being naturally left-footed, although he had a preference for using his stronger foot; his preferred position was in a free role as a classic number 10, but he was also used as a second striker on occasion. Hagi was renowned in particular for his first touch and speed on the ball, as well as his timing, interpretation of space, bursts of acceleration, and dribbling skills, which enabled him to get past defenders; he was also highly regarded for his vision and precise passing, although he was capable of both scoring and assisting goals, and was also an accurate finisher and set-piece taker, who had a penchant for scoring goals from powerful, bending long range strikes. Despite his small stature and slender build, Hagi possessed significant upper body strength, which, along with his control, aided him in protecting the ball from opponents, and allowed him to create space for himself or his teammates. Despite his skill and his reputation as one of the greatest number 10s of his generation, his career was marked by inconsistency at times, and he was also considered to be a controversial player, due to his rebellious and arrogant attitude, as well as his low work-rate, aggression, unsportsmanlike behaviour, and lack of discipline, which led him to have several disagreements and confrontations with his managers, opponents, and officials.
His son Ianis Hagi, who is also a footballer was born in Istanbul, Turkey, when he was playing for Galatasaray SK. Ianis currently plays for Scottish club Rangers.
"Scores and results list Romania's goal tally first"
Steaua București
Real Madrid
Brescia
Barcelona
Galatasaray
Galatasaray
Viitorul Constanța | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12276 |
Gordon Banks
Gordon Banks (30 December 1937 – 12 February 2019) was an English professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He made 679 appearances during a 20-year professional career, and won 73 caps for England, highlighted by starting every game of the nation's 1966 World Cup victory.
Banks joined Chesterfield in March 1953, and played for their youth team in the 1956 FA Youth Cup final. He made his first team debut in November 1958, and was sold to Leicester City for £7,000 in July 1959. He played in four cup finals for the club, as they were beaten in the 1961 and 1963 FA Cup finals, before winning the League Cup in 1964 and finishing as finalists in 1965. Despite this success, and his World Cup win in 1966, he was dropped by Leicester and sold on to Stoke City for £50,000 in April 1967. In the 1970 World Cup, he made one of the game's great saves to prevent a Pelé goal, but was absent due to illness as England were beaten by West Germany at the quarter-final stage.
Banks was Stoke City's goalkeeper in the 1972 League Cup win—the club's only major honour. He was still Stoke and England's number one when a car crash in October 1972 cost him both the sight in his right eye, and eventually, his professional career. He played two last seasons in the United States for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in 1977 and 1978, and despite only having vision in one eye, was NASL Goalkeeper of the Year in 1977 after posting the best defensive record in the league. He briefly entered management with Telford United, but left the game in December 1980.
Regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, Banks was named FWA Footballer of the Year in 1972, and was named FIFA Goalkeeper of the Year on six occasions. The IFFHS named Banks the second-best goalkeeper of the 20th century, after Lev Yashin (1st) and ahead of Dino Zoff (3rd).
Banks was born in Abbeydale, Sheffield, and brought up in the working-class area of Tinsley. The family later moved to the village of Catcliffe after his father set up a (then-illegal) betting shop. This brought greater prosperity but also misery; one day Banks's disabled brother was mugged for the shop's daily takings, and died of his injuries some weeks later. Banks left school in December 1952, aged 15, and took up employment as a bagger with a local coal merchant, which helped to build up his upper body strength. He spent a season playing for amateur side Millspaugh after their regular goalkeeper failed to turn up for a match; the club's trainer spotted Banks amongst the spectators and invited him to play in goal as he was aware that Banks had previously played for Sheffield Schoolboys. His performances there earned him a game in the Yorkshire League for Rawmarsh Welfare, however a 12–2 defeat to Stocksbridge Works on his debut was followed by a 3–1 home defeat, and he was dropped by Rawmarsh and returned to Millspaugh. Still aged 15, he then switched jobs to become a hod carrier.
He was scouted by Chesterfield whilst playing for Millspaugh, and offered a six-game trial in the youth team in March 1953. He impressed enough in these games to be offered a part-time £3-a-week contract by manager Teddy Davison in July 1953. The reserve team were placed in the Central League on account of a powerful club director rather than on merit, and Banks conceded 122 goals in the 1954–55 season as the "Spireites" finished in last place with only three victories. Banks was posted to Germany with the Royal Signals on national service, and won the Rhine Cup with his regimental team. He recovered from a fractured elbow to help the Chesterfield youth team to the 1956 final of the FA Youth Cup. There they were beaten 4–3 on aggregate by Manchester United's famous "Busby Babes"—a team that included both Wilf McGuinness and Bobby Charlton.
Banks was given his first team debut by manager Doug Livingstone, at the expense of long-serving Ron Powell, in a Third Division game against Colchester United at Saltergate in November 1958. The game ended 2–2, and Banks kept his place against Norwich City in the following match; by the end of the 1958–59 season he had missed only three games, those owing to injury. With no goalkeeping coach to guide him, Banks had to learn from his mistakes on the pitch, and he soon developed into a modern vocal goalkeeper who ordered the players in front of him into a more effective defence. Having just 23 league and three cup appearances to his name, it came as a surprise to Banks when Matt Gillies, manager of First Division club Leicester City, bought him from Chesterfield for £7,000 in July 1959; this also meant a wage increase to £15 a week.
Banks faced competition from five other goalkeepers, including 30-year-old Scotland international Johnny Anderson and 25-year-old Dave MacLaren. He started the 1959–60 season as the reserve team's goalkeeper. This in effect made him the club's second choice, ahead of four of his rivals but behind first team choice MacLaren. He had played four reserve team games when MacLaren picked up an injury, and manager Matt Gillies selected Banks for his Leicester debut against Blackpool at Filbert Street on 9 September. The match finished 1–1, with Jackie Mudie's strike cancelling out Ken Leek's opener. Banks retained his place for the 2–0 loss to Newcastle United at St James' Park three days later. With McLaren fit again, Banks was sent back to the reserves but, after the first team conceded 14 goals in the next five games, he was recalled and became the first-choice goalkeeper for the remainder of the season. The defensive record did not improve at first, with Banks conceding six in a heavy defeat by Everton at Goodison Park, but he improved in each match and the Foxes settled for a comfortable 12th-place finish. In training, he worked extensively on improving his weaknesses, such as coming for crosses. He put in extra hours during training and came up with practice sessions to improve his skills – this was largely unique in an era where there were no specialized goalkeeping coaches. In the summer, both Anderson and MacLaren departed, leaving Banks as the club's undisputed number one ahead of a group of understudies.
Leicester finished sixth in 1960–61, and managed to beat champions Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane. Yet their greatest accomplishment was in reaching the final of the FA Cup, with Banks conceding only five goals in their nine games "en route" to the final, and keeping three clean sheets in the semi-final and two replays against Sheffield United. Goals from Jimmy Walsh and Ken Leek finally broke the deadlock in the second replay at St Andrew's. Their opponents in the final at Wembley were Tottenham, who had already won the First Division title by an eight-point margin. Right-back Len Chalmers picked up a severe injury early in the match, and with Ken Leek dropped for disciplinary reasons in favour of rookie Hughie McIlmoyle, City were effectively playing with ten men and offered little threat going forward. Bobby Smith and Terry Dyson gave Spurs a 2–0 win and the first "double" of the 20th century, with Banks unable to prevent either goal.
The 1961–62 season proved to be highly disappointing, as Leicester finished 14th in the league and exited the FA Cup at the hands of Stoke City. The only highlight was the club's participation in the European Cup Winners' Cup, which actually put Banks in the difficult position of choosing to play for his club against Spanish club Atlético Madrid or choosing to attend the England versus Portugal match as a non-playing squad member. He elected to attend both games, leaving London at full-time to reach Leicester 30 minutes before the kick-off against Madrid. A last-minute goal earned the Spaniards a 1–1 draw at Filbert Street. In the return leg, Banks saved an Enrique Collar penalty, but Atlético were awarded a second penalty which Collar converted, and Leicester lost the game 2–0 (losing the tie 3–1 on aggregate).
Banks broke his nose at Craven Cottage on the opening day of the 1962–63 season, in a 2–1 defeat by Fulham. Leicester went to chase a possible double, reaching the FA Cup semi-finals whilst lying top of the table in April. City beat Liverpool 1–0 at Hillsborough to reach the final, with Banks keeping a clean sheet despite his goal being under a near-constant siege from the Merseyside club. The "News of the World" reported that Liverpool had had 34 attempts on goal to Leicester's one, and Banks later stated that it was his finest performance at club level. Unluckily, Banks then broke a finger in a 2–1 defeat by West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns, and was out injured as Leicester lost their final three league games, ending the season in a disappointing fourth place. In the 1963 FA Cup Final Banks and the rest of the team underperformed, and lost the game 3–1 to Manchester United.
City ended the 1963–64 season in 11th place, having been inconsistent all season. Success instead came through the League Cup, as they beat West Ham United 6–3 over two legs in the semi-finals to reach the final against Stoke City. The opening tie at the Victoria Ground finished 1–1 in extremely muddy conditions as Banks spilled a shot from Bill Asprey, with Keith Bebbington pouncing on the rebound. Back at Filbert Street, goals from Mike Stringfellow, Dave Gibson and Howard Riley won the game for Leicester 3–2 and settled the tie at 4–3.
Banks started the 1964–65 season on wages of £40 a week, and the club only agreed to pay £60 a week in December. These miserly wages made it difficult for the club to spend the £80,000 it received from the sale of Frank McLintock – he had put in a transfer request over dissatisfaction with his pay and quality replacements were reluctant to join a club that paid full internationals like Banks and McLintock no more than the base rate that rival clubs paid to average players. Leicester finished 18th in the league and were knocked out of the FA Cup by Liverpool at Anfield in the sixth round. In the League Cup, City struggled to get past Peterborough United (in a replay), Grimsby Town and Crystal Palace (in a replay), before they recorded an 8–1 victory over Coventry City at Highfield Road. After easing past Plymouth Argyle in the semi-finals, Banks found himself playing in another League Cup final. However Chelsea won the final after successfully defending their 3–2 win at Stamford Bridge with a goalless draw at Filbert Street.
Banks missed the first nine games of the 1965–66 season after breaking his wrist when diving at the feet of Northampton Town's Joe Kiernan in a pre-season friendly. Leicester finished the season in seventh spot, and exited both cup competitions at the hands of Manchester City.
Despite being a World Cup winner in the previous summer, Banks was dropped towards the end of the 1966–67 season in favour of highly promising teenage reserve Peter Shilton. Manager Matt Gillies was blunt, telling Banks "we [Gillies and the club's directors] think your best days are behind you, and you should move on". Teammate Richie Norman told Banks that Gillies was pressured into the decision, Shilton having told the board he would leave the club unless he was given first team football. Banks was transfer listed at £50,000, the same price the club received for Derek Dougan in March 1967. However, many of the big clubs were unwilling to spend such a sum on a goalkeeper. Liverpool manager Bill Shankly showed strong interest, but could not convince the club's board of directors to agree to such a large fee for a goalkeeper. West Ham United manager Ron Greenwood was prepared to match the fee, but instead signed Kilmarnock's Bobby Ferguson for £65,000 because he had already agreed terms with Kilmarnock and did not want to go back on his word. Terms were instead agreed with Stoke City, a mid-table First Division side.
On leaving Filbert Street, Banks requested a loyalty bonus from Leicester, and was told by Matt Gillies "We've decided not to pay you a penny. There's to be no compensation payment and that's final." Banks then refused the move until Stoke boss Tony Waddington seemingly negotiated a £2,000 payment out of Leicester. It was only some years later that Banks was informed that Stoke had actually made the payment, not Leicester. Waddington valued good goalkeepers highly, and the two built up a close relationship. During this time, Banks moved to Madeley, Staffordshire. He replaced John Farmer as the club's number one, and kept goal in the last four games of the 1966–67 season, making his home debut at the Victoria Ground in a 3–1 win over his former club Leicester.
Banks fitted in well at Stoke, as Waddington built a team of veteran players who were judged by some to be past their best. The Potters struggled near the foot of the First Division table in the 1967–68 and 1968–69 campaigns, before rising to ninth place in the 1969–70 season. Banks remained a reliable stopper for the club, though on 1 March 1969 he was knocked unconscious at Roker Park by Sunderland's Malcolm Moore, and his replacement David Herd conceded four goals in a 4–1 defeat. Banks also played a season for the Cleveland Stokers of the American United Soccer Association in the summer of 1968: he played seven of the short-lived club's 12 games in Cleveland, Ohio.
Banks made what he believed to be three of the best saves of his career in a Stoke shirt. In the first instance he saved and caught a powerful and well-placed header from Manchester City's Wyn Davies from just eight yards out; in the second case he saved a Francis Lee header at Maine Road; and he made his third great save for the club by catching a volley from Tottenham Hotspur's Alan Gilzean that had been hit from just six yards out at White Hart Lane.
Stoke began to compete for honours in the 1970–71 season, though despite impressive victories against the top two clubs—Arsenal and Leeds United—City ended the season in mid-table obscurity. The club's great achievement was in reaching the semi-finals of the FA Cup, beating Millwall, Huddersfield Town, Ipswich Town and Hull City "en route". Facing Arsenal at Hillsborough in the semi-finals, they lost a two-goal lead to draw 2–2, and were then beaten 2–0 in the replay at Villa Park.
Despite another mid-table finish in 1971–72, Stoke beat Chesterfield, Tranmere Rovers, Hull City and Manchester United to reach another FA Cup semi-final. They again faced Arsenal, and once more a draw at Villa Park meant a replay at Goodison Park. The Gunners' goals in a 2–1 victory came from a disputed Frank McLintock penalty and a John Radford goal that television replays showed was clearly offside. In a May 2011 interview, Banks said that he still felt "cheated" out of a chance to play for the club in an FA Cup final. Stoke and Banks found solace in the League Cup, though it took them 11 matches to reach the final after overcoming Southport, then Oxford United in a replay, Manchester United in a second replay, Bristol Rovers, and then West Ham United in a second replay following an aggregate draw after two legs. In extra-time of the second leg with West Ham, Banks fouled Harry Redknapp, conceding a penalty, and then saved Geoff Hurst's powerful spot-kick to keep City in the competition. They then faced Chelsea in the final at Wembley. Peter Osgood beat Banks with a hooked shot just before half-time, but goals from Terry Conroy and George Eastham won Stoke the game 2–1. At the end of the season Banks was named as the FWA Footballer of the Year, becoming the first goalkeeper to receive the honour since Bert Trautmann in 1956.
On 22 October 1972, while driving home from a session of work on his injured shoulder with the Stoke physiotherapist, Banks lost control of his new Ford Consul (a re-badged Ford Granada Mk I) car, which ended up in a ditch. He had attempted to overtake a car on a sharp bend and collided with an oncoming Austin A60 van. He was taken to the North Staffordshire Hospital and during an operation received 200 stitches in his face and over 100 micro-stitches inside the socket of his right eye, and was told the chances of saving the sight in his eye were 50–50. His sight never returned, and as the loss of binocular vision severely limited his abilities as a goalkeeper, he retired from professional football the following summer.
In April 1977 he went to play as a named superstar in the North American Soccer League (NASL) for Fort Lauderdale Strikers. The Strikers won their division in 1977, and Banks was named NASL Goalkeeper of the Year after he conceded only 29 goals in 26 games—the best defensive record in the NASL. He also played one League of Ireland game for St Patrick's Athletic, keeping a clean sheet in a 1–0 win over Shamrock Rovers at Richmond Park on 2 October 1977. He returned to Fort Lauderdale and played 11 games in the 1978 season.
Banks was capped twice for the England under-23 side, in matches against Wales and Scotland in 1961.
Ron Springett was the goalkeeper for England as Banks rose to prominence, but after the 1962 World Cup in Chile, a new coach was appointed in former England right-back Alf Ramsey. Ramsey demanded sole control of the team and began looking towards the next World Cup. Banks won his first cap on 6 April 1963 against Scotland at Wembley, after Springett was dropped following a poor performance. England lost 2–1, though Banks was blameless as Scotland's goals came firstly from an error by Jimmy Armfield and then secondly from the penalty spot. He was picked for the next match against Brazil, which ended in a credible 1–1 draw after Bryan Douglas cancelled out Pepe's opener. Banks continued to play consistently to become established as England's first-choice goalkeeper. In 1963, he was picked to play against the Rest of the World, in a celebration match to mark 100 years of The Football Association.
Banks also played in two of England's three games at the "Little World Cup" in Brazil in the summer of 1964, a 1–1 draw with Portugal and a 1–0 defeat to Argentina. Blackpool's Tony Waiters won five caps in the England goal in 1964, but found that his challenge to Banks' first team place came to an end after he conceded five goals to Brazil. During England's summer of 1965 tour he built up a solid understanding with his defenders—George Cohen, Jack Charlton, Bobby Moore, and Ray Wilson—as he only conceded two goals in four matches against Hungary, Yugoslavia, West Germany, and Sweden. They then played seven friendlies in 1966 in the build-up to the World Cup, though the team passed their biggest test of character in the British Home Championship, beating Scotland 4–3 in front of a crowd of over 130,000 at Hampden Park. Going into the competition, the only defeat in 21 matches since the "Little World Cup" came against Austria, in a game that Banks missed due to injury.
Banks entered the 1966 FIFA World Cup as England's first choice goalkeeper, and his understudies Ron Springett and Peter Bonetti never took to the field during the tournament. England opened the tournament with a goalless draw against Uruguay, with Banks a virtual spectator as the highly defensive Uruguayans rarely ventured out of their own half. They then defeated Mexico 2–0, with Banks again rarely troubled throughout. A 2–0 win over France then took England through the group stage without Banks conceding a goal.
England beat Argentina 1–0 in the last eight, with Geoff Hurst scoring with a header; the match was sullied by the first-half sending off of Argentinian midfielder Antonio Rattín, who refused to leave the pitch after being dismissed for dissent. In contrast to the previous games, the semi-final against Portugal proved to be a fair contest between two sides of talented players eager to attack from the start of the match. Yet there was panic in the buildup to the game as trainer Harold Shepherdson forgot to buy chewing gum, which Banks used to make his hands stickier and better able to handle the ball, and so Shepherdson had to run to a nearby newsagents to purchase gum as the teams were in the tunnel. Bobby Charlton scored two goals, but Portugal made a strong finish and won a penalty on 82 minutes after Jack Charlton handled the ball in the penalty area. Eusébio converted the penalty after sending Banks the wrong way, and the game finished 2–1 in England's favour. This was the first goal Banks had conceded for England in 721 minutes of regular play, since giving up Scotland's last goal after 81 minutes of the Home International clash in April. This remains a record for an England goalkeeper.
England's opponents in the final were West Germany. It was England who dominated the final but it was Banks who was beaten first. A weak header from Ray Wilson handed a chance to Helmut Haller, who sent an accurate but relatively weak shot into the corner of the net; Banks had been unsighted by Jack Charlton, and he failed to adjust his position in time to reach the ball. England equalised through a Geoff Hurst header within six minutes and went ahead late in the second half through Martin Peters. With seconds left in the game, Lothar Emmerich sent a free kick into the England penalty area, and the ball fell to Wolfgang Weber, who guided the ball over a lunging Ray Wilson and an outstretched Banks into the net to take the game into extra-time. In extra-time, the Germans sent shots in at the England goal which Banks managed to catch and control without any great danger. Hurst scored two goals to complete his hat-trick, and though many claimed his second goal never crossed the line Banks always maintained his belief that the officials called the decision correctly. Between these goals Banks had to deal with a fiery shot from Sigfried Held, and was later exposed only for Uwe Seeler to come just centimetres away from connecting with the ball.
Scotland were the first team to beat the world champions, as goals from Denis Law, Bobby Lennox and Jim McCalliog secured a 3–2 victory at Wembley on 15 April 1967. Despite this set-back, England qualified for UEFA Euro 1968, which consisted of just four teams: England, Italy (hosts), the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. England played just two games at the tournament, losing 1–0 to Yugoslavia, and then beating the Soviets 2–0 in the third-place play-off.
Banks went into the 1970 World Cup as England's number one with 59 caps to his name, and had Peter Bonetti (six caps) and Alex Stepney (one cap) as his understudies. He found the heat and altitude at Guadalajara, Mexico difficult to cope with. The team's efforts at acclimatisation were not helped when Bobby Moore was falsely accused of stealing the infamous "Bogotá Bracelet". Despite this, a Geoff Hurst goal was enough to beat their first opponents, Romania. A far tougher test awaited on 7 June, when England faced Brazil. The day before the match Banks was informed that he had been awarded an OBE.
Playing at pace, Brazil were putting England under enormous pressure and an attack was begun by captain Carlos Alberto who sent a low ball down the right flank for the speedy Jairzinho to latch on to. The Brazilian winger sped past left-back Terry Cooper and crossed the ball into the six-yard box, where Pelé connected with a powerful header to send the ball low towards the right-hand corner of the goal. In the knowledge that his header was placed to perfection, Pelé immediately shouted "Gol!" (Brazilian Portuguese for goal).
The split-second incident only allowed Banks time for one conscious thought – that the shot was impossible to catch, and the only way to prevent Pelé from following up on the rebound would be to parry the ball over the bar. The ball bounced two yards in front of the goal-line, and Banks managed to make contact with the ball with the fingers of his right hand, and rolled his hand slightly to angle the ball over the crossbar. He landed in the inner netting of the goal, and knew he had saved the ball after seeing Pelé's reaction. Banks then rose to his feet to defend the corner, and broke into laughter after the following exchange:
Pelé, and numerous journalists and pundits, would later describe the save as the greatest in the history of the game. Banks later said "They won't remember me for winning the World Cup, it'll be for that save. That's how big a thing it is. People just want to talk about that save." In 2002 the UK public voted the save No. 41 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.
Brazil won the game 1–0 after Jairzinho beat Banks in the second half. England ultimately joined Brazil in the last eight after a win in the final group game against Czechoslovakia. The reward was a rematch of the 1966 final against West Germany.
The day before the game Banks' and England's hopes of making further inroads into the World Cup were dented when he started to complain of an upset stomach. He became affected by violent stomach cramps and aching limbs, and spent his time in the bathroom sweating, shivering and vomiting. He passed an extremely undemanding fitness test but suffered a relapse shortly before the game and Ramsey was forced to rest him and play Peter Bonetti in his place. Ramsey remarked that "of all the players to lose, we had to lose him." Banks watched the game on television at the hotel as England lost a two-goal lead to be eliminated 3–2 after extra time; due to a time delay on the broadcast he switched the television off with England 2–0 in the lead as Bobby Moore returned to the hotel to break the news of the defeat. Conspiracies later surfaced that Banks had been poisoned to take him out of the game, but with no evidence to support them Banks never believed in these conspiracies.
Only four teams competed in UEFA Euro 1972: Belgium (hosts), Hungary, the Soviet Union, and West Germany. England came close to qualifying, but lost 3–1 to West Germany in the final round of qualifying.
On 15 May 1971, Banks was involved in a notorious incident with George Best who, while playing against England for Northern Ireland, flicked the ball out of Banks' hands and headed it into the net. The move was audacious, but was disallowed by the referee, who judged it to be dangerous play. Banks played his 73rd and final game for England on 27 May 1972, in a 1–0 win over Scotland at Hampden Park. During his 73 international games he kept 35 clean sheets and lost just nine games.
In December 1977 he was appointed as a coach at Port Vale by manager Dennis Butler, being demoted to reserve coach in October 1978 by new boss Alan Bloor. Banks enjoyed coaching but soon resigned his position, feeling that players such as Bernie Wright refused to take his advice on board. He applied for the vacant management positions at Lincoln City and Rotherham United, but was rejected. He instead accepted the role as manager of Alliance Premier League part-time club Telford United. He signed a goalkeeper, centre-half and centre-forward from Bangor City for £1,500, as well as former Stoke striker John Ruggiero. The "Bucks" finished in 13th place in 1979–80.
In November 1980, he left Jackie Mudie in temporary charge of team affairs whilst he underwent surgery, who led the club to defeat in the FA Trophy at the hands of a lower league club. On his return to the club Banks was sacked. He was offered the position of raffle-ticket seller, and accepted the post in the belief that it would entitle him to the money owed to him in the terms of his management contract; he eventually had to settle for 50% of his contract. He later stated that "It broke my heart ... I did not want to stay in the game."
An excellent, consistent, and instinctive goalkeeper, who possessed significant physical strength, athleticism, and excellent shot-stopping abilities, Banks is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time in his position. He possessed an excellent positional sense, which he felt to be one of his best assets, and was also known for his handling, awareness, composure, and mental strength, as well as his agility, speed, and quick reflexes, which enabled him to produce acrobatic saves, such as his famous stop from Pelé's header against Brazil at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.
Banks first met his wife Ursula during his national service in Germany in 1955. They had three children: Robert, Julia and Wendy. He separated from Ursula during his time in America, but the couple reunited when Banks returned to England.
Banks' nephew is Nick Banks, drummer of the band Pulp.
Shortly after his retirement, Banks was surprised by Eamonn Andrews for an episode of "This Is Your Life". He later fronted a Leicester-based hospitality company. He lost a significant sum of money when the business failed, but was helped out by Leicester City, who offered him a belated testimonial match. He was appointed as Stoke City's president following the death of Stanley Matthews. Since the 1980s he was a member of the three-man pools panel.
In 2001, he sold his World Cup winners medal at Christie's for £124,750, and his international cap from the final was also sold at £27,025.
Banks was an Inaugural Inductee to the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002. In March 2004, he was named by Pelé as one of the world's 125 greatest living footballers. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Keele University in February 2006. In May 2006, Banks was the first 'legend' to be inducted into a new Walk of Fame, by having a plaque installed in the pavement in front of Sheffield Town Hall. In July 2008, Pelé unveiled a statue of Banks making his famous 1970 World Cup save outside the Britannia Stadium. In March 2011, he was also inducted into the City of Stoke-on-Trent Hall of Fame, along with Roy Sproson. Pelé became a good friend of Banks and following his death the Brazilian described Banks as a "goalkeeper with magic".
In 1980 Banks published his first autobiography, "Banks of England". He published a more comprehensive autobiography in 2002: "Banksy: My Autobiography". Irish investigative author, Don Mullan, published a boyhood memoir in 2006 called "Gordon Banks – A Hero Who Could Fly" in which he wrote about the influence of the England goalkeeper on his life.
In December 2015, it was announced he was receiving treatment for kidney cancer.
Banks died in his sleep on 12 February 2019 at the age of 81. Banks' funeral took place on 4 March 2019 at Stoke Minster. His pallbearers were goalkeepers representing his former teams; Joe Anyon (Chesterfield), Jack Butland (Stoke City), Joe Hart (England) and Kasper Schmeichel (Leicester City).
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Leicester City
Stoke City
England | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12277 |
Ganglion
A ganglion is a group of neuron cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system. In the somatic nervous system this includes dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal ganglia among a few others. In the autonomic nervous system there are both sympathetic and parasympathetic ganglia which contain the cell bodies of postganglionic sympathetic and parasympathetic neurons respectively.
A pseudoganglion looks like a ganglion, but only has nerve fibers and has no nerve cell bodies.
Ganglia are primarily made up of somata and dendritic structures which are bundled or connected. Ganglia often interconnect with other ganglia to form a complex system of ganglia known as a plexus. Ganglia provide relay points and intermediary connections between different neurological structures in the body, such as the peripheral and central nervous systems.
Among vertebrates there are three major groups of ganglia:
In the autonomic nervous system, fibers from the central nervous system to the ganglia are known as preganglionic fibers, while those from the ganglia to the effector organ are called postganglionic fibers.
The term "ganglion" refers to the peripheral nervous system.
However, in the brain (part of the central nervous system), the "basal ganglia" is a group of nuclei interconnected with the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and brainstem, associated with a variety of functions: motor control, cognition, emotions, and learning.
Partly due to this ambiguity, the Terminologia Anatomica recommends using the term basal nuclei instead of basal ganglia; however, this usage has not been generally adopted.
A pseudoganglion is a localized thickening of the main part or trunk of a nerve that has the appearance of a ganglion but has only nerve fibers and no nerve cell bodies.
Pseudoganglia are found in the teres minor muscle and radial nerve. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12278 |
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (sometimes spelled Leibnitz) (; or ; ; – 14 November 1716) was a prominent German polymath and one of the most important logicians, mathematicians and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment. As a representative of the seventeenth-century tradition of rationalism, Leibniz developed, as his most prominent accomplishment, the ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton's contemporaneous developments. Mathematical works have consistently favored Leibniz's notation as the conventional expression of calculus. It was only in the 20th century that Leibniz's law of continuity and transcendental law of homogeneity found mathematical implementation (by means of non-standard analysis). He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is the foundation of all digital computers.
In philosophy, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, i.e. his conclusion that our universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one that God could have created, an idea that was often lampooned by others such as Voltaire. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th-century advocates of rationalism. The work of Leibniz anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy, but his philosophy also assimilates elements of the scholastic tradition, notably that conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or prior definitions rather than to empirical evidence.
Leibniz made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in philosophy, probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics, and computer science. He wrote works on philosophy, politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Leibniz also contributed to the field of library science. While serving as overseer of the Wolfenbüttel library in Germany, he devised a cataloging system that would serve as a guide for many of Europe's largest libraries. Leibniz's contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters, and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German but also in English, Italian and Dutch. There is no complete gathering of the writings of Leibniz translated into English.
Gottfried Leibniz was born on 1 July 1646, toward the end of the Thirty Years' War, in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. Friedrich noted in his family journal:
In English:
Leibniz was baptized on 3 July of that year at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig; his godfather was the Lutheran theologian . His father died when he was six years old, and from that point on he was raised by his mother.
Leibniz's father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and the boy later inherited his father's personal library. He was given free access to it from the age of seven. While Leibniz's schoolwork was largely confined to the study of a small canon of authorities, his father's library enabled him to study a wide variety of advanced philosophical and theological works—ones that he would not have otherwise been able to read until his college years. Access to his father's library, largely written in Latin, also led to his proficiency in the Latin language, which he achieved by the age of 12. He also composed 300 hexameters of Latin verse, in a single morning, for a special event at school at the age of 13.
In April 1661 he enrolled in his father's former university at age 14, and completed his bachelor's degree in Philosophy in December 1662. He defended his "Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui" ("Metaphysical Disputation on the Principle of Individuation"), which addressed the principle of individuation, on 9 June 1663. Leibniz earned his master's degree in Philosophy on 7 February 1664. He published and defended a dissertation "Specimen Quaestionum Philosophicarum ex Jure collectarum" ("An Essay of Collected Philosophical Problems of Right"), arguing for both a theoretical and a pedagogical relationship between philosophy and law, in December 1664. After one year of legal studies, he was awarded his bachelor's degree in Law on 28 September 1665. His dissertation was titled "De conditionibus" ("On Conditions").
In early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, "De Arte Combinatoria" ("On the Combinatorial Art"), the first part of which was also his habilitation thesis in Philosophy, which he defended in March 1666. His next goal was to earn his license and Doctorate in Law, which normally required three years of study. In 1666, the University of Leipzig turned down Leibniz's doctoral application and refused to grant him a Doctorate in Law, most likely due to his relative youth. Leibniz subsequently left Leipzig.
Leibniz then enrolled in the University of Altdorf and quickly submitted a thesis, which he had probably been working on earlier in Leipzig. The title of his thesis was "Disputatio Inauguralis de Casibus Perplexis in Jure" ("Inaugural Disputation on Ambiguous Legal Cases"). Leibniz earned his license to practice law and his Doctorate in Law in November 1666. He next declined the offer of an academic appointment at Altdorf, saying that "my thoughts were turned in an entirely different direction".
As an adult, Leibniz often introduced himself as "Gottfried von Leibniz". Many posthumously published editions of his writings presented his name on the title page as "Freiherr G. W. von Leibniz." However, no document has ever been found from any contemporary government that stated his appointment to any form of nobility.
Leibniz's first position was as a salaried secretary to an alchemical society in Nuremberg. He knew fairly little about the subject at that time but presented himself as deeply learned. He soon met Johann Christian von Boyneburg (1622–1672), the dismissed chief minister of the Elector of Mainz, Johann Philipp von Schönborn. Von Boyneburg hired Leibniz as an assistant, and shortly thereafter reconciled with the Elector and introduced Leibniz to him. Leibniz then dedicated an essay on law to the Elector in the hope of obtaining employment. The stratagem worked; the Elector asked Leibniz to assist with the redrafting of the legal code for the Electorate. In 1669, Leibniz was appointed assessor in the Court of Appeal. Although von Boyneburg died late in 1672, Leibniz remained under the employment of his widow until she dismissed him in 1674.
Von Boyneburg did much to promote Leibniz's reputation, and the latter's memoranda and letters began to attract favorable notice. After Leibniz's service to the Elector there soon followed a diplomatic role. He published an essay, under the pseudonym of a fictitious Polish nobleman, arguing (unsuccessfully) for the German candidate for the Polish crown. The main force in European geopolitics during Leibniz's adult life was the ambition of Louis XIV of France, backed by French military and economic might. Meanwhile, the Thirty Years' War had left German-speaking Europe exhausted, fragmented, and economically backward. Leibniz proposed to protect German-speaking Europe by distracting Louis as follows. France would be invited to take Egypt as a stepping stone towards an eventual conquest of the Dutch East Indies. In return, France would agree to leave Germany and the Netherlands undisturbed. This plan obtained the Elector's cautious support. In 1672, the French government invited Leibniz to Paris for discussion, but the plan was soon overtaken by the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War and became irrelevant. Napoleon's failed invasion of Egypt in 1798 can be seen as an unwitting, late implementation of Leibniz's plan, after the Eastern hemisphere colonial supremacy in Europe had already passed from the Dutch to the British.
Thus Leibniz went to Paris in 1672. Soon after arriving, he met Dutch physicist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens and realised that his own knowledge of mathematics and physics was patchy. With Huygens as his mentor, he began a program of self-study that soon pushed him to making major contributions to both subjects, including discovering his version of the differential and integral calculus. He met Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld, the leading French philosophers of the day, and studied the writings of Descartes and Pascal, unpublished as well as published. He befriended a German mathematician, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus; they corresponded for the rest of their lives.
When it became clear that France would not implement its part of Leibniz's Egyptian plan, the Elector sent his nephew, escorted by Leibniz, on a related mission to the English government in London, early in 1673. There Leibniz came into acquaintance of Henry Oldenburg and John Collins. He met with the Royal Society where he demonstrated a calculating machine that he had designed and had been building since 1670. The machine was able to execute all four basic operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing), and the society quickly made him an external member.
The mission ended abruptly when news of the Elector's death (12 February 1673) reached them. Leibniz promptly returned to Paris and not, as had been planned, to Mainz. The sudden deaths of his two patrons in the same winter meant that Leibniz had to find a new basis for his career.
In this regard, a 1669 invitation from Duke John Frederick of Brunswick to visit Hanover proved to have been fateful. Leibniz had declined the invitation, but had begun corresponding with the duke in 1671. In 1673, the duke offered Leibniz the post of counsellor. Leibniz very reluctantly accepted the position two years later, only after it became clear that no employment was forthcoming in Paris, whose intellectual stimulation he relished, or with the Habsburg imperial court.
In 1675 he tried to get admitted to the French Academy of Sciences as a foreign honorary member, but it was considered that there were already enough foreigners there and so no invitation came. He left Paris in October 1676.
Leibniz managed to delay his arrival in Hanover until the end of 1676 after making one more short journey to London, where Newton accused him of having seen Newton's unpublished work on calculus in advance. This was alleged to be evidence supporting the accusation, made decades later, that he had stolen calculus from Newton. On the journey from London to Hanover, Leibniz stopped in The Hague where he met van Leeuwenhoek, the discoverer of microorganisms. He also spent several days in intense discussion with Spinoza, who had just completed his masterwork, the "Ethics".
In 1677, he was promoted, at his request, to Privy Counselor of Justice, a post he held for the rest of his life. Leibniz served three consecutive rulers of the House of Brunswick as historian, political adviser, and most consequentially, as librarian of the ducal library. He thenceforth employed his pen on all the various political, historical, and theological matters involving the House of Brunswick; the resulting documents form a valuable part of the historical record for the period.
Leibniz began promoting a project to use windmills to improve the mining operations in the Harz Mountains. This project did little to improve mining operations and was shut down by Duke Ernst August in 1685.
Among the few people in north Germany to accept Leibniz were the Electress Sophia of Hanover (1630–1714), her daughter Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (1668–1705), the Queen of Prussia and his avowed disciple, and Caroline of Ansbach, the consort of her grandson, the future George II. To each of these women he was correspondent, adviser, and friend. In turn, they all approved of Leibniz more than did their spouses and the future king George I of Great Britain.
The population of Hanover was only about 10,000, and its provinciality eventually grated on Leibniz. Nevertheless, to be a major courtier to the House of Brunswick was quite an honor, especially in light of the meteoric rise in the prestige of that House during Leibniz's association with it. In 1692, the Duke of Brunswick became a hereditary Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. The British Act of Settlement 1701 designated the Electress Sophia and her descent as the royal family of England, once both King William III and his sister-in-law and successor, Queen Anne, were dead. Leibniz played a role in the initiatives and negotiations leading up to that Act, but not always an effective one. For example, something he published anonymously in England, thinking to promote the Brunswick cause, was formally censured by the British Parliament.
The Brunswicks tolerated the enormous effort Leibniz devoted to intellectual pursuits unrelated to his duties as a courtier, pursuits such as perfecting calculus, writing about other mathematics, logic, physics, and philosophy, and keeping up a vast correspondence. He began working on calculus in 1674; the earliest evidence of its use in his surviving notebooks is 1675. By 1677 he had a coherent system in hand, but did not publish it until 1684. Leibniz's most important mathematical papers were published between 1682 and 1692, usually in a journal which he and Otto Mencke founded in 1682, the "Acta Eruditorum". That journal played a key role in advancing his mathematical and scientific reputation, which in turn enhanced his eminence in diplomacy, history, theology, and philosophy.
The Elector Ernest Augustus commissioned Leibniz to write a history of the House of Brunswick, going back to the time of Charlemagne or earlier, hoping that the resulting book would advance his dynastic ambitions. From 1687 to 1690, Leibniz traveled extensively in Germany, Austria, and Italy, seeking and finding archival materials bearing on this project. Decades went by but no history appeared; the next Elector became quite annoyed at Leibniz's apparent dilatoriness. Leibniz never finished the project, in part because of his huge output on many other fronts, but also because he insisted on writing a meticulously researched and erudite book based on archival sources, when his patrons would have been quite happy with a short popular book, one perhaps little more than a genealogy with commentary, to be completed in three years or less. They never knew that he had in fact carried out a fair part of his assigned task: when the material Leibniz had written and collected for his history of the House of Brunswick was finally published in the 19th century, it filled three volumes.
Leibniz was appointed Librarian of the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, in 1691.
In 1708, John Keill, writing in the journal of the Royal Society and with Newton's presumed blessing, accused Leibniz of having plagiarised Newton's calculus. Thus began the calculus priority dispute which darkened the remainder of Leibniz's life. A formal investigation by the Royal Society (in which Newton was an unacknowledged participant), undertaken in response to Leibniz's demand for a retraction, upheld Keill's charge. Historians of mathematics writing since 1900 or so have tended to acquit Leibniz, pointing to important differences between Leibniz's and Newton's versions of calculus.
In 1711, while traveling in northern Europe, the Russian Tsar Peter the Great stopped in Hanover and met Leibniz, who then took some interest in Russian matters for the rest of his life. In 1712, Leibniz began a two-year residence in Vienna, where he was appointed Imperial Court Councillor to the Habsburgs. On the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Elector George Louis became King George I of Great Britain, under the terms of the 1701 Act of Settlement. Even though Leibniz had done much to bring about this happy event, it was not to be his hour of glory. Despite the intercession of the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach, George I forbade Leibniz to join him in London until he completed at least one volume of the history of the Brunswick family his father had commissioned nearly 30 years earlier. Moreover, for George I to include Leibniz in his London court would have been deemed insulting to Newton, who was seen as having won the calculus priority dispute and whose standing in British official circles could not have been higher. Finally, his dear friend and defender, the Dowager Electress Sophia, died in 1714.
Leibniz died in Hanover in 1716. At the time, he was so out of favor that neither George I (who happened to be near Hanover at that time) nor any fellow courtier other than his personal secretary attended the funeral. Even though Leibniz was a life member of the Royal Society and the Berlin Academy of Sciences, neither organization saw fit to honor his death. His grave went unmarked for more than 50 years. Leibniz was eulogized by Fontenelle, before the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had admitted him as a foreign member in 1700. The eulogy was composed at the behest of the Duchess of Orleans, a niece of the Electress Sophia.
Leibniz never married. He complained on occasion about money, but the fair sum he left to his sole heir, his sister's stepson, proved that the Brunswicks had, by and large, paid him well. In his diplomatic endeavors, he at times verged on the unscrupulous, as was all too often the case with professional diplomats of his day. On several occasions, Leibniz backdated and altered personal manuscripts, actions which put him in a bad light during the calculus controversy.
On the other hand, he was charming, well-mannered, and not without humor and imagination. He had many friends and admirers all over Europe. Though he identified as a protestant, Leibniz learned to appreciate aspects of Catholicism through his patrons and colleagues. He never admitted the Protestant view of the Pope as an Antichrist. Leibniz was claimed as a philosophical theist. Leibniz remained committed to Trinitarian Christianity throughout his life.
Leibniz's philosophical thinking appears fragmented, because his philosophical writings consist mainly of a multitude of short pieces: journal articles, manuscripts published long after his death, and many letters to many correspondents. He wrote only two book-length philosophical treatises, of which only the "Théodicée" of 1710 was published in his lifetime.
Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his "Discourse on Metaphysics", which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld. This led to an extensive and valuable correspondence with Arnauld; it and the "Discourse" were not published until the 19th century. In 1695, Leibniz made his public entrée into European philosophy with a journal article titled "New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances". Between 1695 and 1705, he composed his "New Essays on Human Understanding", a lengthy commentary on John Locke's 1690 "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", but upon learning of Locke's 1704 death, lost the desire to publish it, so that the "New Essays" were not published until 1765. The "Monadologie", composed in 1714 and published posthumously, consists of 90 aphorisms.
Leibniz met Spinoza in 1676, read some of his unpublished writings, and has since been suspected of appropriating some of Spinoza's ideas. While Leibniz admired Spinoza's powerful intellect, he was also forthrightly dismayed by Spinoza's conclusions, especially when these were inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy.
Unlike Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz had a thorough university education in philosophy. He was influenced by his Leipzig professor Jakob Thomasius, who also supervised his BA thesis in philosophy. Leibniz also eagerly read Francisco Suárez, a Spanish Jesuit respected even in Lutheran universities. Leibniz was deeply interested in the new methods and conclusions of Descartes, Huygens, Newton, and Boyle, but viewed their work through a lens heavily tinted by scholastic notions. Yet it remains the case that Leibniz's methods and concerns often anticipate the logic, and analytic and linguistic philosophy of the 20th century.
Leibniz variously invoked one or another of seven fundamental philosophical Principles:
Leibniz would on occasion give a rational defense of a specific principle, but more often took them for granted.
Leibniz's best known contribution to metaphysics is his theory of monads, as exposited in "Monadologie". He proposes his theory that the universe is made of an infinite number of simple substances known as monads. Monads can also be compared to the corpuscles of the Mechanical Philosophy of René Descartes and others. These simple substances or monads are the "ultimate units of existence in nature". Monads have no parts but still exist by the qualities that they have. These qualities are continuously changing over time, and each monad is unique. They are also not affected by time and are subject to only creation and annihilation. Monads are centers of force; substance is force, while space, matter, and motion are merely phenomenal.
Leibniz's proof of God can be summarized in the "Théodicée". Reason is governed by the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. Using the principle of reasoning, Leibniz concluded that the first reason of all things is God. All that we see and experience is subject to change, and the fact that this world is contingent can be explained by the possibility of the world being arranged differently in space and time. The contingent world must have some necessary reason for its existence. Leibniz uses a geometry book as an example to explain his reasoning. If this book was copied from an infinite chain of copies, there must be some reason for the content of the book. Leibniz concluded that there must be the ""monas monadum"" or God.
The ontological essence of a monad is its irreducible simplicity. Unlike atoms, monads possess no material or spatial character. They also differ from atoms by their complete mutual independence, so that interactions among monads are only apparent. Instead, by virtue of the principle of pre-established harmony, each monad follows a pre-programmed set of "instructions" peculiar to itself, so that a monad "knows" what to do at each moment. By virtue of these intrinsic instructions, each monad is like a little mirror of the universe. Monads need not be "small"; e.g., each human being constitutes a monad, in which case free will is problematic.
Monads are purported to have gotten rid of the problematic:
The "Theodicy" tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws.
Leibniz asserted that the truths of theology (religion) and philosophy cannot contradict each other, since reason and faith are both "gifts of God" so that their conflict would imply God contending against himself. The "Theodicy" is Leibniz's attempt to reconcile his personal philosophical system with his interpretation of the tenets of Christianity. This project was motivated in part by Leibniz's belief, shared by many conservative philosophers and theologians during the Enlightenment, in the rational and enlightened nature of the Christian religion as compared against its purportedly less-advanced non-Western counterparts. It was also shaped by Leibniz's belief in the perfectibility of human nature (if humanity relied on correct philosophy and religion as a guide), and by his belief that metaphysical necessity must have a rational or logical foundation, even if this metaphysical causality seemed inexplicable in terms of physical necessity (the natural laws identified by science).
Because reason and faith must be entirely reconciled, any tenet of faith which could not be defended by reason must be rejected. Leibniz then approached one of the central criticisms of Christian theism: if God is all good, all wise, and all powerful, then how did evil come into the world? The answer (according to Leibniz) is that, while God is indeed unlimited in wisdom and power, his human creations, as creations, are limited both in their wisdom and in their will (power to act). This predisposes humans to false beliefs, wrong decisions, and ineffective actions in the exercise of their free will. God does not arbitrarily inflict pain and suffering on humans; rather he permits both "moral evil" (sin) and "physical evil" (pain and suffering) as the necessary consequences of "metaphysical evil" (imperfection), as a means by which humans can identify and correct their erroneous decisions, and as a contrast to true good.
Further, although human actions flow from prior causes that ultimately arise in God and therefore are known to God as metaphysical certainties, an individual's free will is exercised within natural laws, where choices are merely contingently necessary and to be decided in the event by a "wonderful spontaneity" that provides individuals with an escape from rigorous predestination.
For Leibniz, "God is an absolutely perfect being". He describes this perfection later in section VI as the simplest form of something with the most substantial outcome (VI). Along these lines, he declares that every type of perfection "pertains to him (God) in the highest degree" (I). Even though his types of perfections are not specifically drawn out, Leibniz highlights the one thing that, to him, does certify imperfections and proves that God is perfect: "that one acts imperfectly if he acts with less perfection than he is capable of", and since God is a perfect being, he cannot act imperfectly (III). Because God cannot act imperfectly, the decisions he makes pertaining to the world must be perfect. Leibniz also comforts readers, stating that because he has done everything to the most perfect degree; those who love him cannot be injured. However, to love God is a subject of difficulty as Leibniz believes that we are "not disposed to wish for that which God desires" because we have the ability to alter our disposition (IV). In accordance with this, many act as rebels, but Leibniz says that the only way we can truly love God is by being content "with all that comes to us according to his will" (IV).
Because God is "an absolutely perfect being" (I), Leibniz argues that God would be acting imperfectly if he acted with any less perfection than what he is able of (III). His syllogism then ends with the statement that God has made the world perfectly in all ways. This also affects how we should view God and his will. Leibniz states that, in lieu of God’s will, we have to understand that God "is the best of all masters" and he will know when his good succeeds, so we, therefore, must act in conformity to his good will—or as much of it as we understand (IV). In our view of God, Leibniz declares that we cannot admire the work solely because of the maker, lest we mar the glory and love God in doing so. Instead, we must admire the maker for the work he has done (II). Effectively, Leibniz states that if we say the earth is good because of the will of God, and not good according to some standards of goodness, then how can we praise God for what he has done if contrary actions are also praiseworthy by this definition (II). Leibniz then asserts that different principles and geometry cannot simply be from the will of God, but must follow from his understanding.
Leibniz wrote: "Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason ... is found in a substance which ... is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself." Martin Heidegger called this question "the fundamental question of metaphysics".
Leibniz believed that much of human reasoning could be reduced to calculations of a sort, and that such calculations could resolve many differences of opinion:
The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate ["calculemus"], without further ado, to see who is right.
Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator, which resembles symbolic logic, can be viewed as a way of making such calculations feasible. Leibniz wrote memoranda that can now be read as groping attempts to get symbolic logic—and thus his "calculus"—off the ground. These writings remained unpublished until the appearance of a selection edited by C.I. Gerhardt (1859). L. Couturat published a selection in 1901; by this time the main developments of modern logic had been created by Charles Sanders Peirce and by Gottlob Frege.
Leibniz thought symbols were important for human understanding. He attached so much importance to the development of good notations that he attributed all his discoveries in mathematics to this. His notation for calculus is an example of his skill in this regard. Peirce, a 19th-century pioneer of semiotics, shared Leibniz's passion for symbols and notation, and his belief that these are essential to a well-running logic and mathematics.
But Leibniz took his speculations much further. Defining a character as any written sign, he then defined a "real" character as one that represents an idea directly and not simply as the word embodying the idea. Some real characters, such as the notation of logic, serve only to facilitate reasoning. Many characters well known in his day, including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese characters, and the symbols of astronomy and chemistry, he deemed not real. Instead, he proposed the creation of a "characteristica universalis" or "universal characteristic", built on an alphabet of human thought in which each fundamental concept would be represented by a unique "real" character:
It is obvious that if we could find characters or signs suited for expressing all our thoughts as clearly and as exactly as arithmetic expresses numbers or geometry expresses lines, we could do in all matters "insofar as they are subject to reasoning" all that we can do in arithmetic and geometry. For all investigations which depend on reasoning would be carried out by transposing these characters and by a species of calculus.
Complex thoughts would be represented by combining characters for simpler thoughts. Leibniz saw that the uniqueness of prime factorization suggests a central role for prime numbers in the universal characteristic, a striking anticipation of Gödel numbering. Granted, there is no intuitive or mnemonic way to number any set of elementary concepts using the prime numbers.
Because Leibniz was a mathematical novice when he first wrote about the "characteristic", at first he did not conceive it as an algebra but rather as a universal language or script. Only in 1676 did he conceive of a kind of "algebra of thought", modeled on and including conventional algebra and its notation. The resulting "characteristic" included a logical calculus, some combinatorics, algebra, his "analysis situs" (geometry of situation), a universal concept language, and more. What Leibniz actually intended by his "characteristica universalis" and calculus ratiocinator, and the extent to which modern formal logic does justice to calculus, may never be established. Leibniz's idea of reasoning through a universal language of symbols and calculations remarkably foreshadows great 20th-century developments in formal systems, such as Turing completeness, where computation was used to define equivalent universal languages (see Turing degree).
Leibniz has been noted as one of the most important logicians between the times of Aristotle and Gottlob Frege. Leibniz enunciated the principal properties of what we now call conjunction, disjunction, negation, identity, set inclusion, and the empty set. The principles of Leibniz's logic and, arguably, of his whole philosophy, reduce to two:
The formal logic that emerged early in the 20th century also requires, at minimum, unary negation and quantified variables ranging over some universe of discourse.
Leibniz published nothing on formal logic in his lifetime; most of what he wrote on the subject consists of working drafts. In his "History of Western Philosophy", Bertrand Russell went so far as to claim that Leibniz had developed logic in his unpublished writings to a level which was reached only 200 years later.
Russell's principal work on Leibniz found that many of Leibniz's most startling philosophical ideas and claims (e.g., that each of the fundamental monads mirrors the whole universe) follow logically from Leibniz's conscious choice to reject "relations" between things as unreal. He regarded such relations as (real) "qualities" of things (Leibniz admitted unary predicates only): For him, "Mary is the mother of John" describes separate qualities of Mary and of John. This view contrasts with the relational logic of De Morgan, Peirce, Schröder and Russell himself, now standard in predicate logic. Notably, Leibniz also declared space and time to be inherently relational.
Although the mathematical notion of function was implicit in trigonometric and logarithmic tables, which existed in his day, Leibniz was the first, in 1692 and 1694, to employ it explicitly, to denote any of several geometric concepts derived from a curve, such as abscissa, ordinate, tangent, chord, and the perpendicular. In the 18th century, "function" lost these geometrical associations. Leibniz also believed that the sum of an infinite number of zeros would equal to one half using the analogy of the creation of the world from nothing. Leibniz was also one of the pioneers in actuarial science, calculating the purchase price of life annuities and the liquidation of a state's debt.
Leibniz's discoveries of Boolean algebra and of symbolic logic, also relevant to mathematics, are discussed in the preceding section. The best overview of Leibniz's writings on calculus may be found in Bos (1974).
Leibniz arranged the coefficients of a system of linear equations into an array, now called a matrix, in order to find a solution to the system if it existed. This method was later called Gaussian elimination. Leibniz laid down the foundations and theory of determinants, although Seki Takakazu discovered determinants well before Leibniz. His works show calculating the determinants using cofactors. Calculating the determinant using cofactors is named the Leibniz formula. Finding the determinant of a matrix using this method proves impractical with large "n", requiring to calculate "n!" products and the number of n-permutations. He also solved systems of linear equations using determinants, which is now called Cramer's rule. This method for solving systems of linear equations based on determinants was found in 1684 by Leibniz (Cramer published his findings in 1750). Although Gaussian elimination requires formula_1 arithmetic operations, linear algebra textbooks still teach cofactor expansion before LU factorization.
The Leibniz formula for states that
Leibniz wrote that circles "can most simply be expressed by this series, that is, the aggregate of fractions alternately added and subtracted". However this formula is only accurate with a large number of terms, using 10,000,000 terms to obtain the correct value of to 8 decimal places. Leibniz attempted to create a definition for a straight line while attempting to prove the parallel postulate. While most mathematicians defined a straight line as the shortest line between two points, Leibniz believed that this was merely a property of a straight line rather than the definition.
Leibniz is credited, along with Sir Isaac Newton, with the discovery of calculus (differential and integral calculus). According to Leibniz's notebooks, a critical breakthrough occurred on 11 November 1675, when he employed integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of a function . He introduced several notations used to this day, for instance the integral sign , representing an elongated S, from the Latin word "summa", and the used for differentials, from the Latin word "differentia". Leibniz did not publish anything about his calculus until 1684. Leibniz expressed the inverse relation of integration and differentiation, later called the fundamental theorem of calculus, by means of a figure in his 1693 paper "Supplementum geometriae dimensoriae...". However, James Gregory is credited for the theorem's discovery in geometric form, Isaac Barrow proved a more generalized geometric version, and Newton developed supporting theory. The concept became more transparent as developed through Leibniz's formalism and new notation. The product rule of differential calculus is still called "Leibniz's law". In addition, the theorem that tells how and when to differentiate under the integral sign is called the Leibniz integral rule.
Leibniz exploited infinitesimals in developing calculus, manipulating them in ways suggesting that they had paradoxical algebraic properties. George Berkeley, in a tract called "The Analyst" and also in "De Motu", criticized these. A recent study argues that Leibnizian calculus was free of contradictions, and was better grounded than Berkeley's empiricist criticisms.
From 1711 until his death, Leibniz was engaged in a dispute with John Keill, Newton and others, over whether Leibniz had invented calculus independently of Newton. This subject is treated at length in the article Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy.
The use of infinitesimals in mathematics was frowned upon by followers of Karl Weierstrass, but survived in science and engineering, and even in rigorous mathematics, via the fundamental computational device known as the differential. Beginning in 1960, Abraham Robinson worked out a rigorous foundation for Leibniz's infinitesimals, using model theory, in the context of a field of hyperreal numbers. The resulting non-standard analysis can be seen as a belated vindication of Leibniz's mathematical reasoning. Robinson's transfer principle is a mathematical implementation of Leibniz's heuristic law of continuity, while the standard part function implements the Leibnizian transcendental law of homogeneity.
Leibniz was the first to use the term "analysis situs", later used in the 19th century to refer to what is now known as topology. There are two takes on this situation. On the one hand, Mates, citing a 1954 paper in German by Jacob Freudenthal, argues:
Although for Leibniz the situs of a sequence of points is completely determined by the distance between them and is altered if those distances are altered, his admirer Euler, in the famous 1736 paper solving the Königsberg Bridge Problem and its generalizations, used the term "geometria situs" in such a sense that the situs remains unchanged under topological deformations. He mistakenly credits Leibniz with originating this concept. ... [It] is sometimes not realized that Leibniz used the term in an entirely different sense and hence can hardly be considered the founder of that part of mathematics.
But Hideaki Hirano argues differently, quoting Mandelbrot:
To sample Leibniz' scientific works is a sobering experience. Next to calculus, and to other thoughts that have been carried out to completion, the number and variety of premonitory thrusts is overwhelming. We saw examples in "packing", ... My Leibniz mania is further reinforced by finding that for one moment its hero attached importance to geometric scaling. In "Euclidis Prota" ..., which is an attempt to tighten Euclid's axioms, he states ...: "I have diverse definitions for the straight line. The straight line is a curve, any part of which is similar to the whole, and it alone has this property, not only among curves but among sets." This claim can be proved today.
Thus the fractal geometry promoted by Mandelbrot drew on Leibniz's notions of self-similarity and the principle of continuity: "Natura non facit saltus". We also see that when Leibniz wrote, in a metaphysical vein, that "the straight line is a curve, any part of which is similar to the whole", he was anticipating topology by more than two centuries. As for "packing", Leibniz told his friend and correspondent Des Bosses to imagine a circle, then to inscribe within it three congruent circles with maximum radius; the latter smaller circles could be filled with three even smaller circles by the same procedure. This process can be continued infinitely, from which arises a good idea of self-similarity. Leibniz's improvement of Euclid's axiom contains the same concept.
Leibniz's writings are currently discussed, not only for their anticipations and possible discoveries not yet recognized, but as ways of advancing present knowledge. Much of his writing on physics is included in Gerhardt's "Mathematical Writings".
Leibniz contributed a fair amount to the statics and dynamics emerging around him, often disagreeing with Descartes and Newton. He devised a new theory of motion (dynamics) based on kinetic energy and potential energy, which posited space as relative, whereas Newton was thoroughly convinced that space was absolute. An important example of Leibniz's mature physical thinking is his "Specimen Dynamicum" of 1695.
Until the discovery of subatomic particles and the quantum mechanics governing them, many of Leibniz's speculative ideas about aspects of nature not reducible to statics and dynamics made little sense. For instance, he anticipated Albert Einstein by arguing, against Newton, that space, time and motion are relative, not absolute: "As for my own opinion, I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is, that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions."
Leibniz held a relationist notion of space and time, against Newton's substantivalist views. According to Newton's substantivalism, space and time are entities in their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz's relationism, in contrast, describes space and time as systems of relations that exist between objects. The rise of general relativity and subsequent work in the history of physics has put Leibniz's stance in a more favorable light.
One of Leibniz's projects was to recast Newton's theory as a vortex theory. However, his project went beyond vortex theory, since at its heart there was an attempt to explain one of the most difficult problems in physics, that of the origin of the cohesion of matter.
The principle of sufficient reason has been invoked in recent cosmology, and his identity of indiscernibles in quantum mechanics, a field some even credit him with having anticipated in some sense. Those who advocate digital philosophy, a recent direction in cosmology, claim Leibniz as a precursor. In addition to his theories about the nature of reality, Leibniz's contributions to the development of calculus have also had a major impact on physics.
Leibniz's "vis viva" (Latin for "living force") is , twice the modern kinetic energy. He realized that the total energy would be conserved in certain mechanical systems, so he considered it an innate motive characteristic of matter. Here too his thinking gave rise to another regrettable nationalistic dispute. His "vis viva" was seen as rivaling the conservation of momentum championed by Newton in England and by Descartes in France; hence academics in those countries tended to neglect Leibniz's idea. In reality, both energy and momentum are conserved, so the two approaches are equally valid.
By proposing that the earth has a molten core, he anticipated modern geology. In embryology, he was a preformationist, but also proposed that organisms are the outcome of a combination of an infinite number of possible microstructures and of their powers. In the life sciences and paleontology, he revealed an amazing transformist intuition, fueled by his study of comparative anatomy and fossils. One of his principal works on this subject, "Protogaea", unpublished in his lifetime, has recently been published in English for the first time. He worked out a primal organismic theory. In medicine, he exhorted the physicians of his time—with some results—to ground their theories in detailed comparative observations and verified experiments, and to distinguish firmly scientific and metaphysical points of view.
Psychology had been a central interest of Leibniz. He appears to be an "underappreciated pioneer of psychology" He wrote on topics which are now regarded as fields of psychology: attention and consciousness, memory, learning (association), motivation (the act of "striving"), emergent individuality, the general dynamics of development (evolutionary psychology). His discussions in the "New Essays" and "Monadology" often rely on everyday observations such as the behaviour of a dog or the noise of the sea, and he develops intuitive analogies (the synchronous running of clocks or the balance spring of a clock). He also devised postulates and principles that apply to psychology: the continuum of the unnoticed "petite perceptions" to the distinct, self-aware apperception, and psychophysical parallelism from the point of view of causality and of purpose: “Souls act according to the laws of final causes, through aspirations, ends and means. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes, i.e. the laws of motion. And these two realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, harmonize with one another.” This idea refers to the mind-body problem, stating that the mind and brain do not act upon each other, but act alongside each other separately but in harmony. Leibniz, however, did not use the term "psychologia".
Leibniz’ epistemological position—against John Locke and English empiricism (sensualism)—was made clear: “Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi intellectu ipse.” – “Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.” Principles that are not present in sensory impressions can be recognised in human perception and consciousness: logical inferences, categories of thought, the principle of causality and the principle of purpose (teleology).
Leibniz found his most important interpreter in Wilhelm Wundt, founder of psychology as a discipline. Wundt used the "… nisi intellectu ipse" quotation 1862 on the title page of his "Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung" (Contributions on the Theory of Sensory Perception) and published a detailed and aspiring monograph on Leibniz Wundt shaped the term apperception, introduced by Leibniz, into an experimental psychologically based apperception psychology that included neuropsychological modelling – an excellent example of how a concept created by a great philosopher could stimulate a psychological research program. One principle in the thinking of Leibniz played a fundamental role: “the principle of equality of separate but corresponding viewpoints.” Wundt characterized this style of thought (perspectivism) in a way that also applied for him—viewpoints that "supplement one another, while also being able to appear as opposites that only resolve themselves when considered more deeply."
Much of Leibniz's work went on to have a great impact on the field of psychology. Leibniz thought that there are many petites perceptions, or small perceptions of which we perceive but of which we are unaware. He believed that by the principle that phenomena found in nature were continuous by default, it was likely that the transition between conscious and unconscious states had intermediary steps. For this to be true, there must also be a portion of the mind of which we are unaware at any given time. His theory regarding consciousness in relation to the principle of continuity can be seen as an early theory regarding the stages of sleep. In this way, Leibniz's theory of perception can be viewed as one of many theories leading up to the idea of the unconscious. Leibniz was a direct influence on Ernst Platner, who is credited with originally coining the term Unbewußtseyn (unconscious). Additionally, the idea of subliminal stimuli can be traced back to his theory of small perceptions. Leibniz's ideas regarding music and tonal perception went on to influence the laboratory studies of Wilhelm Wundt.
In public health, he advocated establishing a medical administrative authority, with powers over epidemiology and veterinary medicine. He worked to set up a coherent medical training program, oriented towards public health and preventive measures. In economic policy, he proposed tax reforms and a national insurance program, and discussed the balance of trade. He even proposed something akin to what much later emerged as game theory. In sociology he laid the ground for communication theory.
In 1906, Garland published a volume of Leibniz's writings bearing on his many practical inventions and engineering work. To date, few of these writings have been translated into English. Nevertheless, it is well understood that Leibniz was a serious inventor, engineer, and applied scientist, with great respect for practical life. Following the motto "theoria cum praxi", he urged that theory be combined with practical application, and thus has been claimed as the father of applied science. He designed wind-driven propellers and water pumps, mining machines to extract ore, hydraulic presses, lamps, submarines, clocks, etc. With Denis Papin, he created a steam engine. He even proposed a method for desalinating water. From 1680 to 1685, he struggled to overcome the chronic flooding that afflicted the ducal silver mines in the Harz Mountains, but did not succeed.
Leibniz may have been the first computer scientist and information theorist. Early in life, he documented the binary numeral system (base 2), then revisited that system throughout his career. While Leibniz was examining other cultures to compare his metaphysical views, he encountered an ancient Chinese book "I Ching". Leibniz interpreted a diagram which showed yin and yang and corresponded it to a zero and one. More information can be found in the Sinophile section. Leibniz may have plagiarized Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz and Thomas Harriot, who independently developed the binary system, as he was familiar with their works on the binary system. Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz worked extensively on logarithms including logarithms with base 2. Thomas Harriot's manuscripts contained a table of binary numbers and their notation, which demonstrated that any number could be written on a base 2 system. Regardless, Leibniz simplified the binary system and articulated logical properties such as conjunction, disjunction, negation, identity, inclusion, and the empty set. He anticipated Lagrangian interpolation and algorithmic information theory. His calculus ratiocinator anticipated aspects of the universal Turing machine. In 1961, Norbert Wiener suggested that Leibniz should be considered the patron saint of cybernetics.
In 1671, Leibniz began to invent a machine that could execute all four arithmetic operations, gradually improving it over a number of years. This "stepped reckoner" attracted fair attention and was the basis of his election to the Royal Society in 1673. A number of such machines were made during his years in Hanover by a craftsman working under his supervision. They were not an unambiguous success because they did not fully mechanize the carry operation. Couturat reported finding an unpublished note by Leibniz, dated 1674, describing a machine capable of performing some algebraic operations. Leibniz also devised a (now reproduced) cipher machine, recovered by Nicholas Rescher in 2010. In 1693, Leibniz described a design of a machine which could, in theory, integrate differential equations, which he called "integraph".
Leibniz was groping towards hardware and software concepts worked out much later by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. In 1679, while mulling over his binary arithmetic, Leibniz imagined a machine in which binary numbers were represented by marbles, governed by a rudimentary sort of punched cards. Modern electronic digital computers replace Leibniz's marbles moving by gravity with shift registers, voltage gradients, and pulses of electrons, but otherwise they run roughly as Leibniz envisioned in 1679.
Later in Leibniz’s career (after the death of von Boyneburg), Leibniz moved to Paris and accepted a position as a librarian in the Hanoverian court of Johann Friedrich, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg. Leibniz’s predecessor, Tobias Fleischer, had already created a cataloging system for the Duke’s library but it was a clumsy attempt. At this library, Leibniz focused more on advancing the library than on the cataloging. For instance, within a month of taking the new position, he developed a comprehensive plan to expand the library. He was one of the first to consider developing a core collection for a library and felt “that a library for display and ostentation is a luxury and indeed superfluous, but a well-stocked and organized library is important and useful for all areas of human endeavor and is to be regarded on the same level as schools and churches”. Unfortunately, Leibniz lacked the funds to develop the library in this manner. After working at this library, by the end of 1690 Leibniz was appointed as privy-councilor and librarian of the Bibliotheca Augusta at Wolfenbuettel. It was an extensive library with at least 25,946 printed volumes. At this library, Leibniz sought to improve the catalog. He was not allowed to make complete changes to the existing closed catalog, but was allowed to improve upon it so he started on that task immediately. He created an alphabetical author catalog and had also created other cataloging methods that were not implemented. While serving as librarian of the ducal libraries in Hanover and Wolfenbuettel, Leibniz effectively became one of the founders of library science. He also designed a book indexing system in ignorance of the only other such system then extant, that of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. He also called on publishers to distribute abstracts of all new titles they produced each year, in a standard form that would facilitate indexing. He hoped that this abstracting project would eventually include everything printed from his day back to Gutenberg. Neither proposal met with success at the time, but something like them became standard practice among English language publishers during the 20th century, under the aegis of the Library of Congress and the British Library.
He called for the creation of an empirical database as a way to further all sciences. His "characteristica universalis", calculus ratiocinator, and a "community of minds"—intended, among other things, to bring political and religious unity to Europe—can be seen as distant unwitting anticipations of artificial languages (e.g., Esperanto and its rivals), symbolic logic, even the World Wide Web.
Leibniz emphasized that research was a collaborative endeavor. Hence he warmly advocated the formation of national scientific societies along the lines of the British Royal Society and the French Académie Royale des Sciences. More specifically, in his correspondence and travels he urged the creation of such societies in Dresden, Saint Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin. Only one such project came to fruition; in 1700, the Berlin Academy of Sciences was created. Leibniz drew up its first statutes, and served as its first President for the remainder of his life. That Academy evolved into the German Academy of Sciences, the publisher of the ongoing critical edition of his works.
With the possible exception of Marcus Aurelius, no philosopher has ever had as much experience with practical affairs of state as Leibniz. Leibniz's writings on law, ethics, and politics were long overlooked by English-speaking scholars, but this has changed of late.
While Leibniz was no apologist for absolute monarchy like Hobbes, or for tyranny in any form, neither did he echo the political and constitutional views of his contemporary John Locke, views invoked in support of liberalism, in 18th-century America and later elsewhere. The following excerpt from a 1695 letter to Baron J. C. Boyneburg's son Philipp is very revealing of Leibniz's political sentiments:
As for ... the great question of the power of sovereigns and the obedience their peoples owe them, I usually say that it would be good for princes to be persuaded that their people have the right to resist them, and for the people, on the other hand, to be persuaded to obey them passively. I am, however, quite of the opinion of Grotius, that one ought to obey as a rule, the evil of revolution being greater beyond comparison than the evils causing it. Yet I recognize that a prince can go to such excess, and place the well-being of the state in such danger, that the obligation to endure ceases. This is most rare, however, and the theologian who authorizes violence under this pretext should take care against excess; excess being infinitely more dangerous than deficiency.
In 1677, Leibniz called for a European confederation, governed by a council or senate, whose members would represent entire nations and would be free to vote their consciences; this is sometimes considered an anticipation of the European Union. He believed that Europe would adopt a uniform religion. He reiterated these proposals in 1715.
But at the same time, he arrived to propose an interreligious and multicultural project to create a universal system of justice, which required from him a broad interdisciplinary perspective. In order to propose it, he combined linguistics (especially sinology), moral and legal philosophy, management, economics, and politics.
Leibniz devoted considerable intellectual and diplomatic effort to what would now be called ecumenical endeavor, seeking to reconcile first the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, and later the Lutheran and Reformed churches. In this respect, he followed the example of his early patrons, Baron von Boyneburg and the Duke John Frederickboth cradle Lutherans who converted to Catholicism as adultswho did what they could to encourage the reunion of the two faiths, and who warmly welcomed such endeavors by others. (The House of Brunswick remained Lutheran, because the Duke's children did not follow their father.) These efforts included corresponding with French bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, and involved Leibniz in some theological controversy. He evidently thought that the thoroughgoing application of reason would suffice to heal the breach caused by the Reformation.
Leibniz the philologist was an avid student of languages, eagerly latching on to any information about vocabulary and grammar that came his way. He refuted the belief, widely held by Christian scholars in his day, that Hebrew was the primeval language of the human race. He also refuted the argument, advanced by Swedish scholars in his day, that a form of proto-Swedish was the ancestor of the Germanic languages. He puzzled over the origins of the Slavic languages and was fascinated by classical Chinese. Leibniz was also an expert in the Sanskrit language.
He published the "princeps editio" (first modern edition) of the late medieval "Chronicon Holtzatiae", a Latin chronicle of the County of Holstein.
Leibniz was perhaps the first major European intellectual to take a close interest in Chinese civilization, which he knew by corresponding with, and reading other works by, European Christian missionaries posted in China. He apparently read "Confucius Sinarum Philosophus" in the first year of its publication. He came to the conclusion that Europeans could learn much from the Confucian ethical tradition. He mulled over the possibility that the Chinese characters were an unwitting form of his universal characteristic. He noted with fascination how the "I Ching" hexagrams correspond to the binary numbers from 000000 to 111111, and concluded that this mapping was evidence of major Chinese accomplishments in the sort of philosophical mathematics he admired. Leibniz communicated his ideas of the binary system representing Christianity to the Emperor of China, hoping it would convert him. Leibniz was the only major Western philosopher of the time who attempted to accommodate Confucian ideas to prevailing European beliefs.
Leibniz's attraction to Chinese philosophy originates from his perception that Chinese philosophy was similar to his own. The historian E.R. Hughes suggests that Leibniz's ideas of "simple substance" and "pre-established harmony" were directly influenced by Confucianism, pointing to the fact that they were conceived during the period when he was reading "Confucius Sinarum Philosophus".
While making his grand tour of European archives to research the Brunswick family history that he never completed, Leibniz stopped in Vienna between May 1688 and February 1689, where he did much legal and diplomatic work for the Brunswicks. He visited mines, talked with mine engineers, and tried to negotiate export contracts for lead from the ducal mines in the Harz mountains. His proposal that the streets of Vienna be lit with lamps burning rapeseed oil was implemented. During a formal audience with the Austrian Emperor and in subsequent memoranda, he advocated reorganizing the Austrian economy, reforming the coinage of much of central Europe, negotiating a Concordat between the Habsburgs and the Vatican, and creating an imperial research library, official archive, and public insurance fund. He wrote and published an important paper on mechanics.
Leibniz also wrote a short paper, "Primae veritates", first published by Louis Couturat in 1903 (pp. 518–523) summarizing his views on metaphysics. The paper is undated; that he wrote it while in Vienna in 1689 was determined only in 1999, when the ongoing critical edition finally published Leibniz's philosophical writings for the period 1677–90. Couturat's reading of this paper was the launching point for much 20th-century thinking about Leibniz, especially among analytic philosophers. But after a meticulous study of all of Leibniz's philosophical writings up to 1688—a study the 1999 additions to the critical edition made possible—Mercer (2001) begged to differ with Couturat's reading; the jury is still out.
When Leibniz died, his reputation was in decline. He was remembered for only one book, the "Théodicée", whose supposed central argument Voltaire lampooned in his popular book "Candide", which concludes with the character Candide saying, ""Non liquet"" (it is not clear), a term that was applied during the Roman Republic to a legal verdict of "not proven". Voltaire's depiction of Leibniz's ideas was so influential that many believed it to be an accurate description. Thus Voltaire and his "Candide" bear some of the blame for the lingering failure to appreciate and understand Leibniz's ideas. Leibniz had an ardent disciple, Christian Wolff, whose dogmatic and facile outlook did Leibniz's reputation much harm. He also influenced David Hume, who read his "Théodicée" and used some of his ideas. In any event, philosophical fashion was moving away from the rationalism and system building of the 17th century, of which Leibniz had been such an ardent proponent. His work on law, diplomacy, and history was seen as of ephemeral interest. The vastness and richness of his correspondence went unrecognized.
Much of Europe came to doubt that Leibniz had discovered calculus independently of Newton, and hence his whole work in mathematics and physics was neglected. Voltaire, an admirer of Newton, also wrote "Candide" at least in part to discredit Leibniz's claim to having discovered calculus and Leibniz's charge that Newton's theory of universal gravitation was incorrect.
Leibniz's long march to his present glory began with the 1765 publication of the "Nouveaux Essais", which Kant read closely. In 1768, Louis Dutens edited the first multi-volume edition of Leibniz's writings, followed in the 19th century by a number of editions, including those edited by Erdmann, Foucher de Careil, Gerhardt, Gerland, Klopp, and Mollat. Publication of Leibniz's correspondence with notables such as Antoine Arnauld, Samuel Clarke, Sophia of Hanover, and her daughter Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, began.
In 1900, Bertrand Russell published a critical study of Leibniz's metaphysics. Shortly thereafter, Louis Couturat published an important study of Leibniz, and edited a volume of Leibniz's heretofore unpublished writings, mainly on logic. They made Leibniz somewhat respectable among 20th-century analytical and linguistic philosophers in the English-speaking world (Leibniz had already been of great influence to many Germans such as Bernhard Riemann). For example, Leibniz's phrase "salva veritate", meaning interchangeability without loss of or compromising the truth, recurs in Willard Quine's writings. Nevertheless, the secondary literature on Leibniz did not really blossom until after World War II. This is especially true of English speaking countries; in Gregory Brown's bibliography fewer than 30 of the English language entries were published before 1946. American Leibniz studies owe much to Leroy Loemker (1904–1985) through his translations and his interpretive essays in LeClerc (1973).
Nicholas Jolley has surmised that Leibniz's reputation as a philosopher is now perhaps higher than at any time since he was alive. Analytic and contemporary philosophy continue to invoke his notions of identity, individuation, and possible worlds. Work in the history of 17th- and 18th-century ideas has revealed more clearly the 17th-century "Intellectual Revolution" that preceded the better-known Industrial and commercial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1985, the German government created the Leibniz Prize, offering an annual award of 1.55 million euros for experimental results and 770,000 euros for theoretical ones. It was the world's largest prize for scientific achievement prior to the Fundamental Physics Prize.
The collection of manuscript papers of Leibniz at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek – Niedersächische Landesbibliothek was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2007.
Leibniz mainly wrote in three languages: scholastic Latin, French and German. During his lifetime, he published many pamphlets and scholarly articles, but only two "philosophical" books, the "Combinatorial Art" and the "Théodicée". (He published numerous pamphlets, often anonymous, on behalf of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, most notably the "De jure suprematum" a major consideration of the nature of sovereignty.) One substantial book appeared posthumously, his "Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain", which Leibniz had withheld from publication after the death of John Locke. Only in 1895, when Bodemann completed his catalogue of Leibniz's manuscripts and correspondence, did the enormous extent of Leibniz's "Nachlass" become clear: about 15,000 letters to more than 1000 recipients plus more than 40,000 other items. Moreover, quite a few of these letters are of essay length. Much of his vast correspondence, especially the letters dated after 1700, remains unpublished, and much of what is published has appeared only in recent decades. The amount, variety, and disorder of Leibniz's writings are a predictable result of a situation he described in a letter as follows:
I cannot tell you how extraordinarily distracted and spread out I am. I am trying to find various things in the archives; I look at old papers and hunt up unpublished documents. From these I hope to shed some light on the history of the [House of] Brunswick. I receive and answer a huge number of letters. At the same time, I have so many mathematical results, philosophical thoughts, and other literary innovations that should not be allowed to vanish that I often do not know where to begin.
The extant parts of the critical edition of Leibniz's writings are organized as follows:
The systematic cataloguing of all of Leibniz's "Nachlass" began in 1901. It was hampered by two world wars and then by decades of German division into two states with the Cold War's "iron curtain" in between, separating scholars, and also scattering portions of his literary estates. The ambitious project has had to deal with writings in seven languages, contained in some 200,000 written and printed pages. In 1985 it was reorganized and included in a joint program of German federal and state ("Länder") academies. Since then the branches in Potsdam, Münster, Hanover and Berlin have jointly published 57 volumes of the critical edition, with an average of 870 pages, and prepared index and concordance works.
The year given is usually that in which the work was completed, not of its eventual publication.
Six important collections of English translations are Wiener (1951), Parkinson (1966), Loemker (1969), Ariew and Garber (1989), Woolhouse and Francks (1998), and Strickland (2006). The ongoing critical edition of all of Leibniz's writings is "Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe".
Leibniz is receiving popular attention. The Google Doodle for July 1, 2018 celebrated Leibniz's 372nd birthday. Using a quill, his hand is shown writing "Google" in binary ASCII code.
One of the earliest popular but indirect expositions of Leibniz was Voltaire's satire "Candide", published in 1759. Leibniz was lampooned as Professor Pangloss, described as "the greatest philosopher of the Holy Roman Empire".
Leibniz also appears as one of the main historical figures in Neal Stephenson's series of novels "The Baroque Cycle". Stephenson credits readings and discussions concerning Leibniz for inspiring him to write the series.
Leibniz also stars in Adam Ehrlich Sach's novel The Organs of Sense.
An updated bibliography of more than 25.000 titles is available at Leibniz Bibliographie. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12281 |
Gamma World
Gamma World is a science fantasy role-playing game, originally designed by James M. Ward and Gary Jaquet, and first published by TSR in 1978. It borrowed heavily from Ward's earlier product, "Metamorphosis Alpha".
"Gamma World" takes place in the mid-25th century, more than a century after a second nuclear war had destroyed human civilization. The war that destroyed civilization in "Gamma World" is only vaguely described in most editions of the game, and what details are provided change from version to version:
Later versions altered the reason for the collapse.
All editions, however, agree that the cataclysm destroyed all government and society beyond a village scale, plunging the world into a Dark Age. In many editions of the game, technology is at best quasi-medieval (in the first edition, the crossbow is described as "the ultimate weapon" for most Gamma World societies). Some, such as the 2003 and, to a lesser degree the 2010 edition, feature advanced technology that is well known and often easily available. In contrast, super-science artifacts in earlier editions were risky to use due to the average Gamma World character not knowing how to properly operate such devices, or possibly even what the device is at all. The post-apocalyptic inhabitants of Earth now refer to their planet as "Gamma World" (or "Gamma Terra" in later editions).
Gamma World is a chaotic, dangerous environment that little resembles pre-apocalyptic Earth. The weapons unleashed during the final war were strong enough to alter coastlines, level cities, and leave large areas of land lethally radioactive. These future weapons bathed the surviving life of Earth in unspecified forms of radiation and biochemical agents, producing widespread, permanent mutations among humans, animals, and plants. As a result, fantastic mutations such as extra limbs, super strength, and psychic powers are relatively common. (Random tables of such improbable mutations are a hallmark of every edition of "Gamma World".) Many animals and plants are sentient, semi-civilized species competing with surviving humans. Both humans and non-humans have lost most knowledge of the pre-war humans, whom Gamma World's inhabitants refer to as "the Ancients". The only group with significant knowledge of the Ancients are isolated robots and other artificial intelligences that survived the war—though these machines tend to be damaged, in ill repair, or hostile to organic beings.
"Gamma World" player characters include unmutated humans (referred to as "Pure Strain Humans" in most editions), mutated humans, sentient animals or plants, and androids. Characters explore Ancient ruins and strange post-apocalyptic societies to gain knowledge of the Ancients and social status for themselves. Common adventure themes involve protecting fragile post-apocalypse societies, retrieving Ancient "artifacts" (science fiction gadgetry such as power armor, laser pistols, and anti-grav sleds), or mere survival against the multifarious dangers of the future (such as gun-toting mutant rabbits, rampaging ancient death machines, or other Gamma Worlders bent on mayhem).
A recurrent source of conflict on Gamma World is the rivalry among the "Cryptic Alliances", semi-secret societies whose ideological agendas—usually verging on monomania—often bring them into conflict with the rest of the Gamma World. For example, the Pure Strain Human "Knights of Genetic Purity" seek to exterminate all mutants, while the all-mutant "Iron Society" wants to eliminate unmutated humans. Other rivalries involve attitudes towards Ancient technology, with some Alliances (such as "The Restorationists") seeking to rebuild Ancient society, while others (such as "The Seekers") want to destroy remaining artifacts.
Throughout the game's many editions, "Gamma World" has almost always remained strongly compatible with the then-current edition of "Dungeons & Dragons" ("D&D"). Attribute generation is much the same for instance with a range of 3 to 18, randomly generated by rolling three six-sided dice. The attributes themselves are the same, but with occasional name changes such as Physical Strength instead of Strength and Mental Strength instead of Wisdom. This allows Gamma World and D&D characters to potentially cross over genres.
Character generation is mostly random, and features one of the game's most distinctive mechanics, the mutation tables. Players who choose to play mutants roll dice to randomly determine their characters' mutations. All versions of "Gamma World" eschew a realistic portrayal of genetic mutation to one degree or another, instead giving characters fantastic abilities like psychic powers, laser beams, force fields, life draining and others. Other mutations are extensions or extremes of naturally existing features transposed from different species, such as electrical generation, infravision, quills, extra limbs, dual brains, carapaces, gills, etc. These were offset with defects that also ranged from the fantastical - such as skin that dissolves in water, or a scent that attracts monsters - to the mundane, such as seizures, madness and phobias.
Characters in most versions of "Gamma World" earn experience points during their adventures, which cause the character's Rank (in some editions, Level) to increase. Unlike "D&D", however, the first two editions of "Gamma World" do not use a concept of true level or character class, and increases in Rank do not affect the character's skills or combat abilities. In fact, in the first three editions of the game, character rank is primarily a measure of the character's social prestige.
The game mechanics used for resolving character actions, on the other hand, greatly varied between "Gamma World" editions. The first two editions, like the early editions of "D&D", depend heavily on matrix-based mechanics, where two factors (one representing the actor or attacker, and one representing the opponent) are cross-referenced on a chart. For some actions, such as attacks, the number located on the matrix represents a number the acting player must roll. For other actions (such as determining the result of radiation exposure), the matrix result indicates a non-negotiable result. "Gamma" World's first two editions had a variety of specialized matrices for different situations (again, closely resembling "D&D").
The third edition rules replace specialized matrices with the Action Control Table (ACT), a single, color-coded chart that allowed players to determine whether a character action succeeded, and the degree of success, with a single roll. (The ACT concept is drawn from the "Marvel Super Heroes" game published by TSR shortly before development of "Gamma World"'s third edition.) The ACT requires the referee to cross-reference the difficulty of a character action with the ability score used to complete that action, determining which column of the ACT is used for that action. The character's player then rolls percentile dice; the result is compared to appropriate column, determining a degree of success or failure and eliminating the need for second result roll (e.g. the damage roll that many games require after a successful combat action).
The fourth edition was directly compatible with 2nd Edition AD&D with some minor differences in mechanics. The fifth and sixth editions though would relegate Gamma World to that of a Campaign Setting and require the core books to play. 5th uses the Alternity system which is mostly represented in the book but required the core rules in order to resolve some factors. 6th Edition though was fully incomplete on its own and required the d20 Modern rulebook in order to play the game.
The seventh version uses a streamlined version of "D&D 4th edition" mechanics. Character generation choice though was nearly fully removed. Instead of choosing a character class, a player had to roll a twenty-sided die two times and consult an accompanying character origin table. For example, a player might obtain the result "Radioactive Yeti" and gain the powers associated with the "Radioactive" and "Yeti" origins. Attributes, mutations, and skills were also randomly assigned. Two decks of cards comprising the core of a "Collectible Card Game" are included with the game. One deck represented random Alpha Mutations, which could be drawn to gain temporary powers, and the other contained various Omega Tech, powerful technological devices that could possibly backfire on those that used them. Some 4th edition rules enhancements for the setting include new damage types such as "Radiation", Gamma World-specific skills, and increased lethality. Despite these differences, it is possible to use characters and monsters from a "D&D" game in "Gamma World" and vice versa.
The original "Gamma World" boxed set (containing a 56-page rulebook, a map of a devastated North America, and dice) was released in 1978. TSR went on to publish three accessories for the 1st edition of the game:
Grenadier Miniatures also supported the game, with a line of licensed miniatures.
At least one other TSR product was announced -- "Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega", an adaptation of "Metamorphosis Alpha's" campaign setting to "Gamma World's" rules (Anon 1981). Work on the adaptation was halted when a 2nd edition of "Gamma World" was announced. This was later released as "Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega" using the "Amazing Engine" Rules.
The second edition "Gamma World" boxed set (with rules designed by Ward, Jaquet, and David James Ritchie) was released in 1983. Two modules and two accessories were released for this version:
TSR also produced four packs of "Gamma World" miniatures. TSR started production on a third adventure module, which was to be assigned the identification code GW5 and had the working title "Rapture of the Deep". This module was not published. However, a 'ghost' Second Edition GW5 "Rapture of the Deep" module was produced in 2007.
The 3rd edition of "Gamma World" was another boxed set, credited to James M. Ward. It introduced the Action Control Table, a color-coded table used to resolve nearly all actions in the game. (Color-coded tables were something of a trend at TSR in the mid-1980s. After 1984's "Marvel Super Heroes" proved the viability of the concept, TSR revised "Gamma World", "Star Frontiers", and "Top Secret" to use similar tables.) Unfortunately for TSR, this version of the rules became notorious for the number of editorial mistakes, including cross-references to rules that didn't appear in the boxed set. The errors were serious enough that TSR published a "Gamma World Rules Supplement" containing the "missing" rules. The "Rules Supplement" was sent to gamers who requested it by mail, and included in reprintings of the boxed set.
The five modules TSR published for "Gamma World's" 3rd edition introduced the setting's first multi-module metaplot, which involved rebuilding an ancient 'sky chariot':
TSR dropped the 3rd edition of "Gamma World" from its product line before the multi-module storyline could be completed. In 2003 an unofficial conclusion to the series was published under the title GW11 "Omega Project".
Despite its editorial issues, the 3rd edition rules were well-received enough to win the 1986/1987 Gamer's Choice Award for "Best Science-Fiction Roleplaying Game".
The 4th edition of "Gamma World" was a 192-page softcover book, written by Bruce Nesmith and James M. Ward, published in May 1992 by TSR. This version of the game abandoned the 3rd edition's Action Control Table for mechanics resembling "2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". TSR published five accessories for the 4th edition:
TSR's "Gamma World" development team announced at Gen Con 1993 that no further products would be released for the 4th edition. They also announced that TSR had restarted development of "Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega", but that the manuscript would be completed using the "Amazing Engine" rules.
The 5th version of "Gamma World" was a supplement for the science-fiction game "Alternity". (In a nod to "Gamma World"'s reputation for being repeatedly revised, the book's back cover states "That's right, it's the return of the "Gamma World"".) The "Gamma World Campaign Setting" () was a 192-page softcover book written by Andy Collins and Jeff Grubb, published in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), only a month after WOTC announced its cancellation of the "Alternity" line. This version of "Gamma World" is unique as the only one not to have accessories or supplements.
In September 2002, "Omega World", a "d20 System" mini-game based on "Gamma World" and written by Jonathan Tweet, was published in "Dungeon" 94/"Polyhedron" 153. Tweet does not plan any expansions for the game, although it received a warm reception from "Gamma World" fans and players new to the concept alike.
In November 2002, Sword & Sorcery Studios (SSS) announced that it had licensed the "Gamma World" setting from WOTC in order to produce a sixth version of the game. SSS's version of the game, which reached the market in 2003, used the "d20 Modern" system, and mimicked "D&D"'s "three core book" model with three hardcover manuals:
Sword & Sorcery Studios also published three paperback supplements for the d20 version of "Gamma World":
This new version of the game presented a more sober and serious approach to the concept of a post-nuclear world, at odds with the more light-hearted and adventurous approach taken by previous editions; it was also the first edition of the game to include fantastical nanotechnology on a large scale. In August 2005, White Wolf announced that it was reverting the rights to publish "Gamma World" products back to Wizards of the Coast, putting the game out of print again. Several critics and fans considered Tweet's "Omega World" to be a superior d20 System treatment of the "Gamma World" concept.
At the Dungeons & Dragons Experience fan convention in early 2010, Wizards of the Coast announced a new version titled "D&D Gamma World", eventually released in October of that year. The game is compatible with the D&D 4th Edition rules and the System Reference Document, but is not considered a separate D&D setting.
The basic box included 80 non-random cards. In addition, random "boosters" of "Alpha Mutation" and "Omega Tech" cards for players are sold separately in packs of eight.
This edition of "Gamma World" includes the following three boxed sets (one core set and two expansion kits):
Additional content was released for the 7th Edition of "Gamma World" at Game Day 2010 and at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo, Trouble in Freesboro and Pax Extraterrestria respectively. In addition, a Christmas themed adventure and vehicular combat rules were released online.
Don Turnbull reviewed "Gamma World" for "White Dwarf" #10, giving it an overall rating of 9 out of 10, and stated that ""Gamma World" is good quality - let there be no mistake. This has not been thrown together in haste by earnest amateurs over glasses of cheap booze. It is a thoroughly professional job which deserves a place on the shelf (and the playing table) of anyone remotely interested in the science fiction game-setting."
Ronald Pehr reviewed "Gamma World" in "The Space Gamer" No. 32. Pehr commented that "If you liked its progenitors, "Gamma World" is an interesting variant. Beginning players should find it easy to learn, and referees are challenged to create a playable, balanced world. It's somewhat expensive and the sudden-death power of futuristic weaponry and the lack of character 'levels' may put you off, but if the basic premise is appealing you'll probably enjoy "Gamma World"."
Chris Baylis reviewed "Gamma World" for "Imagine" magazine, and stated that "For a post nuclear holocaust role-playing game, "Gamma World" game has just about all the right ingredients, in the correct proportions. It is a very good introduction into the fantasy world of role-playing, and should seriously rival all other RPGs."
The Swedish role playing game Mutant, released in 1984 by Äventyrsspel, was first pitched to its future writer as "Gamma World, set in Sweden". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12283 |
Grimoire
A grimoire ( ) (also known as a "book of spells") is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination, and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities and demons. In many cases, the books themselves are believed to be imbued with magical powers, although in many cultures, other sacred texts that are not grimoires (such as the Bible) have been believed to have supernatural properties intrinsically. Most commonly mistaken as a Book of Shadows, a grimoire is not as personal as its counterpart and in fact, a grimoire doesn't contain any personal writings inside. The only contents found in a grimoire would be information on spells, rituals, the preparation of magickal tools, and lists of ingredients and their magickal correspondence. In this manner, while all "books on magic" could be thought of as grimoires, not all "magical books" should be thought of as grimoires.
While the term "grimoire" is originally European and many Europeans throughout history, particularly ceremonial magicians and cunning folk, have used grimoires, the historian Owen Davies noted that similar books can be found all across the world, ranging from Jamaica to Sumatra. He also noted that in this sense, the world's first grimoires were created in Europe and the Ancient Near East.
It is most commonly believed that the term "grimoire" originated from the Old French word "grammaire", which had initially been used to refer to all books written in Latin. By the 18th century, the term had gained its now common usage in France, and had begun to be used to refer purely to books of magic. Owen Davies presumed this was because "many of them continued to circulate in Latin manuscripts".
However, the term "grimoire" later developed into a figure of speech amongst the French indicating something that was hard to understand. In the 19th century, with the increasing interest in occultism amongst the British following the publication of Francis Barrett's "The Magus" (1801), the term entered the English language in reference to books of magic.
The earliest known written magical incantations come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), where they have been found inscribed on cuneiform clay tablets that archaeologists excavated from the city of Uruk and dated to between the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The ancient Egyptians also employed magical incantations, which have been found inscribed on amulets and other items. The Egyptian magical system, known as heka, was greatly altered and expanded after the Macedonians, led by Alexander the Great, invaded Egypt in 332 BC.
Under the next three centuries of Hellenistic Egypt, the Coptic writing system evolved, and the Library of Alexandria was opened. This likely had an influence upon books of magic, with the trend on known incantations switching from simple health and protection charms to more specific things, such as financial success and sexual fulfillment. Around this time the legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus developed as a conflation of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek Hermes; this figure was associated with writing and magic and, therefore, of books on magic.
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that books on magic were invented by the Persians. The 1st-century AD writer Pliny the Elder stated that magic had been first discovered by the ancient philosopher Zoroaster around the year 647 BC but that it was only written down in the 5th century BC by the magician Osthanes. His claims are not, however, supported by modern historians.
The ancient Jewish people were often viewed as being knowledgeable in magic, which, according to legend, they had learned from Moses, who had learned it in Egypt. Among many ancient writers, Moses was seen as an Egyptian rather than a Jew. Two manuscripts likely dating to the 4th century, both of which purport to be the legendary eighth Book of Moses (the first five being the initial books in the Biblical Old Testament), present him as a polytheist who explained how to conjure gods and subdue demons.
Meanwhile, there is definite evidence of grimoires being used by certain, particularly Gnostic, sects of early Christianity. In the "Book of Enoch" found within the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, there is information on astrology and the angels. In possible connection with the "Book of Enoch", the idea of Enoch and his great-grandson Noah having some involvement with books of magic given to them by angels continued through to the medieval period.
Israelite King Solomon was a Biblical figure associated with magic and sorcery in the ancient world. The 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus mentioned a book circulating under the name of Solomon that contained incantations for summoning demons and described how a Jew called Eleazar used it to cure cases of possession. The book may have been the "Testament of Solomon" but was more probably a different work. The pseudepigraphic "Testament of Solomon" is one of the oldest magical texts. It is a Greek manuscript attributed to Solomon and likely written in either Babylonia or Egypt sometime in the first five centuries AD, over 1,000 years after Solomon's death.
The work tells of the building of The Temple and relates that construction was hampered by demons until the angel Michael gave the king a magical ring. The ring, engraved with the Seal of Solomon, had the power to bind demons from doing harm. Solomon used it to lock demons in jars and commanded others to do his bidding, although eventually, according to the "Testament", he was tempted into worshiping "false gods", such as Moloch, Baal, and Rapha. Subsequently, after losing favour with God, King Solomon wrote the work as a warning and a guide to the reader.
When Christianity became the dominant faith of the Roman Empire, the early Church frowned upon the propagation of books on magic, connecting it with paganism, and burned books of magic. The New Testament records that after the unsuccessful exorcism by the seven sons of Sceva became known, many converts decided to burn their own magic and pagan books in the city of Ephesus; this advice was adopted on a large scale after the Christian ascent to power.
In the Medieval period, the production of grimoires continued in Christendom, as well as amongst Jews and the followers of the newly founded Islamic faith. As the historian Owen Davies noted, "while the [Christian] Church was ultimately successful in defeating pagan worship it never managed to demarcate clearly and maintain a line of practice between religious devotion and magic." The use of such books on magic continued. In Christianised Europe, the Church divided books of magic into two kinds: those that dealt with "natural magic" and those that dealt in "demonic magic".
The former was acceptable because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God; for instance, the Anglo-Saxon leechbooks, which contained simple spells for medicinal purposes, were tolerated. Demonic magic was not acceptable, because it was believed that such magic did not come from God, but from the Devil and his demons. These grimoires dealt in such topics as necromancy, divination and demonology. Despite this, "there is ample evidence that the mediaeval clergy were the main practitioners of magic and therefore the owners, transcribers, and circulators of grimoires," while several grimoires were attributed to Popes.
One such Arabic grimoire devoted to astral magic, the 12th-century "Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi'l-sihr", was later translated into Latin and circulated in Europe during the 13th century under the name of the "Picatrix". However, not all such grimoires of this era were based upon Arabic sources. The 13th-century "Sworn Book of Honorius", for instance, was (like the ancient "Testament of Solomon" before it) largely based on the supposed teachings of the Biblical king Solomon and included ideas such as prayers and a ritual circle, with the mystical purpose of having visions of God, Hell, and Purgatory and gaining much wisdom and knowledge as a result. Another was the Hebrew "Sefer Raziel Ha-Malakh", translated in Europe as the "Liber Razielis Archangeli".
A later book also claiming to have been written by Solomon was originally written in Greek during the 15th century, where it was known as the "Magical Treatise of Solomon" or the "Little Key of the Whole Art of Hygromancy, Found by Several Craftsmen and by the Holy Prophet Solomon". In the 16th century, this work had been translated into Latin and Italian, being renamed the "Clavicula Salomonis", or the "Key of Solomon".
In Christendom during the medieval age, grimoires were written that were attributed to other ancient figures, thereby supposedly giving them a sense of authenticity because of their antiquity. The German abbot and occultist Trithemius (1462–1516) supposedly had a "Book of Simon the Magician", based upon the New Testament figure of Simon Magus. Simon Magus had been a contemporary of Jesus Christ's and, like the Biblical Jesus, had supposedly performed miracles, but had been demonized by the Medieval Church as a devil worshiper and evil individual.
Similarly, it was commonly believed by medieval people that other ancient figures, such as the poet Virgil, astronomer Ptolemy and philosopher Aristotle, had been involved in magic, and grimoires claiming to have been written by them were circulated. However, there were those who did not believe this; for instance, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 1214–94) stated that books falsely claiming to be by ancient authors "ought to be prohibited by law."
As the early modern period commenced in the late 15th century, many changes began to shock Europe that would have an effect on the production of grimoires. Historian Owen Davies classed the most important of these as the Protestant Reformation and subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the witch-hunts and the advent of printing. The Renaissance saw the continuation of interest in magic that had been found in the Mediaeval period, and in this period, there was an increased interest in Hermeticism among occultists and ceremonial magicians in Europe, largely fueled by the 1471 translation of the ancient "Corpus hermeticum" into Latin by Marsilio Ficino (1433–99).
Alongside this, there was a rise in interest in the Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah, which was spread across the continent by Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin. The most important magician of the Renaissance was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), who widely studied occult topics and earlier grimoires and eventually published his own, the "Three Books of Occult Philosophy", in 1533. A similar figure was the Swiss magician known as Paracelsus (1493–1541), who published "Of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature", in which he emphasised the distinction between good and bad magic. A third such individual was Johann Georg Faust, upon whom several pieces of later literature were written, such as Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", that portrayed him as consulting with demons.
The idea of demonology had remained strong in the Renaissance, and several demonological grimoires were published, including "The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy", which falsely claimed to having been authored by Agrippa, and the "Pseudomonarchia Daemonum", which listed 69 demons. To counter this, the Roman Catholic Church authorised the production of many works of exorcism, the rituals of which were often very similar to those of demonic conjuration. Alongside these demonological works, grimoires on natural magic continued to be produced, including "Magia naturalis", written by Giambattista Della Porta (1535–1615).
Iceland held magical traditions in regional work as well, most remarkably the Galdrabók where numerous symbols of mystic origin are dedicated to the practitioner. These pieces give a perfect fusion of Germanic pagan and Christian influence, seeking splendid help from the Norse gods and referring to the titles of demons.
The advent of printing in Europe meant that books could be mass-produced for the first time and could reach an ever-growing literate audience. Among the earliest books to be printed were magical texts. The "nóminas" were one example, consisting of prayers to the saints used as talismans. It was particularly in Protestant countries, such as Switzerland and the German states, which were not under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church, where such grimoires were published.
Despite the advent of print, however, handwritten grimoires remained highly valued, as they were believed to contain inherent magical powers, and they continued to be produced. With increasing availability, people lower down the social scale and women began to have access to books on magic; this was often incorporated into the popular folk magic of the average people and, in particular, that of the cunning folk, who were professionally involved in folk magic. These works left Europe and were imported to the parts of Latin America controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires and the parts of North America controlled by the British and French empires.
Throughout this period, the Inquisition, a Roman Catholic organisation, had organised the mass suppression of peoples and beliefs that they considered heretical. In many cases, grimoires were found in the heretics' possessions and destroyed. In 1599, the church published the "Indexes of Prohibited Books", in which many grimoires were listed as forbidden, including several mediaeval ones, such as the "Key of Solomon", which were still popular.
In Christendom, there also began to develop a widespread fear of witchcraft, which was believed to be Satanic in nature. The subsequent hysteria, known as the Witch Hunt, caused the death of around 40,000 people, most of whom were women. Sometimes, those found with grimoires, particularly demonological ones, were prosecuted and dealt with as witches but, in most cases, those accused had no access to such books. Highly literate Iceland proved an exception to this, where a third of the 134 witch trials held involved people who had owned grimoires. By the end of the Early Modern period and the beginning of the Enlightenment, many European governments brought in laws prohibiting many superstitious beliefs in an attempt to bring an end to the Witch Hunt; this would invariably affect the release of grimoires.
Meanwhile, Hermeticism and the Kabbalah would influence the creation of a mystical philosophy known as Rosicrucianism, which first appeared in the early 17th century, when two pamphlets detailing the existence of the mysterious Rosicrucian group were published in Germany. These claimed that Rosicrucianism had originated with a Medieval figure known as Christian Rosenkreuz, who had founded the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross; however, there was no evidence for the existence of Rosenkreuz or the Brotherhood.
The 18th century saw the rise of the Enlightenment, a movement devoted to science and rationalism, predominantly amongst the ruling classes. However, amongst much of Europe, belief in magic and witchcraft persisted, as did the witch trials in certain areas. Governments tried to crack down on magicians and fortune tellers, particularly in France, where the police viewed them as social pests who took money from the gullible, often in a search for treasure. In doing so, they confiscated many grimoires.
A new form of printing developed in France, the "Bibliothèque bleue". Many grimoires published through this circulated among an ever-growing percentage of the populace, in particular the "Grand Albert", the "Petit Albert" (1782), the "Grimoire du Pape Honorius" and the "Enchiridion Leonis Papae". The "Petit Albert" contained a wide variety of forms of magic, for instance, dealing in simple charms for ailments along with more complex things such as the instructions for making a Hand of Glory.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, following the French Revolution of 1789, a hugely influential grimoire was published under the title of the "Grand Grimoire", which was considered particularly powerful, because it involved conjuring and making a pact with the devil's chief minister, Lucifugé Rofocale, to gain wealth from him. A new version of this grimoire was later published under the title of the "Dragon rouge" and was available for sale in many Parisian bookstores. Similar books published in France at the time included the "Black Pullet" and the "Grimoirium Verum". The "Black Pullet", probably authored in late-18th-century Rome or France, differs from the typical grimoires in that it does not claim to be a manuscript from antiquity but told by a man who was a member of Napoleon's armed expeditionary forces in Egypt.
The widespread availability of printed grimoires in France—despite the opposition of both the rationalists and the church—soon spread to neighbouring countries such as Spain and Germany. In Switzerland, Geneva was commonly associated with the occult at the time, particularly by Catholics, because it had been a stronghold of Protestantism. Many of those interested in the esoteric traveled from Roman Catholic nations to Switzerland to purchase grimoires or to study with occultists. Soon, grimoires appeared that involved Catholic saints; one example that appeared during the 19th century that became relatively popular, particularly in Spain, was the "Libro de San Cipriano", or "The Book of St. Ciprian", which falsely claimed to date from c. 1000. Like most grimoires of this period, it dealt with (among other things) how to discover treasure.
In Germany, with the increased interest in folklore during the 19th century, many historians took an interest in magic and in grimoires. Several published extracts of such grimoires in their own books on the history of magic, thereby helping to further propagate them. Perhaps the most notable of these was the Protestant pastor Georg Conrad Horst (1779–1832), who from 1821 to 1826, published a six-volume collection of magical texts in which he studied grimoires as a peculiarity of the Mediaeval mindset.
Another scholar of the time interested in grimoires, the antiquarian bookseller Johann Scheible, first published the "Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses", two influential magical texts that claimed to have been written by the ancient Jewish figure Moses. "The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" were among the works that later spread to the countries of Scandinavia, where, in Danish and Swedish, grimoires were known as black books and were commonly found among members of the army.
In Britain, new grimoires continued to be produced throughout the 18th century, such as Ebenezer Sibly's "A New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology". In the last decades of that century, London experienced a revival of interest in the occult that was further propagated when Francis Barrett published "The Magus" in 1801. "The Magus" contained many things taken from older grimoires, particularly those of Cornelius Agrippa, and while not achieving initial popularity upon release, gradually became an influential text.
One of Barrett's pupils, John Parkin, created his own handwritten grimoire, "The Grand Oracle of Heaven, or, The Art of Divine Magic", although it was never published, largely because Britain was at war with France, and grimoires were commonly associated with the French. The only writer to publish British grimoires widely in the early 19th century, Robert Cross Smith, released "The Philosophical Merlin" (1822) and "The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century" (1825), but neither sold well.
In the late 19th century, several of these texts (including "The Book of Abramelin" and the "Key of Solomon") were reclaimed by para-Masonic magical organisations, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis.
"The Secret Grimoire of Turiel" claims to have been written in the 16th century, but no copy older than 1927 has been produced.
A modern grimoire, the "Simon Necronomicon", takes its name from a fictional book of magic in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft, inspired by Babylonian mythology and by the "Ars Goetia", a section in the "Lesser Key of Solomon" that concerns the summoning of demons. The "Azoëtia" of Andrew D. Chumbley has been described by Gavin Semple as a modern grimoire.
The neopagan religion of Wicca publicly appeared in the 1940s, and Gerald Gardner introduced the "Book of Shadows" as a Wiccan grimoire.
The term grimoire commonly serves as an alternative name for a spell book or tome of magical knowledge in fantasy fiction and role-playing games. The most famous fictional grimoire is the "Necronomicon", a creation of H. P. Lovecraft. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12284 |
Grand Guignol
Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (: "The Theatre of the Great Puppet") – known as the Grand Guignol – was a theatre in the Pigalle district of Paris (at 20 bis, ). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialised in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", and Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" and "The White Devil"), to today's splatter films.
"Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol" was founded in 1897 by Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for naturalist performance. With 293 seats, the venue was the smallest in Paris.
A former chapel, the theatre's previous life was evident in the boxes – which looked like confessionals – and in the angels over the orchestra. Although the architecture created frustrating obstacles, the design that was initially a predicament ultimately became beneficial to the marketing of the theatre. The opaque furniture and gothic structures placed sporadically on the walls of the building exude a feeling of eeriness from the moment of entrance. People came to this theatre for an experience, not only to see a show. The audience at "Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol" endured the terror of the shows because they wanted to be filled with strong "feelings" of something. Many attended the shows to get a feeling of arousal. Underneath the balcony were boxes (originally built for nuns to watch church services) that were available for theatre-goers to rent during performances because they would get so aroused by the action happening on stage. It has been said that audience members would get so boisterous in the boxes, that actors would sometimes break character and yell something such as "Keep it down in there!" Conversely, there were audience members who could not physically handle the brutality of the actions taking place on stage. Frequently, the "special effects" would be too realistic and often an audience member would faint or vomit during performances. Maury used the goriness to his advantage by hiring doctors to be at performances as a marketing ploy.
The theatre owed its name to Guignol, a traditional Lyonnaise puppet character, joining political commentary with the style of Punch and Judy.
The theatre's peak was between World War I and World War II, when it was frequented by royalty and celebrities in evening dress.
Oscar Méténier was the Grand Guignol's founder and original director. Under his direction, the theatre produced plays about a class of people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, criminals, street urchins and others at the lower end of Paris's social echelon.
André Antoine was the founder of the Théâtre Libre and a collaborator of Metenier. His theatre gave Metenier a basic model to use for The Grand Guignol Theatre.
Max Maurey served as director from 1898 to 1914. Maurey shifted the theatre's emphasis to the horror plays it would become famous for and judged the success of a performance by the number of patrons who passed out from shock; the average was two faintings each evening. Maurey discovered André de Lorde, who would become the most important playwright for the theatre.
De Lorde was the theatre's principal playwright from 1901 to 1926. He wrote at least 100 plays for the Grand Guignol, such as "The Old Woman", "The Ultimate Torture", "A Crime in the Mad House" and more. He collaborated with experimental psychologist Alfred Binet to create plays about insanity, one of the theatre's favourite and frequently recurring themes.
Camille Choisy served as director from 1914 to 1930. He contributed his expertise in special effects and scenery to the theatre's distinctive style.
Jack Jouvin served as director from 1930 to 1937. He shifted the theatre's subject matter, focusing performances not on gory horror but psychological drama. Under his leadership, the theatre's popularity waned and, after World War II, it was not well-attended.
Charles Nonon was the theatre's last director.
At the Grand Guignol, patrons would see five or six plays, all in a style that attempted to be brutally true to the theatre's naturalistic ideals. The plays were in a variety of styles. The plays were usually short and would alternate between comedy and horror and they referred to this as "Hot and Cold Showers". But, the most popular and best known were the horror plays, featuring a distinctly bleak worldview as well as notably gory special effects in their notoriously bloody climaxes. The horrors depicted at Grand Guignol were generally not supernatural; these plays often explored the altered states, like insanity, hypnosis, or panic, under which uncontrolled horror could happen. To heighten the effect, the horror plays were often alternated with comedies.
"Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations", by André de Lorde: When a doctor finds his wife's lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery, rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor's brain.
"Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous", by André de Lorde: Two hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a pretty, young fellow inmate out of jealousy.
"L'Horrible Passion", by André de Lorde: A nanny strangles the children in her care.
"Le Baiser dans la Nuit", by Maurice Level: A young woman visits the man whose face she horribly disfigured with acid, where he obtains his revenge.
Audiences waned in the years following World War II, and the Grand Guignol closed its doors in 1962. Management attributed the closure in part to the fact that the theatre's faux horrors had been eclipsed by the actual events of the Holocaust two decades earlier. "We could never equal Buchenwald," said its final director, Charles Nonon. "Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality."
The Grand Guignol building still exists. It is occupied by the , a company devoted to presenting plays in sign language.
While the original Grand Guignol attempted to present naturalistic horror, the performances would seem melodramatic and heightened to today's audience. For this reason, the term is often applied to films and plays of a stylised nature with heightened acting, melodrama and theatrical effects such as "", "Sleepy Hollow", "Quills", and the Hammer Horror films that went before them. "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"; "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte"; "What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?"; "What's the Matter with Helen?"; "Night Watch" and "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" form a sub-branch of the genre called Grande Dame Guignol for its use of aging A-list actresses in sensational horror films.
Audiences had strong reactions to the new disturbing themes the horror plays presented. One of the most prevalent themes staged at the Grand-Guignol was the demoralization and corruption of science. The "evil doctor" was a reoccurring trope in the horror shows performed. The popular show The System of Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume by André de Lorde displays a depiction of a doctor typical of the theater. Dr. Goudron is portrayed as manic, insane, unreliable. He is seen "pac[ing] nervously" and "jumping on [a] desk and gesticulating". Later Lorde depicts the scientist as violent with Goudron attempting to carve out an eye and then bite the hands of guards. During the time, curiosity and skepticism ravaged science and medicine. The depiction of scientists at the Grand-Guignol reflected the public attitude of fear and disdain. Medical science held a reputation of "terror and peculiar infamy". Middle-class Parisian society believed science existed in a world of frivolity and falsehood, whereas art existed in a world of honesty. Matthew Arnold is an exemplary lens to use in order to understand these sympathies.
The themes the Grand-Guignol introduced into the horror genre impacted how the genre exists today. The Grand-Guignol's introduction of naturalism into horror "unmasked brutality of contemporary culture". Previously horror served as escapism, dealing with the supernatural and unrelatable (Hand and Wilson 305). After the theater introduced relatable topics into the genre, the audience could visualize the plots taking place and thus experienced greater fear. The Grand-Guignol transformed the horror genre to be meaningful. Horror became a vehicle for ideas and philosophy where deep "insights gave way to spectacle, and spectacle to violence and gore, until in the end little was left but the gore". Today the horror genre begins with "optimism and hope", which "wither before random, chaotic, and inevitable violence". Look to any horror movie: "The Shining" begins with a father getting a new job, "The Amityville Horror" begins with a lovely couple buying a new home together, "Get Out" begins with a boyfriend meeting his girlfriend's parents for the first time. This cultural shift of what horror meant to an audience began at the Grand-Guignol.
Grand Guignol flourished briefly in London in the early 1920s under the direction of Jose Levy, where it attracted the talents of Sybil Thorndike and Noël Coward, and a series of short English "Grand Guignol" films (using original screenplays, not play adaptations) was made at the same time, directed by Fred Paul. Several of the films exist at the BFI National Archive.
The Grand Guignol was revived once again in London in 1945, under the direction of Frederick Witney, where it ran for two seasons at the Granville Theatre. These included premiers of Witney's own work as well as adaptations of French originals.
In recent years, English director-writer, Richard Mazda, has re-introduced New York audiences to the Grand Guignol. His acting troupe, The Queens Players, have produced six mainstage productions of Grand Guignol plays, and Mazda is writing new plays in the classic Guignol style. The sixth production, "Theatre of Fear", included De Lorde's famous adaptation of Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" ("Le Systéme du Dr Goudron et Pr Plume") as well as two original plays, "Double Crossed" and "The Good Death" alongside "The Tell Tale Heart".
The 1963 mondo film "Ecco" includes a scene which may have been filmed at the Grand Guignol theatre during its final years.
American avant-garde composer John Zorn released an album called "Grand Guignol" by Naked City in 1992, in a reference to "the darker side of our existence which has always been with us and always will be".
The Swiss theatre company, Compagnie Pied de Biche revisits the Grand Guignol genre in contemporary contexts since 2008. The company staged in 2010 a diptych "Impact & Dr. Incubis", based on original texts by Nicolas Yazgi and directed by Frédéric Ozier. More than literal adaptations, the plays address violence, death, crime and fear in contemporary contexts, while revisiting many trope of the original Grand Guignol corpus, often with humour.
Recently formed London-based Grand Guignol company Theatre of the Damned, brought their first production to the Camden Fringe in 2010 and produced the award nominated "Grand Guignol" in November of that year. In 2011, they staged "Revenge of the Grand Guignol" at the Courtyard Theatre, London, as part of the London Horror Festival.
In November 2014, 86 years after the last show of Alfredo Sainati's "La Compagnia del Grand-Guignol", founded in 1908 and which had been the only example of Grand Guignol in Italy, the Convivio d'Arte Company presented in Milan "Grand Guignol de Milan: Le Cabaret des Vampires". The show was an original tribute to Grand Guignol, a horror vaudeville with various horror and grotesque performances such as monologues, live music and burlesque, with a satirical black humour conduction.
One of the more prominent examples of Grand Guignol in television is "Hannibal". Every episode includes at least one grisly murder and Hannibal Lecter, the main protagonist is a cannibal that the audience gets to see specifically choosing his victims, removing their organs, and cooking them into a feast that he serves to his unsuspecting friends and colleagues at the FBI. Abbott remarks how "the show's artistic design and display of the corpses calls to mind images from Grand Guignol theatre, featuring weekly macabre images such as a human totem pole made out of dismembered corpses". This show is calling back to the grisly themes of the Grand Guignol and the audience reacts the same way they did in the past: with terrified faces, but never once choosing to leave.
The Grand Guignol plays a prominent role in Ib Melchior's WWII novel "Code Name: Grand Guignol" (1987), in which a small group of actors from the theatre team up with the French resistance and use their special skills to infiltrate Hitler's construction of a secret weapon, the V-3 cannon. Melchior explains in the postscript that he based the novel on his own experiences as an actor in France, where he befriended the stage manager of the Grand Guignol and learned many of its secrets.
Sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12285 |
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which originated from Central Asia in 1331, the first year of the Black Death, an outbreak which included other forms such as pneumonic plague, and lasted until 1750.
The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18
months. The plague was caused by the "Yersinia pestis" bacterium, which is usually transmitted through the bite of an infected rat flea.
The 1665–66 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic; it was remembered afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400-year Second Pandemic.
As in other European cities of the period, the plague was endemic in 17th century London.
The disease periodically erupted into massive epidemics. There were 30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603, 35,000 in 1625, and 10,000 in 1636, as well as smaller numbers in other years.
In late 1664, a bright comet was to be seen in the sky and the people of London were fearful, wondering what evil event it portended. London at that time consisted of a city of about 448 acres surrounded by a city wall, which had originally been built to keep out raiding bands. There were gates at Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate and Bishopsgate and to the south lay the River Thames and London Bridge. In the poorer parts of the city, hygiene was impossible to maintain in the overcrowded tenements and garrets. There was no sanitation, and open drains flowed along the centre of winding streets. The cobbles were slippery with animal dung, rubbish and the slops thrown out of the houses, muddy and buzzing with flies in summer and awash with sewage in winter. The City Corporation employed "rakers" to remove the worst of the filth and it was transported to mounds outside the walls where it accumulated and continued to decompose. The stench was overwhelming and people walked around with handkerchiefs or nosegays pressed against their nostrils.
Some of the city's necessities such as coal arrived by barge, but most came by road. Carts, carriages, horses and pedestrians were crowded together and the gateways in the wall formed bottlenecks through which it was difficult to progress. The nineteen-arch London Bridge was even more congested. The better-off used hackney carriages and sedan chairs to get to their destinations without getting filthy. The poor walked, and might be splashed by the wheeled vehicles and drenched by slops being thrown out and water falling from the overhanging roofs. Another hazard was the choking black smoke belching forth from factories which made soap, from breweries and iron smelters and from about 15,000 houses burning coal.
Outside the city walls, suburbs had sprung up providing homes for the craftsmen and tradespeople who flocked to the already overcrowded city. These were shanty towns with wooden shacks and no sanitation. The government had tried to control this development but had failed and over a quarter of a million people lived here. Other immigrants had taken over fine town houses, vacated by Royalists who had fled the country during the Commonwealth, converting them into tenements with different families in every room. These properties were soon vandalised and became rat-infested slums.
The administration of the City of London was organised by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and common councillors, but not all of the inhabited area generally comprising London was legally part of the City. Both inside the City and outside its boundaries there were also Liberties, which were areas of varying sizes which historically had been granted rights to self-government. Many had been associated with religious institutions, and when these were abolished in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, their historic rights were transferred along with their property to new owners. The walled City was surrounded by a ring of Liberties which had come under its authority, called 'the City and Liberties', but these were surrounded by further suburbs with varying administrations. Westminster was an independent town with its own liberties, joined to London by urban development. The Tower of London was an independent liberty, as were others. Areas north of the river not part of one of these administrations came under the authority of the county of Middlesex, and south of the river under Surrey.
At that time, bubonic plague was a much feared disease but its cause was not understood. The credulous blamed emanations from the earth, "pestilential effluviums", unusual weather, sickness in livestock, abnormal behaviour of animals or an increase in the numbers of moles, frogs, mice or flies. It was not until 1894 that the identification by Alexandre Yersin of its causal agent "Yersinia pestis" was made and the transmission of the bacterium by rat fleas became known. The Great Plague in London had long been believed to be bubonic plague caused by "Yersinia pestis", and this was confirmed by DNA analysis in 2016.
In order to judge the severity of an epidemic, it is first necessary to know how big the population was in which it occurred. There was no official census of the population to provide this figure, and the best contemporary count comes from the work of John Graunt (1620–1674), who was one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society and one of the first demographers, bringing a scientific approach to the collection of statistics. In 1662, he estimated that 384,000 people lived in the City of London, the Liberties, Westminster and the out-parishes, based on figures in the Bills of Mortality published each week in the capital. These different districts with different administrations constituted the officially recognized extent of London as a whole. In 1665, he revised his estimate to "not above 460,000". Other contemporaries put the figure higher, (the French Ambassador, for example, suggested 600,000) but with no mathematical basis to support their estimates. The next largest city in the kingdom was Norwich, with a population of 30,000.
There was no duty to report a death to anyone in authority. Instead, each parish appointed two or more "searchers of the dead", whose duty was to inspect a corpse and determine the cause of death. A searcher was entitled to charge a small fee from relatives for each death they reported, and so habitually the parish would appoint someone to the post who would otherwise be destitute and would be receiving support from the parish poor rate. Typically, this meant searchers would be old women who were illiterate, might know little about identifying diseases and who would be open to dishonesty. Searchers would typically learn about a death either from the local sexton who had been asked to dig a grave or from the tolling of a church bell. Anyone who did not report a death to their local church, such as Quakers, Anabaptists, other non-Anglican Christians or Jews, frequently did not get included in the official records. Searchers during times of plague were required to live apart from the community, avoid other people and carry a white stick to warn of their occupation when outdoors, and stay indoors except when performing their duties, to avoid spreading the diseases. Searchers reported to the Parish Clerk, who made a return each week to the Company of Parish Clerks in Brode Lane. Figures were then passed to the Lord Mayor and then to the Minister of State once plague became a matter of national concern. The reported figures were used to compile the Bills of Mortality, which listed total deaths in each parish and whether by the plague. The system of Searchers to report the cause of death continued until 1836.
Graunt recorded the incompetence of the Searchers at identifying true causes of death, remarking on the frequent recording of 'consumption' rather than other diseases which were recognized then by physicians. He suggested a cup of ale and a doubling of their fee to two groats rather than one was sufficient for Searchers to change the cause of death to one more convenient for the householders. No one wished to be known as having had a death by plague in their household, and Parish Clerks, too, connived in covering up cases of plague in their official returns. Analysis of the Bills of Mortality during the months plague took hold shows a rise in deaths other than by plague well above the average death rate, which has been attributed to misrepresentation of the true cause of death. As plague spread, a system of quarantine was introduced, whereby any house where someone had died from plague would be locked up and no one allowed to enter or leave for 40 days. This frequently led to the deaths of the other inhabitants, by neglect if not from the plague, and provided ample incentive not to report the disease. The official returns record 68,596 cases of plague, but a reasonable estimate suggests this figure is 30,000 short of the true total. A plague house was marked with a red cross on the door with the words "Lord have mercy upon us", and a watchman stood guard outside.
Reports of plague around Europe began to reach England in the 1660s, causing the Privy Council to consider what steps might be taken to prevent it crossing to England. Quarantining (isolation) of ships had been used during previous outbreaks and was again introduced for ships coming to London in November 1663, following outbreaks in Amsterdam and Hamburg. Two naval ships were assigned to intercept any vessels entering the Thames estuary. Ships from infected ports were required to moor at Hole Haven on Canvey Island for a "trentine" – period of 30 days – before being allowed to travel up-river. Ships from ports free of plague or completing their isolation period were given a certificate of health and allowed to travel on. A second inspection line was established between the forts on opposite banks of the Thames at Tilbury and Gravesend with instructions only to pass ships with a certificate.
The isolation period was increased to forty days – a "quarantine" – in May 1664 as the continental plague worsened, and the areas subject to quarantine changed with the news of the spread of plague to include all of Holland, Zeeland and Friesland (all regions of the Dutch Republic); restrictions on Hamburg were removed in November. Quarantine measures against ships coming from the Dutch Republic were put in place in 29 other ports from May, starting with Great Yarmouth. The Dutch ambassador objected at the constraint of trade with his country, but England responded that it had been one of the last countries introducing such restrictions. Regulations were enforced quite strictly, so that people or houses where voyagers had come ashore without serving their quarantine were also subjected to 40 days of quarantine.
Plague was one of the hazards of life in Britain from its dramatic appearance in 1348 with the Black Death. The Bills of Mortality began to be published regularly in 1603, in which year 33,347 deaths were recorded from plague. Between then and 1665, only four years had no recorded cases. In 1563, a thousand people were reportedly dying in London each week. In 1593, there were 15,003 deaths, 1625 saw 41,313 dead, between 1640 and 1646 came 11,000 deaths, culminating in 3,597 for 1647. The 1625 outbreak was recorded at the time as the 'Great Plague', until deaths from the plague of 1665 surpassed it. These official figures are likely to under-report actual numbers.
Plague was sufficiently uncommon that medical practitioners might have had no personal experience of seeing the disease; medical training varied from those who had attended the college of physicians, to apothecaries who also acted as doctors, to charlatans. Other diseases abounded, such as an outbreak of smallpox the year before, and these uncertainties all added to difficulties identifying the true start of the epidemic. Contemporary accounts suggest cases of plague occurred through the winter of 1664/5, some of which were fatal but a number of which did not display the virulence of the later epidemic. The winter was cold, the ground frozen from December to March, river traffic on the Thames twice blocked by ice, and it may be that the cold weather held back its spread.
This outbreak of bubonic plague in England is thought to have spread from the Netherlands, where the disease had been occurring intermittently since 1599. It is unclear exactly where the disease first struck but the initial contagion may have arrived with Dutch trading ships carrying bales of cotton from Amsterdam, which was ravaged by the disease in 1663–1664, with a mortality given of 50,000. The first areas to be struck are believed to be the dock areas just outside London, and the parish of St Giles. In both of these localities, poor workers were crowded into ill-kept structures. Two suspicious deaths were recorded in St Giles parish in 1664 and another in February 1665. These did not appear as plague deaths on the Bills of Mortality, so no control measures were taken by the authorities, but the total number of people dying in London during the first four months of 1665 showed a marked increase. By the end of April, only four plague deaths had been recorded, two in the parish of St. Giles, but total deaths per week had risen from around 290 to 398.
There had been three official cases in April, a level of plague which in earlier years had not induced any official response, but the Privy Council now acted to introduce household quarantine. Justices of the Peace in Middlesex were instructed to investigate any suspected cases and to shut up the house if it was confirmed. Shortly after, a similar order was issued by the King's Bench to the City and Liberties. A riot broke out in St. Giles when the first house was sealed up; the crowd broke down the door and released the inhabitants. Rioters caught were punished severely. Instructions were given to build pest-houses, which were essentially isolation hospitals built away from other people where the sick could be cared for (or stay until they died). This official activity suggests that despite the few recorded cases, the government was already aware that this was a serious outbreak of plague.
With the arrival of warmer weather, the disease began to take a firmer hold. In the week 2–9 May, there were three recorded deaths in the parish of St Giles, four in neighbouring St Clement Danes and one each in St Andrew Holborn and St Mary Woolchurch Haw. Only the last was actually inside the city walls. A Privy Council committee was formed to investigate methods to best prevent the spread of plague, and measures were introduced to close some of the ale houses in affected areas and limit the number of lodgers allowed in a household. In the city, the Lord Mayor issued a proclamation that all householders must diligently clean the streets outside their property, which was a householder's responsibility, not a state one (the city employed scavengers and rakers to remove the worst of the mess). Matters just became worse, and Aldermen were instructed to find and punish those failing their duty. As cases in St. Giles began to rise, an attempt was made to quarantine the area and constables were instructed to inspect everyone wishing to travel and contain inside vagrants or suspect persons.
People began to be alarmed. Samuel Pepys, who had an important position at the Admiralty, stayed in London and provided a contemporary account of the plague through his diary. On 30 April he wrote: "Great fears of the sickness here in the City it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all!" Another source of information on the time is "A Journal of the Plague Year", which was written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1722. He had been only six when the plague struck but made use of his family's recollections (his uncle was a saddler in East London and his father a butcher in Cripplegate), interviews with survivors and sight of such official records as were available.
By July 1665, plague was rampant in the City of London. The rich ran away, including King Charles II of England, his family and his court, who left the city for Salisbury, moving on to Oxford in September when some cases of plague occurred in Salisbury. The aldermen and most of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts. The Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Lawrence, also decided to stay in the city. Businesses were closed when merchants and professionals fled. Defoe wrote "Nothing was to be seen but wagons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, coaches filled with people of the better sort, and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying away". As the plague raged throughout the summer, only a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries remained to cope with an increasingly large number of victims. Edward Cotes, author of "London's Dreadful Visitation", expressed the hope that "Neither the Physicians of our Souls or Bodies may hereafter in such great numbers forsake us".
The poorer people were also alarmed by the contagion and some left the city, but it was not easy for them to abandon their accommodation and livelihoods for an uncertain future elsewhere. Before exiting through the city gates, they were required to possess a certificate of good health signed by the Lord Mayor and these became increasingly difficult to obtain. As time went by and the numbers of plague victims rose, people living in the villages outside London began to resent this exodus and were no longer prepared to accept townsfolk from London, with or without a certificate. The refugees were turned back, were not allowed to pass through towns and had to travel across country, and were forced to live rough on what they could steal or scavenge from the fields. Many died in wretched circumstances of starvation and thirst in the hot summer that was to follow.
In the last week of July, the London Bill of Mortality showed 3,014 deaths, of which 2,020 had died from the plague. The number of deaths as a result of plague may have been underestimated, as deaths in other years in the same period were much lower, at around 300. As the number of victims affected mounted up, burial grounds became overfull, and pits were dug to accommodate the dead. Drivers of dead-carts travelled the streets calling "Bring out your dead" and carted away piles of bodies. The authorities became concerned that the number of deaths might cause public alarm and ordered that body removal and interment should take place only at night. As time went on, there were too many victims, and too few drivers, to remove the bodies which began to be stacked up against the walls of houses. Daytime collection was resumed and the plague pits became mounds of decomposing corpses. In the parish of Aldgate, a great hole was dug near the churchyard, fifty feet long and twenty feet wide. Digging was continued by labourers at one end while the dead-carts tipped in corpses at the other. When there was no room for further extension it was dug deeper until ground water was reached at twenty feet. When finally covered with earth it housed 1,114 corpses.
Plague doctors traversed the streets diagnosing victims, many of them without formal medical training. Several public health efforts were attempted. Physicians were hired by city officials and burial details were carefully organized, but panic spread through the city and, out of the fear of contagion, bodies were hastily buried in overcrowded pits. The means of transmission of the disease were not known but thinking they might be linked to the animals, the City Corporation ordered a cull of dogs and cats. This decision may have affected the length of the epidemic since those animals could have helped keep in check the rat population carrying the fleas which transmitted the disease. Thinking bad air was involved in transmission, the authorities ordered giant bonfires to be burned in the streets and house fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Tobacco was thought to be a prophylactic and it was later said that no London tobacconist had died from the plague during the epidemic.
Trade and business had dried up, and the streets were empty of people except for the dead-carts and the dying victims, as witnessed and recorded by Samuel Pepys in his diary: "Lord! How empty the streets are and how melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets full of sores… in Westminster, there is never a physician and but one apothecary left, all being dead." That people did not starve was down to the foresight of Sir John Lawrence and the Corporation of London who arranged for a commission of one farthing to be paid above the normal price for every quarter of corn landed in the Port of London. Another food source was the villages around London which, denied of their usual sales in the capital, left vegetables in specified market areas, negotiated their sale by shouting, and collected their payment after the money had been left submerged in a bucket of vinegar to "disinfect" the coins.
Records state that plague deaths in London and the suburbs crept up over the summer from 2,000 people per week to over 7,000 per week in September. These figures are likely to be a considerable underestimate. Many of the sextons and parish clerks who kept the records themselves died. Quakers refused to co-operate and many of the poor were just dumped into mass graves unrecorded. It is not clear how many people caught the disease and made a recovery because only deaths were recorded and many records were destroyed in the Great Fire of London the following year. In the few districts where intact records remain, plague deaths varied between 30% and over 50% of the total population.
The outbreak was concentrated in London, but it affected other areas as well. Perhaps the most famous example was the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. The plague allegedly arrived with a merchant carrying a parcel of cloth sent from London. The villagers imposed a quarantine on themselves to stop the further spread of the disease. This prevented the disease from moving into surrounding areas, but around 33% of the village's inhabitants died over a period of fourteen months.
By late autumn, the death toll in London and the suburbs began to slow until, in February 1666, it was considered safe enough for the King and his entourage to come back to the city. With the return of the monarch, others began to return: The gentry returned in their carriages accompanied by carts piled high with their belongings. The judges moved back from Windsor to sit in Westminster Hall; Parliament, which had been prorogued in April 1665, did not reconvene until September 1666. Trade recommenced and businesses and workshops opened up. London was the goal of a new wave of people who flocked to the city in expectation of making their fortunes. Writing at the end of March 1666, Lord Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor, stated "... the streets were as full, the Exchange as much crowded, the people in all places as numerous as they had ever been seen ...".
Plague cases continued to occur sporadically at a modest rate until mid-1666. That September, the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the City of London, and some people believed that the fire put an end to the epidemic. It is now thought that the plague had largely subsided before the fire took place. Most of the later cases of plague were found in the suburbs, and it was the City of London that was destroyed by the fire.
According to the Bills of Mortality, there were in total 68,596 deaths in London from the plague in 1665. Lord Clarendon estimated that the true number of mortalities was probably twice that figure. 1666 saw further deaths in other cities but on a lesser scale. Dr Thomas Gumble, chaplain to the Duke of Albemarle, both of whom had stayed in London for the whole of the epidemic, estimated that the total death count for the country from plague during 1665 and 1666 was about 200,000.
The Great Plague of 1665/1666 was the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in Great Britain. The last recorded death from plague came in 1679, and it was removed as a specific category in the Bills of Mortality after 1703. It spread to other towns in East Anglia and the southeast of England but fewer than ten percent of parishes outside London had a higher than average death rate during those years. Urban areas were more affected than rural ones; Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester, Southampton and Winchester were badly affected, while the west of England and areas of the English Midlands escaped altogether.
The population of England in 1650 was approximately 5.25 million, which declined to about 4.9 million by 1680, recovering to just over 5 million by 1700. Other diseases, such as smallpox, took a high toll on the population without the contribution by plague. The higher death rate in cities, both generally and specifically from the plague, was made up by continuous immigration, from small towns to larger ones and from the countryside to the towns.
There were no contemporary censuses of London's population, but available records suggest that the population returned to its previous level within a couple of years. Burials in 1667 had returned to 1663 levels, Hearth Tax returns had recovered, and John Graunt contemporarily analysed baptism records and concluded they represented a recovered population. Part of this could be accounted for by the return of wealthy households, merchants and manufacturing industries, all of which needed to replace losses among their staff and took steps to bring in necessary people. Colchester had suffered more severe depopulation, but manufacturing records for cloth suggested that production had recovered or even increased by 1669, and the total population had nearly returned to pre-plague levels by 1674. Other towns did less well: Ipswich was affected less than Colchester, but in 1674, its population had dropped by 18%, more than could be accounted for by the plague deaths alone.
As a proportion of the population who died, the London death toll was less severe than in some other towns. The total of deaths in London was greater than in any previous outbreak for 100 years, though as a proportion of the population, the epidemics in 1563, 1603 and 1625 were comparable or greater. Perhaps around 2.5% of the English population died.
The plague in London largely affected the poor, as the rich were able to leave the city by either retiring to their country estates or residing with kin in other parts of the country. The subsequent Great Fire of London ruined many city merchants and property owners. As a result of these events, London was largely rebuilt and Parliament enacted the Rebuilding of London Act 1666. The street plan of the capital remained relatively unchanged, but some improvements were made: streets were widened, pavements were created, open sewers abolished, wooden buildings and overhanging gables forbidden, and the design and construction of buildings controlled. The use of brick or stone was mandatory and many gracious buildings were constructed. Not only was the capital rejuvenated, but it became a healthier environment in which to live. Londoners had a greater sense of community after they had overcome the great adversities of 1665 and 1666.
Rebuilding took over ten years and was supervised by Robert Hooke as Surveyor of London. The architect Sir Christopher Wren was involved in the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and more than fifty London churches. King Charles ll did much to foster the rebuilding work. He was a patron of the arts and sciences and founded the Royal Observatory and supported the Royal Society, a scientific group whose early members included Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton. In fact, out of the fire and pestilence flowed a renaissance in the arts and sciences in England.
Plague pits have been archaeologically excavated during underground construction work. Between 2011 and 2015, 3,500 burials from the 'New Churchyard' or 'Bethlam burial ground' were discovered during the construction of the Crossrail railway at Liverpool Street. "Yersinia pestis" DNA was found in the teeth of individuals found buried in pits at the site, confirming they had died of bubonic plague.
Notes
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12286 |
Graphical user interface
The graphical user interface (GUI or ) is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard.
The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements. Beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls. The term "GUI" tends not to be applied to other lower-display resolution types of interfaces, such as video games (where "head-up display" (HUD) is preferred), or not including flat screens, like volumetric displays because the term is restricted to the scope of two-dimensional display screens able to describe generic information, in the tradition of the computer science research at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of software application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the underlying logical design of a stored program, a design discipline named "usability". Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the visual language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks.
The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as "chrome" or "GUI" (pronounced "gooey"). Typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of a well-designed interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows flexible structures in which the interface is independent of and indirectly linked to application functions, so the GUI can be customized easily. This allows users to select or design a different "skin" at will, and eases the designer's work to change the interface as user needs evolve. Good user interface design relates to users more, and to system architecture less.
Large widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, email message, or drawing. Smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool.
A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a vertical market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. Examples include automated teller machines (ATM), point of sale (POS) touchscreens at restaurants, self-service checkouts used in a retail store, airline self-ticketing and check-in, information kiosks in a public space, like a train station or a museum, and monitors or control screens in an embedded industrial application which employ a real-time operating system (RTOS).
By the 1980s, cell phones and handheld game systems also employed application specific touchscreen GUIs. Newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations.
A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, for the tasks of gathering and producing information.
A series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with and use computer software. The most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the "windows, icons, menus, pointer" (WIMP) paradigm, especially in personal computers.
The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual input device to represent the position of a pointing device's interface , most often a mouse, and presents information organized in windows and represented with icons. Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device. A window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications, and the windowing system. The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, and positioning of the pointer.
In personal computers, all these elements are modeled through a desktop metaphor to produce a simulation called a desktop environment in which the display represents a desktop, on which documents and folders of documents can be placed. Window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism.
Smaller mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space and available input devices. Applications for which WIMP is not well suited may use newer interaction techniques, collectively termed "post-WIMP" user interfaces.
As of 2011, some touchscreen-based operating systems such as Apple's iOS (iPhone) and Android use the class of GUIs named post-WIMP. These support styles of interaction using more than one finger in contact with a display, which allows actions such as pinching and rotating, which are unsupported by one pointer and mouse.
Human interface devices, for the efficient interaction with a GUI include a computer keyboard, especially used together with keyboard shortcuts, pointing devices for the cursor (or rather pointer) control: mouse, pointing stick, touchpad, trackball, joystick, virtual keyboards, and head-up displays (translucent information devices at the eye level).
There are also actions performed by programs that affect the GUI. For example, there are components like inotify or D-Bus to facilitate communication between computer programs.
Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963, widely held as the first graphical computer-aided design program. It used a light pen to create and manipulate objects in engineering drawings in realtime with coordinated graphics. In the late 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute, led by Douglas Engelbart, developed the On-Line System (NLS), which used text-based hyperlinks manipulated with a then-new device: the mouse. (A 1968 demonstration of NLS became known as "The Mother of All Demos.") In the 1970s, Engelbart's ideas were further refined and extended to graphics by researchers at Xerox PARC and specifically Alan Kay, who went beyond text-based hyperlinks and used a GUI as the main interface for the Smalltalk programming language, which ran on the Xerox Alto computer, released in 1973. Most modern general-purpose GUIs are derived from this system.
The Xerox PARC user interface consisted of graphical elements such as windows, menus, radio buttons, and check boxes. The concept of icons was later introduced by David Canfield Smith, who had written a thesis on the subject under the guidance of Kay. The PARC user interface employs a pointing device along with a keyboard. These aspects can be emphasized by using the alternative term and acronym for "windows, icons, menus, pointing device" (WIMP). This effort culminated in the 1973 Xerox Alto, the first computer with a GUI, though the system never reached commercial production.
The first commercially available computer with a GUI was 1979 PERQ workstation, manufactured by Three Rivers Computer Corporation. Its design was heavily influenced by the work at Xerox PARC. In 1981, Xerox eventually commercialized the Alto in the form of a new and enhanced system – the Xerox 8010 Information System – more commonly known as the Xerox Star. These early systems spurred many other GUI efforts, including Lisp machines by Symbolics and other manufacturers, the Apple Lisa (which presented the concept of menu bar and window controls) in 1983, the Apple Macintosh 128K in 1984, and the Atari ST with Digital Research's GEM, and Commodore Amiga in 1985. Visi On was released in 1983 for the IBM PC compatible computers, but was never popular due to its high hardware demands. Nevertheless, it was a crucial influence on the contemporary development of Microsoft Windows.
Apple, Digital Research, IBM and Microsoft used many of Xerox's ideas to develop products, and IBM's Common User Access specifications formed the basis of the user interfaces used in Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager, and the Unix Motif toolkit and window manager. These ideas evolved to create the interface found in current versions of Microsoft Windows, and in various desktop environments for Unix-like operating systems, such as macOS and Linux. Thus most current GUIs have largely common idioms.
GUIs were a hot topic in the early 1980s. The Apple Lisa was released in 1983, and various windowing systems existed for DOS operating systems (including PC GEM and PC/GEOS). Individual applications for many platforms presented their own GUI variants. Despite the GUIs advantages, many reviewers questioned the value of the entire concept, citing hardware limits, and problems in finding compatible software.
In 1984, Apple released a television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh during the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS, with allusions to George Orwell's noted novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The goal of the commercial was to make people think about computers, identifying the user-friendly interface as a personal computer which departed from prior business-oriented systems, and becoming a signature representation of Apple products.
Windows 95, accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, was a major success in the marketplace at launch and shortly became the most popular desktop operating system.
In 2007, with the iPhone and later in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad, Apple popularized the post-WIMP style of interaction for multi-touch screens, and those devices were considered to be milestones in the development of mobile devices.
The GUIs familiar to most people as of the mid-late 2010s are Microsoft Windows, macOS, and the X Window System interfaces for desktop and laptop computers, and Android, Apple's iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone/Windows 10 Mobile, Tizen, WebOS, and Firefox OS for handheld (smartphone) devices.
Since the commands available in command line interfaces can be many, complex operations can be performed using a short sequence of words and symbols. This allows greater efficiency and productivity once many commands are learned, but reaching this level takes some time because the command words may not be easily discoverable or mnemonic. Also, using the command line can become slow and error-prone when users must enter long commands comprising many parameters or several different filenames at once. However, "windows, icons, menus, pointer" (WIMP) interfaces present users with many widgets that represent and can trigger some of the system's available commands.
GUIs can be made quite hard when dialogs are buried deep in a system or moved about to different places during redesigns. Also, icons and dialog boxes are usually harder for users to script.
WIMPs extensively use modes, as the meaning of all keys and clicks on specific positions on the screen are redefined all the time. Command-line interfaces use modes only in limited forms, such as for current directory and environment variables.
Most modern operating systems provide both a GUI and some level of a CLI, although the GUIs usually receive more attention. The GUI is usually WIMP-based, although occasionally other metaphors surface, such as those used in Microsoft Bob, 3dwm, or File System Visualizer.
Graphical user interface (GUI) wrappers find a way around the command-line interface versions (CLI) of (typically) Linux and Unix-like software applications and their text-based user interfaces or typed command labels. While command-line or text-based applications allow users to run a program non-interactively, GUI wrappers atop them avoid the steep learning curve of the command-line, which requires commands to be typed on the keyboard. By starting a GUI wrapper, users can intuitively interact with, start, stop, and change its working parameters, through graphical icons and visual indicators of a desktop environment, for example.
Applications may also provide both interfaces, and when they do the GUI is usually a WIMP wrapper around the command-line version. This is especially common with applications designed for Unix-like operating systems. The latter used to be implemented first because it allowed the developers to focus exclusively on their product's functionality without bothering about interface details such as designing icons and placing buttons. Designing programs this way also allows users to run the program in a shell script.
Several attempts have been made to create a multi-user three-dimensional environment or 3D GUI, including Sun's Project Looking Glass, Metisse, which was similar to Project Looking Glass, BumpTop, where users can manipulate documents and windows with realistic movement and physics as if they were physical documents, and the Croquet Project, which moved to the Open Cobalt effort.
The zooming user interface (ZUI) is a related technology that promises to deliver the representation benefits of 3D environments without their usability drawbacks of orientation problems and hidden objects. It is a logical advance on the GUI, blending some three-dimensional movement with two-dimensional or "2.5D" vector objects. In 2006, Hillcrest Labs introduced the first zooming user interface for television.
For typical computer displays, "three-dimensional" is a misnomer—their displays are two-dimensional, for example, Metisse characterized itself as a "2.5-dimensional" UI. Semantically, however, most graphical user interfaces use three dimensions. With height and width, they offer a third dimension of layering or stacking screen elements over one another. This may be represented visually on screen through an illusionary transparent effect, which offers the advantage that information in background windows may still be read, if not interacted with. Or the environment may simply hide the background information, possibly making the distinction apparent by drawing a drop shadow effect over it.
Some environments use the methods of 3D graphics to project virtual three-dimensional user interface objects onto the screen. These are often shown in use in science fiction films (see below for examples). As the processing power of computer graphics hardware increases, this becomes less of an obstacle to a smooth user experience.
Three-dimensional graphics are currently mostly used in computer games, art, and computer-aided design (CAD). A three-dimensional computing environment can also be useful in other uses, like molecular graphics, aircraft design and Phase Equilibrium Calculations/Design of unit operations and chemical processes.
The use of three-dimensional graphics has become increasingly common in mainstream operating systems, from creating attractive interfaces, termed eye candy, to functional purposes only possible using three dimensions. For example, user switching is represented by rotating a cube that faces are each user's workspace, and window management are represented via a Rolodex-style flipping mechanism in Windows Vista (see Windows Flip 3D). In both cases, the operating system transforms windows on-the-fly while continuing to update the content of those windows.
Interfaces for the X Window System have also implemented advanced three-dimensional user interfaces through compositing window managers such as Beryl, Compiz and KWin using the AIGLX or XGL architectures, allowing the use of OpenGL to animate user interactions with the desktop.
Three-dimensional GUIs appeared in science fiction literature and films before they were technically feasible or in common use. For example; the 1993 American film "Jurassic Park" features Silicon Graphics' three-dimensional file manager File System Navigator, a real-life file manager for Unix operating systems. The film "Minority Report" has scenes of police officers using specialized 3D data systems. In prose fiction, three-dimensional user interfaces have been portrayed as immersible environments like William Gibson's Cyberspace or Neal Stephenson's Metaverse. Many futuristic imaginings of user interfaces rely heavily on object-oriented user interface (OOUI) style and especially object-oriented graphical user interface (OOGUI) style. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12293 |
Gamete
A gamete (; from Ancient Greek γαμετή "gamete" from gamein "to marry") is a haploid cell that fuses with another haploid cell during fertilization in organisms that sexually reproduce. In species that produce two morphologically distinct types of gametes, and in which each individual produces only one type, a female is any individual that produces the larger type of gamete—called an ovum— and a male produces the smaller tadpole-like type—called a sperm. In short a gamete is an egg cell (female gamete) or a sperm (male gamete). This is an example of anisogamy or heterogamy, the condition in which females and males produce gametes of different sizes (this is the case in humans; the human ovum has approximately 100,000 times the volume of a single human sperm cell). In contrast, isogamy is the state of gametes from both sexes being the same size and shape, and given arbitrary designators for mating type. The name gamete was introduced by the German cytologist Eduard Strasburger. Gametes carry half the genetic information of an individual, one ploidy of each type, and are created through meiosis.
Oogenesis is the process of female gamete formation in animals. This process involves meiosis (including meiotic recombination) occurring in the diploid primary oocyte to produce the haploid ovum. Spermatogenesis is the process of male gamete formation in animals. This process also involves meiosis occurring in the diploid primary spermatocyte to produce the haploid spermatozoon.
In contrast to a gamete, the diploid somatic cells of an individual contain one copy of the chromosome set from the sperm and one copy of the chromosome set from the egg cell; that is, the cells of the offspring have genes expressing characteristics of both the "father" and the "mother". A gamete's chromosomes are not exact duplicates of either of the sets of chromosomes carried in the diploid chromosomes, and may undergo random mutations resulting in modified DNA and subsequently, new proteins and phenotypes.
Humans and most mammals use the XY sex-determination system in which a normal ovum can carry only an X chromosome whereas a sperm may carry either an X or a Y chromosome. A non-normal ovum can end up carrying two or no X chromosomes, as a result of an irregularity at either of the two stages of meiosis, while a non-normal sperm cell can end up carrying either no sex-defining chromosomes, an XY pair, or an XX pair; thus the male sperm determines the sex of any resulting zygote. If the zygote has two X chromosomes it will develop into a female, if it has an X and a Y chromosome, it will develop into a male.
For birds, the female ovum determines the sex of the offspring, through the ZW sex-determination system.
Artificial gametes, also known as In vitro derived gametes (IVD), stem cell-derived gametes (SCDGs), and In vitro generated gametes (IVG), are gametes derived from stem cells. Research shows that artificial gametes may be a reproductive technique for same-sex male couples, although a surrogate mother would still be required for the gestation period. Women who have passed menopause may be able to produce eggs and bear genetically related children with artificial gametes. Robert Sparrow wrote, in the Journal of Medical Ethics, that embryos derived from artificial gametes could be used to derive new gametes and this process could be repeated to create multiple human generations in the laboratory. This technique could be used to create cell lines for medical applications and for studying the heredity of genetic disorders. Additionally, this technique could be used for human enhancement by selectively breeding for a desired genome or by using recombinant DNA technology to create enhancements that have not arisen in nature.
Plants which reproduce sexually also have gametes. However, since plants have an alternation of diploid and haploid generations some differences exist. In flowering plants, the flowers use meiosis to produce a haploid generation which produce gametes through mitosis. The female haploid is called the ovule and is produced by the ovary of the flower. When mature, the haploid ovule produces the female gamete which are ready for fertilization. The male haploid is pollen and is produced by the anther, when pollen lands on a mature stigma of a flower it grows a pollen tube down into the flower. The haploid pollen then produces sperm by mitosis and releases them for fertilization. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12295 |
George R. R. Martin
George Raymond Richard Martin (born George Raymond Martin; September 20, 1948), also known as GRRM, is an American novelist and short story writer in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres, screenwriter, and television producer. He wrote the series of epic fantasy novels "A Song of Ice and Fire", which was adapted into the HBO series "Game of Thrones" (2011–2019).
In 2005, Lev Grossman of "Time" called Martin "the American Tolkien", and in 2011, he was included on the annual "Time" 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
George Raymond Martin (he adopted the confirmation name Richard at 13 years old) was born on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of longshoreman Raymond Collins Martin and Margaret Brady Martin. On his mother's side his family used to be wealthy, and owned a successful construction business, but they lost it all in the Great Depression, something Martin was reminded about every day when he passed what used to be his family's dock and house. It made him feel that even if they were poor, they came from greatness that had been taken away from them. He has two younger sisters, Darleen and Janet. His mother was of half Irish ancestry. He also acknowledges French, English, Welsh and German roots, which were confirmed on the television series "Finding Your Roots". However, while he also believed he was a quarter Italian because of who he was told was his paternal grandfather, a DNA test on the show confirmed his Irish and other ancestries but excluded any Italian ancestry, showing instead he is approximately a quarter Ashkenazi Jewish.
The family first lived in a house on Broadway, belonging to Martin's great-grandmother. In 1953, they moved to a federal housing project near the Bayonne docks. During Martin's childhood, his world consisted predominantly of "First Street to Fifth Street", between his grade school and his home; this limited world made him want to travel and experience other places, but the only way of doing so was through his imagination, and he became a voracious reader. Martin began writing and selling monster stories for pennies to other neighborhood children, dramatic readings included. He also wrote stories about a mythical kingdom populated by his pet turtles; the turtles died frequently in their toy castle, so he decided they were killing each other off in "sinister plots". Martin had a habit of starting "endless stories" that he never completed, as they didn't turn out as great as word on paper as he had imagined them in his head.
Martin attended Mary Jane Donohoe School and later Marist High School. While there he became an avid comic book fan, developing a strong interest in the superheroes being published by Marvel Comics, and later credited Stan Lee for being one of his greatest literary influences; "Maybe Stan Lee is the greatest literary influence on me, even more than Shakespeare or Tolkien." A letter Martin wrote to the editor of "Fantastic Four" was printed in issue No. 20 (November 1963); it was the first of many sent, e.g., "Fantastic Four" #32, #34, and others. Fans who read his letters wrote him letters in turn, and through such contacts, Martin joined the fledgling comics fandom of the era, writing fiction for various fanzines; he bought the first ticket to the world's first Comic-Con, held in New York in 1964. In 1965, Martin won comic fandom's Alley Award for Best Fan Fiction for his prose superhero story "Powerman vs. The Blue Barrier".
In 1970, Martin earned a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois, graduating "summa cum laude"; he went on to complete his M.S. in Journalism in 1971, also from Medill. Eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War, to which he objected, Martin applied for and obtained conscientious objector status; he instead did alternative service work for two years (1972–1974) as a VISTA volunteer, attached to the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation.
In the mid-1970s, Martin met English professor George Guthridge from Dubuque, Iowa, at a science fiction convention in Milwaukee. Martin persuaded Guthridge (who later said that at that time he despised science fiction and fantasy) not only to give speculative fiction a second look, but to write in the field himself. Guthridge has since been a finalist for the Hugo Award and twice for the Nebula Award for science fiction and fantasy. In 1998, Guthridge and Janet Berliner won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in the Novel for their "Children of the Dusk".
In turn, Guthridge helped Martin in finding a job at Clarke University (then Clarke College). Martin "wasn't making enough money to stay alive" from writing and the chess tournaments, says Guthridge. From 1976 to 1978, Martin was an English and journalism instructor at Clarke, and he became Writer In Residence at the college from 1978 to 1979.
While he enjoyed teaching, the sudden death of friend and fellow author Tom Reamy in late 1977 made Martin reevaluate his own life, and he eventually decided to try to become a full-time writer. When his wife graduated from Clarke in 1979, he resigned from his job, and being tired of the hard winters in Dubuque, they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1979, which they had "fallen in love with" after a visit the year before on their way to the worldcon in Phoenix.
Martin began selling science fiction short stories professionally in 1970, at age 21. His first sale was "The Hero", sold to "Galaxy" magazine and published in its February 1971 issue; other sales soon followed. His first story to be nominated for the Hugo Award and Nebula Awards was "With Morning Comes Mistfall", published in 1973 in "Analog" magazine. In 1975 his story "...for a single yesterday" about a post-apocalyptic timetripper was selected for inclusion in "Epoch", a science fiction anthology edited by Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg. His first novel, "Dying of the Light", was completed in 1976 right before he moved to Dubuque and published in 1977. That same year the enormous success of "Star Wars" had a huge impact on the publishing industry and science fiction, and he sold the novel for the same amount he would make in three years of teaching.
The short stories he was able to sell in his early 20s gave him some profit, but not enough to pay his bills, which prevented him from becoming the full-time writer he wanted to be. The need for a day job occurred simultaneously with the American chess craze which followed Bobby Fischer's victory in the 1972 world chess championship. Martin's own chess skills and experience allowed him to be hired as a tournament director for the Continental Chess Association that ran chess tournaments on the weekends. This gave him a sufficient income, and because the tournaments only ran on Saturdays and Sundays, it allowed him to work as a writer five days a week from 1973 to 1976. When the chess bubble subsequently burst and no longer provided an income, he had become much better established as a writer.
Martin is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA); he served as the organization's Southwest Regional Director from 1977 to 1979, and as its vice-president from 1996 to 1998. In 1976, for Kansas City's MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), Martin and his friend and fellow writer-editor Gardner Dozois conceived of and organized the first Hugo Losers' Party for the benefit of all past and present Hugo-losing writers on the evening following the convention's Hugo Awards ceremony. Martin was nominated for two Hugos that year but lost both awards, for the novelette "...and Seven Times Never Kill Man" and the novella "The Storms of Windhaven", co-written with Lisa Tuttle. Although Martin often writes fantasy or horror, a number of his earlier works are science fiction tales occurring in a loosely defined future history, known informally as "The Thousand Worlds" or "The Manrealm".
In 2017, Martin recalled that he had started writing science fiction-horror hybrids in the late 1970s to disprove a statement from a critic claiming that science fiction and horror were opposites and therefore incompatible. Martin considered "Sandkings" (1979) the best known of these. Another was the novella "Nightflyers" (1980), whose screen and television rights were purchased by Vista in 1984, which produced a 1987 film adaptation, "Nightflyers", with a screenplay co-written by Martin. Martin was unhappy about having to cut plot elements in order to accommodate the film's small budget. While not a hit at theatres, Martin believes that the film saved his career, and that everything he has written since exists in large part because of it. He has also written at least one piece of political-military fiction, "Night of the Vampyres", collected in Harry Turtledove's anthology "The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century" (2001).
In 1982, Martin published a vampire novel titled "Fevre Dream" set in the 19th century on the Mississippi River. Unlike traditional vampire novels, in "Fevre Dream" vampires are not supernatural creatures, but are rather a different species related to humans created by evolution with superhuman powers. Critic Don D'Amassa has praised "Fevre Dream" for its strong 19th century atmosphere and wrote: "This is without question one of the greatest vampire novels of all time". Martin followed up "Fevre Dream" with another horror novel, "The Armageddon Rag" (1983). The unexpected commercial failure of "The Armageddon Rag" "essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time", he recalled, and made him consider going into real estate instead.
In 1984, the new editor of Baen Books, Betsy Mitchell, called Martin to ask him if he had considered doing a collection of Haviland Tuf adventures. Martin, who had several favorite series characters like Solomon Kane, Elric, Nicholas van Rijn and Magnus Ridolph, had made an attempt to create such a character on his own in the 1970s with his Tuf stories. He was interested, but was too occupied with the writing of his next book, the never-completed novel "Black and White and Red All Over", which occupied most of his writing time the same year. But after the failure of "The Armageddon Rag", all editors rejected his upcoming novel, and desperate for money, he accepted Mitchell's offer and wrote some more Tuf stories which were collected in "Tuf Voyaging", which sold well enough for Mitchell to suggest a sequel. Martin was willing and agreed to do it, but before he got started he got an offer from Hollywood, where producer Philip DeGuere Jr. wanted to adapt "The Armageddon Rag" into a film. The film adaptation did not happen, but they stayed in touch, and when DeGuere became the producer for the revival of "The Twilight Zone", Martin was offered a job as a writer. Working for television paid a lot better than writing literature, so he decided to move to Hollywood to seek a new career. At first he worked as staff writer for the show, and then as an executive story consultant. After the CBS series was cancelled, Martin migrated over to the already-underway satirical science fiction series "Max Headroom". He worked on scripts and created the show's "Ped Xing" character. However, before his scripts could go into production, the ABC show was cancelled in the middle of its second season. Martin was hired as a writer-producer on the new dramatic fantasy series "Beauty and the Beast"; in 1989, he became the show's co-supervising producer and wrote 14 of its episodes.
In 1987, Martin published a collection of short horror stories in "Portraits of His Children". During this same period, Martin continued working in print media as a book-series editor, this time overseeing the development of the multi-author "Wild Cards" book series, which takes place in a shared universe in which a small slice of post–World War II humanity gains superpowers after the release of an alien-engineered virus; new titles are published in the ongoing series from Tor Books. In "Second Person", Martin "gives a personal account of the close-knit role-playing game (RPG) culture that gave rise to his "Wild Cards" shared-world anthologies". An important element in the creation of the multiple author series was a campaign of Chaosium's role-playing game "Superworld" (1983) that Martin ran in Albuquerque. Admitting he became completely obsessed with the game, he stopped writing literature for most of 1983, which he refers to as his "lost year", but his shrinking bank accounts made him realize he had to come up with something, and got the idea that perhaps the stories and characters created in "Superworld" could somehow become profitable. Martin's own contributions to "Wild Cards" have included Thomas Tudbury, "The Great and Powerful Turtle", a powerful psychokinetic whose flying "shell" consisted of an armored VW Beetle. , 21 "Wild Cards" volumes had been published in the series; earlier that same year, Martin signed the contract for the 22nd volume, "Low Ball" (2014), published by Tor Books. In early 2012, Martin signed another Tor contract for the 23rd "Wild Cards" volume, "High Stakes", which was released in August 2016.
In August 2016 Martin announced that Universal Cable Productions had acquired the rights to adapt the "Wild Cards" novels into a television series. In 2017, Martin confirmed he would serve as an executive producer of the HBO television series adaptation of the 2010 novel "Who Fears Death" by Nnedi Okorafor. Martin also contributed to an upcoming FromSoftware video game titled "Elden Ring", writing the worldbuilding aspects for it.
In 1991, Martin briefly returned to writing novels. He had grown frustrated that his TV pilots and screenplays were not getting made and that TV-related production limitations like budgets and episode lengths were forcing him to cut characters and trim battle scenes. This pushed Martin back towards writing books, where he did not have to worry about compromising his imagination. Admiring the works of J. R. R. Tolkien in his childhood, he wanted to write an epic fantasy, though he did not have any specific ideas.
His epic fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire", was inspired by the Wars of the Roses, "The Accursed Kings" and "Ivanhoe". Though Martin originally conceptualized it as being three volumes, it is currently slated to comprise seven. The first, "A Game of Thrones", was published in 1996, followed by "A Clash of Kings" in 1998 and "A Storm of Swords" in 2000. In November 2005, "A Feast for Crows", the fourth novel in this series, became "The New York Times" No. 1 Bestseller. The fifth book, "A Dance with Dragons", was published July 12, 2011, and became an international bestseller, including achieving a No. 1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List and many others; it remained on the "New York Times" list for 88 weeks. In 2012, "A Dance With Dragons" made the final ballot for science fiction and fantasy's Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, Locus Poll Award, and the British Fantasy Award; the novel went on to win the Locus Poll Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Two more novels are planned in the series: "The Winds of Winter" and the final volume "A Dream of Spring". On April 25, 2018, Martin announced the release date of his new book, "Fire & Blood", dealing with the history of House Targaryen, which was released on November 20, 2018.
HBO Productions purchased the television rights for the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series in 2007 and began airing the fantasy series on their US premium cable channel on April 17, 2011. Titled "Game of Thrones", it ran weekly for ten episodes, each approximately an hour long. Although busy completing "A Dance With Dragons" and other projects, George R. R. Martin was heavily involved in the production of the television series adaptation of his books. Martin's involvement included the selection of a production team and participation in scriptwriting; the opening credits list him as a co-executive producer of the series. The series was renewed shortly after the first episode aired.
The first season was nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, ultimately winning two: one for its opening title credits, and one for Peter Dinklage as Best Supporting Actor.
The first season was also nominated for a 2012 Hugo Award, fantasy and science fiction's oldest award, presented by the World Science Fiction Society each year at the annual Worldcon; the show went on to win the 2012 Hugo for "Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form", at Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention. Martin took home one of the three Hugo Award trophies awarded in that collaborative category, the other two going to "Game of Thrones" show-runners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.
The second season, based on the second "A Song of Ice and Fire" novel "A Clash of Kings", began airing on HBO in the US on April 1, 2012. The second season was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards, including another Supporting Actor nomination for Dinklage. It went on to win six of those Emmys in the Technical Arts categories, which were awarded the week before the regular televised 2012 awards show. The second-season episode "Blackwater", written by Martin, was nominated the following year for the 2013 Hugo Award in the "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form" category; that episode went on to win the Hugo Award at LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention. In addition to Martin, show-runners Benioff and Weiss (who contributed several scenes to the final screenplay) and episode director Neil Marshal (who expanded the scope of the episode on set) received Hugo statuettes.
Seasons 5 and 6 each won a dozen Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series.
By the end of 2016, all seasons up to season 6 (which premiered on April 24, 2016) had been aired on HBO and all seasons had been released on DVD and/or Blu-ray for home viewing (see List of "Game of Thrones" episodes). The company confirmed on July 18, 2016 that season 7 would consist of seven episodes instead of the usual ten, and would premiere later than usual, in mid-2017, because of the later filming schedule. This was necessary in order to be shooting during the winter season in Europe. Season 7 was expected to air in mid 2017. The first footage from the season was revealed in a new promotional video that featured clips from its new and returning original shows for the coming year on November 28, 2016, showcasing Jon Snow, Sansa Stark and Arya Stark. Like the previous season, it would largely consist of original content not found in Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, but also adapts material from the upcoming sixth and seventh novels: "The Winds of Winter" and "A Dream of Spring".
For season 8, in November 2016, President of Programming Casey Bloys indicated that he had had preliminary discussions about a prequel spinoff to the "Game of Thrones" series with Martin. In May 2017, HBO commissioned five screenwriters – Max Borenstein, Jane Goldman, Brian Helgeland, Carly Wray and Bryan Cogman – to develop individual spin-offs. All of the writers are to be working individually with Martin. According to Casey Bloys, Martin is co-writing two of the four announced scripts. The first episode of season 8 was broadcast on April 14, 2019. This season had a total of six episodes.
Martin's work has been described as having "complex story lines, fascinating characters, great dialogue, perfect pacing" by literary critic Jeff VanderMeer. Dana Jennings of the "New York Times" described Martin's work as "fantasy for grown ups" and Lev Grossman wrote that it was dark and cynical. Martin's first novel, "Dying of the Light", set the tone for some of his future work; it unfolds on a mostly abandoned planet that is slowly becoming uninhabitable as it moves away from its sun. This story has a strong sense of melancholy. His characters are often unhappy or, at least, unsatisfied, in many cases holding on to idealisms in spite of an otherwise chaotic and ruthless world, and often troubled by their own self-seeking or violent actions, even as they undertake them. Many have elements of tragic heroes or antiheroes in them; reviewer T. M. Wagner writes: "Let it never be said Martin doesn't share Shakespeare's fondness for the senselessly tragic."
The overall gloominess of "A Song of Ice and Fire" can be an obstacle for some readers; the Inchoatus Group writes that, "If this absence of joy is going to trouble you, or you're looking for something more affirming, then you should probably seek elsewhere." However, for many fans, it is precisely this level of "realness" and "completeness"–including many characters' imperfections, moral and ethical ambiguity, and (often sudden) consequential plot twists that is endearing about Martin's work. Many find that this is what makes the series' story arcs compelling enough to keep following despite its sheer brutality and intricately messy and interwoven plotlines; as TM Wagner points out:There's great tragedy here, but there's also excitement, humor, heroism even in weaklings, nobility even in villains, and, now and then, a taste of justice after all. It's a rare gift when a writer can invest his story with that much humanity.Martin's characters are multifaceted, each with intricate pasts, aspirations, and ambitions. "Publishers Weekly" writes of his ongoing epic fantasy "A Song of Ice and Fire": "The complexity of characters such as Daenerys, Arya and the Kingslayer will keep readers turning even the vast number of pages contained in this volume, for the author, like Tolkien or Jordan, makes us care about their fates." Misfortune, injury, and death (including false death and reanimation) often befall major or minor characters, no matter how attached the reader has become. Martin has described his penchant for killing off important characters as being necessary for the story's depth: "when my characters are in danger, I want you to be afraid to turn the page, (so) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps".
In distinguishing his work from others, Martin makes a point of emphasizing realism and plausible social dynamics above an over-reliance on magic and a simplistic "good versus evil" dichotomy, for which contemporary fantasy writing is often criticized. Notably, Martin's work makes a sharp departure from the prevalent "heroic knights and chivalry" schema that has become a mainstay in fantasy as derived from J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". He specifically critiques the oversimplification of Tolkien's themes and devices by imitators in ways that he has humorously described as "Disneyland Middle Ages", which gloss over or ignore major differences between medieval and modern societies, particularly social structures, ways of living, and political arrangements. Martin has been described as "the American Tolkien" by literary critics. While Martin finds inspiration in Tolkien's legacy, he aims to go beyond what he sees as Tolkien's "medieval philosophy" of "if the king was a good man, the land would prosper" to delve into the complexities, ambiguities, and vagaries of real-life power: "We look at real history and it's not that simple ... Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king." Per this fact Martin has been credited with the rise of grimdark fantasy, a modern form of an "anti-Tolkien" approach to fantasy writing which, according to British science fiction and fantasy novelist Adam Roberts, is characterized by its reaction to Tolkien's idealism even though it owes a lot to Tolkien's work. The Canadian fantasy writer R. Scott Bakker "says he wouldn't have been able to publish his fantasy novels without the success George R. R. Martin achieved first". Similarly, Mark Lawrence, author of "Prince of Thorns", was inspired by Martin and impressed by his Red Wedding scene.
The author makes a point of grounding his work on a foundation of historical fiction, which he channels to evoke important social and political elements of primarily the European medieval era that differ markedly from elements of modern times, including the multigenerational, rigid, and often brutally consequential nature of the hierarchical class system of feudal societies that is in many cases overlooked in fantasy writing. Even as "A Song of Ice and Fire" is a fantasy series that employs magic and the surreal as central to the genre, Martin is keen to ensure that magic is merely one element of many that moves his work forward, not a generic deus ex machina that is itself the focus of his stories, which is something he has been very conscious about since reading Tolkien; "If you look at "The Lord of the Rings", what strikes you, it certainly struck me, is that although the world is infused with this great sense of magic, there is very little onstage magic. So you have a sense of magic, but it's kept under very tight control, and I really took that to heart when I was starting my own series." Martin's ultimate aim is an exploration of the internal conflicts that define the human condition, which, in deriving inspiration from William Faulkner, he ultimately describes as the only reason to read any literature, regardless of genre.
In 2018, Martin called "The Lord of the Rings", "The Great Gatsby", "Gone with the Wind", "Great Expectations", "Lonesome Dove", "Catch-22", and "Charlotte's Web" "favorites all, towering masterpieces, books that changed my life".
Martin actively contributes to his blog, "Not a Blog"; in April 2018 he moved his blog from Livejournal to his own website. He still does all his "writing on an old DOS machine running Wordstar 4.0".
Martin is known for his regular attendance at science fiction conventions and comics conventions, and his accessibility to fans. In the early 1980s, critic and writer Thomas Disch identified Martin as a member of the "Labor Day Group", writers who regularly congregated at the annual Worldcon, usually held on or around the Labor Day weekend. Since the early 1970s, he has also attended regional science fiction conventions, and since 1986 Martin has participated annually in Albuquerque's smaller regional convention Bubonicon, near his New Mexico home. He was the Guest of Honor at the 61st World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto, held in 2003.
In December 2016, Martin was a key speaker at the Guadalajara International Book Fair 2016 in Mexico where the author provided hints about the next two books in the series "A Song of Ice and Fire".
Martin's official fan club is the "Brotherhood Without Banners", which has a regular posting board at the Forum of the website westeros.org, which is focused on his "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series. At the annual World Science Fiction Convention every year, the Brotherhood Without Banners hosts a large, on-going hospitality suite that is open to all members of the Worldcon.
Martin has been criticized by some of his readers for the long periods between books in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, notably the six-year gap between the fourth volume, "A Feast for Crows" (2005), and the fifth volume, "A Dance with Dragons" (2011). In 2010, Martin had responded to fan criticisms by saying he was unwilling to write only his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, noting that working on other prose and compiling and editing different book projects have always been part of his working process. Writer Neil Gaiman famously wrote on his blog in 2009 to a critic of Martin's pace, "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch". Gaiman later went on to state that writers are not machines and that they have every right to work on other projects if they want to.
Martin is opposed to fan fiction, which he views as copyright infringement and a bad exercise for aspiring writers in terms of developing skills in worldbuilding and character development.
In the early 1970s, Martin was in a relationship with fellow science fiction/fantasy author Lisa Tuttle, with whom he co-wrote "Windhaven".
While attending an East Coast science fiction convention he met his first wife, Gale Burnick; they were married in 1975. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979, without issue. On February 15, 2011, Martin married his longtime partner Parris McBride during a small ceremony at their Santa Fe home. On August 19, 2011, they held a larger wedding ceremony and reception at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention.
He and McBride are supporters of the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico. In early 2013, he purchased Santa Fe's Jean Cocteau Cinema and Coffee House, which had been closed since 2006. He had the property completely restored, including both its original 35 mm capability to which was added digital projection and sound; the Cocteau officially reopened for business on August 9, 2013. In 2019 he opened a bookstore named Beastly Books, after Beauty and the Beast, next to Jean Cocteau. Martin has also supported Meow Wolf, an arts collective in Santa Fe, having pledged $2.7 million towards a new art-space in January 2015.
In response to a question on his religious views, Martin replied: "I suppose I'm a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn't the end and there's something more, but I can't convince the rational part of me that makes any sense whatsoever."
Martin is a fan of the New York Jets, the New York Giants and the New York Mets. He is also a fan of the Grateful Dead, and says that the band's music may have influenced his work.
Martin made a guest appearance as himself in an episode, "El Skeletorito", of the Adult Swim show "Robot Chicken". He also appeared in SyFy's "Z Nation" as a zombie version of himself in season two's "The Collector", where he is still signing copies of his new novel. In "", he is killed when watching a movie at the theatre.
In 2014, Martin launched a campaign on Prizeo to raise funds for Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary and the Food Depot of Santa Fe. As part of the campaign, Martin offered one donor the chance to accompany him on a trip to the wolf sanctuary, including a helicopter ride and dinner. Martin also offered those donating $20,000 or more the opportunity to have a character named after them and "killed off" in an upcoming "A Song of Ice and Fire" novel. The campaign garnered media attention and raised a total of $502,549.
In 2017, Martin announced that he was funding The Miskatonic Scholarship. The Miskatonic Scholarship allows a writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror to attend the Odyssey workshop, a six-week writing workshop held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Growing up, Martin avoided the draft to the Vietnam War by being a conscientious objector and did two years of alternative service. He generally opposes war and thought the Vietnam War was a "terrible mistake for America". He has also written against the glory of war and tries to realistically describe war in his books.
In 2014, Martin endorsed Democratic Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico.
In the midst of pressure to pull the 2014 feature film "The Interview" from theatres, the Jean Cocteau Theatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which has been owned by Martin since 2013, decided to show the film. Theatre manager Jon Bowman told the "Santa Fe New Mexican": "Martin feels strongly about the First Amendment and the idea of artists having the ability to speak their minds and not having to worry about being targets."
On November 20, 2015, writing on his LiveJournal blog, Martin advocated for allowing Syrian refugees into the United States. Immediately following Bernie Sanders' defeat in the U.S. Democratic primary election, he supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the general 2016 United States presidential election, and criticized Donald Trump during the election and following her defeat, commenting that Trump would "become the worst president in American history".
In May 2019, Martin endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12300 |
A Song of Ice and Fire
A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. He began the first volume of the series, "A Game of Thrones," in 1991, and it was published in 1996. Martin, who initially envisioned the series as a trilogy, has published five out of a planned seven volumes. The fifth and most recent volume of the series, "A Dance with Dragons", was published in 2011 and took Martin six years to write. He is currently writing the sixth novel, "The Winds of Winter". A seventh novel "A Dream of Spring" is planned.
"A Song of Ice and Fire" takes place on the fictional continents Westeros and Essos. The point of view of each chapter in the story is a limited perspective of a range of characters growing from nine in the first novel, to 31 characters by the fifth novel. Three main stories interweave: a dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros, the rising threat of the supernatural Others in northernmost Westeros, and the ambition of Daenerys Targaryen, the deposed king's exiled daughter, to assume the Iron Throne.
Martin's inspirations included the Wars of the Roses and the French historical novels "The Accursed Kings" by Maurice Druon. "A Song of Ice and Fire" received praise for its diverse portrayal of women and religion, as well as its realism. An assortment of disparate and subjective points of view confronts the reader, and the success or survival of point-of-view characters is never assured. Within the often morally ambiguous world of "A Song of Ice and Fire", questions concerning loyalty, pride, human sexuality, piety, and the morality of violence frequently arise.
The books have sold 90 million copies worldwide , after having been translated into 47 languages . The fourth and fifth volumes reached the top of the "New York Times" Best Seller lists upon their releases. Among the many derived works are several prequel novellas, a TV series, a comic book adaptation, and several card, board, and video games.
"A Song of Ice and Fire" takes place in a fictional world in which seasons last for years and end unpredictably. Nearly three centuries before the events of the first novel, the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros were united under the Targaryen dynasty by Aegon I and his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, establishing military supremacy through their control of dragons. The Targaryen dynasty ruled for three hundred years, although civil war and infighting among the Targaryens was frequent. Due to being held and bred in captivity, their dragons became ever smaller until they finally went extinct. At the beginning of "A Game of Thrones", 15 peaceful years have passed since the rebellion led by Lord Robert Baratheon that deposed and killed the last Targaryen king, Aerys II "the Mad King", and proclaimed Robert king of the Seven Kingdoms, with a nine-year-long summer coming to an end.
The principal story chronicles the power struggle for the Iron Throne among the great Houses of Westeros following the death of King Robert in "A Game of Thrones". Robert's heir apparent, the 13-year-old Joffrey, is immediately proclaimed king through the machinations of his mother, Queen Cersei Lannister. When Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, Robert's closest friend and chief advisor, discovers that Joffrey and his siblings are the product of incest between Cersei and her twin brother Ser Jaime "The Kingslayer" Lannister, Eddard attempts to unseat Joffrey, but is betrayed and executed for treason. In response, Robert's brothers Stannis and Renly both lay separate claims to the throne. During this period of instability, two of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros attempt to become independent from the Iron Throne: Eddard's eldest son Robb is proclaimed King in the North, while Lord Balon Greyjoy desires to recover the sovereignty of his region, the Iron Islands. The so-called "War of the Five Kings" is in full progress by the middle of the second book, "A Clash of Kings".
The second part of the story takes place in the far north of Westeros, where an 8,000-year-old wall of ice, simply called "the Wall", defends the Seven Kingdoms from supernatural creatures known as the Others. The Wall's sentinels, the Sworn Brotherhood of the Night's Watch, also protect the realm from the incursions of the "wildlings" or "Free Folk", who are several human tribes living on the north side of the Wall. The Night's Watch story is told primarily through the point of view of Jon Snow, Lord Eddard Stark's bastard son. Jon follows the footsteps of his uncle Benjen Stark and joins the Watch at a young age, rising quickly through the ranks. He eventually becomes Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. In the third volume, "A Storm of Swords", the Night's Watch storyline becomes increasingly entangled with the War of the Five Kings.
The third storyline follows Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of Aerys II, the last Targaryen king. On the continent of Essos, east of Westeros across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys is married off by her elder brother Viserys Targaryen to a powerful warlord, but slowly becomes an independent and intelligent ruler in her own right. Her rise to power is aided by the historic birth of three dragons, hatched from eggs given to her as wedding gifts. The three dragons soon become not only a symbol of her bloodline and her claim to the throne, but also devastating weapons of war, which help her in the conquest of Slaver's Bay.
Books in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series are first published in hardcover and are later re-released as paperback editions. In the UK, Harper Voyager publishes special slipcased editions. The series has also been translated into more than 30 languages. All page totals given below are for the US first editions.
George R. R. Martin was already a successful fantasy and sci-fi author and TV writer before writing his "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series. Martin had published his first short story in 1971 and his first novel in 1977. By the mid-1990s, he had won three Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and other awards for his short fiction. Although his early books were well-received within the fantasy fiction community, his readership remained relatively small and Martin took on jobs as a writer in Hollywood in the mid-1980s. He worked principally on the revival of "The Twilight Zone" throughout 1986 and on "Beauty and the Beast" until 1990, but he also developed his own TV pilots and wrote feature film scripts. He grew frustrated that his pilots and screenplays were not getting made and that TV-related production limitations like budgets and episode lengths were forcing him to cut characters and trim battle scenes. This pushed Martin back towards writing books, where he did not have to worry about compromising the size of his imagination. Admiring the works of J. R. R. Tolkien in his childhood, he wanted to write an epic fantasy, though he did not have any specific ideas.
When Martin was between Hollywood projects in the summer of 1991, he started writing a new science fiction novel called "Avalon". After three chapters, he had a vivid idea of a boy seeing a man's beheading and finding direwolves in the snow, which would eventually become the first non-prologue chapter of "A Game of Thrones". Putting "Avalon" aside, Martin finished this chapter in a few days and grew certain that it was part of a longer story. After a few more chapters, Martin perceived his new book as a fantasy story and started making maps and genealogies. However, the writing of this book was interrupted for a few years when Martin returned to Hollywood to produce his TV series "Doorways" that ABC had ordered but ultimately never aired.
In 1994, Martin gave his agent, Kirby McCauley, the first 200 pages and a two-page story projection as part of a planned trilogy with the novels "A Dance with Dragons" and "The Winds of Winter" intended to follow. When Martin had still not reached the novel's end at 1400 manuscript pages, he felt that the series needed to be four and eventually six books long, which he imagined as two linked trilogies of one long story. Martin chose "A Song of Ice and Fire" as the overall series title: Martin saw the struggle of the cold Others and the fiery dragons as one possible meaning for "Ice and Fire", whereas the word "song" had previously appeared in Martin's book titles "A Song for Lya" and "Songs the Dead Men Sing", stemming from his obsessions with songs. Martin also named Robert Frost's 1920 poem "Fire and Ice" and cultural associations such as passion versus betrayal as possible influences for the series' title.
The revised finished manuscript for "A Game of Thrones" was 1088 pages long (without the appendices), with the publication following in August 1996. "The Wheel of Time " author Robert Jordan had written a short endorsement for the cover that was influential in ensuring the book's and hence series' early success with fantasy readers. "Blood of the Dragon", a pre-release sample novella drawn from Daenerys's chapters, went on to win the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
The 300 pages removed from the "A Game of Thrones" manuscript served as the opening of the second book, entitled "A Clash of Kings". It was released in February 1999 in the United States, with a manuscript length (without appendices) of 1184 pages. "A Clash of Kings" was the first book of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series to make the best-seller lists, reaching 13 on "The New York Times" Best Seller list in 1999. After the success of "The Lord of the Rings" films, Martin received his first inquiries to the rights of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series from various producers and filmmakers.
Martin was several months late turning in the third book, "A Storm of Swords". The last chapter he had written was about the "Red Wedding", a pivotal scene notable for its violence (see Themes: Violence and death). "A Storm of Swords" was 1521 pages in manuscript (without appendices), causing problems for many of Martin's publishers around the world. Bantam Books published "A Storm of Swords" in a single volume in the United States in November 2000, whereas some other-language editions were divided into two, three, or even four volumes. "A Storm of Swords" debuted at number 12 in the "New York Times" bestseller list.
After "A Game of Thrones", "A Clash of Kings", and "A Storm of Swords", Martin originally intended to write three more books. The fourth book, tentatively titled "A Dance with Dragons", was to focus on Daenerys Targaryen's return to Westeros and the associated conflicts. Martin wanted to set this story five years after "A Storm of Swords" so that the younger characters could grow older and the dragons grow larger. Agreeing with his publishers early on that the new book should be shorter than "A Storm of Swords", Martin set out to write the novel closer in length to "A Clash of Kings". A long prologue was to establish what had happened in the meantime, initially just as one chapter of Aeron Damphair on the Iron Islands at the Kingsmoot. Since the events on the Iron Islands were to have an impact in the book and could not be told with existing POV characters, Martin eventually introduced three new viewpoints.
In 2001, Martin was still optimistic that the fourth installment might be released in the last quarter of 2002. However, the five-year gap did not work for all characters during writing. On one hand, Martin was unsatisfied with covering the events during the gap solely through flashbacks and internal retrospection. On the other hand, it was implausible to have nothing happen for five years. After working on the book for about a year, Martin realized he needed an additional interim book, which he called "A Feast for Crows". The book would pick up the story immediately after the third book, and Martin scrapped the idea of a five-year gap. The material of the written 250-page prologue was mixed in as new viewpoint characters from Dorne and the Iron Islands. These expanded storylines and the resulting story interactions complicated the plot for Martin.
The manuscript length of "A Feast for Crows" eventually surpassed "A Storm of Swords". Martin was reluctant to make the necessary deep cuts to get the book down to publishable length, as that would have compromised the story he had in mind. Printing the book in "microtype on onion skin paper and giving each reader a magnifying glass" was also not an option for him. On the other hand, Martin rejected the publishers' idea of splitting the narrative chronologically into "A Feast for Crows", Parts One and Two. Being already late with the book, Martin had not even started writing all characters' stories and also objected to ending the first book without any resolution for its many viewpoint characters as in previous books.
With the characters spread out across the world, a friend suggested that Martin divide the story geographically into two volumes, of which "A Feast for Crows" would be the first. This approach would give Martin the room to complete his commenced story arcs as he had originally intended, which he still felt was the best approach years later. Martin moved the unfinished characters' stories set in the east (Essos) and north (Winterfell and the Wall) into the next book, "A Dance with Dragons", and left "A Feast for Crows" to cover the events in King's Landing, the Riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands. Both books begin immediately after the end of "A Storm of Swords", running in parallel instead of sequentially, and involve different casts of characters with only little overlap. Martin split Arya's chapters into both books after having already moved the three other most popular characters (Jon Snow, Tyrion, and Daenerys) into "A Dance with Dragons".
Upon its release in October 2005 in the UK and November 2005 in the US, "A Feast for Crows" went straight to the top of "The New York Times" bestseller list. Among the positive reviewers was Lev Grossman of "Time", who dubbed Martin "the American Tolkien". However, fans and critics alike were disappointed with the story split that left the fates of several popular characters unresolved after "A Storm of Swords" cliffhanger ending. With "A Dance with Dragons" said to be half-finished, Martin mentioned in the epilogue of "A Feast for Crows" that the next volume would be released by the next year. However, planned release dates were repeatedly pushed back. Meanwhile, HBO acquired the rights to turn "A Song of Ice and Fire" into a fantasy drama series in 2007 and aired the first of ten episodes covering "A Game of Thrones" in April 2011.
With around 1600 pages in manuscript length, "A Dance with Dragons" was eventually published in July 2011 after six years of writing, longer in page count and writing time than any of the preceding four novels. The story of "A Dance with Dragons" catches up with and goes beyond "A Feast for Crows" around two-thirds into the book, but nevertheless covers less story than Martin had intended, omitting at least one planned large battle sequence and leaving several character threads ending in cliff-hangers. Martin attributed the delay mainly to his untangling "the Meereenese knot", which the interviewer understood as "making the chronology and characters mesh up as various threads converged on [Daenerys]". Martin also acknowledged spending too much time on rewriting and perfecting the story, but soundly rejected the theories of some of his critics that he had lost interest in the series or would bide his time to make more money.
Martin believes the last two volumes of the series will be big books of 1500 manuscript pages each. The sixth book will be called "The Winds of Winter", taking the title of the last book of the originally planned trilogy. Displeased with the provisional title "A Time for Wolves" for the final volume, Martin ultimately announced "A Dream of Spring" as the title for the seventh book in 2006. Martin said in March 2012 that the final two novels will take readers farther north than any of the previous books, and that the Others will appear.
"The Winds of Winter" will resolve the cliffhangers from "A Dance with Dragons" early on and "will open with the two big battles that [the fifth book] was building up to, the battle in the ice and the battle [...] of Slaver's Bay. And then take it from there." By the middle of 2010, Martin had already finished five chapters of "The Winds of Winter" from the viewpoints of Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Arianne Martell, and Aeron Greyjoy, coming to around 100 completed pages. After the publication of "A Dance with Dragons" in 2011, Martin announced he would return to writing in January 2012. He spent the meantime on book tours, conventions, and continued working on his "The World of Ice & Fire" companion guide and a new "Tales of Dunk and Egg" novella. In December 2011, Martin posted a chapter from "The Winds of Winter" from the viewpoint of Theon Greyjoy; several other chapters have been made public since. Four hundred pages of the sixth novel had been written , although Martin considered only 200 as "really finished"; the rest needed revising. During the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico in early December 2016, Martin offered the following hint as to the tone of this book: "There are a lot of dark chapters right now ... I've been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. Winter is the time when things die, and cold and ice and darkness fill the world, so this is not going to be the happy feel-good that people may be hoping for. Some of the characters [are] in very dark places." Martin did not intend to separate the characters geographically again.
In 2011, Martin gave three years as a realistic estimate for finishing the sixth book at a good pace, but said ultimately the book "will be done when it's done", acknowledging that his publication estimates had been too optimistic in the past. In 2015 there were indications that the book would be published before the sixth season of the HBO show but in early January 2016 Martin confirmed that he had not met an end-of-year deadline that he had established with his publisher for release of the book before the sixth season. He also revealed there had been a previous deadline of October 2015 that he had considered achievable in May 2015, and that in September 2015 he had still considered the end-of-year deadline achievable. He further confirmed that some of the plot of the book might be revealed in the upcoming season of "Game of Thrones". In February 2016, Martin stated that he dropped all his editing projects except for "Wild Cards", and that he would not be writing any teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions or forewords before delivering "The Winds of Winter". In April 2018, Martin announced in a blog post that "The Winds of Winter" would not be published in 2018.
Martin is only firm about ending the series with the seventh novel "until I decide not to be firm". With his stated goal of telling the story from beginning to end, he will not truncate the story to fit into an arbitrary number of volumes. He knows the ending in broad strokes as well as the future of the main characters, and will finish the series with bittersweet elements where not everyone will live happily ever after. Martin hopes to write an ending similar to "The Lord of the Rings" that he felt gave the story a satisfying depth and resonance. On the other hand, Martin noted the challenge to avoid a situation like the finale of the TV series "Lost", which left some fans disappointed by deviating too far from their own theories and desires. In 2012, Martin had acknowledged his concerns about "A Dream of Spring" not being completed by the time the TV series "Game of Thrones" catches up in its storyline to the novels.
In 2015, Martin said that he was not writing "A Dream of Spring" together with "The Winds of Winter", and in early 2016, he said he did not believe "A Dream of Spring" would be published before the last season of the HBO show. In April 2018, Martin commented he had not started working on the book, and in November he said that after "The Winds of Winter" he would decide what to do next: "A Dream of Spring" or the second volume of "Fire & Blood" or one or two stories for the "Tales of Dunk and Egg". In May 2019 he reiterated he had not started writing "A Dream of Spring" and would not do so before finishing "The Winds of Winter".
Martin offered the following hint as to how the series would conclude during a Q&A at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. "I'm not going to tell you how I'm going to end my book, but I suspect the overall flavor is going to be as much bittersweet as it is happy."
Early during the development of the TV series, Martin told major plot points to producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Martin was confident he would have published at least "The Winds of Winter" before the TV series overtook him. Nevertheless, there were general concerns about whether Martin would be able to stay ahead of the show. As a result, head writers Benioff and Weiss learned more future plot points from Martin in 2013 to help them set up the show's new possible seasons. This included the end stories for all the core characters. Deviations from the books' storylines were considered, but a two-year hiatus to wait for new books was not an option for them (as the child actors continue to grow and the show's popularity would wane). Martin indicated he would not permit another writer to finish the book series. On January 2, 2016, Martin confirmed that the sixth volume would not be published before the start of the sixth season of the HBO series.
Regarding "A Song of Ice and Fire" as his masterpiece, Martin is certain never to write anything on this scale again and would only return to this fictional universe in the context of stand-alone novels. He prefers to write stories about characters from other "A Song of Ice and Fire" periods of history such as his "Tales of Dunk and Egg" project, instead of continuing the series directly. Martin said he would love to return to writing short stories, novellas, novelettes, and stand-alone novels from diverse genres such as science fiction, horror, fantasy, or even a murder mystery.
George R. R. Martin believes the most profound influences to be the ones experienced in childhood. Having read H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert A. Heinlein, Eric Frank Russell, Andre Norton, Isaac Asimov, Fritz Leiber, and Mervyn Peake in his youth, Martin never categorized these authors' literature into science fiction, fantasy, or horror and will write from any genre as a result. Martin classified "A Song of Ice and Fire" as "epic fantasy", and specifically named Tad Williams' high fantasy epic "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" as very influential for the writing of the series. One of his favorite authors is Jack Vance, although Martin considered the series not particularly Vancean.
Martin experienced some harsh winters when living in Dubuque a few years in the 1970s, and suspects these winters had an influence on his writing; "I think a lot of the stuff in "A Game of Thrones", the snow and ice and freezing, comes from my memories of Dubuque".
The medieval setting has been the traditional background for epic fantasy. However, where historical fiction leaves versed readers knowing the historical outcome, original characters may increase suspense and empathy for the readers. Yet Martin felt historical fiction, particularly when set during the Middle Ages, had an excitement, grittiness, and a realness to it that was absent in fantasy with a similar backdrop. Thus, he wanted to combine the realism of historical fiction with the magic appeal of the best fantasies, subduing magic in favor of battles and political intrigue. He also decided to avoid the conventional good versus evil setting typical for the genre, using the fight between Achilles and Hector in Homer's "Iliad", where no one stands out as either a hero or a villain, as an example of what he wants to achieve with his books.
Martin is widely credited with broadening the fantasy fiction genre for adult content, including incest, paedophilia, and adultery. Writing for "The Atlantic", Amber Taylor assessed the novels as hard fantasy with vulnerable characters to which readers become emotionally attached. CNN found in 2000 that Martin's mature descriptions were "far more frank than those found in the works of other fantasy authors", although Martin assessed the fantasy genre to have become rougher-edged a decade later and that some writers' work was going beyond the mature themes of his novels. Adam Roberts called Martin's series the most successful and popular example of the emerging subgenre of grimdark fantasy.
Setting out to write something on an epic scale, Martin projected to write three books of 800 manuscript pages in the very early stages of the series. His original 1990s contract specified one-year deadlines for his previous literary works, but Martin only realized later that his new books were longer and hence required more writing time. In 2000, Martin planned to take 18 months to two years for each volume and projected the last of the planned six books to be released five or six years later. However, with "A Song of Ice and Fire" series evolving into the biggest and most ambitious story he has ever attempted writing, he still has two more books to finish . Martin said he needed to be in his own office in Santa Fe, New Mexico to immerse himself in the fictional world and write. , Martin was still typing his fiction on a DOS computer with WordStar 4.0 software. He begins each day at 10 am with rewriting and polishing the previous day's work, and may write all day or struggle to write anything. Excised material and previous old versions are saved to be possibly re-inserted at a later time. Martin does not consider "A Song of Ice and Fire" a "series" but a single story published in several volumes.
Martin set the "A Song of Ice and Fire" story in a secondary world inspired by Tolkien's writing. Unlike Tolkien, who created entire languages, mythologies, and histories for Middle-earth long before writing "The Lord of the Rings", Martin usually starts with a rough sketch of an imaginary world that he improvises into a workable fictional setting along the way. He described his writing as coming from a subconscious level in "almost a daydreaming process", and his stories, which have a mythic rather than a scientific core, draw from emotion instead of rationality. Martin employs maps and a cast list topping 60 pages in the fourth volume, but keeps most information in his mind. His imagined backstory remains subject to change until published, and only the novels count as canon. Martin does not intend to publish his private notes after the series is finished.
Martin drew much inspiration from actual history for the series, having several bookcases filled with medieval history for research and visiting historic European landmarks. For an American who speaks only English, the history of England proved the easiest source of medieval history for him, giving the series a British rather than a German or Spanish historic flavor. For example, Ned and Robb Stark resemble Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and his son Edward IV, and Queen Cersei resembles both Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville. Martin immersed himself in many diverse medieval topics such as clothing, food, feasting, and tournaments to have the facts at hand if needed during writing. The series was in particular influenced by the Hundred Years' War, the Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Wars of the Roses, although Martin refrained from making any direct adaptations. Martin was also inspired by the French historical novels "The Accursed Kings" by Maurice Druon, which are about the French monarchy in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Martin has also drawn from Roman history for inspiration, comparing Stannis Baratheon to the Roman emperor Tiberius. Martin has sourced the Massacre of Glencoe and Black Dinner as inspiration for the "Red Wedding," a crucial twist in "A Storm of Swords".
The story is written to follow principal landmarks with an ultimate destination, but leaves Martin room for improvisation. On occasion, improvised details significantly affected the planned story. By the fourth book, Martin kept more private notes than ever before to keep track of the many subplots, which became so detailed and sprawling by the fifth book as to be unwieldy. Martin's editors, copy editors, and readers monitor for accidental mistakes, although some errors have slipped into publication. For instance, Martin has inconsistently referred to certain characters' eye colors, and has described a horse as being of one sex and then another.
The books are divided into chapters, each one narrated in the third person limited through the eyes of a point of view character, an approach Martin learned himself as a young journalism student. Beginning with nine POV characters in "A Game of Thrones", the number of POV characters grows to a total of 31 in "A Dance with Dragons" (see table). The short-lived one-time POV characters are mostly restricted to the prologues and epilogues. David Orr of "The New York Times" noted the story importance of "the Starks (good guys), the Targaryens (at least one good guy, or girl), the Lannisters (conniving), the Greyjoys (mostly conniving), the Baratheons (mixed bag), the Tyrells (unclear), and the Martells (ditto), most of whom are feverishly endeavoring to advance their ambitions and ruin their enemies, preferably unto death". However, as "Time" Lev Grossman noted, readers "experience the struggle for Westeros from all sides at once", such that "every fight is both triumph and tragedy [...] and everybody is both hero and villain at the same time".
Modeled on "The Lord of the Rings", the story of "A Song of Ice and Fire" begins with a tight focus on a small group (with everyone in Winterfell, except Daenerys) and then splits into separate stories. The storylines are to converge again, but finding the turning point in this complex series has been difficult for Martin and has slowed down his writing. Depending on the interview, Martin is said to have reached the turning point in "A Dance with Dragons", or to not quite have reached it yet in the books. The series' structure of multiple POVs and interwoven storylines was inspired by "Wild Cards", a multi-authored shared universe book series edited by Martin since 1985. As the sole author, Martin begins each new book with an outline of the chapter order and may write a few successive chapters from a single character's viewpoint instead of working chronologically. The chapters are later rearranged to optimize character intercutting, chronology, and suspense.
Influenced by his television and film scripting background, Martin tries to keep readers engrossed by ending each "A Song of Ice and Fire" chapter with a tense or revelational moment, a twist or a cliffhanger, similar to a TV act break. Scriptwriting has also taught him the technique of "cutting out the fat and leaving the muscle", which is the final stage of completing a book, a technique that brought the page count in "A Dance with Dragons" down almost eighty pages. Dividing the continuous "A Song of Ice and Fire" story into books is much harder for Martin. Each book shall represent a phase of the journey that ends in closure for most characters. A smaller portion of characters is left with clear-cut cliffhangers to make sure readers come back for the next installment, although "A Dance with Dragons" had more cliffhangers than Martin originally intended. Both one-time and regular POV characters are designed to have full character arcs ending in tragedy or triumph, and are written to hold the readers' interest and not be skipped in reading. Main characters are killed off so that the reader will not rely on the hero to come through unscathed and will instead feel the character's fear with each page turn.
The unresolved larger narrative arc encourages speculation about future story events. According to Martin, much of the key to "A Song of Ice and Fire" future lies over a dozen years in the fictional past, of which each volume reveals more. Events planned from the beginning are foreshadowed, although Martin is careful not to make the story predictable. The viewpoint characters, who serve as unreliable narrators, may clarify or provide different perspectives on past events. Therefore, what the readers believe to be true may not necessarily be true.
Regarding the characters as the heart of the story, Martin planned the epic "A Song of Ice and Fire" to have a large cast of characters and many different settings from the beginning. "A Feast for Crows" has a 63-page list of characters, with many of the thousands of characters mentioned only in passing or disappearing from view for long stretches. When Martin adds a new family to the ever-growing number of genealogies in the appendices, he devises a secret about the personality or fate of the family members. However, their backstory remains subject to change until written down in the story. Martin drew most character inspiration from history (without directly translating historical figures) and his own experiences, but also from the manners of his friends, acquaintances, and people of public interest. Martin aims to "make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish well-mixed in their natures". Jeff VanderMeer of the "Los Angeles Times" remarked that "Martin's devotion to fully inhabiting his characters, for better or worse, creates the unstoppable momentum in his novels and contains an implied criticism of Tolkien's moral simplicity" (see Themes: Moral ambiguity).
Martin deliberately ignored the writing rule of never giving two characters names starting with the same letter. Instead, character names reflect the naming systems in various European family histories, where particular names were associated with specific royal houses and where even the secondary families assigned the same names repeatedly. The story of "A Song of Ice and Fire" therefore has children called "Robert" in honor of King Robert of House Baratheon, a "Brandon" in every other generation of the Starks in commemoration of Brandon the Builder (of the Wall), and the syllable "Ty" commonly occurring in given names of House Lannister. Confident that readers would pay attention, Martin distinguished people sharing a given name by adding numbers or locations to their given names (e.g. Henry V of England). The family names were designed in association with ethnic groups (see backstory): the First Men in the North of Westeros had very simply descriptive names like Stark and Strong, whereas the descendants of the Andal invaders in the South have more elaborate, undescriptive house names like Lannister or Arryn, and the Targaryens and Valyrians from the Eastern continent have the most exotic names with the letter Y.
All characters are designed to speak with their own internal voices to capture their views of the world. "The Atlantic" pondered whether Martin ultimately intended the readers to sympathize with characters on both sides of the Lannister–Stark feud long before plot developments force them to make their emotional choices. Contrary to most conventional epic fantasies, the characters of "A Song of Ice and Fire" are vulnerable so that, according to "The Atlantic", the reader "cannot be sure that good shall triumph, which makes those instances where it does all the more exulting." Martin gets emotionally involved in the characters' lives during writing, which makes the chapters with dreadful events sometimes very difficult to write. Seeing the world through the characters' eyes requires a certain amount of empathy with them, including the villains, all of whom he has said he loves as if they were his own children. Martin found that some characters had minds of their own and took his writing in different directions. He returns to the intended story if it does not work out, but these detours sometimes prove more rewarding for him.
Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, and Daenerys Targaryen generate the most feedback from readers. Martin has stated that Tyrion is his personal favorite, as the grayest of the gray characters, with his cunning and wit making him the most fun to write. Martin has also said that Bran Stark is the hardest character to write. As the character most deeply involved in magic, Bran's story needs to be handled carefully within the supernatural aspects of the books. Bran is also the youngest viewpoint character, and has to deal with the series' adult themes like grief, loneliness, and anger. Martin set out to have the young characters grow up faster between chapters, but, as it was implausible for a character to take two months to respond, a finished book represents very little time passed. Martin hoped the planned five-year break would ease the situation and age the children to almost adults in terms of the Seven Kingdoms, but he later dropped the five-year gap (see section Bridging the timeline gap).
Although modern fantasy may often embrace strangeness, "A Song of Ice and Fire" series is generally praised for what is perceived as a sort of medieval realism. Believing that magic should be used moderately in the epic fantasy genre, Martin set out to make the story feel more like historical fiction than contemporary fantasy, with less emphasis on magic and sorcery and more on battles, political intrigue, and the characters. Though the amount of magic has gradually increased throughout the story, the series is still to end with less overt magic than most contemporary fantasies. In Martin's eyes, literary effective magic needs to represent strange and dangerous forces beyond human comprehension, not advanced alien technologies or formulaic spells. As such, the characters understand only the natural aspects of their world, but not the magical elements like the Others.
Since Martin drew on historical sources to build the world of "A Song of Ice and Fire" , Damien G. Walter of "The Guardian" saw a strong resemblance between Westeros and England in the period of the Wars of the Roses. "The Atlantic" Adam Serwer regarded "A Song of Ice and Fire" as "more a story of politics than one of heroism, a story about humanity wrestling with its baser obsessions than fulfilling its glorious potential", where the emergent power struggle stems from the feudal system's repression and not from the fight between good and evil. Martin not only wanted to reflect the frictions of the medieval class structures in the novels, but also explore the consequences of the leaders' decisions, as general goodness does not automatically make competent leaders and vice versa.
A common theme in the fantasy genre is the battle between good and evil, which Martin rejects for not mirroring the real world. Attracted to gray characters, Martin instead endorses William Faulkner's view that only the human heart in conflict with itself was worth writing about. Martin explores the questions of redemption and character change in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. The multiple viewpoint structure allows characters to be explored from many sides, such that the supposed villains can provide their viewpoint.
Although fantasy comes from an imaginative realm, Martin sees an honest necessity to reflect the real world where people die sometimes ugly deaths, even beloved people. Main characters are killed off so that the reader will not expect the supposed hero to survive, and instead will feel the same tension and fear that the characters might. The novels also reflect the substantial death rates in war. The deaths of supernumerary extras or orcs have no major effect on readers, whereas a friend's death has much more emotional impact. Martin prefers a hero's sacrifice to say something profound about human nature.
According to Martin, the fantasy genre rarely focuses on sex and sexuality, instead often treating sexuality in a juvenile way or neglecting it completely. Martin, however, considers sexuality an important driving force in human life that should not be excluded from the narrative. Providing sensory detail for an immersive experience is more important than plot advancement for Martin, who aims to let the readers experience the novels' sex scenes, "whether it's a great transcendent, exciting, mind blowing sex, or whether it's disturbing, twisted, dark sex, or disappointing perfunctory sex." Martin was fascinated by medieval contrasts where knights venerated their ladies with poems and wore their favors in tournaments while their armies mindlessly raped women in wartime. The non-existent concept of adolescence in the Middle Ages served as a model for Daenerys' sexual activity at the age of 13 in the books. The novels also allude to the incestuous practices in the Ptolemaic dynasty of Ancient Egypt to keep their bloodlines pure.
Martin provides a variety of female characters to explore the place of women in a patriarchal society. Writing all characters as human beings with the same basic needs, dreams, and influences, his female characters are to cover the same wide spectrum of human traits as the males.
"Science Fiction Weekly" stated in 2000 that "few would dispute that Martin's most monumental achievement to date has been the groundbreaking "A Song of Ice and Fire" historical fantasy series", for which reviews have been "orders of magnitude better" than for his previous works, as Martin described to "The New Yorker". In 2007, "Weird Tales" magazine described the series as a "superb fantasy saga" that "raised Martin to a whole new level of success". Shortly before the release of "A Dance with Dragons" in 2011, Bill Sheehan of "The Washington Post" was sure that "no work of fantasy has generated such anticipation since Harry Potter's final duel with Voldemort", and Ethan Sacks of "Daily News" saw the series turning Martin into a darling of literary critics as well as mainstream readers, which was "rare for a fantasy genre that's often dismissed as garbage not fit to line the bottom of a dragon's cage". Salon.com's Andrew Leonard stated:
"Publishers Weekly" noted in 2000 that "Martin may not rival Tolkien or Robert Jordan, but he ranks with such accomplished medievalists of fantasy as Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson." After the fourth volume came out in 2005, "Time" Lev Grossman considered Martin a "major force for evolution in fantasy" and proclaimed him "the American Tolkien", explaining that, although Martin was "[not] the best known of America's straight-up fantasy writers" at the time and would "never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award ... his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today". As Grossman said in 2011, the phrase "American Tolkien" "has stuck to [Martin], as it was meant to", being picked up by the media including "The New York Times" ("He's much better than that"), the "New Yorker", "Entertainment Weekly" ("an acclaim that borders on fantasy blasphemy"), "The Globe and Mail", and "USA Today". "Time" magazine named Martin one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011, and "USA Today" named George R.R. Martin their Author of the Year 2011.
According to "The Globe and Mail" John Barber, Martin manages simultaneously to master and transcend the genre so that "Critics applaud the depth of his characterizations and lack of cliché in books that are nonetheless replete with dwarves and dragons". "Publishers Weekly" gave favorable reviews to the first three "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels at their points of release, saying that "A Game of Thrones" had "superbly developed characters, accomplished prose and sheer bloody-mindedness", that "A Clash of Kings" was "notable particularly for the lived-in quality of [their fictional world and] for the comparatively modest role of magic", and that "A Storm of Swords" was one "of the more rewarding examples of gigantism in contemporary fantasy". However, they found that "A Feast For Crows" as the fourth installment "sorely misses its other half. The slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying." Their review for "A Dance with Dragons" repeated points of criticism for the fourth volume, and said that, although "The new volume has a similar feel to "Feast"", "Martin keeps it fresh by focusing on popular characters [who were] notably absent from the previous book."
According to the "Los Angeles Times", "Martin's brilliance in evoking atmosphere through description is an enduring hallmark of his fiction, the settings much more than just props on a painted stage", and the novels captivate readers with "complex storylines, fascinating characters, great dialogue, perfect pacing, and the willingness to kill off even his major characters". CNN remarked that "the story weaves through differing points of view in a skillful mix of observation, narration and well-crafted dialogue that illuminates both character and plot with fascinating style", and David Orr of "The New York Times" found that "All of his hundreds of characters have grace notes of history and personality that advance a plot line. Every town has an elaborately recalled series of triumphs and troubles." Salon.com's Andrew Leonard "couldn't stop reading Martin because my desire to know what was going to happen combined with my absolute inability to guess what would happen and left me helpless before his sorcery. At the end, I felt shaken and exhausted." "The Christian Science Monitor" advised reading the novels with an "A Song of Ice and Fire" encyclopedia at hand to "catch all the layered, subtle hints and details that [Martin] leaves throughout his books. If you pay attention, you will be rewarded and questions will be answered."
Among the most critical voices were Sam Jordison and Michael Hann, both of "The Guardian". Jordison detailed his misgivings about "A Game of Thrones" in a 2009 review and summarized "It's daft. It's unsophisticated. It's cartoonish. And yet, I couldn't stop reading ... Archaic absurdity aside, Martin's writing is excellent. His dialogue is snappy and frequently funny. His descriptive prose is immediate and atmospheric, especially when it comes to building a sense of deliciously dark foreboding [of the long impending winter]." Hann did not consider the novels to stand out from the general fantasy genre, despite Martin's alterations to fantasy convention, although he rediscovered his childhood's views:
Academic literary criticism has been slow to engage with the series; there will likely be much more criticism if and when the series is completed. The first scholarly monograph on the series is "George R. R. Martin and the Fantasy Form", by New Zealand scholar Joseph Rex Young.
The reported overall sales figures of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series vary. "The New Yorker" said in April 2011 (before the publication of "A Dance with Dragons") that more than 15 million "A Song of Ice and Fire" books had been sold worldwide, a figure repeated by "The Globe and Mail" in July 2011. Reuters reported in September 2013 that the books including print, digital and audio versions have sold more than 24 million copies in North America. "The Wall Street Journal" reported more than six million sold copies in North America by May 2011. "USA Today" reported 8.5 million copies in print and digital overall in July 2011, and over 12 million sold copies in print in December 2011. The series has been translated into more than 20 languages; "USA Today" reported the fifth book to be translated into over 40 languages. "Forbes" estimated that Martin was the 12th highest-earning author worldwide in 2011 at $15 million.
Martin's publishers initially expected "A Game of Thrones" to be a best-seller, but the first installment did not even reach any lower positions in bestseller list. This left Martin unsurprised, as it is "a fool's game to think anything is going to be successful or to count on it". However, the book slowly won the passionate advocacy of independent booksellers and the book's popularity grew by word of mouth. The series' popularity skyrocketed in subsequent volumes, with the second and third volume making "The New York Times" Best Seller lists in 1999 and 2000, respectively. The series gained Martin's old writings new attention, and Martin's American publisher Bantam Spectra was to reprint his out-of-print solo novels.
The fourth installment, "A Feast for Crows", was an immediate best-seller at its 2005 release, hitting number one on "The New York Times" hardcover fiction bestseller list November 27, 2005, which for a fantasy novel suggested that Martin's books were attracting mainstream readers. The paperback edition of "A Game of Thrones" reached its 34th printing in 2010, surpassing the one million mark. Before it even premiered, the TV series had boosted sales of the book series, with "A Song of Ice and Fire" approaching triple-digit growth in year-on-year sales. Bantam was looking forward to seeing the tie-ins boost sales further, and Martin's British publisher Harper Voyager expected readers to rediscover their other epic fantasy literature. With a reported 4.5 million copies of the first four volumes in print in early 2011, the four volumes re-appeared on the paperback fiction bestseller lists in the second quarter of 2011.
At its point of publication in July 2011, "A Dance with Dragons" was in its sixth print with more than 650,000 hardbacks in print. It also had the highest single and first-day sales of any new fiction title published in 2011 at that point, with 170,000 hardcovers, 110,000 e-books, and 18,000 audio books reportedly sold on the first day. "A Dance with Dragons" reached the top of "The New York Times" bestseller list on July 31, 2011. Unlike most other big titles, the fifth volume sold more physical than digital copies early on, but nevertheless, Martin became the tenth author to sell 1 million Amazon Kindle e-books. All five volumes and the four-volume boxed set were among the top 100 best-selling books in the United States in 2011 and 2012.
The TV series has contributed significantly boosting sales of both the books and collectibles like box-sets, merchandise, and other items. The TV series also contributed in increasing the geographic coverage of the books, introducing new customers in emerging countries like India and Brazil to the book series. All this has significantly increased the overall book sales. As of April 2019, the book series has sold 90million copies worldwide.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Martin's novels had slowly earned him a reputation in science fiction circles, although he said to only have received a few fans' letters a year in the pre-internet days. The publication of "A Game of Thrones" caused Martin's following to grow, with fan sites springing up and a Trekkie-like society of followers evolving that meet regularly. Westeros.org, one of the main "A Song of Ice and Fire" fansites with about seventeen thousand registered members , was co-founded in 1999 by a Swedish-based fan of Cuban descent, Elio M. García, Jr., as well as Linda Antonsson, who introduced him to the series; their involvement with Martin's work has now become semi-professional. The Brotherhood Without Banners, an unofficial fan club operating globally, was formed in 2001. Their founders and other longtime members are among Martin's good friends.
Martin runs an official website and administers a lively blog with the assistance of Ty Franck. He also interacts with fandom by answering emails and letters, although he stated in 2005 that their sheer numbers might leave them unanswered for years. Since there are different types of conventions nowadays, he tends to go to three or four science-fiction conventions a year simply to go back to his roots and meet friends. He does not read message boards anymore, so that his writing will not be influenced by fans foreseeing twists and interpreting characters differently from what he intended.
While Martin calls the majority of his fans "great", and enjoys interacting with them, some of them turned against him because of the six years it took to release "A Dance with Dragons". A movement of disaffected fans called GRRuMblers formed in 2009, creating sites such as "Finish the Book, George" and "Is Winter Coming?" When fans' vocal impatience for "A Dance with Dragons" peaked shortly after, Martin issued a statement called "To My Detractors" on his blog that received media attention. "The New York Times" noted that it was not uncommon for Martin to be mobbed at book signings either. "The New Yorker" called this "an astonishing amount of effort to devote to denouncing the author of books one professes to love. Few contemporary authors can claim to have inspired such passion."
Martin has written several prequel novellas. The "Tales of Dunk and Egg" series, three novellas set 90 years before the events of the novel series, feature the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire "Egg", who later became King Aegon V Targaryen. The stories have no direct connection to the plot of "A Song of Ice and Fire", although both characters are mentioned in "A Storm of Swords" and "A Feast For Crows", respectively. The first installment, "The Hedge Knight", was published in the 1998 anthology "Legends". "The Sworn Sword" followed in 2003, published in "Legends II". Both were later adapted into graphic novels. The third novella, "The Mystery Knight", was first published in the 2010 anthology "Warriors" and in 2017 it was adapted as a graphic novel, as well. In 2015, the first three novellas were published as one illustrated collection, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms".
The novella "The Princess and the Queen or, the Blacks and the Greens" appeared in Tor Books's 2013 anthology "Dangerous Women" and explains some of the Targaryen backstory two centuries before the events of the novels. "The Rogue Prince, or, the King's Brother", published in the 2014 anthology "Rogues", is itself a prequel to the events of "The Princess and the Queen". The novella "The Sons of the Dragon", published in the 2017 anthology "The Book of Swords", is the story of Aegon the Conqueror's two sons Aenys I and Maegor I "The Cruel". All three of these stories were incorporated as parts of "Fire and Blood," a book chronicling the history of the Targaryen line.
Chapter sets from the novels were also compiled into three novellas that were released between 1996 and 2003 by "Asimov's Science Fiction" and "Dragon":
"Fire & Blood" is Martin's complete history of House Targaryen, to be released in two volumes. The first volume was released on November 20, 2018.
With the popularity of the series growing, HBO optioned "A Song of Ice and Fire" for a television adaptation in 2007. A pilot episode was produced in late 2009, and a series commitment for nine further episodes was made in March 2010. The series, titled "Game of Thrones", premiered in April 2011 to great acclaim and ratings (see "Game of Thrones": Reception). The network picked up the show for a second season covering "A Clash of Kings" two days later. Shortly after the conclusion of the first season, the show received 13 Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, winning Outstanding Main Title Design and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Peter Dinklage's portrayal of Tyrion Lannister. HBO announced a renewal for a third season in April 2012, ten days after the season 2 premiere. Due to the length of the corresponding book, the third season only covered roughly the first half of "A Storm of Swords".
Shortly after the season 3 premiere in March 2013, the network announced that "Game of Thrones" would be returning for a fourth season, which would cover the second half of "A Storm of Swords "along with the beginnings of "A Feast for Crows "and "A Dance With Dragons". "Game of Thrones" was nominated for 15 Emmy Awards for season 3. Two days after the fourth season premiered in April 2014, HBO renewed "Game of Thrones" for a fifth and sixth season. Season 5 premiered on April 12, 2015 and set a Guinness World Records for winning the highest number of Emmy Awards for a series in a single season and year, winning 12 out of 24 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series.
These episodes were watched by 8 million viewers, setting a record number for the series. The sixth season premiered on April 24, 2016. These episodes received the most nominations for the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards with 23, winning 12, including the award for Outstanding Drama Series. The seventh season premiered on July 16, 2017. The eighth and final season premiered on April 14, 2019.
"A Song of Ice and Fire" has spawned an industry of spin-off products. Fantasy Flight Games released a collectible card game, a board game, and two collections of artwork inspired by "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Various roleplaying game products were released by Guardians of Order and Green Ronin. Dynamite Entertainment adapted "A Game of Thrones" into a same-titled monthly comic in 2011. Several video games are available or in production, including "" (2011) and "Game of Thrones" (2012) by Cyanide; both received mediocre ratings from critics. A social network game titled "Game of Thrones Ascent" (2013) by Disruptor Beam allows players to live the life of a noble during the series' period setting. Random House released an official map book called "The Lands of Ice and Fire", which includes old and new maps of the "Ice and Fire" world. The companion book "The World of Ice & Fire" by Martin and the Westeros.org owners Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson was published in October 2014. Other licensed products include full-sized weapon reproductions, a range of collectable figures, Westeros coinage reproductions, and a large number of gift and collectible items based on the HBO television series. The popularity of the HBO series has made its version of the Iron Throne an icon of the entire media franchise. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12301 |
World of A Song of Ice and Fire
The fictional world in which the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels by George R. R. Martin take place is divided into several continents, known collectively as The Known World. Some unofficial fan groups call it Planetos.
Most of the story takes place on the continent of Westeros and in a large political entity known as the Seven Kingdoms. Those kingdoms are spread across nine regions: the North, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands, the Vale, the Westerlands, the Stormlands, the Reach, the Crownlands, and Dorne. A massive wall of ice and old magic separates the Seven Kingdoms from the largely unmapped area to the north. The vast continent of Essos is located east of Westeros, across the Narrow Sea. The closest foreign nations to Westeros are the Free Cities, a collection of nine independent city-states along the western edge of Essos. The lands along the southern coastline of Essos are called the Lands of the Summer Sea and include Slaver's Bay and the ruins of Valyria. The latter is the former home of the ancestors of House Targaryen. To the south of Essos are the continents of Sothoryos and Ulthos, which in the narrative are largely unexplored.
The planet experiences erratic seasons of unpredictable duration that can last for many years. At the beginning of "A Song of Ice and Fire", Westeros has enjoyed a decade-long summer, and many fear that an even longer and harsher winter will follow.
George R. R. Martin set the "Ice and Fire" story in an alternative world of Earth, a "secondary world", such as that which J. R. R. Tolkien pioneered with Middle-earth. Martin has also suggested that world may be larger than the real world planet Earth. The "Ice and Fire" narrative is set in a post-magic world where people no longer believe in supernatural things such as the Others. Although the characters understand the natural aspects of their world, they do not know or understand its magical elements. Religion, though, has a significant role in the life of people, and the characters practice many different religions.
"A Game of Thrones", the first installment of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, has two maps of Westeros. Each new book has added one or two maps so that, as of "A Dance with Dragons", seven maps of the fictional world are available in the books. Martin said in 2003 that complete world maps were not made available so that readers may better identify with people of the real Middle Ages who were uneducated about distant places. He also did not "subscribe to the theory put forth in "The Tough Guide To Fantasyland" ... that eventually the characters must visit every place shown on The Map." He conceded, however, that readers may be able to piece together a world map by the end of the series. He was intentionally vague about the size of the "Ice and Fire" world, omitting a scale on the maps to discourage prediction of travel lengths based on measured distances. A new map artist was used in "A Dance with Dragons" so that the maps are available in two versions by James Sinclair and Jeffrey L. Ward, depending on the book. The old maps were redone to match the style of the new ones.
A set of foldout maps was published on October 30, 2012 as "The Lands of Ice and Fire" (). The illustrator and cartographer Jonathan Roberts drew the maps, based on drafts by Martin. The twelve maps in the set are entitled "The Known World", "The West", "Central Essos", "The East", "Westeros", "Beyond The Wall", "The Free Cities", "Slaver's Bay", "The Dothraki Sea", "King's Landing", "Braavos", and "Journeys". The latter tracks the paths taken by the novels' characters.
The story takes place primarily on an elongated continent called Westeros, which is roughly the size of South America. The continent is home to the Seven Kingdoms, also known as "the Realm" or the "Sunset Kingdom", located to the south side of the Wall, a massive man-made ice wall (allegedly fused with magic) 700 feet in height and spanning east–west for 300 miles from coast to coast. The Seven Kingdoms are further divided into the so-called "North" and "South" by a swamp-rich isthmus called the Neck. The land north of the Wall still makes up a large chunk (being roughly the size of Canada) of Westeros, but remains largely unmapped and unexplored, especially the ice field region north and west of a massive mountain range called the Frostfangs, which marks the farthest geographic limit of human settlements. The northern extent of the continent is therefore unknown, although thought to be continuous with a polar ice cap north of the Shivering Sea known as the White Waste.
At the novel's beginning, the majority of Westeros is united under the rule of one king of the Targaryen dynasty, with each of nine regions controlled by a different major house. Martin here drew inspiration from medieval European history, in particular the Hundred Years' War, the Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Wars of the Roses.
The first inhabitants of the continent were the Children of the Forest, a nature-worshipping Stone Age anthropoid species who carved the faces of their gods in weirwood trees. Some time later, Bronze Age human settlers, known as the First Men, migrated from Essos via a land bridge at the southeastern end of the continent and gradually spread to the entire continent. The First Men's attempts to chop down forests and cultivate the land led to a millennia-long war with the Children of the Forest, that eventually was settled by an agreement known as "The Pact". This was the beginning of the Age of Heroes, during which the First Men adopted the religion of the Children of the Forest. Those gods later became known in Westeros as the Old Gods.
Eight thousand years before the events of the novels, an enigmatic arctic humanoid species called the Others emerged from the Land of Always Winter, the northernmost part of Westeros, during the decades-long winter known as "The Long Night". The Children of the Forest and the First Men allied to repel the Others, and then built the Wall barring passage from the far north. The region north of the Wall was since collectively known as the land "Beyond the Wall", and settled by tribal descendants of the First Men known as the Wildlings or Free Folk.
Sometime later, the Iron Age humans from Essos called the Andals invaded Westeros, bringing along the Faith of the Seven. One by one, kingdoms of the First Men south of the Neck fell to the Andals, and only the North remained unconquered. The Children of the Forest were slaughtered and disappeared from Andal lands. Over time, seven relatively stable feudal kingdoms were forged across Westeros, although their territories fluctuated over the next few thousand years through constant warfare, and no kingdom remained dominant for long:
Three hundred years before the novels begin, the Targaryen dragonlord Aegon the Conqueror and his two sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, whose ancestors migrated from Valyria to Dragonstone a century prior, invaded the Westerosi mainland and landed his army at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. The three assembled a temporary bastion called "Aegonfort", which later grew into the a massive capital city known as King's Landing. Aided by their three formidable fire-breathing dragons, the Targaryen armies subdued six of the Seven Kingdoms through conquest or treaty, wiping out three of the seven ruling houses (Durrandon, Hoare and Gardener). Only the defiant Dorne remained independent for another two hundred years through asymmetric guerrilla resistance, until it was finally absorbed under the Iron Throne through a marriage-alliance by King Daeron II. The Targaryens built the Iron Throne, forged from the swords of their defeated enemies by dragonfire. They also annexed the land regions of the riverlands and stormlands around the Blackwater Bay as the Crownlands. House Targaryen ruled as the sole monarchy of the Seven Kingdoms for almost three centuries until overthrown by a rebellion led by Robert Baratheon in 283 AC.
The North consists of the northern half of the Seven Kingdoms and is ruled by House Stark from their castle at Winterfell. The North is sparsely populated, but nearly as big as the other six kingdoms combined. Martin compared the North to Scotland. The climate is cold overall, with hard winters and mild snows common regardless of the season. The region's northern border is the New Gift, a stretch of land 50 leagues wide in the possession of the Night's Watch.
An isthmus of swampland named The Neck separates the North from the South. It is home to short, marsh-dwelling crannogmen ruled by House Reed of Greywater Watch, loyal bannermen of House Stark. The Neck's difficult wetland terrain is infested by predatory lizard-lions, restricting the only dryland passage to the causeway commanded by the almost impenetrable stronghold of Moat Cailin, which protected the North from land invasion from the south. The city of White Harbor, located at mouth of the White Knife river, is a thriving port and the fifth largest settlement in the Seven Kingdoms.
Illegitimate children born of a noble parent in the North are given the surname Snow.
Winterfell is the ancestral castle of House Stark and the political capital of the North. The castle was built over a natural hot spring, whose scalding water runs inside the castle walls and warms its halls and rooms as well as the glass garden at its northwestern corner. There are several open pools where heated water collects within the godswood. The hot spring also prevents the ground from freezing. The castle has deep catacombs called "the crypt", where bodies of deceased Starks are entombed behind statues in their likeness with a direwolf at their feet and their swords in their hands. The tombs have been used since the old kings of the North, known as the Kings of Winter, were in power. They ruled since before the arrival of the Andals.
To depict Winterfell, both the pilot and season 1 of the television adaptation used the 16th century clock tower and ancient courtyard of the Clearsky Adventure Centre located at Castle Ward in County Down, Northern Ireland. Doune Castle in Stirling, Scotland, which was previously featured as Castle Anthrax in the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", was also used for exterior scenes. Saintfield Estates stood in as Winterfell's godswood, an enclosed wooded area where characters can worship the old gods beside trees with faces carved in their bark. A car park stood in for Winterfell's courtyard, and a wine cellar was used to depict the Stark family crypt. Tollymore Forest featured prominently in the prologue of the pilot episode and in the pivotal scene where the Starks first find the direwolves. Cairncastle, meanwhile, served as the location where Ned Stark beheads the deserter Will. The interior of Winterfell, such as the Tower of the First Keep, the Great Hall, and Catelyn's bedchamber, were filmed at The Paint Hall studio. Set designer Gemma Jackson said, "Winterfell was based on a Scottish castle."
The Wall is a huge structure of stone, ice, and magic on the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. It is home to the Night's Watch, a brotherhood sworn to protect the realms of men from the threats beyond the Wall.
The Wall was inspired by Martin's visit to Hadrian's Wall, in the North of England close to the border with Scotland. Looking out over the hills, Martin wondered what a Roman centurion from the Mediterranean would feel, not knowing what threats might come from the north. This experience was so profound that a decade later, in 1991, he wanted to "write a story about the people guarding the end of the world", and ultimately "the things that come out of the [fictional] north are a good deal more terrifying than Scotsmen or Picts".
Martin adjusted the size, length, and magical nature of the Wall for genre demands; Jon Snow's chapters describe it as approximately long and high in general, rising up to a perceived in spots due to huge foundation blocks. The top is wide enough for a dozen mounted knights to ride abreast (approximately 30 ft or 10 m), while the base is so thick that the Wall's gates are more like tunnels through the ice.
The novels' legends claim that the First Men, or more specifically Brandon the Builder with the possible help of children of the forest and giants, constructed the Wall some 8,000 years before the events of the series.
The Wall has since been maintained by the Night's Watch to guard the realms of men against threats from beyond, originally the Others, and later against wildling raids.
A strip of land known as "the Gift", now stretching 50 leagues (about ) south of the wall, was given to them in perpetuity thousands of years earlier for cultivation. In "A Game of Thrones", of the nineteen castles built along the wall, only three are still manned: Castle Black with 600 men, and the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with 200 men each. Parts of Castle Black have fallen into ruin.
The TV series' Castle Black and the Wall were filmed in the abandoned Magheramorne Quarry near Belfast, Northern Ireland, whereas the scenes shot atop the wall were filmed inside Paint Hall Studios. The composite set (with both exteriors and interiors) consisted of a large section of Castle Black including the courtyard, the ravenry, the mess hall, and the barracks, and used the stone wall of the quarry as the basis for the ice wall that protects Westeros from the dangers that dwell beyond. They also made a functional elevator to lift the rangers to the top of the Wall. A castle with real rooms and a working elevator were built near a cliff high. "Working construction lifts were discovered at a nearby work site and rise 18 feet; CGI fills in the rest to make the wall appear 700 feet high." The area around the elevator was painted white to make it look like ice. Martin was surprised by the height and thought: "Oh I may have made the wall too big!" Martin observed: "It's a pretty spectacular, yet miserable location. It is wet and rainy, and the mud is thick...[it] really gets the actors in the mood of being at the end of the world in all of this cold and damp and chill."
"A Clash of Kings" takes the story to the lands Beyond the Wall, although the first five books do not explore "what lies really north ... but we will in the last two books". The TV adaptation used Iceland as filming location for the lands Beyond the Wall. Martin, who has never been to Iceland, said Beyond the Wall was "considerably larger than Iceland and the area closest to my Wall is densely forested, so in that sense it's more like Canada Hudson Bay or the Canadian forests just north of Michigan. And then as you get further and further north, it changes. You get into tundra and ice fields and it becomes more of an arctic environment. You have plains on one side and a very high range of mountains on the other. Of course, once again this is fantasy, so my mountains are more like the Himalayas." In an HBO featurette, Martin stated the lands beyond the wall make up a big part of Westeros, being roughly the size of Canada. The Valley of Thenn is one such location beyond the Wall, and north of that is the Lands of Always Winter, where the Others come from.
During the first season, the HBO team used places that they could decorate with artificial snow for the north of the Wall, but a bigger landscape was chosen for Season 2. "Primary filming for these scenes, which encompass both the Frostfangs and the Fist of the First Men, occurred at the Svínafellsjökull calving glacier in Skaftafell, Iceland, followed by shooting near Smyrlabjörg and Vík í Mýrdal on Höfðabrekkuheiði. Benioff said, "We always knew we wanted something shatteringly beautiful and barren and brutal for this part of Jon's journey, because he's in the true North now. It's all real. It's all in camera. We're not doing anything in postproduction to add mountains or snow or anything."
The Iron Islands are a group of seven islands to the west of Westeros – Pyke, Great Wyk, Old Wyk, Harlaw, Saltcliffe, Blacktyde, and Orkmont – in Ironman's Bay off the west coast of the continent. Ruled by House Greyjoy of Pyke, the isles are described as bare and barren, with the local weather being "windy and cold, and damp". The members of this seafaring nation are known in the rest of Westeros as Ironmen, and to themselves as Ironborn. Illegitimate children born in the Iron Islands are given the surname Pyke.
For fierce raids, the Ironmen are titled the "terror of the seas". They worship the Drowned God, who "had made them to reave and rape, to carve out kingdoms and write their names in fire and blood and song". The appendix of "A Game of Thrones" summarizes that the Ironmen once ruled over the Riverlands and much of the western coast of Westeros. When Aegon the Conqueror extinguished Harren the Black's line, he chose House Greyjoy as the new rulers of the Ironmen.
Pyke is the seat of House Greyjoy. The television adaptation filmed the scenes of Pyke's port at Lordsport Harbour in Ballintoy Harbour, in Northern Ireland's County Antrim. The sea has worn away much of the rock on which Pyke originally stood, so the castle now consists mostly of a main keep on the main island and smaller towers perched on rocks surrounded by sea.
Old Wyk is the smallest and holiest island in the Iron Islands. It is where Kingsmoots are held, and where the Grey King slew Nagga, a sea dragon, and made a court of his bones.
The Riverlands are the populous and fertile areas surrounding the forks of the river Trident on Westeros. While they form one of the nine regions of Westeros, the Riverlands' central location and geographic features made the region an inter-kingdom battle zone that changed hands rather than becoming its own 'eighth' kingdom of the Seven Kingdoms. Centrally located between the Westerlands, the Crownlands, the Vale, and the North and lacking the natural defenses of other regions, they have seen frequent warfare. The first ruler to unite the Riverlands was Benedict Justman, but the Justman dynasty died out three centuries later. The Durrandons conquered the Riverlands, but lost rule of it to Harwyn "Hardhand" Hoare, King of the Iron Islands. At the time of Aegon's conquest, the Riverlands were ruled by Harwyn's grandson, Harren the Black, king of the Iron Islands, and the Tullys were local nobles who rebelled against him by joining Aegon the Conqueror. As with Westerosi customs to give bastards a surname showing their origins, illegitimate children born in the Riverlands are given the surname Rivers.
Harrenhal is an enormous ruined castle and is the site of many important events in the novels. Harrenhal was built by Harren the Black, after his conquest of the Riverlands, intending to make it the largest fortification ever built in Westeros. The castle has been described as so large that an entire army was needed to garrison it. The Great Hall had 35 hearths and seated thousands. Shortly after the castle was completed, Aegon the Conqueror's dragon slew Harren, his sons, and his entire army by setting the castle alight.
Since then, the ruins of the castle have been occupied by a variety of houses, all of which eventually became extinct. As a result, the people of Westeros believe the castle is cursed. The logistical and economic difficulties inherent in keeping such an enormous castle maintained and garrisoned has made it something of a white elephant. At the start of the War of the Five Kings, the castle is in ruin, with only a fraction of it habitable, and held by Lady Shella Whent, the last of her House, who is stripped of Harrenhal when the Lannisters seize her castle. The castle changes hands repeatedly over the course of the novels, many of those holding it meeting unpleasant ends.
Riverrun is the ancestral stronghold of House Tully. The castle is located along one of the "forks" of the Trident and controls access to the interior of Westeros. The castle is bordered on two sides by the Tumblestone River and the Red Fork. The third side fronts on a massive manmade ditch. It was built by Ser Axel Tully on land he received from the Andal King Armistead Vance.
The castle is the location of Robb Stark's great victory over House Lannister and the site of his crowning. By the end of the "A Feast for Crows", Brynden Tully surrenders the castle to Jaime Lannister to spare further bloodshed. Riverrun then passed into the hands of Emmon Frey, an ally of House Lannister.
The Twins is the seat of House Frey, which has grown wealthy by charging a toll of all those who cross for the past six centuries. Because the Freys are both wealthy and numerous, theirs is one of the most powerful houses sworn to House Tully. The castle's strategic position gives House Frey enormous importance in times of war.
When Robb Stark goes to The Twins to repair his alliance with House Frey, the Freys massacre him, his mother, and his army (and in the TV adaptation, his wife): an event known as "The Red Wedding", which violates native customs of guest right and incurs enmity throughout the Seven Kingdoms, especially in the Riverlands and North.
The Vale is the area surrounded almost completely by the Mountains of the Moon in the east of Westeros. The Vale is under the rulership of House Arryn, one of the oldest lines of Andal nobility and formerly Kings of Mountain and Vale. Their seat, the Eyrie, is a castle high in the mountains, small but considered unassailable. The only way to reach the Vale is by a mountain road teeming with animals called 'shadowcats', rock slides, and dangerous mountain clans. The mountain road ends at the Vale's sole entrance, the Bloody Gate: a pair of twin watchtowers, connected by a covered bridge, on the rocky mountain slopes over a very narrow path. The protection of the surrounding mountains gives the Vale itself a temperate climate, fertile meadows, and woods. The snowmelt from the mountains and a constant waterfall that never freezes, named Alyssa's Tears, provide plentiful water. The Vale has rich black soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and hundreds of small lakes. Illegitimate children born in the Vale are given the surname Stone.
Based on the German castle of Neuschwanstein, the Eyrie is the seat of House Arryn. It is situated on the Giant's Lance and reachable only by a narrow mule trail, guarded by the Gates of the Moon and three small castles, titled Stone, Snow, and Sky. Travelers must enter the Gates of the Moon and its upper bailey before reaching the narrow path up the mountain. The steps up the Giant's Lance starts directly behind the Gates of the Moon. The Eyrie clings to the mountain and is six hundred feet above Sky. The last part of the climb to the Eyrie is something of a cross between a chimney and a stone ladder, which leads to the Eyrie's cellar entrance. Due to the Mountains of the Moon's harsh winters, travel to and from the Eyrie is possible through the mountains only in summer.
The Eyrie is the smallest of the great castles in the story, consisting of seven slim towers bunched tightly together. It has no stables, kennels, or smithies, but the towers can house 500 men, and the granary can sustain a small household for a year or more. The Eyrie does not keep livestock on hand; all dairy produce, meats, fruits, vegetables, etc., must be brought from the Vale below. Its cellars hold six great winches with long iron chains to draw supplies and occasionally guests from below. Oxen are used to raise and lower them. Winter snows can make supplying the fortress impossible. The Eyrie's dungeons, known as "sky cells", are left open to the sky on one side and have sloping floors that put prisoners in danger of slipping or rolling off the edge. Executions in the Eyrie are carried out via the Moon Door, which opens from the high hall onto a 600-foot drop.
The Eyrie is made of pale stone and primarily decorated with the blue and white colors of House Arryn. Elegant details provide warmth and comfort through plentiful fireplaces, carpets, and luxurious fabrics. Many of the chambers have been described to be warm and comfortable, with magnificent views of the Vale, the Mountains of the Moon, or the waterfall. The Maiden's Tower is the easternmost of the seven slender towers, so all the Vale can be seen from its windows and balconies. The apartments of the Lady of the Eyrie open over a small garden planted with blue flowers and ringed by white towers, containing grass and scattered statuary, with the central statue of a weeping woman believed to be Alyssa Arryn, around low, flowering shrubs. The lord's chambers have doors of solid oak, and plush velvet curtains covering windows of small rhomboid panes of glass. The High Hall has a blue silk carpet leading to the carved weirwood thrones of the Lord and Lady Arryn. The floors and walls are of milk-white marble veined with blue. Daylight enters down through high narrow arched windows along the eastern wall, and there are some fifty high iron sconces where torches may be lit.
The Eyrie was held by Lord Jon Arryn, who fostered Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon prior to Robert's Rebellion (also known as the War of the Usurper). After the war, Lord Arryn served as King Robert I Baratheon's Hand of the King (prime minister). After Lord Arryn was assassinated, his wife, Lady Lysa Arryn, took her sickly child, Robin, and fled to the Eyrie. Lysa refused to align herself with any of the claimants during the War of the Five Kings, but eventually pretends to a possible alliance with House Lannister after Lord Petyr Baelish agrees to marry her. Later Baelish kills Lysa after she attempts to murder her niece, Sansa Stark. As of "Feast for Crows", Baelish rules in the Eyrie as the Lord Protector and Regent for the sickly, epileptic Lord Robert "Robin" Arryn, and plans for Sansa to marry Harold Harding, who will become heir to the Eyrie and the Vale in the event of young Robin Arryn's death.
For the CGI compositions of the Vale of Arryn in the TV series, as seen in the establishing shot of the Eyrie and from the sky cells, the visual effects team used images and textures from the Greek rock formations of Meteora. Initially they had been considering the Zhangjiajie Mountains in China, but because the landscape base plates were shot in Northern Ireland, using Meteora resulted a better option. Set designer Gemma Jackson said, "A lot of the mosaics in the Eyrie were based on a beautiful chapel I visited in Rome." The interior of the High Hall of the Arryns was filmed at The Paint Hall, occupying one of the four soundstages there. Martin acknowledged that the set differed significantly from its presentation in the books: "In the books, the room is long and rectangular. But [The Paint Hall soundstage] had essentially a square space, which they chose to put a round hall in, with a staircase curving up to a throne that was high above."
The Westerlands are the Westerosi lands to the west of the Riverlands and north of the Reach. They are ruled by House Lannister of Casterly Rock, formerly Kings of the Rock. People of this region are often called "Westermen." Lannisport, lying hard by Casterly Rock, is the chief town of the region and one of the great ports and cities of Westeros. The Westerlands are rich in precious metals, mostly gold, which is the source of their wealth. As with Westerosi customs to give bastards a surname showing their origins, illegitimate children born in the Westerlands are given the surname Hill.
A stronghold carved from a mountain overlooking the harbor city of Lannisport and the sea beyond, Casterly Rock is the ancestral seat of House Lannister. According to popular legend, the hero known as Lann the Clever tricked the Casterlys into giving up the Rock, and took it for himself. The Rock is renowned as the wealthiest region due to its abundance of gold mining resources, and it is one of the strongest castles of the Seven Kingdoms. It has never been taken in battle, despite attacks by the Iron Islanders and the plans of Robb Stark in the War of the Five Kings. It was held by Lord Tywin Lannister before the War of the Five Kings, but after his death, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister made one of her cousins castellan of the castle. As of "A Dance with Dragons", the narrative has not actually taken place in Casterly Rock, yet descriptions of it have been offered by the Lannisters in the POV chapters.
West of Casterly Rock is the coastal city of Lannisport. A busy port under the governance of the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, Lannisport thrives as a protected and wealthy city. The city is also home to many lesser Lannisters and other people with similar surnames, such as Lannys.
George R. R. Martin stated on his blog that he drew inspiration for Casterly Rock from the Rock of Gibraltar.
The Reach is the most lush and fertile region of Westeros, ruled by House Tyrell from Highgarden. The Tyrells were stewards to House Gardener, the Kings of the Reach before Aegon's conquest. After the last Gardener King was killed on the Field of Fire, the Tyrells surrendered Highgarden to Aegon and were rewarded with both the castle and the position of overlords of the Reach. The wealth and power of the Reach comes from their bountiful harvests of the most sought-after wines and foods. During times of war, the lengthy distance of the Reach and its abundance of foods protects their inhabitants from initial famine and sickness. In a significant political maneuver during the civil war in Westeros and the War of the Five Kings, House Tyrell provides the starving populace of King's Landing with hundreds of carts of food, ensuring the positive image of House Tyrell foremost, and the alliance for the Iron Throne with House Baratheon as secondary. However, the Tyrells were responsible for the starvation in the first place, as part of their plan to help Renly usurp the Iron Throne. The most prominent city in the Reach is Oldtown. It is the oldest city in Westeros, home to the Maester's Citadel, and the previous seat of the Faith of the Seven. Illegitimate children born in the Reach are given the surname Flowers.
Oldtown is one of the largest cities in Westeros and is by far the oldest, built by the First Men before the Andal Invasion. It survived the invasion by welcoming the Andals rather than resisting them. The city is located in the southwestern part of Westeros, at the mouth of the River Honeywine, where it opens onto Whispering Sound and the Sunset Sea beyond.
Oldtown is primarily known as the location of the Citadel, home of the order of Maesters who serve as councillors, doctors, scientists, and postmasters for the Seven Kingdoms. The city's Starry Sept was the seat of the Faith of the Seven until the construction of the Great Sept of Baelor in King's Landing. Aegon the Conqueror's reign is dated from his entrance into the city of Oldtown and his acknowledgment as king by the High Septon.
Oldtown is the second most important port in the Seven Kingdoms after King's Landing: trading ships from the Summer Islands, the Free Cities, the eastern cities, and the rest of Westeros constantly crowd into its harbors. The city itself is described as stunningly beautiful. Many rivers and canals crisscross its cobbled streets, and breathtaking stone mansions are common. The city lacks the squalor of King's Landing, which usurped its position as the preeminent city of Westeros.
The largest structure in the city, and the tallest structure in Westeros, is the Hightower, a massive stepped lighthouse which extends some into the sky and is topped by a huge beacon which can be seen for many miles out to sea. Oldtown is ruled from the Hightower by House Hightower. Originally kings in their own right, they later swore fealty to the Gardeners of Highgarden, and became vassals of the Tyrells after the Conquest. The Hightowers are known for their loyalty and stalwartness. The current ruler of the city is Lord Leyton Hightower.
Oldtown remained aloof from the War of the Five Kings, but late in the war the Ironborn under King Euron Greyjoy launched a massive raid along the coast, conquering the Shield Islands and parts of the Arbor before trying to blockade the mouth of the Honeywine. An attempt to attack the city harbor was repulsed by the city's defenders. Oldtown remains under threat from the Ironborn.
The Stormlands are the Westerosi areas between King's Landing and the Sea of Dorne. In the east they are bordered by Shipbreaker Bay and the Dornish Sea to the south. Before Aegon's conquest they were ruled by the Storm Kings, and afterwards by House Baratheon, bastard relatives to the Targaryens. The Dornish Marches are located within this region, and were common battlegrounds between the Stormlands and Dorne until Aegon joined the Seven Kingdoms. Illegitimate children born in the Stormlands are given the surname Storm.
Storm's End is the seat of House Baratheon and, before them, the ancestral seat of the Storm Kings extending back many thousands of years. According to legend, the first Storm King in the age of the First Men was Durran, who married Elenei, the daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. In a rage her parents sent vast storms to shatter his keep and kill his wedding guests and family; whereupon Durran declared war against the gods and raised several castles over Shipbreaker Bay, each larger and more formidable than the last. Finally, the seventh castle stayed in place and resisted the storms. Some believe the Children of the Forest took a hand in its construction; others suggest that Brandon Stark, the builder of the Wall, advised Durran on its construction. The truth of the matter is unknown.
Storm's End has never fallen to either siege or storm. Its outer defenses consist of a huge curtain wall, tall and thick on its thinnest side, nearly thick on its seaward side. The wall consists of a double course of stones with an inner core of sand and rubble. The wall is smooth and curving, the stones so well placed that the wind cannot enter. On the seaward side, there is a drop below the wall into the sea.
The castle itself consists of one huge drum tower crowned with formidable battlements, and so large that it can comfortably contain stables, barracks, armory and lord's chambers in the same structure. Although never taken in battle, Storm's End has endured several sieges and battles in recent history. The last Storm King, Argilac the Arrogant, abandoned his impressive defenses to meet the Targaryen commander, Orys Baratheon, in open battle during Aegon Targaryen's War of Conquest, and lost. This led to Orys Baratheon marrying Argilac's daughter and becoming Lord of Storm's End.
During the War of the Usurper, Storm's End was besieged for a year by the host of Lord Mace Tyrell, who commanded the landward forces, while Paxter Redwyne's fleet of the Arbor kept the castle cut off by sea. Stannis Baratheon, commanding the defense, refused to yield and his men were reduced to eating rats. A smuggler named Davos ran the blockade to resupply the castle and Stannis rewarded him by knighting him and giving him lands, thus founding House Seaworth, but he also cut off the fingertips of his left hand as punishment for all his previous smuggling. After the war, Stannis was furious when his brother Robert, now king, gave the castle to their younger brother Renly and placed Stannis in command of Dragonstone. This led to many years of bitterness on Stannis' part.
During the War of the Five Kings, Storm's End supported Renly when he attempted to usurp the crown, and was besieged by Stannis. When the castellan, Cortnay Penrose, refused to yield even after Renly's death, he was killed by Stannis' ally, the priestess Melisandre, and the castle surrendered. Later, the castle was besieged by a strong army under Mace Tyrell, but he abandoned the siege after a few weeks to return to King's Landing after the arrest of his daughter Margaery by the High Septon. As of "A Dance with Dragons", the castle remains in the hands of Stannis Baratheon.
At the end of "A Dance with Dragons" an army lands in the Stormlands led by Jon Connington and a young man claiming to be Aegon Targaryen, the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell and heir to the Iron Throne. To attract support, Aegon plans to conquer Storm's End and raise the banner of House Targaryen above the battlements.
In the TV adaptation, scenes in the Stormlands were filmed in Larrybane, Northern Ireland. The scene where Stannis' red priestess Melisandre gave birth to a shadow creature was filmed in the Cushendun Caves, also in Northern Ireland.
The Crownlands are the lands in Westeros surrounding King's Landing, ruled directly by the crown of the Iron Throne. The Targaryen kings consolidated this as one of the nine regions of Westeros, after their conquest of the Seven Kingdoms, from sparsely populated pieces of the Riverlands and Stormlands. The Crownlands form the entire coastline of Blackwater Bay, and include the original Targaryen homeland on the island of Dragonstone, at the Narrow Sea entrance to Blackwater Bay. Besides King's Landing, which is the largest city in Westeros, the Crownlands include many towns and castles. The illegitimate children born in the Crownlands are given the surname Waters.
Dragonstone was once the westernmost outpost of the ancient Freehold of Valyria. A century before the Doom, the Targaryen family moved to Dragonstone. When the Doom came upon Valyria, House Targaryen survived along with the last of the Valyrian dragons. Another century later, Aegon Targaryen and his sisters Rhaenys and Visenya launched a massive campaign of conquest from the island and eventually conquered all of Westeros except for Dorne, and North of the Wall. Aegon's progeny reigned as kings of the Seven Kingdoms for centuries.
Dragonstone is a massive, forbidding fortress, taking up a large portion of the island of the same name. The castle is unique in that the builders and sorcerers of Valyria carved its towers and keeps into the shapes of dragons and made ferocious gargoyles to cover its walls using both magic and masonry. The castle's lower levels are warmed by residual volcanic activity deep below the keep. There is a small port and town outside of the castle.
During the War of the Usurper, before the sack of King's Landing, the Targaryen Queen Rhaella, who was pregnant, and her son Viserys were sent to Dragonstone along with part of the Targaryen fleet and a garrison of loyal soldiers. But after King's Landing fell, Robert Baratheon dispatched his brother Stannis to take the island stronghold. After a storm destroyed the royalist fleet, the Targaryen garrison tried to betray Viserys and his newborn sister, Daenerys, to Stannis (the queen had died in childbirth). But Targaryen loyalists led by Ser Willem Darry took the children away. Stannis conquered Dragonstone easily, and King Robert granted him ownership of the castle. Stannis felt slighted because his younger brother Renly then inherited Storm's End, the ancient seat of House Baratheon. Ser Axell Florent, one of the uncles of Stannis' wife Selyse Florent, acted as castellan.
Upon Robert's death, Stannis declared himself King of Westeros and condemned the queen's children as bastards born of incest, as he had discovered with Jon Arryn. Dragonstone became his main seat. He returned there after the disastrous Battle of the Blackwater. His councilor, the red priestess Melisandre of Asshai, tried to convince him to let her raise the "stone dragon" of the castle through blood magic, but Lord Davos Seaworth convinced Stannis to go north to the Wall to help the Night's Watch instead. After Stannis abandoned Dragonstone, leaving the Bastard of Nightsong Rolland Storm as castellan, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister dispatched a fleet to barricade it. However, Ser Loras Tyrell, impatient to free the fleet to protect his home castle of Highgarden, attacked Dragonstone directly. He took the castle but lost a thousand men and was himself reportedly gravely wounded. As of "A Dance with Dragons", Dragonstone is now controlled by troops loyal to House Tyrell, and theoretically, once again under control of the Iron Throne.
One scene set at Dragonstone, in which Stannis burns wooden sculptures of the Seven gods, was filmed at the beach of Downhill Strand. In Season 7 of the show, filming for Dragonstone took place at several locations in the Basque region of Spain: the islet of Gaztelugatxe in Bermeo, Itzurun Beach in Zumaia, and Muriola Beach in Barrika.
King's Landing is the royal capital of Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms. King's Landing has an estimated population of 1 million people, making it the most populous city in Westeros. It is situated on the Blackwater river on the spot where Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros to begin his conquest. The main city is surrounded by a wall, which is manned by the City Watch of King's Landing, which is nicknamed the gold cloaks, after the cloaks they wear. Within the walls, the city's natural landscape is dominated by three hills, named after Aegon and his two sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya. Poorer smallfolk (commoners) build shanty settlements outside the city. King's Landing is described as extremely populous but unsightly and dirty. The stench of the city's waste can be smelled far beyond its walls.
The royal castle, called the Red Keep, sits on Aegon's Hill. It is the seat of the royal court. The Keep holds the Iron Throne. Aegon commissioned the throne's construction from the swords of his defeated enemies. According to legend, he kept the blades sharp because he believed that no ruler should ever sit comfortably. Centuries later, kings still cut themselves on the throne. It is a common belief that one who cuts himself on the throne has been "rejected" by the throne and is therefore not fit to rule.
The city also holds the Great Sept of Baelor, where the Most Devout convene with the High Septon. It is the holiest sept of the Seven. The slums of King's Landing are called Flea Bottom, where residents are so poor they regularly subsist on "bowls of brown", a mystery stew that can include the meat of puppies and murder victims.
Martin compared King's Landing to medieval Paris or London. It was inspired by the view of Staten Island from his childhood home in Bayonne, New Jersey.
The first season of the TV adaptation used Malta's former capital Mdina to represent King's Landing. "Like King's Landing, Mdina is a walled medieval city built upon a hill, but unlike King's Landing, Mdina is an inland city so the production was limited to interior shots such as side streets and the town gate, which can be seen when Ned Stark arrives. Nearby Fort Manoel doubled as the great Sept of Baelor," which can be seen when Ned Stark is executed. Various other locations around Malta represent the Red Keep, "including the real-life residence of the president of Malta, San Anton Palace. The gates of Fort Ricasoli doubled as the Red Keep's gates; Fort St. Angelo was used for the scenes of Arya Stark chasing cats; and St. Dominic monastery stood in for the scene where Ned Stark confronts Cersei Lannister in the godswood."
"In season two, filming for King's Landing and the Red Keep shifted from Malta to the historic parts of Dubrovnik and the Minčeta, Bokar, and Lovrijenac fortresses in Croatia, which allowed for more exterior shots of an authentic walled medieval city." Parts of Season three were filmed there, too, as well as in nearby Trsteno. "Known as "the Pearl of the Adriatic", the city proved to share many characteristics with the fictional capital: it had a well-preserved medieval look, with high walls and the sea at its side. According to David Benioff, executive producer of the show, "King's Landing might be the single most important location in the entire show, and it has to look right", and "The minute we started walking around the city walls we knew that was it. You read the descriptions in the book and you come to Dubrovnik and that's what the actual city is. It has the sparkling sea, sun and beautiful architecture." Co-Executive Producer D.B. Weiss added "To find a full-on, immaculately preserved medieval walled city that actually looks uncannily like King's Landing where the bulk of our show is set, that was in and of itself such an amazing find". The Tourney of the Hand in season 1 was filmed in Shane's Castle, Northern Ireland.
The Red Keep interior are filmed at Belfast's studio The Paint Hall. Set designer Gemma Jackson said, "When I was thinking about King's Landing, the whole red aspect of it, that immediately made me think of Rajasthan. The floor [at King's Landing] was from the Pantheon in Rome." Martin said that "Our throne room is a spectacular throne room – we actually redressed a throne room built for [another] film. And again, it occupied a quarter of the Paint Hall, so it's very big, but in my mind [in the books], it's Westminster Abbey, it's St. Paul's Cathedral."
Dorne is the southernmost and least populated land of Westeros. The capital, Sunspear, is the seat of the ruling House Martell. As of the first five books, Doran Nymeros Martell is the Prince of Dorne and Lord of Sunspear. Doran's sister, Princess Elia, was married in a political alliance to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. They had two children, a daughter, Rhaenys, and a son, Aegon. During the Sack of King's Landing at the end of Robert's Rebellion, Princess Elia was raped and murdered by Gregor Clegane, a House Lannister bannerman (vassal). Her children were also killed in front of her. Prince Doran and his wife, Princess Mellaria, have three children, Arianne, Quentyn and Trystane. During the War of the Five Kings, Tyrion Lannister, as Hand of the King, turns the historical enmity of House Martell and Dorne into an alliance by sending King Joffrey's middle sibling and sister, Myrcella Baratheon, as the betrothed future bride to Trystane, the youngest child of Prince Doran, who is about her own age. The eldest child of Prince Doran, Arianne, is heir to House Martell, Sunspear and the rule of Dorne. The wealth of Dorne comes from their famous Sand Steeds, purebred horses of endurance, speed, and grace, and from spices, wines, fishing, fabrics, and textiles.
Dorne is bordered by the Sea of Dorne to the north, the islands known as the Stepstones to the east, and stretches from the high mountains of the Dornish marches, the Red Mountains, separating Dorne from the remainder of the Seven Kingdoms by land. The two major passes through the Red Mountains that connect Dorne with the rest of the continent are the Stone Way Pass and the Prince's Pass. The Prince's Pass leads to the Reach, while the Stone Way exits the mountains near Summerhall. The southern coast of the continent is bordered by the Summer Sea. Described as tropical in climate by George R. R. Martin, Dorne has the highest temperatures of any kingdom in Westeros, and is arid, with a rocky, mountainous, terrain that includes the only desert on the continent. Its rivers provide some fertile lands and during a long summer there is enough rain and other supplies of water to keep Dorne habitable. Inland water is almost as valuable as gold, and wells are jealously guarded. Notable locations of Dorne are Starfall, the seat of House Dayne, and Yronwood, the seat of House Yronwood, the most powerful of the Martell bannermen. Planky Town is a trade port town at the mouth of the River Greenblood.
Dornishmen have a reputation for hot-bloodedness. They differ both culturally and ethnically from other Westerosi due to the historical mass immigration of Rhoynish people. They have adopted many Rhoynish customs as well, including equal primogeniture. Dorne was the only kingdom in Westeros to successfully resist Aegon's conquest, even killing one of his dragons during the war. It was conquered by Daeron I over a century after the Targaryen invasion, but rose against him leading to his death. Finally under Daeron's cousin Daeron II they joined through marriage. This accomplishment has allowed Dorne to retain a measure of independence. Lords of the ruling House Martell still style themselves "Prince" and "Princess" in the Rhoynish fashion. Unlike most of the rest of Westeros, illegitimate children born in Dorne are treated nearly the same as legal offspring and given the surname Sand, as with Westerosi customs to give bastards a surname showing their origins.
According to "A Storm of Swords", "There were three sorts of Dornishmen [...]. There were the salty Dornishmen who lived along the coasts, the sandy Dornishmen of the deserts and long river valleys, and the stony Dornishmen who made their fastnesses in the passes and heights of the Red Mountains. The salty Dornishmen had the most Rhoynish blood, the stony Dornishmen the least. All three sorts seemed well represented in Doran’s retinue. The salty Dornishmen were lithe and dark, with smooth olive skin and long black hair streaming in the wind. The sandy Dornishmen were even darker, their faces burned brown by the hot Dornish sun. They wound long bright scarfs around their helms to ward off sunstroke. The stony Dornishmen were biggest and fairest, sons of the Andals and the First Men, brownhaired or blond, with faces that freckled or burned in the sun instead of browning."
In the show, Dornish scenes were filmed in the Alcázar of Seville, Seville, Spain.
East of Naath, the Basilisk Isles have been a festering sore of the Summer Sea, and a safe haven for pirates, slavers, sellswords, and outlaws. Ruins have been found on the Isle of Tears, the Isle of Toads, and Ax Island. The Isle of Tears is the largest island, with steep valleys and black bogs. It was conquered by the Ghiscari and it was called Gorgai for two centuries, until the dragonlords of Valyria captured it and renamed it Gorgossos. It was used as a prison by the Freehold, a place where they sent their most despicable criminals.
Naath, also known as the Isle of Butterflies, is an island off the north-west coast of Sothoryos that lies west of the Basilisk Isles. The Naathi people have dark skin and golden eyes. They practice extreme pacifism, making music instead of war and refusing to eat meat, only fruit. This makes them especially vulnerable to slavers from Essos. Daenerys' interpreter Missandei is from Naath.
As indicated on a map in "A Storm of Swords", the Summer Islands are situated to the south of Westeros, with a local fauna of talking birds, apes, and monkeys. The novels describe the island natives as dark-skinned people who speak their own language. They wear colored feathery clothes and live on fruit and fish. From their port city named Tall Trees Town, the Summer Isles export rare goods to Westeros such as wine, spices, feathers, but also a special kind of wood from which bows are made that have a longer range than most others. People of the Seven Kingdoms call the Summer Islanders' great vessels "swan ships", "for their billowing white sails and for their figureheads, most of which depicted birds". Samwell Tarly, who spends two chapters in "A Feast for Crows" aboard a swan ship, describes the Summer Islander women as wanton, and their gods as strange; they "revered the elderly and celebrated their dead" through sexual intercourse. As a prostitute explains to Tyrion in "A Clash of Kings", the Summer Islanders regard their sexuality as the gods' gift to worship them through mating, and hence many of their highborn youths and maidens serve in pleasure houses for a few years to honor the gods.
Part of the narrative in "A Song of Ice and Fire" lies across the Narrow Sea from Westeros, an area comprising the large eastern continent named Essos. Being roughly the size of Eurasia, Essos has geography and climate that vary greatly. The western coastline is characterized by green rolling hills, the massive Forest of Qohor, and extensive island chains such as Braavos and Lys. The middle of the continent is covered by the flat grasslands of the Dothraki Sea and the arid lands known as the Red Waste to the east. Beyond the Red Waste lies the city of Qarth. The south is dominated by dry rolling hills and has a Mediterranean climate, with a coastline along the Summer Sea and Slaver's Bay. The north coast of the mainland is separated from the polar cap by the Shivering Sea. To the south, across the Summer Sea, lies the uncharted jungle continent of Sothoryos.
Much of the fictional history of Essos relates to Valyria, a city located on a peninsula in southern Essos and the origin of House Targaryen before the destruction of the Valyrian Empire in an unspecified cataclysm. After the destruction of Valyria, the cities of Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen regained independence and ruled their respective areas as city-states. The area is known in the books as Slaver's Bay.
Across the Narrow sea on the western side of Essos lie the nine Free Cities, independent city-states that are mostly on islands or along the coast. They are Lys, Myr, Pentos, Braavos, Lorath, Norvos, Qohor, Volantis and Tyrosh. Although most Free Cities are named early in the first novel, the books only provide a map of this region in "A Dance with Dragons". Mountains to the east separate the coast from the plains of the Dothraki Sea, though gaps in the mountain range provide the Dothraki people some access to the Free Cities. The Free Cities were colonies built by the ancient Valyrian Freehold, and later declared independence after the Doom of Valyria. An exception to this is Braavos, which was founded by refugees fleeing Valyrian expansion, escaped slaves and other rabble. The languages of the Free Cities are derivatives of High Valyrian.
The Free Cities span an area characterized by the river Rhoyne, which the local character Yandry describes as "the greatest river in the world". Its banks are the homeland of the Rhoynar, who worship the river as "Mother Rhoyne". As mapped in "A Dance with Dragons", the Rhoyne originates from the conjunction of two of its tributaries, the Upper Rhoyne and the Little Rhoyne, southeast of the ruins of Ghoyan Drohe. The headwaters of the Upper Rhoyne lie in Andalos, the homeland of the Andals between Braavos and Pentos. The Rhoyne's course runs southeast to turn due south after Dagger Lake, where river pirates hide on and around the many lake islands. The Rhoyne gains in width considerably as it gets fed by more tributaries, until it opens into the Summer Sea in a delta near the Free City of Volantis.
Unique among the Free Cities, Braavos was not a Valyrian colony, but a secret refuge from Valyrian expansion. It is a city spread over hundreds of tiny islands in a lagoon on the northwestern end of Essos where the Narrow Sea and Shivering Sea meet. Braavos is home to the 'Iron Bank', one of the wealthiest banks in the known world. Braavos is also known for its swordsmen known as 'bravos', and its mysterious assassins, the Faceless Men. It is also famed for the Titan of Braavos, both a fortress and a statue. The ruler of Braavos is known as the Sealord and it is from the sea that the city's power and wealth flows. The hulls of Braavosi ships are painted purple and their merchant ships sail to many distant lands and bring their trade and wealth back home. Braavos has many moneylenders and the Iron Bank of Braavos lends money to foreign nations, especially The Crown, which has borrowed millions.
Braavosi dress in flashy colors while the very rich and powerful dress in black and in blues that are almost black. Officials of Braavos, called keyholders and justiciars, wear drab coats of brown or grey. The city is also renowned worldwide for its courtesans. Every courtesan has her own barge and servants to work them. The beauty of famed courtesans has inspired many a song. They are showered with gifts from goldsmiths and craftsmen beg for their custom. Nobility and rich merchants pay the courtesans large amounts of money to appear alongside them at events, and bravos are known to kill each other in their names. The character Syrio Forel, former first sword of the Sealord of Braavos, introduces Arya Stark to a unique form of Braavosi sword fighting, called Water Dancing. The style is a refined form of fencing in which the practitioner stands sideways and wields a slender blade. Pugnacious bravos fill the city, frequently dueling to display their skill.
Braavos was inspired by Venice, Italy. It was filmed in Croatian towns of Šibenik, and Kaštel Gomilica in the TV series.
Pentos is a major trading port on a bay of the western coast. Dominated by an architecture of square brick towers, it is headed by a Prince who is chosen by the de facto rulers of the city, known as Magisters. Khalasars occasionally make their way this far from the Dothraki Sea, but the Pentoshi are spared much of the raiding and invasions by paying tribute to their khals. Men from Pentos wear dyed and forked beards. As in many Free Cities, slavery is outlawed, but the wealthy and powerful members of the city have the ability to flout these laws by keeping servants collared in bronze.
Daenerys's scenes in the pilot episode were filmed in Morocco. The television adaptation re-used the Jerusalem sets of "Kingdom of Heaven" near Ouarzazate, Morocco. "One small portion of the Jerusalem set, redressed and repainted, became the courtyard of Illyrio's manse where Dany first meets Khal Drogo." "When the pilot was delivered, HBO asked for extensive reshoots, including the scrapping of all the footage shot in a landlocked part of Morocco which was supposed to take place in Pentos, a fictional port city and filming it again in Malta." The exterior scenes at Illyrio's mansion in Pentos were shot at Verdala Palace, the 16th century summer palace of the president of Malta. "One of Malta's most spectacular natural attractions, the Azure Window on the island of Gozo, stood in for the location of Daenerys Targaryen's wedding to Khal Drogo."
When Pentos reappeared in Season 5, it was filmed in Croatia.
Volantis is a port on the southern coast of Essos, and is the oldest and proudest of the Free Cities. A fortification known as the Black Wall protects the oldest parts of the city. The city is ruled by three triarchs, who are elected every year by free landholders of Volantis, and defended by slave soldiers called the "Tiger cloaks". Volantis is incredibly important to the slave market, and in the city there are five slaves to every free man. All Volantene slaves have facial tattoos denoting their profession: for instance, sex slaves have tears tattooed on their faces, and the tiger cloaks have tiger stripes. The worship of R'hllor is the most influential religion of Volantis, especially among slaves.
The TV adaptation used locations in Córdoba, Spain.
This section covers the Essos locations east of the Free Cities that Daenerys Targeryen passes through on her travels in "A Game of Thrones" and "A Clash of Kings" before moving on to Slaver's Bay.
Valyria is a peninsula in South-Central Essos, west of Slaver's Bay. Before the Doom of Valyria, it was the seat of the Valyrian Freehold, a massive empire thousands of years old. The Valyrians are characterized by their silver hair and violet eyes. Valyria was called The Freehold because every man who owned land was allowed to vote for their leaders. The Valyrians also used slaves to mine the Fourteen Flames, a series of volcanoes rich with ore. They subjugated the Ghiscari and the Rhoynar and established all of the Free Cities, save Braavos. They did this through their knowledge of dragonlore. Many Valyrians rode dragons. However, hundreds of years ago, an event known as the Doom of Valyria, apparently involving a violent eruption of the Fourteen Flames, destroyed the Freehold and made Valyria an archipelago. The Targaryens are of the blood of old Valyria, who escaped before The Doom.
The Dothraki Sea is a vast, flat grassland on Essos. It is inhabited by the Dothraki people, a copper-skinned race of warlike nomads with their own language and unique culture. The Dothraki live in hordes called khalasars, each led by a chief called a khal. Khalasars are broken into groups, called khas, which are each led by one of the khal's captains, called kos. Each khal and his khalasar owe fealty to a ruling council of royal priestesses, called the dosh khaleen, whose members are each a former khal's consort, called a khaleesi during the reign of her husband, one who became part of the dosh khaleen following his death.
Dothraki are expert riders and their horses are of prime importance in their culture, used for food, transportation, raw materials, warfare, and establishing social standing. They regularly raid other peoples.
George R. R. Martin said "The Dothraki were actually fashioned as an amalgam of a number of steppe and plains cultures ... Mongols and Huns, certainly, but also Alans, Sioux, Cheyenne, and various other Amerindian tribes ... seasoned with a dash of pure fantasy. So any resemblance to Arabs or Turks is coincidental. Well, except to the extent that the [historic] Turks were also originally horsemen of the steppes, not unlike the Alans, Huns, and the rest." However, he also noted that "In general, though, while I do draw inspiration from history, I try to avoid direct one-for-one transplants, [so] it would not be correct to say that the Dothraki are Mongols."
The Dothraki have only one permanent city, called Vaes Dothrak, which serves as their capital. The Dosh Khaleen hold the city as their seat. It is filled with statues stolen from other cities the Dothraki conquered or raided. There is a law that no Dothraki may shed blood within the boundaries of Vaes Dothrak and that those who do are cursed. Two gigantic bronze stallions, whose hooves meet midair, form an arch above the entryway to the city. For the first season of the TV adaptation, Sandy Brae in the Mourne Mountains of northern Ireland was chosen to stand in for Vaes Dothrak. The bronze stallions making up the Horse Gate as the main entrance of Vaes Dothrak, were later added using CGI on two pedestals erected on location.
Lhazar is an area of the semi-arid lands south of the Dothraki Sea. A region of pastures and hills, it is inhabited by the Lhazareen, a peaceful people with bronze skin, flat faces, and almond eyes. They are predominantly shepherds, called the Lamb Men by the Dothraki, who frequently prey on them. They worship a god called the Great Shepherd and believe that all of humanity is part of a single flock. The scenes at the village of the Lamb Men that is sacked by the Dothraki were filmed in Malta, at the farming town of Manikata.
Slaver's Bay is a marginal sea of the Summer Sea, lying to the south of the Dothraki Sea, to the west of Lhazar and thousands of leagues to the east of the Free Cities. The climate is very hot. After a first mention in "A Game of Thrones" in relation to slavery, Daenerys Targaryen conquers the three great Slaver's Bay port city-states Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen in "A Storm of Swords". She stays in Meereen throughout most of "A Dance with Dragons".
The cities were built from the rubble of Old Ghis, an ancient rival of Valyria that was crushed by Valyria thousands of years before the series' events. The economies of the cities are largely based on slave labor and the slave trade. Treatment of slaves is often harsh, while citizens live in relative luxury. Professional soldiers of all three cities wear outlandish costumes and hairstyles that limit their usefulness in battle. The cities' militaries are highly dependent on additional slave and mercenary armies for the actual fighting.
Present inhabitants of the bay are a mixed race that no longer speak the old Ghiscari tongue but variations of High Valyrian with a characteristic growl. The ancient folk of Ghis, who name themselves the harpy's sons in Astapor, are said to have bristly red-black hair. The Good Masters of Astapor all appear alike to Daenerys as "thick fleshy men with amber skin, broad noses, dark eyes. Their wiry hair was black or a dark red, or that queer mixture of red and black that was peculiar to Ghiscari". Only the freeborn men of Astapor are permitted to wear garments called tokars, whose fringes display their status. Many Astapori women veil their face for the dust. The Astapori are drenched in sweet perfumes.
Astapor lies on the banks of the Worm River, a wide, slow and crooked stream with wooded islands. Entering Astapor at the beginning of "A Storm of Swords", Daenerys experiences it as an ancient and dilapidated city that has long passed its glory days. The city is dominated by its red brick architecture, and Arstan Whitebeard explains to Daenerys that the saying "Brick and blood built Astapor, ... and brick and blood her people" refers to the slaves who make the bricks. Astapor's stepped pyramids, its fighting pits, streets, the surrounding walls and the Plaza of Pride are all made of red bricks. The so-called Plaza of Punishment at Astapor's main gates is even larger than the Plaza of Pride.
The Plaza of Pride, which has a red-brick fountain and a huge bronze harpy statue in its center, serves as an open air slave market and a marshaling area for the Unsullied, elite eunuch spearmen known for discipline and effectiveness. Astapor is the only city to sell Unsullied, but also sells bed slaves, fieldhands, scribes, craftsmen and tutors. The Unsullied require a huge investment in both time and money by the Astapori who raise and train them, but they earn the most profitable of returns for the Good Masters of Astapor. The Unsullied wear spiked bronze hats, and they obey at all costs, even if it demands their death. They are given new slave names each day to be reminded of their worthlessness. In times of attack, unsold Unsullied are deployed to the massive, crumbling red-brick walls that the Astapori no longer man.
Daenerys decides to buy all of Astapor's trained and untrained Unsullied, over 8600 in number, and tells them to kill all adult Astapori slavers and soldiers when she leaves the city. She gives the power over Astapor to a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar and a priest, and tens of thousands of former slaves join her on her travels to Yunkai. A former butcher named Cleon fends off a scheme to have the Good Masters re-established, and was crowned as the King of Astapor in reward.
The TV show used the coastal town of Essaouira, Morocco to film scenes in Astapor.
The smallest of the three cities, Yunkai, like Meereen, does not trade in Unsullied but is known for its fighting pits and its pleasure houses, both of which turn out slaves at a brisk pace. The city is similar to Astapor in architecture except for its smaller size and its use of yellow brick in its buildings instead of red. The slavers of Yunkai are known as the Wise Masters. Because of the city's lack of Unsullied, it relies on a mixed professional and slave army of approximately 4,000 with at least 1,000 mercenaries. Typical for Ghiscari, Yunkai soldiers wear impractical armor and oiled hair teased into enormous shapes, limiting their effectiveness.
Yunkish scenes were filmed in Aït Benhaddou, Morocco in the TV show.
The largest of the three slaver cities, Meereen has a population equaling that of Astapor and Yunkai combined. The city has architecture similar to that of its neighbors, but it is made of bricks of many colors. Its landscape is dominated by a massive pyramid, named the Great Pyramid, and the Temple of Graces, which is capped by a golden dome. Meereen is unique among the Ghiscari cities in that it is filled with many temples and pyramids. The slavers of Meereen are known as the Great Masters. They field a force of lancers equipped in traditionally extravagant Ghiscari fashion with scales of copper and lances as long as fourteen feet. It is built on the banks of the river Skahadhazan.
For the HBO television series, many of the scenes in Meereen were filmed in Split and the Fortress of Klis, Croatia. In Season 5, Daznak's Pit in the city was shot in the Plaza de Toros in Osuna, Spain.
The Red Waste is a great desert-like area in the eastern part of Essos. Not much is known about it, since it was only briefly seen in "A Clash of Kings" when Daenerys Targaryen and her "khalasar" crossed it. The only known settlement in the region, Vaes Tolorro, is in ruins.
First mentioned in "A Game of Thrones", the city of Qarth has not yet appeared on any maps in the books. However, the HBO "Viewer's Guide" world map and the opening titles of the TV series' second season show Qarth located at a strait between the Summer Sea and the Jade Sea in the south-east of Essos. Upon Daenerys' first visit to Qarth in "A Clash of Kings", the warlock Pyat Pree describes his city as the center of the world and as a gateway of commerce and culture between the east and west, and the north and south. The reader learns through Daenerys's eyes that the city is surrounded by three graded walls of thirty to fifty feet in height, respectively engraved with portraits of animals, war, and lovemaking. The city's buildings are of many colors, including rose, violet, and umber. Slender towers rise throughout the city, fountains adorn every square, and thousands of colored birds, blooming trees and flowers fill the city. The TV adaptation filmed Qarth on the island of Lokrum near Dubrovnik and constructed a set at the Dubac quarry in Croatia to double for the gates of Qarth.
The Qartheen are described as "tall pale folk in linen and samite and tiger fur", with the women wearing gowns that leave one breast bare, while the men sport beaded silk skirts. Daenerys perceives them as "nothing if not polite". Slaves serve their needs. The Pureborn, descendants of the city's ancient kings and queens, govern Qarth and also command the city's defenses. Three principal merchant groups battle amongst themselves and against the Pureborn for dominance of the city: the Thirteen, the Ancient Guild of Spicers, and the Tourmaline Brotherhood. Qarth's warlocks, whose lips are turned blue from a potion called "the shade of the evening", are said to brood over these factions; they are still feared although their power and prestige have waned over the years. Qarth is also home to the Sorrowful Men, a guild of assassins named so for whispering "I am so sorry," before killing their victims. Daenerys leaves Qarth again at the end of "A Clash of Kings".
Asshai and the Shadow Lands are mysterious locations in the "Ice and Fire" world. They are first mentioned in "A Game of Thrones" and were first mapped in "The Lands of Ice and Fire", lying on the far east of the known world. Martin is unsure if the books will ever take the readers to Asshai, but said that readers may learn more through the POV character Melisandre (who originates from Asshai) or through the memories and mentions of other characters. Jorah Mormont describes Asshai as a port city far to the south of the Dothraki sea, at the end of the known world. Asshai exports such goods as black amethysts, amber and dragonglass. At another time, Jorah Mormont tells Daenerys of great kingdoms to the east of the Red Waste, and lists Asshai by the Shadow as one of the cities full of wonders there. According to Martin, all ship travels between Westeros and Asshai go via the Summer Sea and the Jade Sea through the straits at Qarth, and that the common folk still believe the world to be flat. However, according to Martin, "Asshai is not nearly important to trade as Yi Ti, and the rich port cities of Yi Ti (and Leng) and more easily reached via Qarth." Quaithe of the Shadow prophesies Daenerys in Qarth that "To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east [...] and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow." When Daenerys interprets this to mean she must go to Asshai, Quaithe says she would find the truth there.
There are many tales about the Shadow Lands, though how much truth they hold is unclear. The Dothraki believe that ghost grass covers the Shadow Lands, with stalks that glow in the dark and grow taller than a man on horseback. Daenerys heard that "spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night". There are also Westerosi maesters in Asshai. The mages of Asshai teach others their healing powers, but also their spells requiring blood sacrifice. Ancient books of Asshai record the Azor Ahai prophecy followed by members of the R'hllor faith. Daenerys heard that dragons themselves originated from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea, and they possibly still live there. Bran dreams of flying Dragons in Asshai. The petrified dragon eggs Illyrio gives to Daenerys are said to come from the Shadow Lands. The "dour and frightening" Shadow Men cover their bodies in tattoos and wear lacquered wooden masks, and the appearance of the Asshai'i is described as dark and solemn. The Dothraki believe the Asshai'i to be the spawn of shadows. The Asshai'i have a language of their own.
Ibben is a collection of islands north of Essos in the Bay of Whales. The largest of these islands is Ib, which contains the cities Port of Ibben and Ib Nor. Until the Doom of Valyria, Ibben was ruled by a God-King. Now power is held by the Shadow Council, which is made up of nobles, priests, and wealthy guildsmen. Ibben is first mentioned in "A Game of Thrones", where Tyrion talks of rumors that mammoths "roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben". In 2002, Martin said the narrative would "probably not" take readers to Ibben, which he described as a "cold, mountainous, Iceland-sized island" (i.e. 40,000 square miles) in the Shivering Sea, with the Port of Ibben as the major city; some Ibbenese also live on smaller islands nearby or in colonies on Essos. Ibben is unmapped in the books as of "A Dance with Dragons", but similar to Martin's descriptions, the HBO "Viewer's Guide" world map gives the island's location as to the north-east of Essos. Martin said that due to a large whale population in the Shivering sea, many of the Ibbenses were whalers. The Ibbenses are known to chew whale blubber in order to maintain their metabolism in the cold climate. Several characters see Ibbenese whalers and cogs at the ports of King's Landing, Braavos, Maidenpool, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and the Iron Islands. The novels describe the people of Ibben as squat and hairy; Arya even meets an Ibbenese woman with a mustache. Tyrion and Varys meet foul-smelling Ibbenese, who "were as fond of axes as they were of each other". Arya sees "a dark brutal axeman from Ib" in her dreams. The Ibbenese are said to speak with low, raspy voices and to have their own language.
The novels repeatedly describe Yi Ti as a city full of wonders, lying in the far east. As of "A Dance with Dragons", Yi Ti has not appeared on any maps in the books, but Martin specified that "Yi Ti is to the south east of Qarth, generally, across the Jade Sea." The city is first mentioned in "A Game of Thrones", talking of rumors that "basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti". Sailor stories presented in "A Feast for Crows" mention that a grey plague has hit Yi Ti. The god of the people of Yi Ti is called the Lion of Night. Daenerys sees people of Yi Ti as bright-eyed men in monkey-tail hats in the markets of Vaes Dothrak. Martin is unsure "to what extent those peoples [like of Yi Ti] will ever enter this present story, however... their lands are very far away."
North of Yi Ti, the Plain of Jogos Nhai are windswept, with rolling hills. They are dominated by a race of mounted warriors called the Jogos Nhai. The Jogos Nhai live in yurts and tents, and are a nomadic people. They are short, squat, and have large heads and small faces. Men and women both have pointed skulls, a result of their custom of binding the heads of newborns. They also ride zorses, a striped mount that can withstand much more than average horse. The Jogos Nhai do not fight between themselves, and live in small clans bound by blood. They live in a state of perpetual war with outsiders. Each tribe is commanded by a "jhat", or war chief, and a moonsinger, who is a priestess, healer, and judge. Moonsingers are generally female, and "jhats" are mostly male. (Paraphrased from "The World of Ice and Fire)"
To the south of Essos is the continent of Sothoryos (mistakenly spelled Sothoros in early novels). Sothoryos is the third continent of the known world, and is vast, plague-ridden, covered in jungles, and largely unexplored. It is reported to be as large as Essos and described as a "land without end" by Jaenara Belaerys, a Valyrian dragonlord from before the Doom of Valyria.
The continent is first named on a map in "A Storm of Swords" (2000), showing the cities of Yeen and Zamettar on it. The narrative itself first refers to the continent in "A Feast for Crows" (2005). Martin had described Sothoryos in 2002 as "the southern continent, roughly equivalent to Africa, jungly, plague-ridden, and largely unexplored." The novels provide little other information. The swampy nature of Sothoryos is briefly referenced by Victarion in "A Dance with Dragons", and teak from Sothoryos is said to be used to build ships. A corsair's road runs along the continent's northern coast. "A Dance with Dragons" refers to the diseases on Sothoryos in regards to the wealthy but sick Yunkai slave trader Yezzan zo Qaggaz. Victarion describes some people as "squat and hairy as the apes of Sothoros", and some people fighting in Daznak's Pit for Daenerys's entertainment in "A Dance with Dragons" are described as "brindle-skinned half-men from the jungles of Sothoros". Martin said that, unlike other peoples in the novels, the brindled men of Sothoryos were pure fantasy constructs.
The map collection "The Lands of Ice and Fire" also shows the north tip of a landmass named "Ulthos" to the south of Essos and east of Sothoryos. Asked whether this was another continent, Martin replied, "Well, it's a large landmass. I am a little unclear on the formal definition of 'continent' as opposed to 'big island.' Also on the size of Ulthos, which after all sits at the edge of the known world. Terra incognita and all that." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12302 |
Grandmaster (chess)
Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded to chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain.
Once achieved, the title is generally held for life, though exceptionally it may be revoked for cheating. The abbreviation IGM for International Grandmaster is also sometimes used, particularly in older literature.
The title of Grandmaster, along with the lesser FIDE titles of International Master (IM) and FIDE Master (FM), is open to both men and women. The majority of grandmasters are men, but a number of women have also earned the GM title, with the first three being Nona Gaprindashvili in 1978, Maia Chiburdanidze in 1984 and Susan Polgar in 1991. Since about 2000, most of the top 10 women have held the GM title.
There is also a Woman Grandmaster title with lower requirements awarded only to women.
FIDE awards separate Grandmaster titles to composers and solvers of chess problems, International Grandmaster for chess compositions to the former and International Solving Grandmaster to the latter (see List of grandmasters for chess composition). The International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) awards the title of International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (ICCGM).
The first known use of the term "grandmaster" in connection with chess was in the 18 February 1838 issue of "Bell's Life", in which a correspondent referred to William Lewis as "our past grandmaster". Subsequently, George Walker and others referred to Philidor as a grandmaster, and the term was also applied to a few other players.
In the Ostend tournament of 1907 the term "grandmaster" ("Großmeister" in German) was used. The tournament was divided into two sections: the Championship Tournament and the Masters' Tournament. The Championship section was for players who had previously won an international tournament. Siegbert Tarrasch won the Championship section, over Carl Schlechter, Dawid Janowski, Frank Marshall, Amos Burn, and Mikhail Chigorin. These players were described as grandmasters for the purposes of the tournament.
The San Sebastián 1912 tournament won by Akiba Rubinstein was a designated grandmaster event. Rubinstein won with 12½ points out of 19. Tied for second with 12 points were Aron Nimzowitsch and Rudolf Spielmann.
By some accounts, in the St. Petersburg 1914 chess tournament, the title Grandmaster was formally conferred by Russian Tsar Nicholas II, who had partially funded the tournament. The Tsar reportedly awarded the title to the five finalists: Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Siegbert Tarrasch, and Frank Marshall. Chess historian Edward Winter has questioned this, stating that the earliest known sources that support this story are an article by Robert Lewis Taylor in the June 15, 1940, issue of "The New Yorker" and Marshall's autobiography "My 50 Years of Chess" (1942).
Before 1950, the term grandmaster was sometimes informally applied to world class players. The Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE, or International Chess Federation) was formed in Paris in 1924, but at that time did not award formal titles.
In 1927, the Soviet Union's Chess Federation established the title of Grandmaster of the Soviet Union, for their own players, since at that time Soviets were not competing outside their own country. This title was abolished in 1931, after having been awarded to Boris Verlinsky, who won the 1929 Soviet Championship. The title was brought back in 1935, and awarded to Mikhail Botvinnik, who thus became the first "official" Grandmaster of the USSR. Verlinsky did not get his title back.
When FIDE reorganized after World War II it adopted regulations concerning international titles. Titles were awarded by a resolution of the FIDE General Assembly and the Qualification Committee, with no formal written criteria. FIDE first awarded the Grandmaster title in 1950 to 27 players. These players were:
Since FIDE did not award the Grandmaster title posthumously, world-class players who died prior to 1950, including World Champions Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine, never received the title.
Title awards under the original regulations were subject to political concerns. Efim Bogoljubov, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union to Germany, was not entered in the first class of Grandmasters, even though he had played two matches for the World Championship with Alekhine. He received the title in 1951, by a vote of thirteen to eight with five abstentions. Yugoslavia supported his application, but all other Communist countries opposed it. In 1953, FIDE abolished the old regulations, although a provision was maintained that allowed older masters who had been overlooked to be awarded titles. The new regulations awarded the title of International Grandmaster of the FIDE to players meeting any of the following criteria:
After FIDE issued the 1953 title regulations, it was recognized that they were somewhat haphazard, and work began to revise the regulations. The FIDE Congress in Vienna in 1957 adopted new regulations, called the FAV system, in recognition of the work done by International Judge Giovanni Ferrantes (Italy), Alexander (probably Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander), and Giancarlo Dal Verme (Italy). Under the 1957 regulations, the title of International Grandmaster of the FIDE was automatically awarded to:
The regulations also allowed titles to be awarded by a FIDE Congress on recommendation by the Qualification Committee. Recommendations were based on performance in qualifying tournaments, with the required score depending on the percentage of Grandmasters and International Masters in the tournament.
Concerns were raised that the 1957 regulations were too lax. At the FIDE Congress in 1961, GM Milan Vidmar said that the regulations "made it possible to award international titles to players without sufficient merit". At the 1964 Congress in Tel Aviv, a subcommittee was formed to propose changes to the regulations. The subcommittee recommended that the automatic award of titles be abolished, criticized the methods used for awarding titles based on qualifying performances, and called for a change in the makeup of the Qualification Committee. Several delegates supported the subcommittee recommendations, including GM Miguel Najdorf who felt that existing regulations were leading to an inflation of international titles. At the 1965 Congress in Wiesbaden FIDE raised the standards required for international titles. The International Grandmaster title regulations were:
To fulfill requirement 2b, the candidate must score one GM norm in a category 1a tournament or two norms within a three-year period in two Category 1b tournaments, or one Category 2a tournament and one Category 1b tournament.
The categories of tournaments are:
Since FIDE titles are for life, a GM or IM does not count for the purposes of this requirement if he had not had a GM or IM result in the five years prior to the tournament.
In addition, no more than 50 percent plus one of the players can be from the same country for tournaments of 10 to 12 players, or no more than 50 percent plus two for larger tournaments.
Seventy-four GM titles were awarded in 1951 through 1968. During that period, ten GM titles were awarded in 1965, but only one in 1966 and in 1968.
The modern system for awarding FIDE titles evolved from the "Dorazil" proposals, presented to the 1970 Siegen Chess Olympiad FIDE Congress. The proposals were put together by Dr Wilfried Dorazil (then FIDE Vice-President) and fellow Committee members Grandmaster Svetozar Gligorić and Professor Arpad Elo. The recommendations of the Committee report were adopted in full.
In essence, the proposals built on the work done by Professor Elo in devising his Elo rating system. The establishment of an updated list of players and their Elo rating enabled significantly strong international chess tournaments to be allocated a "Category", based on the average rating of the contestants. For instance, it was decided that 'Category 1' status would apply to tournaments with an average Elo rating of participants falling within the range 2251–2275; similarly Category 2 would apply to the range 2276–2300 etc. The higher the tournament Category, the stronger the tournament.
Another vital component involved the setting of meritorious "scores" for each Category of tournament. A player must meet or surpass the relevant score to demonstrate that they had performed at Grandmaster (GM) or International Master (IM) level. Scores were expressed as percentages of a perfect maximum score and decreased as the tournament Category increased, thereby reflecting the strength of a player's opposition and the relative difficulty of the task.
Tournament organisers could then apply the percentages to their own tournament format and declare in advance the actual score that participants must achieve to attain a GM or IM result (nowadays referred to as a norm).
To qualify for the Grandmaster title, a player needed to achieve three such GM results within a rolling period of three years. Exceptionally, if a player's contributory games totalled thirty or more, then the title could be awarded on the basis of two such results. There were also circumstances where the system could be adapted to fit team events and other competitions.
The full proposals included many other rules and regulations, covering such topics as:
The current requirements for becoming a Grandmaster are:
The Grandmaster title is also automatically conferred, without needing to fulfill the above criteria, when winning the Women's World Championship, the World Junior Championship, or the World Senior Championship. Current regulations can be found in the FIDE Handbook.
FIDE titles including the grandmaster title are valid for life, but FIDE regulations allow a title to be revoked for "use of a FIDE title or rating to subvert the ethical principles of the title or rating system" or if a player is found to have violated the anti-cheating regulations in a tournament on which the title application was based.
Although the qualifications for obtaining the grandmaster title are similar to those adopted in 1970, concern has been expressed that the title is not as meaningful now as it was in the past. According to Macieja, it is difficult to gauge meaningfulness: although the number of grandmasters had increased greatly between 1972 and 2008, the number of registered players had increased even faster.
From 1977 until 2003, FIDE awarded honorary Grandmaster titles to 31 players based on their past performances or other contributions to chess. Since 2007, no distinction has been made between an "honorary" grandmaster and a full grandmaster. The following players have been awarded honorary Grandmaster titles:
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12304 |
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (; ; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and an outstanding representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature. He is widely considered by theatre historians to be the first dramaturg in his role at Abel Seyler's Hamburg National Theatre.
Lessing was born in Kamenz, a small town in Saxony, to Johann Gottfried Lessing and Justine Salome Feller. His father was a Lutheran minister and wrote on theology. Young Lessing studied at the Latin School in Kamenz from 1737 to 1741. With a father who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, Lessing next attended the Fürstenschule St. Afra in Meissen. After completing his education at St. Afra's, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig where he pursued a degree in theology, medicine, philosophy, and philology (1746–1748).
It was here that his relationship with Karoline Neuber, a famous German actress, began. He translated several French plays for her, and his interest in theatre grew. During this time, he wrote his first play, "The Young Scholar." Neuber eventually produced the play in 1748.
From 1748 to 1760, Lessing lived in Leipzig and Berlin. He began to work as a reviewer and editor for the "Vossische Zeitung" and other periodicals. Lessing formed a close connection with his cousin, Christlob Mylius, and decided to follow him to Berlin. In 1750, Lessing and Mylius teamed together to begin a periodical publication named "Beiträge zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters". The publication ran only four issues, but it caught the public's eye and revealed Lessing to be a serious critic and theorist of drama.
In 1752, he took his master's degree in Wittenberg. From 1760 to 1765, he worked in Breslau (now Wrocław) as secretary to General Tauentzien during the Seven Years' War between Britain and France, which had effects in Europe. It was during this time that he wrote his famous .
In 1765, Lessing returned to Berlin, leaving in 1767 to work for three years at the Hamburg National Theatre. Actor-manager, Konrad Ackermann, began construction on Germany's first permanent theatre in Hamburg. established Germany's first national theatre, the Hamburg National Theatre. The owners hired Lessing as the theatre's critic of plays and acting, which would later be known as dramaturgy (based on his own words), making Lessing the very first dramaturge. The theatre's main backer was Abel Seyler, a former currency speculator who since became known as "the leading patron of German theatre." There he met Eva König, his future wife. His work in Hamburg formed the basis of his pioneering work on drama, titled "Hamburgische Dramaturgie". Unfortunately, because of financial losses due to pirated editions of the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie", the Hamburg Theatre closed just three years later.
In 1770, Lessing became librarian at the ducal library, now the Herzog August Library ("Herzog-August-Bibliothek", "Bibliotheca Augusta"), in Wolfenbüttel under the commission of the Duke of Brunswick. His tenure there was energetic, if interrupted by many journeys. In 1775, for example, he accompanied Prince Leopold to Italy.
On 14 October 1771, Lessing was initiated into Freemasonry in the lodge "Zu den drei Goldenen Rosen" in Hamburg.
In 1776, he married Eva König, who was then a widow, in Jork (near Hamburg). She died in 1778 after giving birth to a short-lived son. On 15 February 1781, Lessing, aged 52, died during a visit to the wine dealer Angott in Brunswick.
Lessing was also famous for his friendship with Jewish-German philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. A recent biography of Mendelssohn's grandson, Felix, describes their friendship as one of the most "illuminating metaphors [for] the clarion call of the Enlightenment for religious tolerance". It was this relationship that sparked his interest in popular religious debates of the time. He began publishing heated pamphlets on his beliefs which were eventually banned. It was this banishment that inspired him to return to theatre to portray his views and to write "Nathan the Wise".
Early in his life, Lessing showed interest in the theatre. In his theoretical and critical writings on the subject—as in his own plays—he tried to contribute to the development of a new type of theatre in Germany. With this he especially turned against the then predominant literary theory of Gottsched and his followers. Lessing's "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" ran critiques of plays that were performed in the Hamburg Theatre, but after dealing with dissatisfied actors and actresses, Lessing redirected his writings to more of an analysis on the proper uses of drama. Lessing advocated the outline of drama in Aristotle's "Poetics". He believed the French Academy had devalued the uses of drama through their neoclassical rules of form and separation of genres. His repeated opinions on this issue influenced theatre practitioners who began the movement of rejecting theatre rules known as "Sturm und Drang" ("Storm and Stress"). He also supported serious reception of Shakespeare's works. He worked with many theatre groups (e.g. the one of the Neuberin).
In Hamburg he tried with others to set up the German National Theatre. Today his own works appear as prototypes of the later developed bourgeois German drama. Scholars see "Miss Sara Sampson" and "Emilia Galotti" as amongst the first bourgeois tragedies, "Minna von Barnhelm" (Minna of Barnhelm) as the model for many classic German comedies, "Nathan the Wise" ("Nathan der Weise") as the first German drama of ideas ("Ideendrama"). His theoretical writings "Laocoön" and "Hamburg Dramaturgy" ("Hamburgische Dramaturgie") set the standards for the discussion of aesthetic and literary theoretical principles. Lessing advocated that dramaturgs should carry their work out working directly with theatre companies rather than in isolation.
In his religious and philosophical writings he defended the faithful Christian's right for freedom of thought. He argued against the belief in revelation and the holding on to a literal interpretation of the Bible by the predominant orthodox doctrine through a problem later to be called Lessing's Ditch. Lessing outlined the concept of the religious "Proof of Power": How can miracles continue to be used as a base for Christianity when we have no proof of miracles? Historical truths which are in doubt cannot be used to prove metaphysical truths (such as God's existence). As Lessing says it: "That, then, is the ugly great ditch which I cannot cross, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make that leap."
In the final leg of his life, Lessing threw himself into an intense evaluation of theology and religion. He did much of his studying by reading manuscripts he found while working as a librarian. While working for the Duke, he formed a close friendship with a family by the name of Reimarus. The family held an unpublished manuscript by Hermann Samuel Reimarus which attacked the historicity of Christian revelation. Despite discouragement from his brother Karl Gotthelf Lessing, he began publishing pieces of the manuscript in pamphlets known as "Fragments from an Unnamed Author". The controversial pamphlets resulted in a heated debate between him and another theologian, Johann Melchior Goeze. In concern for tarnishing his reputation, Goeze requested the government put an end to the feud, and Lessing was silenced through a law that took away his freedom from censorship.
In response, Lessing relied upon his skills as a playwright to write what is undoubtedly his most influential play, "Nathan the Wise". In the play, Lessing set up tension between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity by having one character ask Nathan which religion was the most genuine. Nathan avoids the question by telling the parable of the three rings, which implies the idea that no specific religion is the "correct religion." The Enlightenment ideas to which Lessing held tight were portrayed through his "ideal of humanity," stating that religion is relative to the individual's ability to reason. "Nathan the Wise" is considered to be the first example of the German "literature of humanity".
As a child of the Enlightenment he trusted in a "Christianity of Reason", which oriented itself by the spirit of religion. He believed that human reason (initiated by criticism and dissent) would develop, even without help by a divine revelation. In his writing "The Education of Humankind" ("Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts") he extensively and coherently lays out his position.
The idea of freedom (for the theatre against the dominance of its French model; for religion from the church's dogma) is his central theme throughout his life. Therefore, he also stood up for the liberation of the upcoming middle and upper class from the nobility making up their minds for them.
In his own literary existence he also constantly strove for independence. But his ideal of a possible life as a free author was hard to keep up against the economic constraints he faced. His project of authors self-publishing their works, which he tried to accomplish in Hamburg with C. J. Bode, failed.
Lessing is important as a literary critic for his work "Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry". In this work, he argues against the tendency to take Horace's "ut pictura poesis" (as painting, so poetry) as prescriptive for literature. In other words, he objected to trying to write poetry using the same devices as one would in painting. Instead, poetry and painting each has its character (the former is extended in time; the latter is extended in space). This is related to Lessing's turn from French classicism to Aristotelian mimesis, discussed above.
The Radical Pietist Johann Daniel Müller (born 1716 in Wissenbach/Nassau, today part of Eschenburg, deceased after 1785) published the following anonymous book against Lessing and Reimarus: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12305 |
Geotechnical engineering
Geotechnical engineering, also known as geotechnics, is the application of scientific methods and engineering principles to the acquisition, interpretation, and use of knowledge of materials of the Earth's crust and earth materials for the solution of engineering problems and the design of engineering works. It is the applied science of predicting the behavior of the Earth, its various materials and processes towards making the Earth more suitable for human activities and development.
Geotechnical engineering embraces the fields of soil mechanics and rock mechanics, and has applications in the fields of geology, geophysics, hydrology, and other related sciences. Geotechnics is practiced by both engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers.
Examples of the application of geotechnics include: the prediction, prevention or mitigation of damage caused by natural hazards such as avalanches, mud flows, landslides, rockslides, sinkholes, and volcanic eruptions; the application of soil, rock and groundwater mechanics to the design and predicted performance of earthen structures such as dams; the design and performance prediction of the foundations of bridges, buildings, and other man-made structures in terms of the underlying soil and/or rock; and flood control and prediction.
Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. Geotechnical engineering is important in civil engineering, but also has applications in military, mining, petroleum and other engineering disciplines that are concerned with construction occurring on the surface or within the ground. Geotechnical engineering uses principles of soil mechanics and rock mechanics to investigate subsurface conditions and materials; determine the relevant physical/mechanical and chemical properties of these materials; evaluate stability of natural slopes and man-made soil deposits; assess risks posed by site conditions; design earthworks and structure foundations; and monitor site conditions, earthwork and foundation construction.
A typical geotechnical engineering project begins with a review of project needs to define the required material properties. Then follows a site investigation of soil, rock, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest to determine their engineering properties including how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction. Site investigations are needed to gain an understanding of the area in or on which the engineering will take place. Investigations can include the assessment of the risk to humans, property and the environment from natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, sinkholes, soil liquefaction, debris flows and rockfalls.
A geotechnical engineer then determines and designs the type of foundations, earthworks, and/or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be built. Foundations are designed and constructed for structures of various sizes such as high-rise buildings, bridges, medium to large commercial buildings, and smaller structures where the soil conditions do not allow code-based design.
Foundations built for above-ground structures include shallow and deep foundations. Retaining structures include earth-filled dams and retaining walls. Earthworks include embankments, tunnels, dikes and levees, channels, reservoirs, deposition of hazardous waste and sanitary landfills. Geotechnical engineers are extensively involved in earthen and concrete dam projects, evaluating the subsurface conditions at the dam site and the side slopes of the reservoir, the seepage conditions under and around the dam and the stability of the dam under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions.
Geotechnical engineering is also related to coastal and ocean engineering. Coastal engineering can involve the design and construction of wharves, marinas, and jetties. Ocean engineering can involve foundation and anchor systems for offshore structures such as oil platforms.
The fields of geotechnical engineering and engineering geology are closely related, and have large areas of overlap. However, the field of geotechnical engineering is a specialty of engineering, where the field of engineering geology is a specialty of geology. Coming from the fields of engineering and science, respectively, the two may approach the same subject, such as soil classification, with different methods.
Humans have historically used soil as a material for flood control, irrigation purposes, burial sites, building foundations, and as construction material for buildings. First activities were linked to irrigation and flood control, as demonstrated by traces of dykes, dams, and canals dating back to at least 2000 BCE that were found in ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, as well as around the early settlements of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa in the Indus valley. As the cities expanded, structures were erected supported by formalized foundations; Ancient Greeks notably constructed pad footings and strip-and-raft foundations. Until the 18th century, however, no theoretical basis for soil design had been developed and the discipline was more of an art than a science, relying on past experience.
Several foundation-related engineering problems, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, prompted scientists to begin taking a more scientific-based approach to examining the subsurface. The earliest advances occurred in the development of earth pressure theories for the construction of retaining walls. Henri Gautier, a French Royal Engineer, recognized the "natural slope" of different soils in 1717, an idea later known as the soil's angle of repose. A rudimentary soil classification system was also developed based on a material's unit weight, which is no longer considered a good indication of soil type.
The application of the principles of mechanics to soils was documented as early as 1773 when Charles Coulomb (a physicist, engineer, and army Captain) developed improved methods to determine the earth pressures against military ramparts. Coulomb observed that, at failure, a distinct slip plane would form behind a sliding retaining wall and he suggested that the maximum shear stress on the slip plane, for design purposes, was the sum of the soil cohesion, formula_1, and friction formula_2 formula_3, where formula_2 is the normal stress on the slip plane and formula_5 is the friction angle of the soil. By combining Coulomb's theory with Christian Otto Mohr's 2D stress state, the theory became known as Mohr-Coulomb theory. Although it is now recognized that precise determination of cohesion is impossible because formula_1 is not a fundamental soil property, the Mohr-Coulomb theory is still used in practice today.
In the 19th century Henry Darcy developed what is now known as Darcy's Law describing the flow of fluids in porous media. Joseph Boussinesq (a mathematician and physicist) developed theories of stress distribution in elastic solids that proved useful for estimating stresses at depth in the ground; William Rankine, an engineer and physicist, developed an alternative to Coulomb's earth pressure theory. Albert Atterberg developed the clay consistency indices that are still used today for soil classification. Osborne Reynolds recognized in 1885 that shearing causes volumetric dilation of dense and contraction of loose granular materials.
Modern geotechnical engineering is said to have begun in 1925 with the publication of "Erdbaumechanik" by Karl Terzaghi (a mechanical engineer and geologist). Considered by many to be the father of modern soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, Terzaghi developed the principle of effective stress, and demonstrated that the shear strength of soil is controlled by effective stress. Terzaghi also developed the framework for theories of bearing capacity of foundations, and the theory for prediction of the rate of settlement of clay layers due to consolidation. In his 1948 book, Donald Taylor recognized that interlocking and dilation of densely packed particles contributed to the peak strength of a soil. The interrelationships between volume change behavior (dilation, contraction, and consolidation) and shearing behavior were all connected via the theory of plasticity using critical state soil mechanics by Roscoe, Schofield, and Wroth with the publication of "On the Yielding of Soils" in 1958. Critical state soil mechanics is the basis for many contemporary advanced constitutive models describing the behavior of soil.
Geotechnical centrifuge modeling is a method of testing physical scale models of geotechnical problems. The use of a centrifuge enhances the similarity of the scale model tests involving soil because the strength and stiffness of soil is very sensitive to the confining pressure. The centrifugal acceleration allows a researcher to obtain large (prototype-scale) stresses in small physical models.
Geotechnical engineers are typically graduates of a four-year civil engineering program and some hold a masters degree. In the US, geotechnical engineers are typically licensed and regulated as Professional Engineers (PEs) in most states; currently only California and Oregon have licensed geotechnical engineering specialties. The Academy of Geo-Professionals (AGP) began issuing Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineering (D.GE) certification in 2008. State governments will typically license engineers who have graduated from an ABET accredited school, passed the Fundamentals of Engineering examination, completed several years of work experience under the supervision of a licensed Professional Engineer, and passed the Professional Engineering examination.
In geotechnical engineering, soils are considered a three-phase material composed of: rock or mineral particles, water and air. The voids of a soil, the spaces in between mineral particles, contain the water and air.
The engineering properties of soils are affected by four main factors: the predominant size of the mineral particles, the type of mineral particles, the grain size distribution, and the relative quantities of mineral, water and air present in the soil matrix. Fine particles (fines) are defined as particles less than 0.075 mm in diameter.
Some of the important properties of soils that are used by geotechnical engineers to analyze site conditions and design earthworks, retaining structures, and foundations are:
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Geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists perform geotechnical investigations to obtain information on the physical properties of soil and rock underlying (and sometimes adjacent to) a site to design earthworks and foundations for proposed structures, and for the repair of distress to earthworks and structures caused by subsurface conditions. A geotechnical investigation will include surface exploration and subsurface exploration of a site. Sometimes, geophysical methods are used to obtain data about sites. Subsurface exploration usually involves in-situ testing (two common examples of in-situ tests are the standard penetration test and cone penetration test). In addition site investigation will often include subsurface sampling and laboratory testing of the soil samples retrieved. The digging of test pits and trenching (particularly for locating faults and slide planes) may also be used to learn about soil conditions at depth. Large diameter borings are rarely used due to safety concerns and expense but are sometimes used to allow a geologist or engineer to be lowered into the borehole for direct visual and manual examination of the soil and rock stratigraphy.
A variety of soil samplers exists to meet the needs of different engineering projects. The standard penetration test (SPT), which uses a thick-walled split spoon sampler, is the most common way to collect disturbed samples. Piston samplers, employing a thin-walled tube, are most commonly used for the collection of less disturbed samples. More advanced methods, such as ground freezing and the Sherbrooke block sampler, are superior, but even more expensive.
Atterberg limits tests, water content measurements, and grain size analysis, for example, may be performed on disturbed samples obtained from thick-walled soil samplers. Properties such as shear strength, stiffness hydraulic conductivity, and coefficient of consolidation may be significantly altered by sample disturbance. To measure these properties in the laboratory, high-quality sampling is required. Common tests to measure the strength and stiffness include the triaxial shear and unconfined compression test.
Surface exploration can include geologic mapping, geophysical methods, and photogrammetry; or it can be as simple as an engineer walking around to observe the physical conditions at the site. Geologic mapping and interpretation of geomorphology are typically completed in consultation with a geologist or engineering geologist.
Geophysical exploration is also sometimes used. Geophysical techniques used for subsurface exploration include measurement of seismic waves (pressure, shear, and Rayleigh waves), surface-wave methods and/or downhole methods, and electromagnetic surveys (magnetometer, resistivity, and ground-penetrating radar).
A building's foundation transmits loads from buildings and other structures to the earth. Geotechnical engineers design foundations based on the load characteristics of the structure and the properties of the soils and/or bedrock at the site. In general, geotechnical engineers:
The primary considerations for foundation support are bearing capacity, settlement, and ground movement beneath the foundations. Bearing capacity is the ability of the site soils to support the loads imposed by buildings or structures. Settlement occurs under all foundations in all soil conditions, though lightly loaded structures or rock sites may experience negligible settlements. For heavier structures or softer sites, both overall settlement relative to unbuilt areas or neighboring buildings, and differential settlement under a single structure can be concerns. Of particular concern is a settlement which occurs over time, as immediate settlement can usually be compensated for during construction. Ground movement beneath a structure's foundations can occur due to shrinkage or swell of expansive soils due to climatic changes, frost expansion of soil, melting of permafrost, slope instability, or other causes. All these factors must be considered during the design of foundations.
Many building codes specify basic foundation design parameters for simple conditions, frequently varying by jurisdiction, but such design techniques are normally limited to certain types of construction and certain types of sites and are frequently very conservative.
In areas of shallow bedrock, most foundations may bear directly on bedrock; in other areas, the soil may provide sufficient strength for the support of structures. In areas of deeper bedrock with soft overlying soils, deep foundations are used to support structures directly on the bedrock; in areas where bedrock is not economically available, stiff "bearing layers" are used to support deep foundations instead.
Shallow foundations are a type of foundation that transfers the building load to the very near the surface, rather than to a subsurface layer. Shallow foundations typically have a depth to width ratio of less than 1.
Footings (often called "spread footings" because they spread the load) are structural elements which transfer structure loads to the ground by direct areal contact. Footings can be isolated footings for point or column loads or strip footings for wall or another long (line) loads. Footings are normally constructed from reinforced concrete cast directly onto the soil and are typically embedded into the ground to penetrate through the zone of frost movement and/or to obtain additional bearing capacity.
A variant on spread footings is to have the entire structure bear on a single slab of concrete underlying the entire area of the structure. Slabs must be thick enough to provide sufficient rigidity to spread the bearing loads somewhat uniformly and to minimize differential settlement across the foundation. In some cases, flexure is allowed and the building is constructed to tolerate small movements of the foundation instead. For small structures, like single-family houses, the slab may be less than 300 mm thick; for larger structures, the foundation slab may be several meters thick.
Slab foundations can be either slab-on-grade foundations or embedded foundations, typically in buildings with basements. Slab-on-grade foundations must be designed to allow for potential ground movement due to changing soil conditions.
Deep foundations are used for structures or heavy loads when shallow foundations cannot provide adequate capacity, due to size and structural limitations. They may also be used to transfer building loads past weak or compressible soil layers. While shallow foundations rely solely on the bearing capacity of the soil beneath them, deep foundations can rely on end bearing resistance, frictional resistance along their length, or both in developing the required capacity. Geotechnical engineers use specialized tools, such as the cone penetration test, to estimate the amount of skin and end bearing resistance available in the subsurface.
There are many types of deep foundations including piles, drilled shafts, caissons, piers, and earth stabilized columns. Large buildings such as skyscrapers typically require deep foundations. For example, the Jin Mao Tower in China uses tubular steel piles about 1m (3.3 feet) driven to a depth of 83.5m (274 feet) to support its weight.
In buildings that are constructed and found to undergo settlement, underpinning piles can be used to stabilize the existing building.
There are three ways to place piles for a deep foundation. They can be driven, drilled, or installed by the use of an auger. Driven piles are extended to their necessary depths with the application of external energy in the same way a nail is hammered. There are four typical hammers used to drive such piles: drop hammers, diesel hammers, hydraulic hammers, and air hammers. Drop hammers simply drop a heavy weight onto the pile to drive it, while diesel hammers use a single-cylinder diesel engine to force piles through the Earth. Similarly, hydraulic and air hammers supply energy to piles through hydraulic and air forces. The energy imparted from a hammerhead varies with the type of hammer chosen and can be as high as a million-foot pounds for large scale diesel hammers, a very common hammerhead used in practice. Piles are made of a variety of material including steel, timber, and concrete. Drilled piles are created by first drilling a hole to the appropriate depth, and filling it with concrete. Drilled piles can typically carry more load than driven piles, simply due to a larger diameter pile. The auger method of pile installation is similar to drilled pile installation, but concrete is pumped into the hole as the auger is being removed.
A retaining wall is a structure that holds back earth. Retaining walls stabilize soil and rock from downslope movement or erosion and provide support for vertical or near-vertical grade changes. Cofferdams and bulkheads, structures to hold back water, are sometimes also considered retaining walls.
The primary geotechnical concern in design and installation of retaining walls is that the weight of the retained material is creates lateral earth pressure behind the wall, which can cause the wall to deform or fail. The lateral earth pressure depends on the height of the wall, the density of the soil, the strength of the soil, and the amount of allowable movement of the wall. This pressure is smallest at the top and increases toward the bottom in a manner similar to hydraulic pressure, and tends to push the wall away from the backfill. Groundwater behind the wall that is not dissipated by a drainage system causes an additional horizontal hydraulic pressure on the wall.
Gravity walls depend on the size and weight of the wall mass to resist pressures from behind. Gravity walls will often have a slight setback, or batter, to improve wall stability. For short, landscaping walls, gravity walls made from dry-stacked (mortarless) stone or segmental concrete units (masonry units) are commonly used.
Earlier in the 20th century, taller retaining walls were often gravity walls made from large masses of concrete or stone. Today, taller retaining walls are increasingly built as composite gravity walls such as geosynthetic or steel-reinforced backfill soil with precast facing; gabions (stacked steel wire baskets filled with rocks), crib walls (cells built up log cabin style from precast concrete or timber and filled with soil or free-draining gravel) or soil-nailed walls (soil reinforced in place with steel and concrete rods).
For "reinforced-soil gravity walls", the soil reinforcement is placed in horizontal layers throughout the height of the wall. Commonly, the soil reinforcement is "geogrid", a high-strength polymer mesh, that provides tensile strength to hold the soil together. The wall face is often of precast, segmental concrete units that can tolerate some differential movement. The reinforced soil's mass, along with the facing, becomes the gravity wall. The reinforced mass must be built large enough to retain the pressures from the soil behind it. Gravity walls usually must be a minimum of 30 to 40 percent as deep (thick) as the height of the wall and may have to be larger if there is a slope or surcharge on the wall.
Prior to the introduction of modern reinforced-soil gravity walls, cantilevered walls were the most common type of taller retaining wall. Cantilevered walls are made from a relatively thin stem of steel-reinforced, cast-in-place concrete or mortared masonry (often in the shape of an inverted T). These walls cantilever loads (like a beam) to a large, structural footing; converting horizontal pressures from behind the wall to vertical pressures on the ground below. Sometimes cantilevered walls are buttressed on the front, or include a counterfort on the back, to improve their stability against high loads. Buttresses are short wing walls at right angles to the main trend of the wall. These walls require rigid concrete footings below seasonal frost depth. This type of wall uses much less material than a traditional gravity wall.
Cantilever walls resist lateral pressures by friction at the base of the wall and/or "passive earth pressure", the tendency of the soil to resist lateral movement.
Basements are a form of cantilever walls, but the forces on the basement walls are greater than on conventional walls because the basement wall is not free to move.
Shoring of temporary excavations frequently requires a wall design that does not extend laterally beyond the wall, so shoring extends below the planned base of the excavation. Common methods of shoring are the use of "sheet piles" or "soldier beams and lagging". Sheet piles are a form of driven piling using thin interlocking sheets of steel to obtain a continuous barrier in the ground and are driven prior to excavation. Soldier beams are constructed of wide flange steel H sections spaced about 2–3 m apart, driven prior to excavation. As the excavation proceeds, horizontal timber or steel sheeting (lagging) is inserted behind the H pile flanges.
The use of underground space requires excavation, which may cause large and dangerous displacement of soil mass around the excavation. Since the space for slope excavation is limited in urban areas, cutting is done vertically. Retaining walls are made to prevent unsafe soil displacements around excavations. Diaphragm walls are a type of retaining walls that are very stiff and generally watertight. The horizontal movements of diaphragm walls are usually prevented by lateral supports. Diaphragm walls are expensive walls, but they save time and space and are also safe, so are widely used in urban deep excavations.
In some cases, the lateral support which can be provided by the shoring wall alone is insufficient to resist the planned lateral loads; in this case, additional support is provided by walers or tie-backs. Walers are structural elements that connect across the excavation so that the loads from the soil on either side of the excavation are used to resist each other, or which transfer horizontal loads from the shoring wall to the base of the excavation. Tie-backs are steel tendons drilled into the face of the wall which extends beyond the soil which is applying pressure to the wall, to provide additional lateral resistance to the wall.
Ground Improvement is a technique that improves the engineering properties of the treated soil mass. Usually, the properties modified are shear strength, stiffness, and permeability. Ground improvement has developed into a sophisticated tool to support foundations for a wide variety of structures. Properly applied, i.e. after giving due consideration to the nature of the ground being improved and the type and sensitivity of the structures being built, ground improvement often reduces direct costs and saves time.
Slope stability is the potential of soil covered slopes to withstand and undergo movement. Stability is determined by the balance of shear stress and shear strength. A previously stable slope may be initially affected by preparatory factors, making the slope conditionally unstable. Triggering factors of a slope failure can be climatic events that can then make a slope actively unstable, leading to mass movements. Mass movements can be caused by increases in shear stress, such as loading, lateral pressure, and transient forces. Alternatively, shear strength may be decreased by weathering, changes in pore water pressure, and organic material.
Several modes of failure for earth slopes include falls, topples, slides, and flows. In slopes with coarse-grained soil or rocks, falls typically occur as the rapid descent of rocks and other loose slope material. A slope topples when a large column of soil tilts over its vertical axis at failure. Typical slope stability analysis considers sliding failures, categorized mainly as rotational slides or translational slides. As implied by the name, rotational slides fail along a generally curved surface, while translational slides fail along a more planar surface. A slope failing as flow would resemble a fluid flowing downhill.
Stability analysis is needed for the design of engineered slopes and for estimating the risk of slope failure in natural or designed slopes. A common assumption is that a slope consists of a layer of soil sitting on top of a rigid base. The mass and the base are assumed to interact via friction. The interface between the mass and the base can be planar, curved, or have some other complex geometry. The goal of a slope stability analysis is to determine the conditions under which the mass will slip relative to the base and lead to slope failure.
If the interface between the mass and the base of a slope has a complex geometry, slope stability analysis is difficult and numerical solution methods are required. Typically, the exact geometry of the interface is not known and a simplified interface geometry is assumed. Finite slopes require three-dimensional models to be analyzed. To keep the problem simple, most slopes are analyzed assuming that the slopes are infinitely wide and can, therefore, be represented by two-dimensional models. A slope can be drained or undrained. The undrained condition is used in the calculations to produce conservative estimates of risk.
A popular stability analysis approach is based on principles pertaining to the limit equilibrium concept. This method analyzes a finite or infinite slope as if it were about to fail along its sliding failure surface. Equilibrium stresses are calculated along the failure plane and compared to the soils shear strength as determined by Terzaghi's shear strength equation. Stability is ultimately decided by a factor of safety equal to the ratio of shear strength to the equilibrium stresses along the failure surface. A factor of safety greater than one generally implies a stable slope, failure of which should not occur assuming the slope is undisturbed. A factor of safety of 1.5 for static conditions is commonly used in practice.
"Offshore" (or "marine") "geotechnical engineering" is concerned with foundation design for human-made structures in the sea, away from the coastline (in opposition to "onshore" or "nearshore"). Oil platforms, artificial islands and submarine pipelines are examples of such structures. There are a number of significant differences between onshore and offshore geotechnical engineering. Notably, ground improvement (on the seabed) and site investigation are more expensive, the offshore structures are exposed to a wider range of geohazards, and the environmental and financial consequences are higher in case of failure. Offshore structures are exposed to various environmental loads, notably wind, waves and currents. These phenomena may affect the integrity or the serviceability of the structure and its foundation during its operational lifespan – they need to be taken into account in offshore design.
In subsea geotechnical engineering, seabed materials are considered a two-phase material composed of 1) rock or mineral particles and 2) water. Structures may be fixed in place in the seabed—as is the case for piers, jettys and fixed-bottom wind turbines—or maybe a floating structure that remains roughly fixed relative to its geotechnical anchor point. Undersea mooring of human-engineered floating structures include a large number of offshore oil and gas platforms and, since 2008, a few floating wind turbines. Two common types of engineered design for anchoring floating structures include tension-leg and catenary loose mooring systems. "Tension
leg mooring systems have vertical tethers under tension providing large restoring moments in pitch and roll. Catenary mooring systems provide station keeping for an offshore structure yet provide little stiffness at low tensions."
Geosynthetics are a type of plastic polymer products used in geotechnical engineering that improve engineering performance while reducing costs. This includes geotextiles, geogrids, geomembranes, geocells, and geocomposites. The synthetic nature of the products makes them suitable for use in the ground where high levels of durability are required; their main functions include drainage, filtration, reinforcement, separation, and containment. Geosynthetics are available in a wide range of forms and materials, each to suit a slightly different end-use, although they are frequently used together. These products have a wide range of applications and are currently used in many civil and geotechnical engineering applications including roads, airfields, railroads, embankments, piled embankments, retaining structures, reservoirs, canals, dams, landfills, bank protection and coastal engineering.
In geotechnical engineering, during the construction of earth structures (dams and tunnels, for example) the observational method is a continuous, managed and integrated process of design, construction control, monitoring and review enabling appropriate, previously-defined modifications to be incorporated during (or after) construction. All these aspects must be demonstrably robust. The objective is to achieve greater overall economy, without compromising safety.
The observational method was proposed by Karl Terzaghi and discussed in a paper by Ralph B. Peck (1969) in an effort to reduce the costs during construction incurred by designing earth structures based on the most-unfavorable assumptions (in other words, geological conditions, soil engineering properties and so on). Instead, the design is based on the most-probable conditions rather than the most-unfavorable. Gaps in the available information are filled by observations: geotechnical-instrumentation measurements (for example, inclinometers and piezometers) and geotechnical site investigation (for example, borehole drilling and a CPT). These observations aid in assessing the behavior of the structure during construction, which can then be modified in accordance with the findings. The method may be described as "learn-as-you-go".
The observational method may be described as follows:
The observational method is suitable for construction which has already begun when an unexpected development occurs, or when a failure or accident threatens or has already occurred. The method is not suitable for projects whose design cannot be altered during construction.
The most serious blunder in applying the observational method is failing to select (in advance) an appropriate course of action for all foreseeable deviations (disclosed by observation) from those assumed in the design. The engineer must devise solutions to all problems which could arise under the least-favorable conditions. If he or she cannot solve these hypothetical problems (even if the probability of their occurrence is very low), he or she must revert to a design based on the least-favorable conditions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12306 |
Gregory Chaitin
Gregory John Chaitin ( ; born 25 June 1947) is an Argentine-American mathematician and computer scientist. Beginning in the late 1960s, Chaitin made contributions to algorithmic information theory and metamathematics, in particular a computer-theoretic result equivalent to Gödel's incompleteness theorem. He is considered to be one of the founders of what is today known as algorithmic (Solomonoff-Kolmogorov-Chaitin, Kolmogorov or program-size) complexity together with Andrei Kolmogorov and Ray Solomonoff. Along with the works of e.g. Solomonoff, Kolmogorov, Martin-Löf, and Leonid Levin, algorithmic information theory became a foundational part of theoretical computer science, information theory, and mathematical logic. It is a common subject in several computer science curricula. Besides computer scientists, Chaitin's work draws attention of many philosophers and mathematicians to fundamental problems in mathematical creativity and digital philosophy.
He attended the Bronx High School of Science and City College of New York, where he (still in his teens) developed the theory that led to his independent discovery of algorithmic complexity.
Chaitin has defined Chaitin's constant Ω, a real number whose digits are equidistributed and which is sometimes informally described as an expression of the probability that a random program will halt. Ω has the mathematical property that it is definable, with asymptotic approximations from below (but not from above), but not computable.
Chaitin is also the originator of using graph coloring to do register allocation in compiling, a process known as Chaitin's algorithm.
He was formerly a researcher at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York and remains an emeritus researcher. He has written more than 10 books that have been translated to about 15 languages. He is today interested in questions of metabiology and information-theoretic formalizations of the theory of evolution.
Chaitin also writes about philosophy, especially metaphysics and philosophy of mathematics (particularly about epistemological matters in mathematics). In metaphysics, Chaitin claims that algorithmic information theory is the key to solving problems in the field of biology (obtaining a formal definition of 'life', its origin and evolution) and neuroscience (the problem of consciousness and the study of the mind).
In recent writings, he defends a position known as digital philosophy. In the epistemology of mathematics, he claims that his findings in mathematical logic and algorithmic information theory show there are "mathematical facts that are true for no reason, that are true by accident". Chaitin proposes that mathematicians must abandon any hope of proving those mathematical facts and adopt a quasi-empirical methodology.
In 1995 he was given the degree of doctor of science "honoris causa" by the University of Maine. In 2002 he was given the title of honorary professor by the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, where his parents were born and where Chaitin spent part of his youth. In 2007 he was given a Leibniz Medal by Wolfram Research. In 2009 he was given the degree of doctor of philosophy "honoris causa" by the National University of Córdoba. He was formerly a researcher at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and is now a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12308 |
Goran Bregović
Goran Bregović (, born 22 March 1950) is a Bosnian recording artist. He is one of the most internationally known modern musicians and composers of the Slavic-speaking countries in the Balkans, and is one of the few former Yugoslav musicians who has performed at major international venues such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and L'Olympia.
A Sarajevo native, Bregović started out with Kodeksi and Jutro, but rose to prominence as the main creative mind and lead guitarist of Bijelo Dugme, widely considered as one of the most popular recording acts ever to exist in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and one of the most important bands of the Yugoslav rock scene. After Bijelo Dugme split up, he started composing film scores. Among his better known film scores are three of Emir Kusturica's films ("Time of the Gypsies", "Arizona Dream", and "Underground"). For Time of the Gypsies, Bregović won a Golden Arena Award at the Pula Film Festival in 1990, among other awards. He had also composed for the Academy Award-nominated film "La Reine Margot" and the Cannes-entered film "The Serpent's Kiss".
Bregović, during his five-decade long career, has composed for critically acclaimed singers, including Sezen Aksu, Kayah, Iggy Pop, Šaban Bajramović, George Dalaras and Cesária Évora.
Born in Sarajevo, PR Bosnia-Herzegovina, FPR Yugoslavia to a Croat father Franjo Bregović and Serb mother Borka Perišić, Goran grew up with two younger siblings — sister Dajana and brother Predrag. Their father was from the Croatian region of Zagorje, specifically Sveti Petar Čvrstec village near Križevci, while their mother was born in Virovitica to parents that had shortly before her birth arrived in the nearby village of Čemernica, settling there from the village of Kazanci near Gacko in eastern Herzegovina. Goran's maternal grandfather, fought in the Royal Serbian Army at the Salonica Front during World War I and as a reward received land in Slavonia where he soon moved his family.
Goran's parents met shortly after World War II in Virovitica where his mother Borka lived and his father Franjo (who fought on the Partisan side during the war) attended a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) military school. Franjo Bregović soon got his first job, teaching ballistics at a military school in Sarajevo, so the couple that at the time moved there. Goran, their first child, was born in 1950 in Sarajevo.
Goran was 10 years old when his parents divorced. In later interviews, he mentioned his father's alcoholism as the reason for the breakdown of their marriage. Soon after the split, his father moved to Livno, taking Goran's younger brother Predrag with him while Goran remained living with his mother in Sarajevo, visiting his father and brother every summer in Livno. Their father soon retired and eventually moved back to his home village in Zagorje while Goran's brother Predrag later moved back to Sarajevo for university studies.
Goran played violin in a music school. However, deemed untalented, he was thrown out during second grade. His musical education was thus reduced to what his friend taught him until Goran's mother bought him his first guitar in his early teens. Bregović wanted to enroll in a fine arts high school, but his aunt told his mother that it was supposedly full of homosexuals, which precipitated his mother's decision to send him to a technical (traffic) school. As a compromise for not getting his way, she allowed him to grow his hair long.
Upon entering high school, teenage Bregović joined the school band Izohipse where he began on bass guitar. Soon, however, he was kicked out of that school too (this time for misbehavior – he crashed into a school-owned Mercedes-Benz). Bregović then entered grammar school and its school band Beštije (again as a bass guitar player). When he was 16, his mother left him and moved to the coast, meaning that other than having a few relatives to rely on, he mostly had to take care of himself. He did that by playing folk music in a kafana in Konjic, working on construction sites, and selling newspapers.
Spotting him at a Beštije gig in 1969, Željko Bebek invited eighteen-year-old Bregović to play bass guitar in his band Kodeksi, which Goran gladly accepted.
Eventually, Kodeksi shifted setup so Bregović moved from bass to lead guitar, resulting in Kodeksi having the following line-up during summer 1970: Goran Bregović, Željko Bebek, Zoran Redžić and Milić Vukašinović. All of them would eventually become members of Bijelo Dugme at some point in the future. At the time, they were largely influenced by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. During the fall of 1970, this resulted in the departure of Željko Bebek, who (both as rhythm guitar player and singer) got phased out of the band. At the end of the year, Goran's mother and Zoran's brother arrived in Naples and took them back to Sarajevo.
Then, in the autumn of 1971, Bregović enrolled at the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Philosophy, studying philosophy and sociology. He soon quit, however. At the same time, Milić Vukašinović left for London, so Bregović formed a band with Nuno Arnautalić called Jutro (Morning), which Redžić soon joined as well. Over the next few years, the band changed lineups frequently, and on 1 January 1974 modified its name to Bijelo Dugme ("White Button").
From 1974 until 1989, Bregović played lead guitar and was the main creative force behind Bijelo Dugme ("White Button"). For years they stood as one of the most popular bands in SFR Yugoslavia. From the get-go, he established himself as the band's undisputed leader as well as its public face in the Yugoslav print and electronic media.
Over the band's fifteen-year run, in addition to their enormous popularity at home, led by Bregović, Bijelo Dugme made several attempts at expanding their prominence abroad. In late 1975, while recording their second album "Šta bi dao da si na mom mjestu" in London, they additionally recorded an English language track called "Playing the Part" (translated version of their Serbo-Croatian track "Šta bi dao da si na mom mjestu", itself an uncredited cover of Argent's 1972 track "I Am the Dance of Ages") that was packaged as a promo single for English music journalists. Never officially released for mass distribution, the track quickly fell into oblivion.
Bijelo Dugme had somewhat better luck with touring abroad, which almost entirely took place in the Eastern Bloc countries as part of their respective cultural exchange programs with SFR Yugoslavia. The band briefly toured the Polish People's Republic during April 1977, a 9-concert leg as part of the tour in support of their third album "Eto! Baš hoću!". During their 10-day Polish tour, the band played two concerts on back-to-back nights in Warsaw, followed by Olsztyn, Zielona Góra, three shows on back-to-back days in Poznań, and finally two shows on the same day in Kalisz. While in Poland, they also shot a 30-minute television special for TVP3 Katowice, a regional Katowice-based branch of the state-owned Telewizja Polska. Later that year, following the tour that culminated in a triumphant open-air concert at Hajdučka Česma in Belgrade, Bregović went to serve his mandatory Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) stint. Assigned to a unit based in Niš, he would spend the following year away from music, a period during which the band was on hiatus.
During early 1982, the band played in Innsbruck, Austria as representatives of the city of Sarajevo and SFR Yugoslavia, the site of the upcoming Winter Olympics, as part of an event bringing together past and future Winter Olympic hosts. On return to Yugoslavia from Innsbruck, the band had its equipment confiscated by the Yugoslav customs after undeclared musical equipment was found among their luggage. Some six months after that, during summer 1982, Bijelo Dugme went on a tour of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, playing 41 shows throughout the country from 15 July until 31 August 1982. Despite the tour in support of their latest studio album "Doživjeti stotu" being over for more than a year, and having no new material to promote, the band reportedly accepted the tour of Bulgaria in order to recover some of the funds lost after getting fined by the Yugoslav customs over the attempt to bring undeclared musical equipment into the country.
In summer 1985, following a decade of continuous rejection for tours of the Soviet Union by the cultural attaché of the Soviet embassy in Yugoslavia, Bijelo Dugme was finally scheduled to play in Moscow on 28 July 1985 at a huge open-air concert at Gorky Park on the same bill with another Yugoslav act Bajaga i Instruktori as part of the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students. Ahead of the show, Bregović decided to take the band to Budva for two weeks in order to practice for the Moscow appearance, an indication of the seriousness with which they approached this particular concert. However, due to overcrowding and safety concerns, the event got interrupted around 10 pm after the Bajaga i Instruktori set before Bijelo Dugme even took the stage. Instead at Gorky Park, Bijelo Dugme played the Dynamo Arena on the Moscow outskirts two days later at noon on 30 July 1985.
In between Bijelo Dugme's studio releases and tours, in-demand Bregović worked on various side projects in Yugoslavia. These included releasing a solo record in 1976 and composing two movie soundtracks — 1977's "Leptirov oblak" and 1979's "Lične stvari".
He also tried his hand at music production, producing Idoli's 1980 seven-inch single "Maljčiki" / "Retko te viđam sa devojkama" and co-producing, alongside Kornelije Kovač, Zdravko Čolić's fourth studio album "Malo pojačaj radio" in 1981.
Bregović furthermore made guest appearances on guitar on various studio recordings by different Yugoslav pop, folk, and rock acts: Neda Ukraden's track "Tri djevojke" (together with Bijelo Dugme bandmates Vlado Pravdić and Zoran Redžić) off her 1976 album "Ko me to od nekud doziva", Hanka Paldum's track "Zbog tebe" off her 1980 album "Čežnja", "Ne da/ne nego i/ili" track by Kozmetika off their 1983 eponymous album, Valentino's track "Pazi na ritam" off their 1983 debut album "ValentiNo1", Riblja Čorba's track "Disko mišić" off their 1985 album "Istina", Merlin's 1986 album "Teško meni sa tobom (a još teže bez tebe)", Mjesečari track "Gdje izlaziš ovih dana" off their 1988 album "One šetaju od 1 do 2", and Piloti track "Tiho, tiho" off their 1990 album "Nek te Bog čuva za mene".
During his time leading Bijelo Dugme, Bregović also became involved in the financial and organizational side of the music business. In 1984, dissatisfied with their respective financial terms at the state-owned Jugoton label, Bijelo Dugme bandleader Bregović and one of Yugoslavia's biggest pop stars Zdravko Čolić got together to establish their own music label Kamarad, which, via a deal with state-owned Diskoton and later another newly-established private label Komuna, would end up co-releasing all of Bijelo Dugme's subsequent studio albums including three of Čolić's studio albums from 1984 until 1990. Considered an unusual move at the time in a socialist country with nearly across-the-board public ownership that had just recently began allowing certain modes of private entrepreneurship, starting a privately-owned record label, combined with Bregović's and Čolić's high public profile in Yugoslavia, got them both a lot of additional attention in the country's press. The company was registered in Radomlje near Domžale in SR Slovenia. Due to not having its own production facilities and distribution network, the new label entered into a co-releasing agreement with Diskoton thus essentially functioning as the legal entity that holds the licensing rights to the works of Bijelo Dugme and Zdravko Čolić. Kamarad's debut co-release was Čolić's 1984 studio album "Ti si mi u krvi" followed by Bijelo Dugme's self-titled studio album later that year with new vocalist Mladen "Tifa" Vojičić. The label would also co-release many of Dugme's and Čolić's later 'best of' compilations in addition to Bregović's movie soundtrack albums as well as Vesna Zmijanac's 1992 album "Ako me umiriš sad".
At the time Bijelo Dugme was falling apart, Goran entered the world of film music. His first project was Emir Kusturica's "Time of the Gypsies" (1989). This turned out to be a great success (both the film and the soundtrack). Goran and Emir's collaboration continued, and Goran composed music (which was performed by Iggy Pop) for Emir's next film "Arizona Dream" (1993). During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Goran lived in Paris, but he also lived in Belgrade. His next major project, music for Patrice Chéreau's "Queen Margot" was a great success as well, and as a result, the film won two awards on the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. The next year's Golden Palm award went to "Underground", for which Goran Bregović composed the music.
In 1997, he worked with Turkish singer Sezen Aksu on her album "Düğün ve Cenaze" ("Wedding and Funeral"). After that album, he continued making composite albums with other musicians that were based on his music and singers' lyrics.
He made an album with George Dalaras in 1999 named "Thessaloniki – Yannena with Two Canvas Shoes". In the same year, Bregović recorded an album called "Kayah i Bregović" (Kayah and Bregović) with popular Polish singer Kayah which sold over 700,000 copies in Poland (seven times platinum record).
In 2001, he recorded another album with another Polish singer, Krzysztof Krawczyk, titled "Daj mi drugie życie" ("Give Me Second Life").
In 2005, Bregović took part in three large farewell concerts of Bijelo Dugme.
A number of works created by Bregović can be heard on the soundtrack to the 2006 film ", most notably "Đurđevdan". The film itself actually features more Bregović samples than the soundtrack.
Two musical numbers by Bregović, "Ne Siam Kurve Tuke Sijam Prostitutke," and "Gas, Gas" were featured in the soundtrack of the 2012 Brazilian telenovela, "Salve Jorge", on the television network Rede Globo.
For many years Bregović performed with a large ensemble of musicians: a brass band, bagpipes, a string ensemble, a tuxedo-clad all-male choir from Belgrade, women wearing traditional Bulgarian costumes, and Roma singers make up his 40-piece band and orchestra.
Since 1998, and until about 2012, Bregović has been performing his music mainly in the form of concerts all over the world with his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra. This consists of 10 people (in the small version) or 37 (in the large version, although, in some instances, this number varies, depending on participants from the host country).
Since 2012 the orchestra consists of 9 people (in the small version) or 19 (in the large version), as it played in New York at the Lincoln Center on 15 and 16 July 2016.
The small orchestra consists of Muharem "Muki" Rexhepi (vocals, drums), Bokan Stanković (first trumpet), Dragić Velićović (second trumpet), Stojan Dimov (sax, clarinet), Aleksandar Rajković (first trombone, glockenspiel), Miloš Mihajlović (second trombone), female vocals Bulgarian singers Daniela Radkova-Aleksandrova and Lyudmila Radkova-Traykova, and Goran himself.
The large orchestra includes also string quartet: Ivana Mateijć (first violin), Bojana Jovanović-Jotić (second violin), Saša Mirković (viola), and Tatjana Jovanović-Mirković, as well as sextet of male voices: Dejan Pesić (first tenor), Milan Panić and Ranko Jović (second tenors), Aleksandar Novaković (baritone), Dušan Ljubinković and Siniša Dutina (basses).
In previous years, in the orchestra the following musicians have performed: Ogi Radivojević and Alen Ademović (vocals, drums), Dalibor Lukić (second trumpet), Dejan Manigodić (tuba), Vaska Jankovska (vocals).
In 2013, as part of his Asia-Pacific tour (including Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong), Bregović performed with a string quartet, a male choir, Bulgarian singers and half of a brass band. The other part of the brass band – including bass and percussions – were being played from his computer. In 2017, he was a guest artist on Puerto Rican rapper Residente's album "Residente" on the song "El Futuro Es Nuestro" (Spanish for "The Future is Ours").
During the Eurovision 2008 final in Belgrade Arena, Serbia, he had a small concert.
He also composed the Serbian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010; 'Ovo Je Balkan' sung by Milan Stanković.
Bregović's compositions, extending Balkan musical inspirations to innovative extremes, draw upon European classicism and Balkan rhythms.
Bregović's music carries: Yugoslav, Bulgarian, Romani, Greek, Romanian, Albanian, Italian, Turkish and Polish themes and is a fusion of popular music, with traditional polyphonic music from the Balkans, tango and brass bands.
During the early 1970s, Bregović's first child, daughter Željka, was born out of wedlock from a brief relationship with a Sarajevo-based dancer named Jasenka. Željka lives in Austria where she gave birth to Goran's granddaughter, Bianca.
With Bijelo Dugme's mid-1970s breakout commercial success and Bregović's increased public profile in Yugoslavia, details of his lifestyle and romantic relationships also became fodder for the country's press. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, various Yugoslav print media outlets documented his high-profile relationship with Serbian model Ljiljana Tica who reportedly inspired his song "Bitanga i princeza" off Bijelo Dugme's eponymous 1979 album.
In 1993, Bregović married his long-time girlfriend Dženana Sudžuka, a Bosniak model. The wedding ceremony held in Paris featured film director Emir Kusturica as the groom's best man and longtime Bijelo Dugme backing vocal Amila Sulejmanović as the bride's maid of honour.
The couple has three daughters: Ema (born in March 1995), Una (February 2002), and Lulu (May 2004).
Bregović owns real-estate all over the world, but divides most of his time between Belgrade due to most of his musical collaborators residing in Serbia and Paris where his spouse lives with their three daughters. In Belgrade, Bregović owns multiple properties in the upscale Senjak neighbourhood.
On 12 June 2008, fifty-eight-year-old Bregović injured his spine, falling from a tree. He fell four meters from a cherry tree in the garden of his home in Senjak, a Belgrade district, breaking vertebrae. However, according to the doctors, his condition was "stable without neurological complications." After surgery, he made a quick recovery and on 8 and 9 July, he held two big concerts in New York City, where for more than two hours each night, he proved his performance skills had not suffered from the accident.
Bregović's siblings, brother Predrag and sister Dajana, live in New York City and Split, respectively.
During mid-1971, while studying at the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Philosophy, twenty-one-year-old Bregović got accepted into the Yugoslav Communist League (SKJ), the only party in SFR Yugoslavia's political system.
Throughout the mid-to-late 1970s, by now a famous rock musician in SFR Yugoslavia, Bregović often publicly expressed his support for communism and the importance of being active in the party.
In 1990, ahead of the general elections in the SR Bosnia and Herzegovina constituent unit of SFR Yugoslavia, Bregović publicly expressed his support for Ante Marković's Union of Reform Forces of Yugoslavia (SRSJ). He furthermore participated in their campaign and contributed to it in creative capacity. Despite securing public support and endorsements from many prominent public figures in SR Bosnia and Herzegovina such as Emir Kusturica, Nele Karajlić, Branko Đurić, etc., the party got only 8.9% of the total vote.
In the years following the Yugoslav Wars and the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bregović has described himself as Yugonostalgic. In 2009, he stated: "Yugoslavia is the intersection of so many worlds: Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim. With music, I don't have to represent anyone, except myself – because I speak the first language of the world, the one everyone understands: music."
Bregović has frequently been accused of plagiarizing other performers' works as well as republishing his own previously released material as new.
In the mid-2000s, French singer-songwriter Enrico Macias reportedly sued Bregović over Bregović's song "In the Deathcar" off the "Arizona Dream" soundtrack album, claiming it plagiarized Macias' song "Solenzara". Media outlets in the Balkans reported in 2015 that the French court ruled in Macias' favour, ordering Bregović to pay Macias €1 million in damages.
In response, via a press release distributed to media outlets throughout the Balkans, Bregović's representative Svetlana Strunić claimed that there never was a plagiarism court process against Bregović in France.
In March 2015, Bregović performed in a concert in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia the previous year. The following month, the Life Festival in Oświęcim, Poland canceled an appearance by Bregović, saying that his statements were "contrary to the values cherished by the Life Festival founders." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12309 |
Gestation
Gestation is the period of development during the carrying of an embryo or fetus inside viviparous animals. It is typical for mammals, but also occurs for some non-mammals. Mammals during pregnancy can have one or more gestations at the same time, for example in a multiple birth.
The time interval of a gestation is called the "gestation period". In human obstetrics, "gestational age" refers to the fertilization age plus two weeks. This is approximately the duration since the woman's last menstrual period (LMP) began.
In mammals, pregnancy begins when a zygote (fertilized ovum) implants in the female's uterus and ends once the fetus leaves the uterus.
On the main article link above, are average and approximate gestation values ordered by number of days (note: human gestational age is counted from the last menstrual period; for other animals the counting method varies, so these figures could be 14 days off)
Human pregnancy can be divided roughly into three trimesters, each approximately three months long. The first trimester is from the last period through the 13th week, the second trimester is 14th–27th week, and the third trimester is 28th–42nd week. Birth normally occurs at a gestational age of about 40 weeks, though it is common for births to occur from 37 to 42 weeks. From the 9th week of pregnancy (11th week of gestational age), the embryo is called a fetus.
Various factors can come into play in determining the duration of gestation. For humans, male fetuses normally gestate several days longer than females and multiple pregnancies gestate for a shorter period.
A viviparous animal is an animal employing viviparity: the embryo develops inside the body of the mother, as opposed to outside in an egg (oviparity). The mother then gives live birth. The less developed form of viviparity is called ovoviviparity, which, for instance, occurs in most vipers. The more developed form of viviparity is called placental viviparity; mammals are the best example, but it has also evolved independently in other animals, such as in scorpions, some sharks, and in velvet worms. Viviparous offspring live independently and require an external food supply from birth. Certain lizards also employ this method such as the genera "Tiliqua" and "Corucia." The placenta is attached directly to the mother in these lizards which is called viviparous matrotrophy.
Ovoviviparous animals develop within eggs that remain within the mother's body up until they hatch or are about to hatch. This strategy of birth is known as ovoviviparity. It is similar to vivipary in that the embryo develops within the mother's body. Unlike the embryos of viviparous species, ovoviviparous embryos are nourished by the egg yolk rather than by the mother's body. However, the mother's body does provide gas exchange. The young of ovoviviparous amphibians are sometimes born as larvae, and undergo metamorphosis outside the body of the mother.
The fish family Syngnathidae has the unique characteristic whereby females lay their eggs in a brood pouch on the male's chest, and the male incubates the eggs. Fertilization may take place in the pouch or before implantation in the water. Included in Syngnathidae are seahorses, the pipefish, and the weedy and leafy sea dragons. Syngnathidae is the only family in the animal kingdom to which the term "male pregnancy" has been applied. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12312 |
Gamma function
In mathematics, the gamma function (represented by formula_1 the capital letter gamma from the Greek alphabet) is one commonly used extension of the factorial function to complex numbers. The gamma function is defined for all complex numbers except the non-positive integers. For any positive integer formula_2
Derived by Daniel Bernoulli, for complex numbers with a positive real part the gamma function is defined via a convergent improper integral:
The gamma function then is defined as the analytic continuation of this integral function to a meromorphic function that is holomorphic in the whole complex plane except the non-positive integers, where the function has simple poles.
The gamma function has no zeroes, so the reciprocal gamma function formula_5 is an entire function. In fact, the gamma function corresponds to the Mellin transform of the negative exponential function:
Other extensions of the factorial function do exist, but the gamma function is the most popular and useful. It is a component in various probability-distribution functions, and as such it is applicable in the fields of probability and statistics, as well as combinatorics.
The gamma function can be seen as a solution to the following interpolation problem:
A plot of the first few factorials makes clear that such a curve can be drawn, but it would be preferable to have a formula that precisely describes the curve, in which the number of operations does not depend on the size of formula_9. The simple formula for the factorial, formula_11, cannot be used directly for fractional values of formula_9 since it is only valid when is a natural number (or positive integer). There are, relatively speaking, no such simple solutions for factorials; no finite combination of sums, products, powers, exponential functions, or logarithms will suffice to express formula_13; but it is possible to find a general formula for factorials using tools such as integrals and limits from calculus. A good solution to this is the gamma function.
There are infinitely many continuous extensions of the factorial to non-integers: infinitely many curves can be drawn through any set of isolated points. The gamma function is the most useful solution in practice, being analytic (except at the non-positive integers), and it can be defined in several equivalent ways. However, it is not the only analytic function which extends the factorial, as adding to it any analytic function which is zero on the positive integers, such as , will give another function with that property.
A more restrictive property than satisfying the above interpolation is to satisfy the recurrence relation defining a translated version of the factorial function,
for equal to any positive real number. But this would allow for multiplication by any periodic analytic function which evaluates to 1 on the positive integers, such as . One of several ways to finally resolve the ambiguity comes from the Bohr–Mollerup theorem. It states that when the condition that be logarithmically convex (or "super-convex") is added, it uniquely determines for positive, real inputs. From there, the gamma function can be extended to all real and complex values (except the negative integers and zero) by using the unique analytic continuation of .
The notation formula_16 is due to Legendre. If the real part of the complex number is positive (formula_17), then the integral
converges absolutely, and is known as the Euler integral of the second kind. (Euler's integral of the first kind is the beta function.) Using integration by parts, one sees that:
Recognizing that formula_20 as formula_21
We can calculate formula_23
Given that formula_25 and formula_26
for all positive integers . This can be seen as an example of proof by induction.
The identity formula_28 can be used (or, yielding the same result, analytic continuation can be used) to uniquely extend the integral formulation for formula_16 to a meromorphic function defined for all complex numbers , except integers less than or equal to zero. It is this extended version that is commonly referred to as the gamma function.
When seeking to approximate formula_30 for a complex number formula_31, it is effective to first compute formula_32 for some large integer formula_33. Use that to approximate a value for formula_34, and then use the recursion relation formula_35 backwards formula_33 times, to unwind it to an approximation for formula_30. Furthermore, this approximation is exact in the limit as formula_33 goes to infinity.
Specifically, for a fixed integer formula_39, it is the case that
If formula_39 is not an integer then it is not possible to say whether this equation is true because we have not yet (in this section) defined the factorial function for non-integers. However, we do get a unique extension of the factorial function to the non-integers by insisting that this equation continue to hold when the arbitrary integer formula_39 is replaced by an arbitrary complex number formula_31.
Multiplying both sides by formula_30 gives
This infinite product converges for all complex numbers formula_31 except the negative integers, which fail because trying to use the recursion relation formula_48 backwards through the value formula_49 involves a division by zero.
Similarly for the gamma function, the definition as an infinite product due to Euler is valid for all complex numbers formula_31 except the non-positive integers:
By this construction, the gamma function is the unique function that simultaneously satisfies formula_25, formula_53 for all complex numbers formula_31 except the non-positive integers, and formula_55 for all complex numbers formula_31.
The definition for the gamma function due to Weierstrass is also valid for all complex numbers except the non-positive integers:
where formula_58 is the Euler–Mascheroni constant. This is the Hadamard Product of formula_59 in a rewritten form. Indeed, since formula_59 is entire of genus 1 with a simple zero at formula_61, we have the product representation
where the product is over the zeros formula_63 of formula_59. Since formula_65 has simple poles at the non-positive integers, it follows formula_59 has simple zeros at the nonpositive integers, and so the equation above becomes Weierstrass's formula with formula_67 in place of formula_68. The derivation of the constants formula_69 and formula_70 is somewhat technical, but can be accomplished by using some identities involving the Riemann zeta function (see this identity, for instance). See also the Weierstrass factorization theorem.
A representation of the incomplete gamma function in terms of generalized Laguerre polynomials is
which converges for formula_72 and formula_73.
Other important functional equations for the gamma function are Euler's reflection formula
which implies
and the Legendre duplication formula
Since formula_77
the gamma function can be represented as
Integrating by parts formula_33 times yields
which is equal to
This can be rewritten as
Then, using the functional equation of the gamma function, we get
It can be proved that
Then
Euler's reflection formula follows:
The beta function can be represented as
Setting formula_88 yields
After the substitution formula_90 we get
The function formula_92 is even, hence
Now assume
Then
This implies
Since
the Legendre duplication formula follows:
The duplication formula is a special case of the multiplication theorem (See, Eq. 5.5.6)
A simple but useful property, which can be seen from the limit definition, is:
In particular, with , this product is
If the real part is an integer or a half-integer, this can be finitely expressed in closed form:
First, consider the reflection formula applied to formula_103.
Applying the recurrence relation to the second term, we have
which with simple rearrangement gives
Second, consider the reflection formula applied to formula_107.
Formulas for other values of formula_31 for which the real part is integer or half-integer quickly follow by induction using the recurrence relation in the positive and negative directions.
Perhaps the best-known value of the gamma function at a non-integer argument is
which can be found by setting formula_111 in the reflection or duplication formulas, by using the relation to the beta function given below with formula_112, or simply by making the substitution formula_113 in the integral definition of the gamma function, resulting in a Gaussian integral. In general, for non-negative integer values of formula_33 we have:
where formula_116 denotes the double factorial of "n" and, when formula_117, formula_118. See Particular values of the gamma function for calculated values.
It might be tempting to generalize the result that formula_119 by looking for a formula for other individual values formula_120 where formula_121 is rational, especially because according to Gauss's digamma theorem, it is possible to do so for the closely related digamma function at every rational value. However, these numbers formula_120 are not known to be expressible by themselves in terms of elementary functions. It has been proved that formula_123 is a transcendental number and algebraically independent of formula_124 for any integer formula_33 and each of the fractions formula_126. In general, when computing values of the gamma function, we must settle for numerical approximations.
Another useful limit for asymptotic approximations is:
The derivatives of the gamma function are described in terms of the polygamma function. For example:
For a positive integer the derivative of the gamma function can be calculated as follows (here formula_129 is the Euler–Mascheroni constant):
For formula_131 the formula_33th derivative of the gamma function is:
Using the identity
where formula_136 is the Riemann zeta function, and formula_124 is a partition of formula_33 given by
we have in particular
When restricted to the positive real numbers, the gamma function is a strictly logarithmically convex function. This property may be stated in any of the following three equivalent ways:
The last of these statements is, essentially by definition, the same as the statement that formula_148, where formula_149 is the polygamma function of order 1. To prove the logarithmic convexity of the gamma function, it therefore suffices to observe that formula_149 has a series representation which, for positive real , consists of only positive terms.
Logarithmic convexity and Jensen's inequality together imply, for any positive real numbers formula_151 and formula_152,
There are also bounds on ratios of gamma functions. The best-known is Gautschi's inequality, which says that for any positive real number and any ,
The behavior of formula_65 for an increasing positive variable is simple. It grows quickly, faster than an exponential function in fact. Asymptotically as formula_156, the magnitude of the gamma function is given by Stirling's formula
where the symbol formula_158 implies asymptotic convergence. In other words, the ratio of the two sides converges to 1 as formula_159.
The behavior for non-positive formula_31 is more intricate. Euler's integral does not converge for formula_161, but the function it defines in the positive complex half-plane has a unique analytic continuation to the negative half-plane. One way to find that analytic continuation is to use Euler's integral for positive arguments and extend the domain to negative numbers by repeated application of the recurrence formula,
choosing formula_33 such that formula_164 is positive. The product in the denominator is zero when formula_31 equals any of the integers formula_166. Thus, the gamma function must be undefined at those points to avoid division by zero; it is a meromorphic function with simple poles at the non-positive integers.
For a function formula_167 of a complex variable formula_31, at a simple pole formula_169, the residue of formula_167 is given by:
For the simple pole formula_172 we rewrite recurrence formula as:
The numerator at formula_172 is
and the denominator
So the residues of the gamma function at those points are:
The gamma function is non-zero everywhere along the real line, although it comes arbitrarily close to zero as . There is in fact no complex number formula_31 for which formula_179, and hence the reciprocal gamma function formula_180 is an entire function, with zeros at formula_181.
The gamma function has a local minimum at (truncated) where it attains the value (truncated). The gamma function must alternate sign between the poles because the product in the forward recurrence contains an odd number of negative factors if the number of poles between formula_31 and formula_164 is odd, and an even number if the number of poles is even.
There are many formulas, besides the Euler integral of the second kind, that express the gamma function as an integral. For instance, when the real part of is positive,
Binet's first integral formula for the gamma function states that, when the real part of is positive, then:
The integral on the right-hand side may be interpreted as a Laplace transform. That is,
Binet's second integral formula states that, again when the real part of is positive, then:
Let be a Hankel contour, meaning a path that begins and ends at the point on the Riemann sphere, whose unit tangent vector converges to at the start of the path and to at the end, which has winding number 1 around , and which does not cross . Fix a branch of formula_188 by taking a branch cut along and by taking formula_188 to be real when is on the negative real axis. Assume is not an integer. Then Hankel's formula for the gamma function is:
where formula_191 is interpreted as formula_192. The reflection formula leads to the closely related expression
again valid whenever is not an integer.
The logarithm of the gamma function has the following Fourier series expansion for formula_194
which was for a long time attributed to Ernst Kummer, who derived it in 1847. However, Iaroslav Blagouchine discovered that Carl Johan Malmsten first derived this series in 1842.
In 1840 Joseph Ludwig Raabe proved that
In particular, if formula_197 then
The latter can be derived taking the logarithm in the above multiplication formula, which gives an expression for the Riemann sum of the integrand. Taking the limit for formula_199 gives the formula.
An alternative notation which was originally introduced by Gauss and which was sometimes used is the formula_200-function, which in terms of the gamma function is
so that formula_202 for every non-negative integer formula_33.
Using the pi function the reflection formula takes on the form
where is the normalized sinc function, while the multiplication theorem takes on the form
We also sometimes find
which is an entire function, defined for every complex number, just like the reciprocal gamma function. That formula_207 is entire entails it has no poles, so formula_208, like formula_209, has no zeros.
The volume of an -ellipsoid with radii can be expressed as
Including up to the first 20 digits after the decimal point, some particular values of the gamma function are:
The complex-valued gamma function is undefined for non-positive integers, but in these cases the value can be defined in the Riemann sphere as . The reciprocal gamma function is well defined and analytic at these values (and in the entire complex plane):
Because the gamma and factorial functions grow so rapidly for moderately large arguments, many computing environments include a function that returns the natural logarithm of the gamma function (often given the name codice_1 or codice_2 in programming environments or codice_3 in spreadsheets); this grows much more slowly, and for combinatorial calculations allows adding and subtracting logs instead of multiplying and dividing very large values. It is often defined as
The digamma function, which is the derivative of this function, is also commonly seen.
In the context of technical and physical applications, e.g. with wave propagation, the functional equation
is often used since it allows one to determine function values in one strip of width 1 in from the neighbouring strip. In particular, starting with a good approximation for a with large real part one may go step by step down to the desired . Following an indication of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Rocktaeschel (1922) proposed for formula_224 an approximation for large :
This can be used to accurately approximate for with a smaller via (P.E.Böhmer, 1939)
A more accurate approximation can be obtained by using more terms from the asymptotic expansions of and , which are based on Stirling's approximation.
In a more "natural" presentation:
The coefficients of the terms with of in the last expansion are simply
where the are the Bernoulli numbers.
The Bohr–Mollerup theorem states that among all functions extending the factorial functions to the positive real numbers, only the gamma function is log-convex, that is, its natural logarithm is convex on the positive real axis.
In a certain sense, the function is the more natural form; it makes some intrinsic attributes of the function clearer. A striking example is the Taylor series of around 1:
with denoting the Riemann zeta function at .
So, using the following property:
we can find an integral representation for the function:
or, setting and calculating :
There also exist special formulas for the logarithm of the gamma function for rational .
For instance, if formula_234 and formula_33 are integers with formula_236 and formula_237, then
see.
This formula is sometimes used for numerical computation, since the integrand decreases very quickly.
The integral
can be expressed in terms of the Barnes -function (see Barnes -function for a proof):
where .
It can also be written in terms of the Hurwitz zeta function:
When formula_242 it follows that
and this is a consequence of Raabe's formula as well. O. Espinosa and V. Moll derived a similar formula for the integral of the square of formula_244:
where formula_246 is formula_247.
D. H. Bailey and his co-authors gave an evaluation for
when formula_249 in terms of the Tornheim-Witten zeta function and its derivatives.
In addition, it is also known that
Complex values of the gamma function can be computed numerically with arbitrary precision using Stirling's approximation or the Lanczos approximation.
The gamma function can be computed to fixed precision for formula_251 by applying integration by parts to Euler's integral. For any positive number the gamma function can be written
When and formula_253, the absolute value of the last integral is smaller than formula_254. By choosing a large enough formula_9, this last expression can be made smaller than formula_256 for any desired value formula_257. Thus, the gamma function can be evaluated to formula_257 bits of precision with the above series.
A fast algorithm for calculation of the Euler gamma function for any algebraic argument (including rational) was constructed by E.A. Karatsuba,
For arguments that are integer multiples of , the gamma function can also be evaluated quickly using arithmetic–geometric mean iterations (see particular values of the gamma function and ).
One author describes the gamma function as "Arguably, the most common special function, or the least 'special' of them. The other transcendental functions […] are called 'special' because you could conceivably avoid some of them by staying away from many specialized mathematical topics. On the other hand, the gamma function is most difficult to avoid."
The gamma function finds application in such diverse areas as quantum physics, astrophysics and fluid dynamics. The gamma distribution, which is formulated in terms of the gamma function, is used in statistics to model a wide range of processes; for example, the time between occurrences of earthquakes.
The primary reason for the gamma function's usefulness in such contexts is the prevalence of expressions of the type formula_259 which describe processes that decay exponentially in time or space. Integrals of such expressions can occasionally be solved in terms of the gamma function when no elementary solution exists. For example, if is a power function and is a linear function, a simple change of variables gives the evaluation
The fact that the integration is performed along the entire positive real line might signify that the gamma function describes the cumulation of a time-dependent process that continues indefinitely, or the value might be the total of a distribution in an infinite space.
It is of course frequently useful to take limits of integration other than 0 and to describe the cumulation of a finite process, in which case the ordinary gamma function is no longer a solution; the solution is then called an incomplete gamma function. (The ordinary gamma function, obtained by integrating across the entire positive real line, is sometimes called the "complete gamma function" for contrast.)
An important category of exponentially decaying functions is that of Gaussian functions
and integrals thereof, such as the error function. There are many interrelations between these functions and the gamma function; notably, the factor formula_262 obtained by evaluating formula_263 is the "same" as that found in the normalizing factor of the error function and the normal distribution.
The integrals we have discussed so far involve transcendental functions, but the gamma function also arises from integrals of purely algebraic functions. In particular, the arc lengths of ellipses and of the lemniscate, which are curves defined by algebraic equations, are given by elliptic integrals that in special cases can be evaluated in terms of the gamma function. The gamma function can also be used to calculate "volume" and "area" of -dimensional hyperspheres.
The gamma function's ability to generalize factorial products immediately leads to applications in many areas of mathematics; in combinatorics, and by extension in areas such as probability theory and the calculation of power series. Many expressions involving products of successive integers can be written as some combination of factorials, the most important example perhaps being that of the binomial coefficient
The example of binomial coefficients motivates why the properties of the gamma function when extended to negative numbers are natural. A binomial coefficient gives the number of ways to choose elements from a set of elements; if , there are of course no ways. If , is the factorial of a negative integer and hence infinite if we use the gamma function definition of factorials—dividing by infinity gives the expected value of 0.
We can replace the factorial by a gamma function to extend any such formula to the complex numbers. Generally, this works for any product wherein each factor is a rational function of the index variable, by factoring the rational function into linear expressions. If and are monic polynomials of degree and with respective roots and , we have
If we have a way to calculate the gamma function numerically, it is a breeze to calculate numerical values of such products. The number of gamma functions in the right-hand side depends only on the degree of the polynomials, so it does not matter whether equals 5 or 105. By taking the appropriate limits, the equation can also be made to hold even when the left-hand product contains zeros or poles.
By taking limits, certain rational products with infinitely many factors can be evaluated in terms of the gamma function as well. Due to the Weierstrass factorization theorem, analytic functions can be written as infinite products, and these can sometimes be represented as finite products or quotients of the gamma function. We have already seen one striking example: the reflection formula essentially represents the sine function as the product of two gamma functions. Starting from this formula, the exponential function as well as all the trigonometric and hyperbolic functions can be expressed in terms of the gamma function.
More functions yet, including the hypergeometric function and special cases thereof, can be represented by means of complex contour integrals of products and quotients of the gamma function, called Mellin–Barnes integrals.
An elegant and deep application of the gamma function is in the study of the Riemann zeta function. A fundamental property of the Riemann zeta function is its functional equation:
Among other things, this provides an explicit form for the analytic continuation of the zeta function to a meromorphic function in the complex plane and leads to an immediate proof that the zeta function has infinitely many so-called "trivial" zeros on the real line. Borwein "et al". call this formula "one of the most beautiful findings in mathematics". Another champion for that title might be
Both formulas were derived by Bernhard Riemann in his seminal 1859 paper ""Über die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Größe"" ("On the Number of Prime Numbers less than a Given Quantity"), one of the milestones in the development of analytic number theory—the branch of mathematics that studies prime numbers using the tools of mathematical analysis. Factorial numbers, considered as discrete objects, are an important concept in classical number theory because they contain many prime factors, but Riemann found a use for their continuous extension that arguably turned out to be even more important.
The gamma function has caught the interest of some of the most prominent mathematicians of all time. Its history, notably documented by Philip J. Davis in an article that won him the 1963 Chauvenet Prize, reflects many of the major developments within mathematics since the 18th century. In the words of Davis, "each generation has found something of interest to say about the gamma function. Perhaps the next generation will also."
The problem of extending the factorial to non-integer arguments was apparently first considered by Daniel Bernoulli and Christian Goldbach in the 1720s, and was solved at the end of the same decade by Leonhard Euler. Euler gave two different definitions: the first was not his integral but an infinite product,
of which he informed Goldbach in a letter dated October 13, 1729. He wrote to Goldbach again on January 8, 1730, to announce his discovery of the integral representation
which is valid for . By the change of variables , this becomes the familiar Euler integral. Euler published his results in the paper "De progressionibus transcendentibus seu quarum termini generales algebraice dari nequeunt" ("On transcendental progressions, that is, those whose general terms cannot be given algebraically"), submitted to the St. Petersburg Academy on November 28, 1729. Euler further discovered some of the gamma function's important functional properties, including the reflection formula.
James Stirling, a contemporary of Euler, also attempted to find a continuous expression for the factorial and came up with what is now known as Stirling's formula. Although Stirling's formula gives a good estimate of , also for non-integers, it does not provide the exact value. Extensions of his formula that correct the error were given by Stirling himself and by Jacques Philippe Marie Binet.
Carl Friedrich Gauss rewrote Euler's product as
and used this formula to discover new properties of the gamma function. Although Euler was a pioneer in the theory of complex variables, he does not appear to have considered the factorial of a complex number, as instead Gauss first did. Gauss also proved the multiplication theorem of the gamma function and investigated the connection between the gamma function and elliptic integrals.
Karl Weierstrass further established the role of the gamma function in complex analysis, starting from yet another product representation,
where is the Euler–Mascheroni constant. Weierstrass originally wrote his product as one for , in which case it is taken over the function's zeros rather than its poles. Inspired by this result, he proved what is known as the Weierstrass factorization theorem—that any entire function can be written as a product over its zeros in the complex plane; a generalization of the fundamental theorem of algebra.
The name gamma function and the symbol were introduced by Adrien-Marie Legendre around 1811; Legendre also rewrote Euler's integral definition in its modern form. Although the symbol is an upper-case Greek gamma, there is no accepted standard for whether the function name should be written "gamma function" or "Gamma function" (some authors simply write "-function"). The alternative "pi function" notation due to Gauss is sometimes encountered in older literature, but Legendre's notation is dominant in modern works.
It is justified to ask why we distinguish between the "ordinary factorial" and the gamma function by using distinct symbols, and particularly why the gamma function should be normalized to instead of simply using "". Consider that the notation for exponents, , has been generalized from integers to complex numbers without any change. Legendre's motivation for the normalization does not appear to be known, and has been criticized as cumbersome by some (the 20th-century mathematician Cornelius Lanczos, for example, called it "void of any rationality" and would instead use ). Legendre's normalization does simplify a few formulae, but complicates most others. From a modern point of view, the Legendre normalization of the Gamma function is the integral of the additive character against the multiplicative character with respect to the Haar measure formula_272 on the Lie group . Thus this normalization makes it clearer that the gamma function is a continuous analogue of a Gauss sum.
It is somewhat problematic that a large number of definitions have been given for the gamma function. Although they describe the same function, it is not entirely straightforward to prove the equivalence. Stirling never proved that his extended formula corresponds exactly to Euler's gamma function; a proof was first given by Charles Hermite in 1900. Instead of finding a specialized proof for each formula, it would be desirable to have a general method of identifying the gamma function.
One way to prove would be to find a differential equation that characterizes the gamma function. Most special functions in applied mathematics arise as solutions to differential equations, whose solutions are unique. However, the gamma function does not appear to satisfy any simple differential equation. Otto Hölder proved in 1887 that the gamma function at least does not satisfy any "algebraic" differential equation by showing that a solution to such an equation could not satisfy the gamma function's recurrence formula, making it a transcendentally transcendental function. This result is known as Hölder's theorem.
A definite and generally applicable characterization of the gamma function was not given until 1922. Harald Bohr and Johannes Mollerup then proved what is known as the "Bohr–Mollerup theorem": that the gamma function is the unique solution to the factorial recurrence relation that is positive and "logarithmically convex" for positive and whose value at 1 is 1 (a function is logarithmically convex if its logarithm is convex).
The Bohr–Mollerup theorem is useful because it is relatively easy to prove logarithmic convexity for any of the different formulas used to define the gamma function. Taking things further, instead of defining the gamma function by any particular formula, we can choose the conditions of the Bohr–Mollerup theorem as the definition, and then pick any formula we like that satisfies the conditions as a starting point for studying the gamma function. This approach was used by the Bourbaki group.
Borwein & Corless review three centuries of work on the gamma function.
Although the gamma function can be calculated virtually as easily as any mathematically simpler function with a modern computer—even with a programmable pocket calculator—this was of course not always the case. Until the mid-20th century, mathematicians relied on hand-made tables; in the case of the gamma function, notably a table computed by Gauss in 1813 and one computed by Legendre in 1825.
Tables of complex values of the gamma function, as well as hand-drawn graphs, were given in "Tables of Higher Functions" by Jahnke and , first published in Germany in 1909. According to Michael Berry, "the publication in J&E of a three-dimensional graph showing the poles of the gamma function in the complex plane acquired an almost iconic status."
There was in fact little practical need for anything but real values of the gamma function until the 1930s, when applications for the complex gamma function were discovered in theoretical physics. As electronic computers became available for the production of tables in the 1950s, several extensive tables for the complex gamma function were published to meet the demand, including a table accurate to 12 decimal places from the U.S. National Bureau of Standards.
"Abramowitz and Stegun" became the standard reference for this and many other special functions after its publication in 1964.
Double-precision floating-point implementations of the gamma function and its logarithm are now available in most scientific computing software and special functions libraries, for example TK Solver, Matlab, GNU Octave, and the GNU Scientific Library. The gamma function was also added to the C standard library (math.h). Arbitrary-precision implementations are available in most computer algebra systems, such as Mathematica and Maple. PARI/GP, MPFR and MPFUN contain free arbitrary-precision implementations. A little-known feature of the calculator app included with the Android operating system is that it will accept fractional values as input to the factorial function and return the equivalent gamma function value. The same is true for Windows Calculator (in scientific mode). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12316 |
Georges Braque
Georges Braque (; ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque's work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso.
Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882 in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.
Braque's earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the "Fauves" (Beasts) in 1905, he adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors to represent emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.
In May 1907, he successfully exhibited works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants. The same year, Braque's style began a slow evolution as he became influenced by Paul Cézanne who had died in 1906 and whose works were exhibited in Paris for the first time in a large-scale, museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly affected the avant-garde artists of Paris, resulting in the advent of Cubism.
Braque's paintings of 1908–1912 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions. In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the painting "Houses at l'Estaque".
Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso who had been developing a similar proto-Cubist style of painting. At the time, Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African masks and Iberian sculpture while Braque was interested mainly in developing Cézanne's ideas of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way.” Braque's essential subject is the ordinary objects he has known practically forever. Picasso celebrates animation, while Braque celebrates contemplation. Thus, the invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris. These artists were the style's main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism.
A decisive time of its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes virtually impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and Braque invented the "papier collé" technique.
On 14 November 1908, the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles, in his review of Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes".
Vauxcelles, on 25 March 1909, used the terms "bizarreries cubiques" (cubic oddities) after seeing a painting by Braque at the Salon des Indépendants.
The term 'Cubism', first pronounced in 1911 with reference to artists exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants, quickly gained wide use but Picasso and Braque did not adopt it initially. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described Cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas." The Cubist style spread quickly throughout Paris and then Europe.
The two artists' productive collaboration continued and they worked closely together until the beginning of World War I in 1914, when Braque enlisted with the French Army. In May 1915, Braque received a severe head injury in battle at Carency and suffered temporary blindness. He was trepanned, and required a long period of recuperation.
Braque resumed painting in late 1916. Working alone, he began to moderate the harsh abstraction of cubism. He developed a more personal style characterized by brilliant color, textured surfaces, and—after his relocation to the Normandy seacoast—the reappearance of the human figure. He painted many still life subjects during this time, maintaining his emphasis on structure. One example of this is his 1943 work "Blue Guitar", which hangs in the Allen Memorial Art Museum. During his recovery he became a close friend of the cubist artist Juan Gris.
He continued to work during the remainder of his life, producing a considerable number of paintings, graphics, and sculptures. Braque, along with Matisse, is credited for introducing Pablo Picasso to Fernand Mourlot, and most of the lithographs and book illustrations he himself created during the 1940s and '50s were produced at the Mourlot Studios. In 1962 Braque worked with master printmaker Aldo Crommelynck to create his series of etchings and aquatints titled "L’Ordre des Oiseaux" ("The Order of Birds"), which was accompanied by the poet Saint-John Perse's text.
Braque died on 31 August 1963 in Paris. He is buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Valery in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy whose windows he designed. Braque's work is in most major museums throughout the world.
Braque believed that an artist experienced beauty "… in terms of volume, of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty [he] interpret[s] [his] subjective impression...” He described "objects shattered into fragments… [as] a way of getting closest to the object…Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space”. He adopted a monochromatic and neutral color palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.
Although Braque began his career painting landscapes, during 1908 he, alongside Picasso, discovered the advantages of painting still lifes instead. Braque explained that he
“… began to concentrate on still-lifes, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them… In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life” A still life was also more accessible, in relation to perspective, than landscape, and permitted the artist to see the multiple perspectives of the object. Braque's early interest in still lifes revived during the 1930s.
During the period between the wars, Braque exhibited a freer, more relaxed style of Cubism, intensifying his color use and a looser rendering of objects. However, he still remained committed to the cubist method of simultaneous perspective and fragmentation. In contrast to Picasso, who continuously reinvented his style of painting, producing both representational and cubist images, and incorporating surrealist ideas into his work, Braque continued in the Cubist style, producing luminous, other-worldly still life and figure compositions. By the time of his death in 1963, he was regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the School of Paris, and of modern art.
On 20 May 2010, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris reported the overnight theft of five paintings from its collection. The paintings taken were "Le pigeon aux petits pois" ("The Pigeon with the Peas") by Pablo Picasso, "La Pastorale" by Henri Matisse, "L'Olivier Près de l'Estaque" ("Olive Tree near Estaque") by Georges Braque, "" ("Woman with a Fan") by Amedeo Modigliani and "Nature Morte aux Chandeliers" ("Still Life with Chandeliers") by Fernand Léger and were valued at ( ). A window had been smashed and CCTV footage showed a masked man taking the paintings. Authorities believe the thief acted alone. The man carefully removed the paintings from their frames, which he left behind. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12317 |
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain and the standard compiler for most projects related to GNU and Linux, including the Linux kernel. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). GCC has played an important role in the growth of free software, as both a tool and an example.
When it was first released in 1987, GCC 1.0 was named the GNU C Compiler since it only handled the C programming language. It was extended to compile C++ in December of that year. Front ends were later developed for Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go, among others.
Version 4.5 of the OpenMP specification is now supported in the C and C++ compilers and a "much improved" implementation of the OpenACC 2.0a specification is also supported. By default, the current version supports "gnu++14", a superset of C++14, and "gnu11", a superset of C11, with strict standard support also available. It also provides experimental support for C++17 and later.
GCC has been ported to a wide variety of instruction set architectures, and is widely deployed as a tool in the development of both free and proprietary software. GCC is also available for many embedded systems, including ARM-based; AMCC, and Freescale Power ISA-based chips. The compiler can target a wide variety of platforms.
As well as being the official compiler of the GNU operating system, GCC has been adopted as the standard compiler by many other modern Unix-like computer operating systems, including most Linux distributions. Most BSD family operating systems also switched to GCC, although since then, some BSDs including FreeBSD and OpenBSD have since moved to the Clang compiler. macOS also switched to Clang after using GCC. Versions are also available for Microsoft Windows and other operating systems; GCC can compile code for Android and iOS.
In an effort to bootstrap the GNU operating system, Richard Stallman asked Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the author of the Amsterdam Compiler Kit (also known as the "Free University" Compiler Kit) for permission to use that software for GNU. When Tanenbaum advised him that the compiler was not free, and that only the university was "free", Stallman decided to write a new compiler. Stallman's initial plan was to rewrite an existing compiler from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from Pastel to C with some help from Len Tower and others. Stallman wrote a new C front end for the Livermore compiler, but then realized that it required megabytes of stack space, an impossibility on a 68000 Unix system with only 64 KB, and concluded he would have to write a new compiler from scratch. None of the Pastel compiler code ended up in GCC, though Stallman did use the C front end he had written.
GCC was first released March 22, 1987, available by FTP from MIT. Stallman was listed as the author but cited others for their contributions, including Jack Davidson and Christopher Fraser for the idea of using RTL as an intermediate language, Paul Rubin for writing most of the preprocessor, and Leonard Tower for "parts of the parser, RTL generator, RTL definitions, and of the Vax machine description." Described as the "first free software hit" by Salus, the GNU compiler arrived just at the time when Sun Microsystems was unbundling its development tools from its operating system, selling them separately at a higher combined price than the previous bundle, which led many of Sun's users to buy or download GCC instead of the vendor's tools. By 1990, GCC supported thirteen computer architectures, was outperforming several vendor compilers, was shipped by Data General and NeXT with their workstations, and was used by Lotus Development Corporation.
As GCC was licensed under the GPL, programmers wanting to work in other directions—particularly those writing interfaces for languages other than C—were free to develop their own fork of the compiler, provided they meet the GPL's terms, including its requirements to distribute source code. Multiple forks proved inefficient and unwieldy, however, and the difficulty in getting work accepted by the official GCC project was greatly frustrating for many. The FSF kept such close control on what was added to the official version of GCC 2.x that GCC was used as one example of the "cathedral" development model in Eric S. Raymond's essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
In 1997, a group of developers formed Experimental/Enhanced GNU Compiler System (EGCS) to merge several experimental forks into a single project. The basis of the merger was a GCC development snapshot taken between the 2.7 and 2.81 releases. Projects merged included g77 (Fortran), PGCC (P5 Pentium-optimized GCC), many C++ improvements, and many new architectures and operating system variants. EGCS development proved considerably more vigorous than GCC development, so much so that the FSF officially halted development on their GCC 2.x compiler, blessed EGCS as the official version of GCC, and appointed the EGCS project as the GCC maintainers in April 1999. With the release of GCC 2.95 in July 1999 the two projects were once again united.
GCC has since been maintained by a varied group of programmers from around the world under the direction of a steering committee. It has been ported to more kinds of processors and operating systems than any other compiler.
GCC has been ported to a wide variety of instruction set architectures, and is widely deployed as a tool in the development of both free and proprietary software. GCC is also available for many embedded systems, including Symbian (called "gcce"), ARM-based; AMCC, and Freescale Power ISA-based chips. The compiler can target a wide variety of platforms, including video game consoles such as the PlayStation 2, Cell SPE of PlayStation 3, and Dreamcast.
GCC's external interface follows Unix conventions. Users invoke a language-specific driver program (codice_1 for C, codice_2 for C++, etc.), which interprets command arguments, calls the actual compiler, runs the assembler on the output, and then optionally runs the linker to produce a complete executable binary.
Each of the language compilers is a separate program that reads source code and outputs machine code. All have a common internal structure. A per-language front end parses the source code in that language and produces an abstract syntax tree ("tree" for short).
These are, if necessary, converted to the middle end's input representation, called "GENERIC" form; the middle end then gradually transforms the program towards its final form. Compiler optimizations and static code analysis techniques (such as FORTIFY_SOURCE, a compiler directive that attempts to discover some buffer overflows) are applied to the code. These work on multiple representations, mostly the architecture-independent GIMPLE representation and the architecture-dependent RTL representation. Finally, machine code is produced using architecture-specific pattern matching originally based on an algorithm of Jack Davidson and Chris Fraser.
GCC was written primarily in C except for parts of the Ada front end. The distribution includes the standard libraries for Ada, C++, and Java whose code is mostly written in those languages. On some platforms, the distribution also includes a low-level runtime library, libgcc, written in a combination of machine-independent C and processor-specific machine code, designed primarily to handle arithmetic operations that the target processor cannot perform directly.
In May 2010, the GCC steering committee decided to allow use of a C++ compiler to compile GCC. The compiler was intended to be written in C plus a subset of features from C++. In particular, this was decided so that GCC's developers could use the destructors and generics features of C++.
In August 2012, the GCC steering committee announced that GCC now uses C++ as its implementation language. This means that to build GCC from sources, a C++ compiler is required that understands ISO/IEC C++03 standard.
On May 18 2020, GCC moved away from ISO/IEC C++03 standard to ISO/IEC C++11 standard.
Each front end uses a parser to produce the abstract syntax tree of a given source file. Due to the syntax tree abstraction, source files of any of the different supported languages can be processed by the same back end. GCC started out using LALR parsers generated with Bison, but gradually switched to hand-written recursive-descent parsers for C++ in 2004, and for C and Objective-C in 2006. Currently all front ends use hand-written recursive-descent parsers.
Until GCC 4.0 the tree representation of the program was not fully independent of the processor being targeted.
The meaning of a tree was somewhat different for different language front ends, and front ends could provide their own tree codes. This was simplified with the introduction of GENERIC and GIMPLE, two new forms of language-independent trees that were introduced with the advent of GCC 4.0. GENERIC is more complex, based on the GCC 3.x Java front end's intermediate representation. GIMPLE is a simplified GENERIC, in which various constructs are "lowered" to multiple GIMPLE instructions. The C, C++, and Java front ends produce GENERIC directly in the front end. Other front ends instead have different intermediate representations after parsing and convert these to GENERIC.
In either case, the so-called "gimplifier" then converts this more complex form into the simpler SSA-based GIMPLE form that is the common language for a large number of powerful language- and architecture-independent global (function scope) optimizations.
"GENERIC" is an intermediate representation language used as a "middle end" while compiling source code into executable binaries. A subset, called "GIMPLE", is targeted by all the front ends of GCC.
The middle stage of GCC does all of the code analysis and optimization, working independently of both the compiled language and the target architecture, starting from the GENERIC representation and expanding it to register transfer language (RTL). The GENERIC representation contains only the subset of the imperative programming constructs optimized by the middle end.
In transforming the source code to GIMPLE, complex expressions are split into a three-address code using temporary variables. This representation was inspired by the SIMPLE representation proposed in the McCAT compiler by Laurie J. Hendren for simplifying the analysis and optimization of imperative programs.
Optimization can occur during any phase of compilation; however, the bulk of optimizations are performed after the syntax and semantic analysis of the front end and before the code generation of the back end; thus a common, even though somewhat contradictory, name for this part of the compiler is the "middle end."
The exact set of GCC optimizations varies from release to release as it develops, but includes the standard algorithms, such as loop optimization, jump threading, common subexpression elimination, instruction scheduling, and so forth. The RTL optimizations are of less importance with the addition of global SSA-based optimizations on GIMPLE trees, as RTL optimizations have a much more limited scope, and have less high-level information.
Some of these optimizations performed at this level include dead code elimination, partial redundancy elimination, global value numbering, sparse conditional constant propagation, and scalar replacement of aggregates. Array dependence based optimizations such as automatic vectorization and automatic parallelization are also performed. Profile-guided optimization is also possible.
The GCC's back end is partly specified by preprocessor macros and functions specific to a target architecture, for instance to define its endianness, word size, and calling conventions. The front part of the back end uses these to help decide RTL generation, so although GCC's RTL is nominally processor-independent, the initial sequence of abstract instructions is already adapted to the target. At any moment, the actual RTL instructions forming the program representation have to comply with the machine description of the target architecture.
The machine description file contains RTL patterns, along with operand constraints, and code snippets to output the final assembly. The constraints indicate that a particular RTL pattern might only apply (for example) to certain hardware registers, or (for example) allow immediate operand offsets of only a limited size ("e.g." 12, 16, 24, … bit offsets, etc.). During RTL generation, the constraints for the given target architecture are checked. In order to issue a given snippet of RTL, it must match one (or more) of the RTL patterns in the machine description file, and satisfy the constraints for that pattern; otherwise, it would be impossible to convert the final RTL into machine code.
Towards the end of compilation, valid RTL is reduced to a "strict" form in which each instruction refers to real machine registers and a pattern from the target's machine description file. Forming strict RTL is a complicated task; an important step is register allocation, where real hardware registers are chosen to replace the initially assigned pseudo-registers. This is followed by a "reloading" phase; any pseudo-registers that were not assigned a real hardware register are 'spilled' to the stack, and RTL to perform this spilling is generated. Likewise, offsets that are too large to fit into an actual instruction must be broken up and replaced by RTL sequences that will obey the offset constraints.
In the final phase, the machine code is built by calling a small snippet of code, associated with each pattern, to generate the real instructions from the target's instruction set, using the final registers, offsets, and addresses chosen during the reload phase. The assembly-generation snippet may be just a string, in which case a simple string substitution of the registers, offsets, and/or addresses into the string is performed. The assembly-generation snippet may also be a short block of C code, performing some additional work, but ultimately returning a string containing the valid assembly code.
Some features of GCC include:
The standard compiler releases since 7 include front ends for C (codice_1), C++ (codice_2), Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran (codice_5), Ada (GNAT), and Go (codice_6). A popular parallel language extension, OpenMP, is also supported. Version 5.0 added support for Cilk Plus, version 9.1 added support for D, and since version 5.1, there is preliminary support for OpenACC. Versions prior to GCC 7 also supported Java (codice_7), allowing compilation of Java to native machine code.
The Fortran front end was codice_8 before version 4.0, which only supports FORTRAN 77. In newer versions, codice_8 is dropped in favor of the new GNU Fortran front end (retaining most of g77's language extensions) that supports Fortran 95 and large parts of Fortran 2003 and Fortran 2008 as well. A front-end for CHILL was dropped due to a lack of maintenance.
Third-party front ends exist for Pascal (codice_10), Modula-2, Modula-3, PL/I, and VHDL (codice_11).
A few experimental branches exist to support additional languages, such as the GCC UPC compiler for Unified Parallel C.
GCC target processor families as of version 4.3 include:
Lesser-known target processors supported in the standard release have included:
Additional processors have been supported by GCC versions maintained separately from the FSF version:
The gcj Java compiler can target either a native machine language architecture or the Java virtual machine's Java bytecode. When retargeting GCC to a new platform, bootstrapping is often used. Motorola 68000, Zilog Z80, and other processors are also targeted in the gcc versions developed for various Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, Sharp, and Casio programmable graphing calculators.
The current stable version of GCC is 10.1, which was released on May 9, 2020.
As of version 4.8, GCC is implemented in C++.
GCC 4.6 supports many new Objective-C features, such as declared and synthesized properties, dot syntax, fast enumeration, optional protocol methods, method/protocol/class attributes, class extensions, and a new GNU Objective-C runtime API. It also supports the Go programming language and includes the codice_12 library, which provides quadruple-precision mathematical functions on targets supporting the codice_13 datatype. The library is used to provide the codice_14 type in GNU Fortran on such targets.
GCC uses many standard tools in its build, including Perl, Flex, Bison, and other common tools. In addition, it currently requires three additional libraries to be present in order to build: GMP, MPC, and MPFR.
The trunk concentrates the major part of the development efforts, where new features are implemented and tested.
GCC is licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
The "GCC runtime exception" permits compilation of proprietary and free software programs with GCC and usage of free software plugins. The availability of this exception does not imply any general presumption that third-party software is unaffected by the copyleft requirements of the license of GCC.
Several companies make a business out of supplying and supporting GCC ports to various platforms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12323 |
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 AD – /), often Anglicized as Galen and better known as Galen of Pergamon (), was a physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. He is considered one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic.
The son of Aelius Nicon, a wealthy Greek architect with scholarly interests, Galen received a comprehensive education that prepared him for a successful career as a physician and philosopher. Born in the ancient city of Pergamon (present-day Bergama, Turkey), Galen travelled extensively, exposing himself to a wide variety of medical theories and discoveries before settling in Rome, where he served prominent members of Roman society and eventually was given the position of personal physician to several emperors.
Galen's understanding of anatomy and medicine was principally influenced by the then-current theory of humorism (also known as the theory of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm), as advanced by ancient Greek physicians such as Hippocrates. Galen's views dominated and influenced Western medical science for more than 1,300 years. His anatomical reports were based mainly on the dissection of monkeys. However, while dissecting them he discovered that their facial expressions were too much like those of humans; thus, he switched to other animals, especially pigs. The reason for using animals to discover the human body was due to the fact that dissections and vivisections on humans were strictly prohibited at the time. Galen would encourage his students to go look at dead gladiators or bodies that washed up in order to get better acquainted with the human body. Galen’s most famous experiment that he recreated in public was the squealing pig. The squealing pig experiment was when Galen would cut open a pig, and while it was squealing he would cut the nerve, or vocal cords, showing they controlled the making of sound. His anatomical reports remained uncontested until 1543, when printed descriptions and illustrations of human dissections were published in the seminal work "De humani corporis fabrica" by Andreas Vesalius where Galen's physiological theory was accommodated to these new observations. Galen's theory of the physiology of the circulatory system remained unchallenged until ca. 1242, when Ibn al-Nafis published his book "Sharh tashrih al-qanun li’ Ibn Sina" ("Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon"), in which he reported his discovery of the pulmonary circulation.
Galen saw himself as both a physician and a philosopher, as he wrote in his treatise titled "That the Best Physician Is Also a Philosopher". Galen was very interested in the debate between the rationalist and empiricist medical sects, and his use of direct observation, dissection and vivisection represents a complex middle ground between the extremes of those two viewpoints. Many of his works have been preserved and/or translated from the original Greek, although many were destroyed and some credited to him are believed to be spurious. Although there is some debate over the date of his death, he was no younger than seventy when he died.
Galen's name , "Galēnos" comes from the adjective "", "calm".
Galen describes his early life in "On the affections of the mind". He was born in September AD 129. His father, Aelius Nicon, was a wealthy patrician, an architect and builder, with eclectic interests including philosophy, mathematics, logic, astronomy, agriculture and literature. Galen describes his father as a "highly amiable, just, good and benevolent man". At that time Pergamon (modern-day Bergama, Turkey) was a major cultural and intellectual centre, noted for its library, second only to that in Alexandria,
and attracted both Stoic and Platonic philosophers, to whom Galen was exposed at age 14. His studies also took in each of the principal philosophical systems of the time, including Aristotelian and Epicurean. His father had planned a traditional career for Galen in philosophy or politics and took care to expose him to literary and philosophical influences. However, Galen states that in around AD 145 his father had a dream in which the god Asclepius (Aesculapius) appeared and commanded Nicon to send his son to study medicine. Again, no expense was spared, and following his earlier liberal education, at 16 he began studies at the prestigious local sanctuary or Asclepieum dedicated to Asclepius, god of medicine, as a θεραπευτής ("therapeutes", or attendant) for four years. There he came under the influence of men like Aeschrion of Pergamon, Stratonicus and Satyrus. Asclepiea functioned as spas or sanitoria to which the sick would come to seek the ministrations of the priesthood. Romans frequented the temple at Pergamon in search of medical relief from illness and disease. It was also the haunt of notable people such as Claudius Charax the historian, Aelius Aristides the orator, Polemo the sophist, and Cuspius Rufinus the Consul.
Galen's father died in 148, leaving Galen independently wealthy at the age of 19. He then followed the advice he found in Hippocrates' teaching and travelled and studied widely including such destinations as Smyrna (now Izmir), Corinth, Crete, Cilicia (now Çukurova), Cyprus, and finally the great medical school of Alexandria, exposing himself to the various schools of thought in medicine. In 157, aged 28, he returned to Pergamon as physician to the gladiators of the High Priest of Asia, one of the most influential and wealthy men in Asia. Galen claims that the High Priest chose him over other physicians after he eviscerated an ape and challenged other physicians to repair the damage. When they refused, Galen performed the surgery himself and in so doing won the favor of the High Priest of Asia. Over his four years there, he learned the importance of diet, fitness, hygiene and preventive measures, as well as living anatomy, and the treatment of fractures and severe trauma, referring to their wounds as "windows into the body". Only five deaths among the gladiators occurred while he held the post, compared to sixty in his predecessor's time, a result that is in general ascribed to the attention he paid to their wounds. At the same time he pursued studies in theoretical medicine and philosophy.
Galen went to Rome in 162 and made his mark as a practicing physician. His impatience brought him into conflict with other doctors and he felt menaced by them. His demonstrations there antagonized the less skilled and more conservative physicians in the city. When Galen's animosity with the Roman medical practitioners became serious, he feared he might be exiled or poisoned, so he left the city.
Rome had engaged in foreign wars in 161; Marcus Aurelius and his colleague Lucius Verus were in the north fighting the Marcomanni. During the autumn of 169 when Roman troops were returning to Aquileia, a great plague broke out, and the emperor summoned Galen back to Rome. He was ordered to accompany Marcus and Verus to Germany as the court physician. The following spring Marcus was persuaded to release Galen after receiving a report that Asclepius was against the project. He was left behind to act as physician to the imperial heir Commodus. It was here in court that Galen wrote extensively on medical subjects. Ironically, Lucius Verus died in 169, and Marcus Aurelius himself died in 180, both victims of the plague.
Galen was the physician to Commodus for much of the emperor’s life and treated his common illnesses. According to Dio Cassius 72.14.3–4, in about 189, under Commodus’ reign, a pestilence occurred which at its height killed 2,000 people a day in Rome. This was most likely the same plague that struck Rome during Marcus Aurelius’ reign.
Galen became physician to Septimius Severus during his reign in Rome. Galen compliments Severus and Caracalla on keeping a supply of drugs for their friends and mentions three cases in which they had been of use in 198.
The Antonine Plague was named after Marcus Aurelius’ family name of Antoninus. It was also known as the Plague of Galen and held an important place in medicinal history because of its association with Galen. He had first-hand knowledge of the disease, and was present in Rome when it first struck in 166 AD, and was also present in the winter of 168–69 during an outbreak among troops stationed at Aquileia. He had experience with the epidemic, referring to it as very long lasting, and described its symptoms and his treatment of it. Unfortunately, his references to the plague are scattered and brief. Galen was not trying to present a description of the disease so that it could be recognized in future generations; he was more interested in the treatment and physical effects of the disease. For example, in his writings about a young man afflicted with the plague, he concentrated on the treatment of internal and external ulcerations. According to Niebuhr, "this pestilence must have raged with incredible fury; it carried off innumerable victims. The ancient world never recovered from the blow inflicted upon it by the plague that visited it in the reign of M. Aurelius."
The mortality rate of the plague was 7–10 percent; the outbreak in 165–168 would have caused approximately 3.5 to 5 million deaths. Otto Seeck believes that over half the population of the empire perished. J. F. Gilliam believes that the Antonine plague probably caused more deaths than any other epidemic during the empire before the mid-3rd century. Although Galen's description is incomplete, it is sufficient to enable a firm identification of the disease as smallpox.
Galen notes that the exanthema covered the victim's entire body and was usually black. The exanthem became rough and scabby where there was no ulceration. He states that those who were going to survive developed a black exanthem. According to Galen, it was black because of a remnant of blood putrefied in a fever blister that was pustular. His writings state that raised blisters were present in the Antonine plague, usually in the form of a blistery rash. Galen states that the skin rash was close to the one Thucydides described. Galen describes symptoms of the alimentary tract via a patient's diarrhea and stools. If the stool was very black, the patient died. He says that the amount of black stools varied. It depended on the severity of the intestinal lesions. He observes that in cases where the stool was not black, the black exanthema appeared. Galen describes the symptoms of fever, vomiting, fetid breath, catarrh, cough, and ulceration of the larynx and trachea.
When the Peripatetic philosopher Eudemus became ill with quartan fever, Galen felt obliged to treat him "since he was my teacher and I happened to live nearby." Galen wrote: "I return to the case of Eudemus. He was thoroughly attacked by the three attacks of quartan ague, and the doctors had given him up, as it was now mid-winter." Some Roman physicians criticized Galen for his use of the prognosis in his treatment of Eudemus. This practice conflicted with the then-current standard of care, which relied upon divination and mysticism. Galen retaliated against his detractors by defending his own methods. Garcia-Ballester quotes Galen as saying: "In order to diagnose, one must observe and reason. This was the basis of his criticism of the doctors who proceeded alogos and askeptos." However, Eudemus warned Galen that engaging in conflict with these physicians could lead to his assassination. "Eudemus said this, and more to the same effect; he added that if they were not able to harm me by unscrupulous conduct they would proceed to attempts at poisoning. Among other things he told me that, some ten years before, a young man had come to the city and had given, like me practical demonstrations of the resources of our art; this young man was put to death by poison, together with two servants who accompanied him."
Garcia-Ballester says the following of Galen’s use of prognosis: "In modern medicine, we are used to distinguishing between the diagnostic judgment (the scientific knowledge of what a patient has) and the prognostic judgment (the conjecture about what will happen to him.) For Galen, to understand a clinical case technically, ‘to diagnose’, was, among other things, to know with greater or lesser certainty the outcome for the patient, ‘to prognosticate’. Prognosis, then, is one of the essential problems and most important objectives of Galenic diagnosis. Galen was concerned with distinguishing prognosis from divination or prophecy, both to improve diagnosis technically and to enhance the physician's reputation."
The 11th-century "Suda" lexicon states that Galen died at the age of 70, which would place his death in about the year 199. However, there is a reference in Galen's treatise ""On Theriac to Piso"" (which may, however, be spurious) to events of 204. There are also statements in Arabic sources that he died in Sicily at age 87, after 17 years studying medicine and 70 practicing it, which would mean he died about 217. According to these sources, the tomb of Galenus in Palermo was still well preserved in the tenth century. Nutton believes that ""On Theriac to Piso"" is genuine, that the Arabic sources are correct, and that the "Suda" has erroneously interpreted the 70 years of Galen's career in the Arabic tradition as referring to his whole lifespan. Boudon-Millot more or less concurs and favours a date of 216.
Galen contributed a substantial amount to the Hippocratic understanding of pathology. Under Hippocrates' bodily humors theory, differences in human moods come as a consequence of imbalances in one of the four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Galen promoted this theory and the typology of human temperaments. In Galen's view, an imbalance of each humor corresponded with a particular human temperament (blood—sanguine, black bile—melancholic, yellow bile—choleric, and phlegm—phlegmatic). Thus, individuals with sanguine temperaments are extroverted and social; choleric people have energy, passion, and charisma; melancholics are creative, kind, and considerate; and phlegmatic temperaments are characterized by dependability, kindness, and affection.
Galen's principal interest was in human anatomy, but Roman law had prohibited the dissection of human cadavers since about 150 BC. Because of this restriction, Galen performed anatomical dissections on living (vivisection) and dead animals, mostly focusing on primates. This work was useful because Galen believed that the anatomical structures of these animals closely mirrored those of humans. Galen clarified the anatomy of the trachea and was the first to demonstrate that the larynx generates the voice. In one experiment, Galen used bellows to inflate the lungs of a dead animal. Galen's work on the anatomy remained largely unsurpassed and unchallenged up until the 16th century in Europe. In the middle of the 16th century, the anatomist Andreas Vesalius challenged the anatomical knowledge of Galen by conducting dissections on human cadavers. These investigations allowed Vesalius to refute aspects of Galen's anatomy.
Among Galen's major contributions to medicine was his work on the circulatory system. He was the first to recognize that there are distinct differences between venous (dark) and arterial (bright) blood. Although his anatomical experiments on animal models led him to a more complete understanding of the circulatory system, nervous system, respiratory system, and other structures, his work contained scientific errors. Galen believed the circulatory system to consist of two separate one-way systems of distribution, rather than a single unified system of circulation. He believed venous blood to be generated in the liver, from where it was distributed and consumed by all organs of the body. He posited that arterial blood originated in the heart, from where it was distributed and consumed by all organs of the body. The blood was then regenerated in either the liver or the heart, completing the cycle. Galen also believed in the existence of a group of blood vessels he called the rete mirabile in the carotid sinus. Both of these theories of the circulation of blood were later (beginning with works of Ibn al-Nafis published ca. 1242) shown to be incorrect.
In his work "De motu musculorum", Galen explained the difference between motor and sensory nerves, discussed the concept of muscle tone, and explained the difference between agonists and antagonists.
Galen was a skilled surgeon, operating on human patients. Many of his procedures and techniques would not be used again for centuries, such as the procedures he performed on brains and eyes. To correct cataracts in patients, Galen performed an operation similar to a modern one. Using a needle-shaped instrument, Galen attempted to remove the cataract-affected lens of the eye. His surgical experiments included ligating the arteries of living animals. Although many 20th century historians have claimed that Galen believed the lens to be in the exact center of the eye, Galen actually understood that the crystalline lens is located in the anterior aspect of the human eye.
At first reluctantly but then with increasing vigour, Galen promoted Hippocratic teaching, including venesection and bloodletting, then unknown in Rome. This was sharply criticised by the Erasistrateans, who predicted dire outcomes, believing that it was not blood but "pneuma" that flowed in the veins. Galen, however, staunchly defended venesection in his three books on the subject and in his demonstrations and public disputations.
Although the main focus of his work was on medicine, anatomy, and physiology, Galen also wrote about logic and philosophy. His writings were influenced by earlier Greek and Roman thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Pyrrhonists. Galen was concerned to combine philosophical thought with medical practice, as in his brief work "That the Best Physician is also a Philosopher" he took aspects from each group and combined them with his original thought. He regarded medicine as an interdisciplinary field that was best practiced by utilizing theory, observation, and experimentation in conjunction.
Several schools of thought existed within the medical field during Galen's lifetime, the main two being the Empiricists and Rationalists (also called Dogmatists or Philosophers), with the Methodists being a smaller group. The Empiricists emphasized the importance of physical practice and experimentation, or "active learning" in the medical discipline. In direct opposition to the Empiricists were the Rationalists, who valued the study of established teachings in order to create new theories in the name of medical advancements. The Methodists formed somewhat of a middle ground, as they were not as experimental as the Empiricists, nor as theoretical as the Rationalists. The Methodists mainly utilized pure observation, showing greater interest in studying the natural course of ailments than making efforts to find remedies. Galen's education had exposed him to the five major schools of thought (Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans, Pyrrhonists), with teachers from the Rationalist sect and from the Empiricist sect.
Galen was well known for his advancements in medicine and the circulatory system, but he was also concerned with philosophy. He developed his own tripartite soul model following the examples of Plato; some scholars refer to him as a Platonist. Galen developed a theory of personality based on his understanding of fluid circulation in humans, and he believed that there was a physiological basis for mental disorders. Galen connected many of his theories to the pneuma and he opposed the Stoics' definition of and use of the pneuma.
The Stoics, according to Galen, failed to give a credible answer for the localization of functions of the psyche, or the mind. Through his use of medicine, he was convinced that he came up with a better answer, the brain. The Stoics only recognized the soul as having one part, which was the rational soul and they claimed it would be found in the heart. Galen, following Plato's idea, came up with two more parts to the soul.
Galen also rejected Stoic propositional logic and instead embraced a hypothetical syllogistic which was strongly influenced by the Peripatetics and based on elements of Aristotelian logic.
One of Galen's major works, "On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato", sought to demonstrate the unity of the two subjects and their views. Using their theories, combined with Aristotle's, Galen developed a tripartite soul consisting of similar aspects. He used the same terms as Plato, referring to the three parts as rational, spiritual, and appetitive. Each corresponded to a localized area of the body. The rational soul was in the brain, the spiritual soul was in the heart, and the appetitive soul was in the liver. Galen was the first scientist and philosopher to assign specific parts of the soul to locations in the body because of his extensive background in medicine. This idea is now referred to as localization of function. Galen's assignments were revolutionary for the time period, which set the precedent for future localization theories.
Galen believed each part of this tripartite soul controlled specific functions within the body and that the soul, as a whole, contributed to the health of the body, strengthening the "natural functioning capacity of the organ or organs in question". The rational soul controlled higher level cognitive functioning in an organism, for example, making choices or perceiving the world and sending those signals to the brain. He also listed "imagination, memory, recollection, knowledge, thought, consideration, voluntary motion and sensation" as being found within the rational soul. The functions of "growing or being alive" resided in the spirited soul. The spirited soul also contained our passions, such as anger. These passions were considered to be even stronger than regular emotions, and, as a consequence, more dangerous. The third part of the soul, or the appetitive spirit, controlled the living forces in our body, most importantly blood. The appetitive spirit also regulated the pleasures of the body and was moved by feelings of enjoyment. This third part of the soul is the animalistic, or more natural, side of the soul; it deals with the natural urges of the body and survival instincts. Galen proposed that when the soul is moved by too much enjoyment, it reaches states of "incontinence" and "licentiousness", the inability to willfully cease enjoyment, which was a negative consequence of too much pleasure.
In order to unite his theories about the soul and how it operated within the body, he adapted the theory of the pneuma, which he used to explain how the soul operated within its assigned organs, and how those organs, in turn, interacted together. Galen then distinguished the vital pneuma, in the arterial system, from the psychic pneuma, in the brain and nervous system. Galen placed the vital pneuma in the heart and the psychic pneuma within the brain. He conducted many anatomical studies on animals, most famously an ox, to study the transition from vital to psychic pneuma. Although highly criticized for comparing animal anatomy to human anatomy, Galen was convinced that his knowledge was abundant enough in both anatomies to base one on the other.
Galen believed there to be no distinction between the mental and the physical. This was a controversial argument of the time, and Galen fell with the Greeks in believing that the mind and body were not separate faculties. He believed that this could be scientifically proven. This was where his opposition to the Stoics became most prevalent. Galen proposed organs within the body to be responsible for specific functions, rather than individual parts. According to Galen, the Stoics' lack of scientific justification discredited their claims of the separateness of mind and body, which is why he spoke so strongly against them.
Another one of Galen's major works, "On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul's Passion," discussed how to approach and treat psychological problems. This was Galen's early attempt at what would later be called psychotherapy. His book contained directions on how to provide counsel to those with psychological issues to prompt them to reveal their deepest passions and secrets, and eventually cure them of their mental deficiency. The leading individual, or therapist, had to be a male, preferably of an older, wiser, age, as well as free from the control of the passions. These passions, according to Galen, caused the psychological problems that people experienced.
Galen may have produced more work than any author in antiquity, rivaling the quantity of work issued from Augustine of Hippo. So profuse was Galen's output that the surviving texts represent nearly half of all the extant literature from ancient Greece. It has been reported that Galen employed twenty scribes to write down his words. Galen may have written as many as 500 treatises, amounting to some 10 million words. Although his surviving works amount to some 3 million words, this is thought to represent less than a third of his complete writings. In AD 191, a fire in the Temple of Peace destroyed many of his works, in particular treatises on philosophy.
Because Galen's works were not translated into Latin in the ancient period, and because of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the study of Galen, along with the Greek medical tradition as a whole, went into decline in Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages, when very few Latin scholars could read Greek. However, in general, Galen and the ancient Greek medical tradition continued to be studied and followed in the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly known as the Byzantine Empire. All of the extant Greek manuscripts of Galen were copied by Byzantine scholars. In the Abbasid period (after AD 750) Arab Muslims began to be interested in Greek scientific and medical texts for the first time, and had some of Galen's texts translated into Arabic, often by Syrian Christian scholars (see below). As a result, some texts of Galen exist only in Arabic translation, while others exist only in medieval Latin translations of the Arabic. In some cases scholars have even attempted to translate from the Latin or Arabic back into Greek where the original is lost. For some of the ancient sources, such as Herophilus, Galen's account of their work is all that survives.
Even in his own time, forgeries and unscrupulous editions of his work were a problem, prompting him to write "On his Own Books". Forgeries in Latin, Arabic or Greek continued until the Renaissance. Some of Galen's treatises have appeared under many different titles over the years. Sources are often in obscure and difficult-to-access journals or repositories. Although written in Greek, by convention the works are referred to by Latin titles, and often by merely abbreviations of those. No single authoritative collection of his work exists, and controversy remains as to the authenticity of a number of works attributed to Galen. As a consequence, research on Galen's work is fraught with hazard.
Various attempts have been made to classify Galen's vast output. For instance Coxe (1846) lists a Prolegomena, or introductory books, followed by 7 classes of treatise embracing Physiology (28 vols.), Hygiene (12), Aetiology (19), Semeiotics (14), Pharmacy (10), Blood letting (4) and Therapeutics (17), in addition to 4 of aphorisms, and spurious works. The most complete compendium of Galen's writings, surpassing even modern projects like the "Corpus Medicorum Graecorum", is the one compiled and translated by Karl Gottlob Kühn of Leipzig between 1821 and 1833. This collection consists of 122 of Galen's treatises, translated from the original Greek into Latin (the text is presented in both languages). Over 20,000 pages in length, it is divided into 22 volumes, with 676 index pages. Many of Galen's works are included in the "Thesaurus Linguae Graecae", a digital library of Greek literature started in 1972. Another useful modern source is the French Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de médecine (BIUM).
In his time, Galen's reputation as both physician and philosopher was legendary, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius describing him as "Primum sane medicorum esse, philosophorum autem solum" (first among doctors and unique among philosophers "Praen 14: 660"). Other contemporary authors in the Greek world confirm this including Theodotus the Shoemaker, Athenaeus and Alexander of Aphrodisias. The 7th-century poet George of Pisida went so far as to refer to Christ as a second and neglected Galen. Galen continued to exert an important influence over the theory and practice of medicine until the mid-17th century in the Byzantine and Arabic worlds and Europe. Hippocrates and Galen form important landmarks of 600 years of Greek medicine. A. J. Brock describes them as representing the foundation and apex respectively. A few centuries after Galen, Palladius Iatrosophista stated, in his commentary on Hippocrates, that Hippocrates sowed and Galen reaped.
Thus Galen summarised and synthesised the work of his predecessors, and it is in Galen's words (Galenism) that Greek medicine was handed down to subsequent generations, such that Galenism became the means by which Greek medicine was known to the world. Often, this was in the form of restating and reinterpreting, such as in Magnus of Nisibis' 4th-century work on urine, which was in turn translated into Arabic. Yet the full importance of his contributions was not appreciated till long after his death. Galen's rhetoric and prolificity were so powerful as to convey the impression that there was little left to learn. The term Galenism has subsequently taken on both a positive and pejorative meaning as one that transformed medicine in late antiquity yet so dominated subsequent thinking as to stifle further progress.
After the collapse of the Western Empire the study of Galen and other Greek works almost disappeared in the Latin West. In contrast, in the predominantly Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman empire (Byzantium), many commentators of the subsequent centuries, such as Oribasius, physician to the emperor Julian who compiled a "Synopsis" in the 4th century, preserved and disseminated Galen's works, making Galenism more accessible. Nutton refers to these authors as the "medical refrigerators of antiquity". In late antiquity, medical writing veered increasingly in the direction of the theoretical at the expense of the practical, with many authors merely debating Galenism. Magnus of Nisibis was a pure theorist, as were John of Alexandria and Agnellus of Ravenna with their lectures on Galen's "De Sectis". So strong was Galenism that other authors such as Hippocrates began to be seen through a Galenic lens, while his opponents became marginalised and other medical sects such as Asclepiadism slowly disappeared. Greek medicine was part of Greek culture, and Syrian Eastern Christians came in contact with it while the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) ruled Syria and Western Mesopotamia, regions that were conquered from Byzantium in the 7th century by Arab Muslims. After AD 750, Muslims had these Syrian Christians make the first translations of Galen into Arabic. From then on, Galen and the Greek medical tradition in general became assimilated into the medieval and early modern Islamic Middle East.
Galen's approach to medicine became and remains influential in the Islamic world. The first major translator of Galen into Arabic was the Arab Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq. He translated (c. 830–870) 129 works of "Jalinos" into Arabic. Arabic sources, such as Muhammad ibn Zakarīya al-Rāzi (AD 865–925), continue to be the source of discovery of new or relatively inaccessible Galenic writings. One of Hunayn's Arabic translations, "Kitab ila Aglooqan fi Shifa al Amrad", which is extant in the Library of Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine & Sciences, is regarded as a masterpiece of Galen's literary works. A part of the Alexandrian compendium of Galen's work, this 10th-century manuscript comprises two parts that include details regarding various types of fevers (Humyat) and different inflammatory conditions of the body. More important is that it includes details of more than 150 single and compound formulations of both herbal and animal origin. The book provides an insight into understanding the traditions and methods of treatment in the Greek and Roman eras. In addition, this book provides a direct source for the study of more than 150 single and compound drugs used during the Greco-Roman period.
As the title of "Doubts on Galen" by al-Rāzi implies, as well as the writings of physicians such as Ibn Zuhr and Ibn al-Nafis, the works of Galen were not accepted unquestioningly, but as a challengeable basis for further inquiry. A strong emphasis on experimentation and empiricism led to new results and new observations, which were contrasted and combined with those of Galen by writers such as al-Rāzi, Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Zuhr and Ibn al-Nafis. For example, Ibn al-Nafis' discovery of the pulmonary circulation contradicted the Galenic theory on the heart.
The influence of Galen's writings, including humorism, remains strong in modern Unani medicine, now closely identified with Islamic culture, and widely practiced from India (where it is officially recognized) to Morocco.
From the 11th century onwards, Latin translations of Islamic medical texts began to appear in the West, alongside the Salerno school of thought, and were soon incorporated into the curriculum at the universities of Naples and Montpellier. From that time, Galenism took on a new, unquestioned authority, Galen even being referred to as the "Medical Pope of the Middle Ages". Constantine the African was amongst those who translated both Hippocrates and Galen from Arabic. In addition to the more numerous translations of Arabic texts in this period, there were a few translations of Galenic works directly from the Greek, such as Burgundio of Pisa's translation of "De complexionibus". Galen's works on anatomy and medicine became the mainstay of the medieval physician's university curriculum, alongside Ibn Sina's "The Canon of Medicine", which elaborated on Galen's works. Unlike pagan Rome, Christian Europe did not exercise a universal prohibition of the dissection and autopsy of the human body and such examinations were carried out regularly from at least the 13th century. However, Galen's influence was so great that when dissections discovered anomalies compared with Galen's anatomy, the physicians often tried to fit these into the Galenic system. An example of this is Mondino de Liuzzi, who describes rudimentary blood circulation in his writings but still asserts that the left ventricle should contain air. Some cited these changes as proof that human anatomy had changed since the time of Galen.
The most important translator of Galen's works into Latin was Niccolò di Deoprepio da Reggio, who spent several years working on Galen. Niccolò worked at the Angevin Court during the reign of king Robert of Naples. Among Niccolò's translations is a piece from a medical treatise by Galen, of which the original text is lost.
The Renaissance, and the fall of the Byzantine Empire (1453), were accompanied by an influx of Greek scholars and manuscripts to the West, allowing direct comparison between the Arabic commentaries and the original Greek texts of Galen. This New Learning and the Humanist movement, particularly the work of Linacre, promoted "literae humaniores" including Galen in the Latin scientific canon, "De Naturalibus Facultatibus" appearing in London in 1523. Debates on medical science now had two traditions, the more conservative Arabian and the liberal Greek. The more extreme liberal movements began to challenge the role of authority in medicine, as exemplified by Paracelsus' symbolically burning the works of Avicenna and Galen at his medical school in Basle. Nevertheless, Galen's pre-eminence amongst the great thinkers of the millennium is exemplified by a 16th-century mural in the refectory of the Great Lavra of Mt Athos. It depicts pagan sages at the foot of the Tree of Jesse, with Galen between the Sibyl and Aristotle.
Galenism's final defeat came from a combination of the negativism of Paracelsus and the constructivism of the Italian Renaissance anatomists, such as Vesalius in the 16th century. In the 1530s, the Flemish anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius took on a project to translate many of Galen's Greek texts into Latin. Vesalius' most famous work, "De humani corporis fabrica", was greatly influenced by Galenic writing and form. Seeking to examine critically Galen's methods and outlook, Vesalius turned to human cadaver dissection as a means of verification. Galen's writings were shown by Vesalius to describe details present in monkeys but not in humans, and he demonstrated Galen's limitations through books and hands-on demonstrations despite fierce opposition from orthodox pro-Galenists such as Jacobus Sylvius. Since Galen states that he is using observations of monkeys (human dissection was prohibited) to give an account of what the body looks like, Vesalius could portray himself as using Galen's approach of description of direct observation to create a record of the exact details of the human body, since he worked in a time when human dissection was allowed. Galen argued that monkey anatomy was close enough to humans for physicians to learn anatomy with monkey dissections and then make observations of similar structures in the wounds of their patients, rather than trying to learn anatomy only from wounds in human patients, as would be done by students trained in the Empiricist model. The examinations of Vesalius also disproved medical theories of Aristotle and Mondino de Liuzzi. One of the best known examples of Vesalius' overturning of Galenism was his demonstration that the interventricular septum of the heart was not permeable, as Galen had taught ("Nat Fac III xv"). However, this had been revealed two years before by Michael Servetus in his fateful ""Christianismi restitutio"" (1553) with only three copies of the book surviving, but these remaining hidden for decades; the rest were burned shortly after its publication because of persecution of Servetus by religious authorities.
Michael Servetus, using the name "Michel de Villeneuve" during his stay in France, was Vesalius' fellow student and the best Galenist at the University of Paris, according to Johann Winter von Andernach, who taught both. In the Galenism of the Renaissance, editions of the "Opera Omnia" by Galen were very important. It was begun in Venice in 1541–1542 by the Guinta. There were fourteen editions of the book from that date until 1625. Just one edition was produced from Lyon between 1548 and 1551. The Lyon edition has commentaries on breathing and blood streaming that correct the work of earlier renowned authors such as Vesalius, Caius or Janus Cornarius. "Michel De Villeneuve" had contracts with Jean Frellon for that work, and the Servetus scholar-researcher Francisco Javier González Echeverría presented research that became an accepted communication in the International Society for the History of Medicine, which concluded that Michael De Villeneuve (Michael Servetus) is the author of the commentaries of this edition of Frellon, in Lyon.
Another convincing case where understanding of the body was extended beyond where Galen had left it came from these demonstrations of the nature of human circulation and the subsequent work of Andrea Cesalpino, Fabricio of Acquapendente and William Harvey. Some Galenic teaching, such as his emphasis on bloodletting as a remedy for many ailments, however, remained influential until well into the 19th century.
Galenic scholarship remains an intense and vibrant field, following renewed interest in his work, dating from the German encyclopedia "Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft".
Copies of his works translated by Robert M. Green are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
In 2018, the University of Basel discovered that a mysterious Greek papyrus with mirror writing on both sides, which was at the collection of Basilius Amerbach, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Basel in the 16th century, is an unknown medical document of Galen or an unknown commentary on his work. The medical text describes the phenomenon of ‘hysterical apnea’. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12326 |
Glossolalia
Glossolalia or speaking in tongues is a phenomenon in which people speak words that are apparently in languages unknown to the speaker. One definition used by linguists is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables that lack any readily comprehended meaning, in some cases as part of religious practice in which it is believed to be a divine language unknown to the speaker. Glossolalia is practiced in Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity as well as in other religions.
Sometimes a distinction is made between "glossolalia" and "xenolalia" or "xenoglossy", which specifically designates when the language being spoken is a natural language previously unknown to the speaker. This distinction is not universally made, and the New Testament of the Bible mentions the phenomenon in at least one passage in reference to speaking in languages known to others but not to the speakers.
"Glossolalia" is from the Greek word γλωσσολαλία, itself a compound of the words γλῶσσα ("glossa"), meaning "tongue" or "language" and λαλέω ("laleō"), "to speak, talk, chat, prattle, or to make a sound". The Greek expression (in various forms) appears in the New Testament in the books of Acts and First Corinthians. In Acts 2, the followers of Christ receive the Holy Spirit and speak in the languages of at least fifteen countries or ethnic groups.
The exact phrase "speaking in tongues" has been used at least since the translation of the New Testament into Middle English in the Wycliffe Bible in the 14th century. Frederic Farrar first used the word "glossolalia" in 1879.
In 1972, William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics. His assessment was based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in public and private Christian meetings in Italy, the Netherlands, Jamaica, Canada, and the United States over the course of five years; his wide range of subjects included the Puerto Ricans of the Bronx, the snake handlers of the Appalachians and the spiritual Christians from Russia in Los Angeles ("Pryguny, Dukh-i-zhizniki").
Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels taken from a language known to the speaker:
It is verbal behaviour that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels ... in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudogrammatically ... with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.
[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.
That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed by others. Felicitas Goodman, a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language. These findings were confirmed by Kavan (2004).
Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface and so concluded that glossolalia is "only a facade of language". He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts. Humans use language to communicate but glossolalia does not. Therefore, he concluded that glossolalia is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives". On the basis of his linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead".
Practitioners of glossolalia may disagree with linguistic researchers and claim that they are speaking human languages (xenoglossia). Felicitas Goodman studied a number of Pentecostal communities in the United States, the Caribbean, and Mexico; these included English-, Spanish- and Mayan-speaking groups. She compared what she found with recordings of non-Christian rituals from Africa, Borneo, Indonesia and Japan. She took into account both the segmental structure (such as sounds, syllables, phrases) and the supra-segmental elements (rhythm, accent, intonation) and concluded that there was no distinction between what was practised by the Pentecostal Protestants and the followers of other religions.
It was a commonplace idea within the Greco-Roman world that divine beings spoke languages different from human languages, and historians of religion have identified references to esoteric speech in Greco-Roman literature that resemble glossolalia, sometimes explained as angelic or divine language. An example is the account in the Testament of Job, a non-canonical elaboration of the Book of Job, where the daughters of Job are described as being given sashes enabling them to speak and sing in angelic languages.
According to Dale B. Martin, glossolalia accorded high status in the ancient world due to its association with the divine. Alexander of Abonoteichus may have exhibited glossolalia during his episodes of prophetic ecstasy. Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus linked glossolalia to prophecy, writing that prophecy was divine spirit possession that "emits words which are not understood by those that utter them; for they pronounce them, as it is said, with an insane mouth ("mainomenό stomati") and are wholly subservient, and entirely yield themselves to the energy of the predominating God."
In his writings on early Christianity, the Greek philosopher Celsus includes an account of Christian glossolalia. Celsus describes prophecies made by several Christians in Palestine and Phoenicia of which he writes, "Having brandished these threats they then go on to add incomprehensible, incoherent, and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover: for they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes."
References to speaking in tongues by the Church fathers are rare. Except for Irenaeus' 2nd-century reference to many in the church speaking all kinds of languages "through the Spirit", and Tertullian's reference in 207 AD to the spiritual gift of interpretation of tongues being encountered in his day, there are no other known first-hand accounts of glossolalia, and very few second-hand accounts among their writings.
During the 20th century, glossolalia primarily became associated with Pentecostalism and the later charismatic movement. The holiness preachers Charles Parham and William Seymour are credited as co-founders of the movement. Parham and Seymour taught that "baptism of the Holy Spirit was not the blessing of sanctification but rather a third work of grace that was accompanied by the experience of tongues." It was Parham who formulated the doctrine of "initial evidence". After studying the Bible, Parham came to the conclusion that speaking in tongues was the Bible evidence that one had received the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
In 1900, Parham opened Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, America, where he taught initial evidence. During a service on 1 January 1901, a student named Agnes Ozman asked for prayer and the laying on of hands to specifically ask God to fill her with the Holy Spirit. She became the first of many students to experience glossolalia, coincidentally in the first hours of the 20th century. Parham followed within the next few days. Parham called his new movement the apostolic faith. In 1905, he moved to Houston and opened a Bible school there. One of his students was William Seymour, an African-American preacher. In 1906, Seymour traveled to Los Angeles where his preaching ignited the Azusa Street Revival. This revival is considered the birth of the global Pentecostal movement. According to the first issue of William Seymour's newsletter, "The Apostolic Faith", from 1906:
Parham and his early followers believed that speaking in tongues was xenoglossia, and some followers traveled to foreign countries and tried to use the gift to share the Gospel with non-English-speaking people. From the time of the Azusa Street revival and among early participants in the Pentecostal movement, there were many accounts of individuals hearing their own languages spoken 'in tongues'. It is likely that the majority of Pentecostals and charismatics still consider speaking in tongues to primarily be human languages. In the years following the Azusa Street revival Pentecostals who went to the mission field found that they were unable to speak in the language of the local inhabitants at will when they spoke in tongues in strange lands. But Pentecostals and Charismatics have reported many cases of 'speaking in tongues' that were identified as human languages since.
The revival at Azusa Street lasted until around 1915. From it grew many new Pentecostal churches as people visited the services in Los Angeles and took their newfound beliefs to communities around the United States and abroad. During the 20th century, glossolalia became an important part of the identity of these religious groups. During the 1960s, the charismatic movement within the mainline Protestant churches and among charismatic Roman Catholics adopted some Pentecostal beliefs, and the practice of glossolalia spread to other Christian denominations. The discussion regarding tongues has permeated many branches of the Protestantism, particularly since the widespread charismatic movement in the 1960s. Many books have been published either defending or attacking the practice.
In Christianity, a supernatural explanation for glossolalia is advocated by some and rejected by others.
Proponents of each viewpoint use the biblical writings and historical arguments to support their positions.
There are five places in the New Testament where speaking in tongues is referred to "explicitly":[see also Sumerian dialects ]
Other verses by inference may be considered to refer to "speaking in tongues", such as , and .
The biblical account of Pentecost in the second chapter of the book of Acts describes the sound of a mighty rushing wind and "divided tongues like fire" coming to rest on the apostles. The text further describes that "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages". It goes on to say in verses 5–11 that when the Apostles spoke, each person in attendance "heard their own language being spoken". Therefore, the gift of speaking in tongues refers to the Apostles' speaking languages that the people listening heard as "them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God". Glossolalists and cessationists both recognize this as xenoglossia, a miraculous ability that marked their baptism in the Holy Spirit. Something similar (although perhaps not xenoglossia) took place on at least two subsequent occasions, in Caesarea and Ephesus.
Glossolalists and cessationists generally agree that the primary purpose of the gift of speaking in tongues was to mark the Holy Spirit being poured out. At Pentecost the Apostle Peter declared that this gift, which was making some in the audience ridicule the disciples as drunks, was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel which described that God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh ().
Despite these commonalities, there are significant variations in interpretation.
Influenced by the Holiness movement, baptism with the Holy Spirit was regarded by the first Pentecostals as being the third work of grace, following the new birth (first work of grace) and entire sanctification (second work of grace). This third work of grace was accompanied with glossolalia.
Because Pentecostal and charismatic beliefs are not monolithic, there is not complete theological agreement on speaking in tongues. Generally, however, it is agreed that speaking in tongues is a spiritual gift that can be manifested as either a human language or a heavenly supernatural language in three ways:
Many Pentecostals and charismatics quote Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 14 which established guidelines on the public use of glossolalia in the church at Corinth although the exegesis of this passage and the extent to which these instructions are followed is a matter of academic debate.
The gift of tongues is often referred to as a "message in tongues". This use of glossolalia requires an interpretation so that the gathered congregation can understand the message. This is accomplished by the interpretation of tongues, another spiritual gift. There are two schools of thought concerning the nature of a message in tongues:
In addition to praying in the Spirit, many Pentecostal and charismatic churches practice what is known as singing in the Spirit. The Apostle "Paul's definition of spiritual songs – is singing in the Spirit which is singing in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:15). Paul made it clear that praying in the Spirit was praying in tongues because it was in direct contrast to praying with the understanding or the language that could not be understood in the context of human languages (1 Corinthians 14:14, 16–18)"
Other religious groups have been observed to practice some form of theopneustic glossolalia. It is perhaps most commonly in Paganism, Shamanism, and other mediumistic religious practices. In Japan, the God Light Association believed that glossolalia could cause adherents to recall past lives.
Glossolalia has been postulated as an explanation for the Voynich manuscript.
In the 19th century, Spiritism was developed by the work of Allan Kardec, and the phenomenon was seen as one of the self-evident manifestations of spirits. Spiritists argued that some cases were actually cases of xenoglossia.
Glossolalia is classified as a non-neurogenic language disorder. Most people exhibiting glossolalia do not have a neuropsychiatric disorder.
Neuroimaging of brain activity during glossolalia does not show activity in the language areas of the brain.
A study done by the "American Journal of Human Biology" found that speaking in tongues was associated with both a reduction in circulatory cortisol, and enhancements in alpha-amylase enzyme activitytwo common biomarkers of stress reduction that can be measured in saliva. This supports sociological studies that report various social benefits to engaging in Pentecostal glossolalia, such as an increase in self-confidence.
Adriano Celentano's 1972 song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" is an Italian song purposely written in mock-up English. It uses sounds from American English to simulate having been written in that language, while conveying no actual meaning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12327 |
Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.
He coined the term black-body radiation in 1862. Several different sets of concepts are named "Kirchhoff's laws" after him, concerning such diverse subjects as black-body radiation and spectroscopy, electrical circuits, and thermochemistry. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague, Robert Bunsen.
Gustav Kirchhoff was born on 12 March 1824 in Königsberg, Prussia, the son of Friedrich Kirchhoff, a lawyer, and Johanna Henriette Wittke. His family were Lutherans in the Evangelical Church of Prussia. He graduated from the Albertus University of Königsberg in 1847 where he attended the mathematico-physical seminar directed by Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, Franz Ernst Neumann and Friedrich Julius Richelot. In the same year, he moved to Berlin, where he stayed until he received a professorship at Breslau. Later, in 1857, he married Clara Richelot, the daughter of his mathematics professor Richelot. The couple had five children. Clara died in 1869. He married Luise Brömmel in 1872.
Kirchhoff formulated his circuit laws, which are now ubiquitous in electrical engineering, in 1845, while still a student. He completed this study as a seminar exercise; it later became his doctoral dissertation. He was called to the University of Heidelberg in 1854, where he collaborated in spectroscopic work with Robert Bunsen. In 1857 he calculated that an electric signal in a resistanceless wire travels along the wire at the speed of light. He proposed his law of thermal radiation in 1859, and gave a proof in 1861. Together Kirchhoff and Bunsen invented the spectroscope, which Kirchhoff used to pioneer the identification of the elements in the Sun, showing in 1859 that the Sun contains sodium. He and Bunsen discovered caesium and rubidium in 1861.
At Heidelberg he ran a mathematico-physical seminar, modelled on Neumann's, with the mathematician Leo Koenigsberger. Among those who attended this seminar were Arthur Schuster and Sofia Kovalevskaya.
He contributed greatly to the field of spectroscopy by formalizing three laws that describe the spectral composition of light emitted by incandescent objects, building substantially on the discoveries of David Alter and Anders Jonas Ångström (see also: spectrum analysis). In 1862 he was awarded the Rumford Medal for his researches on the fixed lines of the solar spectrum, and on the inversion of the bright lines in the spectra of artificial light. In 1875 Kirchhoff accepted the first chair specifically dedicated to theoretical physics at Berlin.
He also contributed to optics, carefully solving the wave equation to provide a solid foundation for Huygens' principle (and correct it in the process).
In 1884 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Kirchhoff died in 1887, and was buried in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin (just a few meters from the graves of the Brothers Grimm). Leopold Kronecker is buried in the same cemetery.
Kirchhoff's first law is that the algebraic sum of currents in a network of conductors meeting at a point (or node) is zero. The second law is that in a closed circuit, the directed sums of the voltages in a closed system is zero.
Kirchhoff did not know about the existence of energy levels in atoms. The existence of discrete spectral lines was later explained by the Bohr model of the atom, which helped lead to quantum mechanics.
Kirchhoff showed in 1858 that, in thermochemistry, the variation of the heat of a chemical reaction is given by the difference in heat capacity between products and reactants:
Integration of this equation permits the evaluation of the heat of reaction at one temperature from measurements at another temperature. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12332 |
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". "Time" magazine observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."
Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as "Orthodoxy" and "The Everlasting Man". Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin. On his contributions, T. S. Eliot wrote,
Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London, the son of Marie Louise, née Grosjean, and Edward Chesterton (1841–1922).
G. K. Chesterton was baptised at the age of one month into the Church of England, though his family themselves were irregularly practising Unitarians. According to his autobiography, as a young man he became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards.
Chesterton was educated at St Paul's School, then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator. The Slade is a department of University College London, where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but did not complete a degree in either subject.
Chesterton married Frances Blogg in 1901; the marriage lasted the rest of his life. Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back to Anglicanism, though he later considered Anglicanism to be a "pale imitation". He entered full communion with the Catholic Church in 1922. The couple were unable to have children.
In September 1895 Chesterton began working for the London publisher Redway, where he remained for just over a year. In October 1896 he moved to the publishing house T. Fisher Unwin, where he remained until 1902. During this period he also undertook his first journalistic work, as a freelance art and literary critic. In 1902 the "Daily News" gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in "The Illustrated London News", for which he continued to write for the next thirty years.
Early on Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art. He had planned to become an artist, and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images. Even his fiction contained carefully concealed parables. Father Brown is perpetually correcting the incorrect vision of the bewildered folks at the scene of the crime and wandering off at the end with the criminal to exercise his priestly role of recognition and repentance. For example, in the story "The Flying Stars", Father Brown entreats the character Flambeau to give up his life of crime: "There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime."
Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow. According to his autobiography, he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released.
Chesterton was a large man, standing and weighing around . His girth gave rise to an anecdote during the First World War, when a lady in London asked why he was not "out at the Front"; he replied, "If you go round to the side, you will see that I am." On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw, "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England." Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it." P. G. Wodehouse once described a very loud crash as "a sound like G. K. Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin".
Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand, and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from an incorrect location, writing such things as "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home". Chesterton himself told this story, omitting, however, his wife's alleged reply, in his autobiography.
In 1931, the BBC invited Chesterton to give a series of radio talks. He accepted, tentatively at first. However, from 1932 until his death, Chesterton delivered over 40 talks per year. He was allowed (and encouraged) to improvise on the scripts. This allowed his talks to maintain an intimate character, as did the decision to allow his wife and secretary to sit with him during his broadcasts.
The talks were very popular. A BBC official remarked, after Chesterton's death, that "in another year or so, he would have become the dominating voice from Broadcasting House."
Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on the morning of 14 June 1936, at his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. His last known words were a greeting spoken to his wife. The sermon at Chesterton's Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral, London, was delivered by Ronald Knox on 27 June 1936. Knox said, "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton." He is buried in Beaconsfield in the Catholic Cemetery. Chesterton's estate was probated at £28,389, .
Near the end of Chesterton's life, Pope Pius XI invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great (KC*SG). The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be beatified. He is remembered liturgically on 13 June by the Episcopal Church, with a provisional feast day as adopted at the 2009 General Convention.
Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the "Daily News", "The Illustrated London News", and his own paper, "G. K.'s Weekly"; he also wrote articles for the "Encyclopædia Britannica", including the entry on Charles Dickens and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition (1929). His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared only in short stories, while "The Man Who Was Thursday" is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic Church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing. In the United States, his writings on distributism were popularised through "The American Review", published by Seward Collins in New York.
Of his nonfiction, "Charles Dickens: A Critical Study" (1906) has received some of the broadest-based praise. According to Ian Ker ("The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845–1961", 2003), "In Chesterton's eyes Dickens belongs to Merry, not Puritan, England"; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in Chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time.
Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics.
Chesterton's writing has been seen by some analysts as combining two earlier strands in English literature. Dickens' approach is one of these. Another is represented by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, whom Chesterton knew well: satirists and social commentators following in the tradition of Samuel Butler, vigorously wielding paradox as a weapon against complacent acceptance of the conventional view of things.
Chesterton's style and thinking were all his own, however, and his conclusions were often opposed to those of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. In his book "Heretics", Chesterton has this to say of Wilde: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw." More briefly, and with a closer approximation of Wilde's own style, he writes in "Orthodoxy" concerning the necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."
Chesterton and Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they both maintained good will toward, and respect for, each other. However, in his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In "Heretics" he writes of Shaw:
Shaw represented the new school of thought, modernism, which was rising at the time. Chesterton's views, on the other hand, became increasingly more focused towards the Church. In "Orthodoxy" he writes: "The worship of will is the negation of will … If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, 'Will something', that is tantamount to saying, 'I do not mind what you will', and that is tantamount to saying, 'I have no will in the matter.' You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular."
This style of argumentation is what Chesterton refers to as using 'Uncommon Sense' – that is, that the thinkers and popular philosophers of the day, though very clever, were saying things that were nonsensical. This is illustrated again in "Orthodoxy": "Thus when Mr. H. G. Wells says (as he did somewhere), 'All chairs are quite different', he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them 'all chairs'." Or, again from "Orthodoxy":
The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless – one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is – well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.
Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." He was an early member of the Fabian Society, but resigned from it at the time of the Boer War.
Another contemporary and friend from schooldays was Edmund Bentley, inventor of the clerihew. Chesterton himself wrote clerihews and illustrated his friend's first published collection of poetry, "Biography for Beginners" (1905), which popularised the clerihew form. Chesterton was also godfather to Bentley's son, Nicolas, and opened his novel "The Man Who Was Thursday" with a poem written to Bentley.
Chesterton faced accusations of anti-Semitism during his lifetime, saying in chapter 13 of "The New Jerusalem" (1920) that it was something "for which my friends and I were for a long period rebuked and even reviled". Despite his prostestations to the contrary, the accusation continues to be repeated. An early supporter of Captain Dreyfus, by 1906 he had turned into an anti-dreyfusard. From the early 20th century, his fictional work included caricatures of Jews, stereotyping them as greedy, cowardly, disloyal and communists.
The Marconi scandal of 1912–13 brought issues of anti-Semitism into the political mainstream. Senior ministers in the Liberal government had secretly profited from advanced knowledge of deals regarding wireless telegraphy, and critics regarded it as relevant that some of the key players were Jewish. According to historian Todd Endelman, who identified Chesterton as among the most vocal critics, "The Jew baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest, mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and their challenge to what were seen as traditional English values."
In a work of 1917, titled "A Short History of England", Chesterton considers the royal decree of 1290 by which Edward I expelled Jews from England, a policy that remained in place until 1655. Chesterton writes that popular perception of Jewish moneylenders could well have led Edward I's subjects to regard him as a "tender father of his people" for "breaking the rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth". He felt that Jews, "a sensitive and highly civilized people" who "were the capitalists of the age, the men with wealth banked ready for use", might legitimately complain that "Christian kings and nobles, and even Christian popes and bishops, used for Christian purposes (such as the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could only be accumulated in such mountains by a usury they inconsistently denounced as unchristian; and then, when worse times came, gave up the Jew to the fury of the poor".
In "The New Jerusalem" Chesterton dedicated a chapter to his views on the Jewish question: the sense that Jews were a distinct people without a homeland of their own, living as foreigners in countries where they were always a minority. He wrote that in the past, his position: was always called Anti-Semitism; but it was always much more true to call it Zionism. ... my friends and I had in some general sense a policy in the matter; and it was in substance the desire to give Jews the dignity and status of a separate nation. We desired that in some fashion, and so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live in a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews. I am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism. It would seem more rational to call it Semitism. In the same place he proposed the thought experiment (describing it as "a parable" and "a flippant fancy") that Jews should be admitted to any role in English public life on condition that they must wear distinctively Middle Eastern garb, explaining that "The point is that we should know where we are; and he would know where he is, which is in a foreign land."
Chesterton, like Belloc, openly expressed his abhorrence of Hitler's rule almost as soon as it started. As Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote in a posthumous tribute to Chesterton in 1937 :
When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. Blessing to his memory!
In "The Truth about the Tribes" Chesterton blasted German race theories, writing: "the essence of Nazi Nationalism is to preserve the purity of a race in a continent where all races are impure."
The historian Simon Mayers points out that Chesterton wrote in works such as "The Crank", "The Heresy of Race", and "The Barbarian as Bore" against the concept of racial superiority and critiqued pseudo-scientific race theories, saying they were akin to a new religion. In "The Truth About the Tribes" Chesterton wrote, "the curse of race religion is that it makes each separate man the sacred image which he worships. His own bones are the sacred relics; his own blood is the blood of St. Januarius." Mayers records that despite "his hostility towards Nazi antisemitism … [it is unfortunate that he made] claims that 'Hitlerism' was a form of Judaism, and that the Jews were partly responsible for race theory." In "The Judaism of Hitler", as well as in "A Queer Choice" and "The Crank", Chesterton made much of the fact that the very notion of "a Chosen Race" was of Jewish origin, saying in "The Crank": "If there is one outstanding quality in Hitlerism it is its Hebraism" and "the new Nordic Man has all the worst faults of the worst Jews: jealousy, greed, the mania of conspiracy, and above all, the belief in a Chosen Race."
Mayers also shows that Chesterton portrayed Jews not only as culturally and religiously distinct, but racially as well. In "The Feud of the Foreigner" (1920) he said that the Jew "is a foreigner far more remote from us than is a Bavarian from a Frenchman; he is divided by the same type of division as that between us and a Chinaman or a Hindoo. He not only is not, but never was, of the same race."
In "The Everlasting Man", while writing about human sacrifice, Chesterton suggested that medieval stories about Jews killing children might have resulted from a distortion of genuine cases of devil-worship. Chesterton wrote: the Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war upon children; and it is probable enough that this abominable apostasy from the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel since, in the form of what is called ritual murder; not of course by any representative of the religion of Judaism, but by individual and irresponsible diabolists who did happen to be Jews.
The has devoted a whole issue of its magazine, "Gilbert", to defending Chesterton against charges of antisemitism. Likewise, Ann Farmer, author of "Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender", writes, "Public figures from Winston Churchill to Wells proposed remedies for the "Jewish problem" – the seemingly endless cycle of anti-Jewish persecution – all shaped by their worldviews. As patriots, Churchill and Chesterton embraced Zionism; both were among the first to defend the Jews from Nazism," concluding that "A defender of Jews in his youth – a conciliator as well as a defender – GKC returned to the defence when the Jewish people needed it most."
In "Eugenics and Other Evils" Chesterton attacked eugenics as Parliament was moving towards passage of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. Some backing the ideas of eugenics called for the government to sterilise people deemed "mentally defective"; this view did not gain popularity but the idea of segregating them from the rest of society and thereby preventing them from reproducing did gain traction. These ideas disgusted Chesterton who wrote, "It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children." He blasted the proposed wording for such measures as being so vague as to apply to anyone, including "Every tramp who is sulk, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that is the point … we are already under the Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion."
He derided such ideas as founded on nonsense, "as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment".
Chesterton also mocked the idea that poverty was a result of bad breeding: "[it is a] strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race; as if they were a colony of Japs or Chinese coolies … The poor are not a race or even a type. It is senseless to talk about breeding them; for they are not a breed. They are, in cold fact, what Dickens describes: 'a dustbin of individual accidents,' of damaged dignity, and often of damaged gentility."
Chesterton is often associated with his close friend, the poet and essayist Hilaire Belloc. George Bernard Shaw coined the name "Chesterbelloc" for their partnership, and this stuck. Though they were very different men, they shared many beliefs; Chesterton eventually joined Belloc in the Catholic faith, and both voiced criticisms of capitalism and socialism. They instead espoused a third way: distributism. "G. K.'s Weekly", which occupied much of Chesterton's energy in the last 15 years of his life, was the successor to Belloc's "New Witness", taken over from Cecil Chesterton, Gilbert's brother, who died in World War I.
Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood (compare to the Precautionary principle). The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, "The Thing: Why I am a Catholic", in the chapter, "The Drift from Domesticity":
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.' | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12333 |
God Save the Queen
"God Save the Queen" (alternatively "God Save the King", depending on the gender of the reigning monarch) is the royal anthem in a number of Commonwealth realms, their territories, and the British Crown dependencies. The author of the tune is unknown, and it may originate in plainchant; but an attribution to the composer John Bull is sometimes made.
"God Save the Queen" is the national anthem of the United Kingdom and one of two national anthems used by New Zealand since 1977, as well as for several of the UK's territories that have their own additional local anthem. It is also the royal anthem – played specifically in the presence of the monarch – of all the aforementioned countries, as well as Australia (since 1984), Canada (since 1980), Barbados and Tuvalu. In countries not previously part of the British Empire, the tune of "God Save the Queen" has provided the basis for various patriotic songs, though still generally connected with royal ceremony. The melody continues to be used for the national anthem of Liechtenstein, "Oben am jungen Rhein", and the royal anthem of Norway, "Kongesangen". In the United States, the melody is used for the patriotic song "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (also known as "America").
Beyond its first verse, which is consistent, "God Save the Queen/King" has many historic and extant versions. Since its first publication, different verses have been added and taken away and, even today, different publications include various selections of verses in various orders. In general, only one verse is sung. Sometimes two verses are sung, and on rare occasions, three.
The sovereign and her or his spouse are saluted with the entire composition, while other members of the royal family who are entitled to royal salute (such as the Prince of Wales, Duke of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex along with their spouses) receive just the first six bars. The first six bars also form all or part of the Vice Regal Salute in some Commonwealth realms other than the UK (e.g., in Canada, governors general and lieutenant governors at official events are saluted with the first six bars of "God Save the Queen" followed by the first four and last four bars of "O Canada"), as well as the salute given to governors of British overseas territories.
In "The Oxford Companion to Music", Percy Scholes points out the similarities to an early plainsong melody, although the rhythm is very distinctly that of a galliard, and he gives examples of several such dance tunes that bear a striking resemblance to "God Save the King/Queen". Scholes quotes a keyboard piece by John Bull (1619) which has some similarities to the modern tune, depending on the placing of accidentals which at that time were unwritten in certain cases and left to the discretion of the player (see "musica ficta"). He also points to several pieces by Henry Purcell, one of which includes the opening notes of the modern tune, setting the words "God Save the King". Nineteenth-century scholars and commentators mention the widespread belief that an old Scots carol, "Remember O Thou Man", was the source of the tune.
The first published version of what is almost the present tune appeared in 1744 in "Thesaurus Musicus". The 1744 version of the song was popularised in Scotland and England the following year, with the landing of Charles Edward Stuart and was published in "The Gentleman's Magazine" (see illustration above). This manuscript has the tune depart from that which is used today at several points, one as early as the first bar, but is otherwise clearly a strong relative of the contemporary anthem. It was recorded as being sung in London theatres in 1745, with, for example, Thomas Arne writing a setting of the tune for the Drury Lane Theatre.
Scholes' analysis includes mention of "untenable" and "doubtful" claims, as well as "an American misattribution". Some of these are:
Scholes recommends the attribution "traditional" or "traditional; earliest known version by John Bull (1562–1628)". The "English Hymnal" (musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams) gives no attribution, stating merely "17th or 18th cent."
The lyrics as published in the "Gentleman's Magazine" in 1745 ran:
God save great George our king,
Long live our noble king,
God save the king.
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the king!
Like many aspects of British constitutional life, "God Save the Queen" derives its official status from custom and use, not from Royal Proclamation or Act of Parliament. The variation in the UK of the lyrics to "God Save the Queen" is the oldest amongst those currently used, and forms the basis on which all other versions used throughout the Commonwealth are formed; though, again, the words have varied over time.
England has no official national anthem of its own; "God Save the Queen" is treated as the English national anthem when England is represented at sporting events (though there are some exceptions to this rule, such as cricket where "Jerusalem" is used). There is a movement to establish an English national anthem, with Blake and Parry's "Jerusalem" and Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" among the top contenders. Scotland has its own national song and Wales has its own national anthem for political and national events and for use at international football, rugby union and other sports in which those nations compete independently. On all occasions Wales's national anthem is "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" (Land of my Fathers). Scotland has no single anthem; "Scotland the Brave" was traditionally used until the 1990s, when "Flower of Scotland" was adopted. In Northern Ireland, "God Save the Queen" is still used as the official anthem.
The phrase "No surrender" is occasionally sung in the bridge before "Send her victorious" by England football fans at matches. The phrase "no surrender" is also associated with Combat 18, a white supremacist group. The phrase is also associated with Ulster loyalism and can sometimes be heard at the same point before Northern Ireland football matches.
Since 2003, "God Save the Queen", considered an all-inclusive anthem for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as other countries within the Commonwealth, has been dropped from the Commonwealth Games. Northern Irish athletes receive their gold medals to the tune of the "Londonderry Air", popularly known as "Danny Boy". In 2006, English winners heard Elgar's ""Pomp and Circumstance March" No. 1", usually known as "Land of Hope and Glory", but after a poll conducted by the Commonwealth Games Council for England prior to the 2010 Games, "Jerusalem" was adopted as England's new Commonwealth Games anthem. In sports in which the UK competes as one nation, most notably as Great Britain at the Olympics, "God Save the Queen" is used to represent anyone or any team that comes from the United Kingdom.
The phrase "God Save the King" is much older than the song, appearing, for instance, several times in the King James Bible. A text based on the 1st Book of Kings Chapter 1: verses 38–40, "...And all the people rejoic'd, and said: God save the King! Long live the King! May the King live for ever, Amen", has been sung at every coronation since that of King Edgar in 973. Scholes says that as early as 1545 "God Save the King" was a watchword of the Royal Navy, with the response being "Long to reign over us". He also notes that the prayer read in churches on anniversaries of the Gunpowder Plot includes words which might have formed part of the basis for the second verse "Scatter our enemies...assuage their malice and confound their devices".
In 1745, "The Gentleman's Magazine" published "God save our lord the king: A new song set for two voices", describing it "As sung at both Playhouses" (the Theatres Royal at Drury Lane and Covent Garden). Traditionally, the first performance was thought to have been in 1745, when it was sung in support of King George II, after his defeat at the Battle of Prestonpans by the army of Charles Edward Stuart, son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the Jacobite claimant to the British throne.
It is sometimes claimed that, ironically, the song was originally sung in support of the Jacobite cause: the word "send" in the line "Send him victorious" could imply that the king was absent. However, the "Oxford English Dictionary" cites examples of "[God] send (a person) safe, victorious, etc." meaning "God grant that he may be safe, etc.". There are also examples of early eighteenth century Jacobean drinking glasses which are inscribed with a version of the words and were apparently intended for drinking the health of King James II and VII.
Scholes acknowledges these possibilities but argues that the same words were probably being used by both Jacobite and Hanoverian supporters and directed at their respective kings.
In 1902, the musician William Hayman Cummings, quoting mid-18th century correspondence between Charles Burney and Sir Joseph Banks, proposed that the words were based on a Latin verse composed for King James II at the Chapel Royal.
There is no definitive version of the lyrics. However, the version consisting of the three verses reproduced in the box on the right hand side has the best claim to be regarded as the "standard" British version, appearing not only in the 1745 "Gentleman's Magazine", but also in publications such as "The Book of English Songs: From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century" (1851), "National Hymns: How They Are Written and How They Are Not Written" (1861), "Household Book of Poetry" (1882), and "Hymns Ancient and Modern, Revised Version" (1982).
The same version with verse two omitted appears in publications including "Scouting for Boys" (1908), and on the British Monarchy website. At the Queen's Golden Jubilee Party at the Palace concert, Prince Charles referred in his speech to the "politically incorrect second verse" of the National Anthem.
According to Alan Michie's "Rule, Britannia", which was published in 1952, after the death of King George VI but before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, when the first General Assembly of the United Nations was held in London in January 1946 the King, in honour of the occasion, "ordered the belligerent imperious second stanza of 'God Save the King' to be rewritten to bring it more into the spirit of the brotherhood of nations."
In the UK, the first verse is typically sung alone, even on official occasions, although the third verse is sometimes sung in addition on certain occasions such as during the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics, and usually at the Last Night of the Proms.
The standard version of the melody and its key of G major are still those of the originally published version, although the start of the anthem is often signalled by an introductory timpani roll of two bars length. The bass line of the standard version differs little from the second voice part shown in the original, and there is a standard version in four-part harmony for choirs. The first three lines (six bars of music) are soft, ending with a short "crescendo" into "Send her victorious", and then is another "crescendo" at "over us:" into the final words "God save the Queen".
In the early part of the 20th century there existed a Military Band version in the higher key of B, because it was easier for brass instruments to play in that key, though it had the disadvantage of being more difficult to sing: however now most Bands play it in the correct key of concert F.
Since 1953, the anthem is sometimes preceded by a fanfare composed by Gordon Jacob for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
There have been several attempts to rewrite the words. In the nineteenth century there was some lively debate about the national anthem as verse two was considered by some to be slightly offensive in its use of the phrase "scatter her enemies." Some thought it placed better emphasis on the respective power of Parliament and the Crown to change "her enemies" to "our enemies"; others questioned the theology and proposed "thine enemies" instead. Sydney G. R. Coles wrote a completely new version, as did Canon F. K. Harford.
In 1836 William Hickson wrote an alternative version, of which the first, third, and fourth verses gained some currency when they were appended to the National Anthem in the English Hymnal. The fourth "Hickson" verse was sung after the traditional first verse at the Queen's Golden Jubilee National Service of Thanksgiving in 2002, and during the raising of the Union Flag during the 2008 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, in which London took the baton from Beijing in order to host the 2012 Summer Olympics.
To mark the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, a modified version of the second verse was written by the Dean of Rochester, the Very Reverend Samuel Reynolds Hole. A four-part harmony setting was then made by Frederick Bridge, and published by Novello.
The "Musical Times" commented: "There are some conservative minds who may regret the banishment of the 'knavish tricks' and aggressive spirit of the discarded verse, but it must be admitted that Dean Hole's lines are more consonant with the sentiment of modern Christianity." Others reactions were more negative, one report describing the setting as "unwarrantable liberties...worthy of the severest reprobation", with "too much of a Peace Society flavour about it...If we go about pleading for peace, other nations will get it into their heads that we are afraid of fighting." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hole's version failed to replace the existing verse permanently.
A less militaristic version of the song, titled "Official peace version, 1919", was first published in the hymn book "Songs of Praise" in 1925. This was "official" in the sense that it was approved by the British Privy Council in 1919. However, despite being reproduced in some other hymn books, it is largely unknown today.
Around 1745, anti-Jacobite sentiment was captured in a verse appended to the song, with a prayer for the success of Field Marshal George Wade's army then assembling at Newcastle. These words attained some short-term use, although they did not appear in the published version in the October 1745 "Gentleman's Magazine". This verse was first documented as an occasional addition to the original anthem by Richard Clark in 1822, and was also mentioned in a later article on the song, published by the "Gentleman's Magazine" in October 1836. Therein, it is presented as an "additional verse... though being of temporary application only... stored in the memory of an old friend... who was born in the very year 1745, and was thus the associate of those who heard it first sung", the lyrics given being:
The 1836 article and other sources make it clear that this verse was not used soon after 1745, and certainly before the song became accepted as the British national anthem in the 1780s and 1790s. It was included as an integral part of the song in the "Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse" of 1926, although erroneously referencing the "fourth verse" to the "Gentleman's Magazine" article of 1745.
On the opposing side, Jacobite beliefs were demonstrated in an alternative verse used during the same period:
In May 1800, following an attempt to assassinate King George III at London's Drury Lane theatre, playwright Richard Sheridan immediately composed an additional verse, which was sung from the stage the same night:
Various other attempts were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to add verses to commemorate particular royal or national events. For example, according to Fitzroy Maclean, when Jacobite forces bypassed Wade's force and reached Derby, but then retreated and when their garrison at Carlisle Castle surrendered to a second government army led by King George's son, the Duke of Cumberland, another verse was added. Other short-lived verses were notably anti-French, such as the following, quoted in the book "Handel" by Edward J. Dent:
However, none of these additional verses survived into the twentieth century. Updated "full" versions including additional verses have been published more recently, including the standard three verses, Hickson's fourth verse, Sheridan's verse and the Marshal Wade verse.
A version from 1794 composed by the American republican and French citizen Joel Barlow celebrated the power of the guillotine to liberate:
The style most commonly heard in official performances was proposed as the "proper interpretation" by King George V, who considered himself something of an expert (in view of the number of times he had heard it). An Army Order was duly issued in 1933, which laid down regulations for tempo, dynamics and orchestration. This included instructions such as that the opening "six bars will be played quietly by the reed band with horns and basses in a single phrase. Cornets and side-drum are to be added at the little scale-passage leading into the second half of the tune, and the full brass enters for the last eight bars". The official tempo for the opening section is a metronome setting of 60, with the second part played in a broader manner, at a metronome setting of 52. In recent years the prescribed sombre-paced introduction is often played at a faster and livelier tempo.
Until the latter part of the 20th century, theatre and concert goers were expected to stand while the anthem was played after the conclusion of a show. In cinemas this brought a tendency for audiences to rush out while the end credits played to avoid this formality. (This can be seen in the 1972 "Dad's Army" episode "A Soldier's Farewell".)
The anthem continues to be played at some traditional events such as Wimbledon, Royal Variety Performance, the Edinburgh Tattoo, Royal Ascot, Henley Royal Regatta and The Proms as well as at Royal events.
The anthem was traditionally played at close-down on the BBC, and with the introduction of commercial television to the UK this practice was adopted by some ITV companies (with the notable exceptions of Granada, Thames Television, Central Television, Border Television, and Yorkshire Television). BBC Two also never played the anthem at close-down, and ITV dropped the practice in the late 1980s, but it continued on BBC One until the final close-down on 8 November 1997 (thereafter BBC One began to simulcast with BBC News after end of programmes). The tradition is carried on, however, by BBC Radio 4, which plays the anthem each night as a transition piece between the end of the Radio 4 broadcasting and the move to BBC World Service. Radio 4 and Radio 2 also play the National Anthem just before the 0700 and 0800 news bulletins on the actual and official birthdays of the Queen and the birthdays of senior members of the Royal Family.
The UK's national anthem usually prefaces The Queen's Christmas Message (although in 2007 it appeared at the end, taken from a recording of the 1957 television broadcast), and important royal announcements, such as of royal deaths, when it is played in a slower, sombre arrangement.
Frequently, when an anthem is needed for one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom at an international sporting event, for instance an alternative song is used:
In April 2007 there was an early day motion, number 1319, to the British Parliament to propose that there should be a separate England anthem: "That this House ... believes that all English sporting associations should adopt an appropriate song that English sportsmen and women, and the English public, would favour when competing as England". An amendment (EDM 1319A3) was proposed by Evan Harris that the song "should have a bit more oomph than "God Save The Queen" and should also not involve God."
For more information see also:
"God Save the King/Queen" was exported around the world via the expansion of the British Empire, serving as each country's national anthem. Throughout the Empire's evolution into the Commonwealth of Nations, the song declined in use in most states which became independent. In New Zealand, it remains one of the official national anthems.
In Australia, the song has standing through a Royal Proclamation issued by Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen on 19 April 1984. It declared "God Save the Queen" to be the Royal Anthem and that it is to be played when the Australian monarch or a member of the Royal Family is present, though not exclusively in such circumstances. The same proclamation made "Advance Australia Fair" the national anthem and the basis for the "Vice-Regal Salute" (the first four and last two bars of the anthem). Prior to 1984, "God Save the Queen" was the national anthem of Australia. In 1975 former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr, alluded to the anthem in his comment "Well may we say 'God save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General!".
By convention, "God Save the Queen" (, "Dieu Sauve le Roi" when a King) is the Royal Anthem of Canada. It is sometimes played or sung together with the national anthem, "O Canada", at private and public events organised by groups such as the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Legion, police services, and loyal groups. The governor general and provincial lieutenant governors are accorded the "Viceregal Salute", comprising the first three lines of "God Save the Queen", followed by the first and last lines of "O Canada".
"God Save the Queen" has been sung in Canada since the late 1700s and by the mid 20th century was, along with "O Canada", one of the country's two "de facto" national anthems, the first and last verses of the standard British version being used. By-laws and practices governing the use of either song during public events in municipalities varied; in Toronto, "God Save the Queen" was employed, while in Montreal it was "O Canada". Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1964 said one song would have to be chosen as the country's national anthem and, three years later, he advised Governor General Georges Vanier to appoint the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons on the National and Royal Anthems. Within two months, on 12 April 1967, the committee presented its conclusion that "God Save the Queen", whose music and lyrics were found to be in the public domain, should be designated as the Royal Anthem of Canada and "O Canada" as the national anthem, one verse from each, in both official languages, to be adopted by parliament. The group was then charged with establishing official lyrics for each song; for "God Save the Queen", the English words were those inherited from the United Kingdom and the French words were taken from those that had been adopted in 1952 for the coronation of Elizabeth II. When the bill pronouncing "O Canada" as the national anthem was put through parliament, the joint committee's earlier recommendations regarding "God Save the Queen" were not included.
The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces regulates that "God Save the Queen" be played as a salute to the monarch and other members of the Canadian Royal Family, though it may also be used as a hymn, or prayer. The words are not to be sung when the song is played as a military royal salute and is abbreviated to the first three lines while arms are being presented. Elizabeth II stipulated that the arrangement in G major by Lieutenant Colonel Basil H. Brown be used in Canada. The authorised version to be played by pipe bands is "Mallorca".
The first verse of "God Save the Queen" has been translated into French, as shown below:
Additionally, another French version can be found by the Government of Canada:
There is a special Canadian verse in English which was once commonly sung in addition to the two standing verses:
"God Save the Queen" was the sole official national anthem until 1977 when "God Defend New Zealand" was added as a second. "God Save the Queen" is now most often only played when the sovereign, governor-general or other member of the Royal Family is present, or on some occasions such as Anzac Day. The Māori-language version was written by Edward Marsh Williams under the title, "E te atua tohingia te kuini".
There is a special New Zealand verse in English which was once commonly sung to replace the second and third verses:
All verses of "God Save the Queen" have been translated into Māori. The first verse is shown below:
When Rhodesia issued its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the UK on 11 November 1965, it did so while still maintaining loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II as the Rhodesian head of state, despite the non-recognition of the Rhodesian government by the United Kingdom and the United Nations; "God Save the Queen" therefore remained the Rhodesian national anthem. This was supposed to demonstrate the continued allegiance of the Rhodesian people to the monarch, but the retention in Rhodesia of a song so associated with the UK while the two countries were at loggerheads regarding its constitutional status caused Rhodesian state occasions to have "a faintly ironic tone", in the words of "The Times". Nevertheless, "God Save the Queen" remained Rhodesia's national anthem until March 1970, when the country formally declared itself a republic. "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia" was adopted in its stead in 1974 and remained in use until the country returned to the UK's control in December 1979. Since the internationally recognised independence of the Republic of Zimbabwe in April 1980, "God Save the Queen" has had no official status there.
"God Save the Queen" (, "God Red die Koning" when a King) was a co-national anthem of South Africa from 1938 until 1957, when it was formally replaced by "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" as the sole national anthem. The latter served as a sort of "de facto" co-national anthem alongside the former until 1938.
"God Save the King" played a significant role in the emergence of the national anthem in the late 18th to early 19th century.
It is a royal anthem in origin, but its tune became extremely popular for political hymns, both monarchist and republican, on the European continent.
Its earliest adoption outside of the British sphere was by August Christian Niemann, a collector and composer of German academic songs,
as the hymn "Heil, unserm Bunde Heil!", published in 1782 in his "Akademisches Liederbuch".
This was an early expression of Pan-Germanism.
"Heil dir im Siegerkranz" was originally written by Heinrich Harries in honour of King Christian VII of Denmark, in 1790.
In 1793, Harries' text was adapted by Balthasar Gerhard Schumacher for use in Prussia. After 1871, this hymn became the imperial anthem of the German Empire, with the reference to "König" "king" replaced by "Kaiser" "emperor".
Influenced by the imperial anthem, several states of the German Empire used the tune, including Bavaria ("Heil unserm König, Heil! - Hail to our King, Hail!"), Saxony ("Gott segne Sachsenland - God bless Saxony").
The same melody is used for Norway's royal anthem "Kongesangen" and for the Swedish royal anthem "Bevare Gud vår kung" (1805).
Greece adopted the melody as its national anthem during the autocratic rule of Otto (r. 1832–1862). Based on the German version, it had adapted lyrics. It was replaced by the Hymn to Liberty in 1864, following Otto's overthrow.
The national anthem of Imperial Russia from 1816 to 1833 was "Molitva russkikh" ("The Prayer of Russians"), which used the melody of "God Save the King" and lyrics by Vasily Zhukovsky.
The American patriotic hymn "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", the lyrics of which were written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831. The song is often quoted – alongside "Hail, Columbia" – as a "de facto" national anthem for the United States, before the "de jure" adoption of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1931.
"Rufst Du, mein Vaterland" was a Swiss patriotic song by Johann Rudolf Wyss published in 1811, which became the Swiss national anthem following the formation of Switzerland as a federal state in 1848.
"Oben am jungen Rhein" was written c. 1850 by Swiss pastor Jakob Josef Jauch (1802–1859). It is one of the German "Rhine songs"
invoking the Rhine as part of the German national patrimony in the face of French territorial claims.
The song appears to have been used as the "de facto" national anthem of Liechtenstein by the late 19th century, and was officially adopted as such in 1920.
Iceland's de facto national anthem in the 19th century was "Íslands minni" ("To Iceland", better known as "Eldgamla Ísafold"), a poem by Bjarni Thorarensen set to the melody of "God Save the King". This lasted until the current national anthem was adopted, first by popular consent and later by law. The tune remains a popular one in Iceland and many different texts—serious, satirical and comical—have been set to it.
"God Save the King" was used as the national anthem of the Kingdom of Hawaii before 1860 E Ola Ke Alii Ke Akua, from 1860 to 1886 the national anthem of Hawaii, was set to the same melody. The Hawaiian anthem Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī composed by the Prussian Kapellmeister Henri Berger is a variation of the melody.
The royal and national anthem of the Kingdom of Siam ""Chomrat Chongcharoen"" used the melody of "God Save the King" from 1852 to 1871 in the reign of Rama IV and Rama V before the adoption of "Sansoen Phra Barami" in 1888.
The melody is also used as a hymn tune by Christian churches in various countries, including by the United Methodist Church and other denominations. "Glory to God on High" is frequently sung to the tune, as is "Since I Have My Retreat" in the Protestant Church of Korea, and the Dutch hymn "Eeuwig en machtig Heer".
The UK's anthem has also been used by Hong Kong protesters to demand British intervention and unification with Britain.
About 140 composers have used the tune in their compositions, including Queen, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Clementi, J. C. Bach, Liszt, Britten, Carl Maria von Weber, Niccolò Paganini, Johann Strauss I, and Edward Elgar.
Ludwig van Beethoven composed a set of seven piano variations in the key of C major to the theme of "God Save the King", catalogued as WoO.78 (1802–1803). He also quotes it in his orchestral work "Wellington's Victory".
Muzio Clementi used the theme to "God Save the King" in his "Symphony No. 3 in G major", often called the "Great National Symphony", catalogued as WoO. 34. Clementi paid a high tribute to his adopted homeland (the United Kingdom) where he grew up and stayed most of his lifetime. He based the Symphony (about 1816–1824) on "God Save the King", which is hinted at earlier in the work, not least in the second movement, and announced by the trombones in the finale.
• Symphony No. 3 "Great National Symphony " in en sol majeur/G-dur/G major/sol maggiore
1. Andante sostenuto – Allegro con brio
2. Andante un poco mosso
3. Minuetto. Allegretto
4. Finale. Vivace
Johann Christian Bach composed a set of variations on "God Save the King" for the finale to his sixth keyboard concerto (Op. 1) written c. 1763.
Joseph Haydn was impressed by the use of "God Save the King" as a national anthem during his visit to London in 1794, and on his return to Austria composed "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" ("God Save Emperor Francis") for the birthday of the last Holy Roman Emperor and Roman-German King, Francis II. It became the anthem of the Austrian Empire after the end of the Holy Roman Empire with revised lyrics, its tune ultimately being used for the German national anthem. The tune of "God Save the King" was adopted for the Prussian royal anthem "Heil Dir im Siegerkranz".
Franz Liszt wrote a piano paraphrase on the anthem (S.259 in the official catalogue, c. 1841).
Johann Strauss I quoted "God Save the Queen" in full at the end of his waltz "Huldigung der Königin Victoria von Grossbritannien" (Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain) Op. 103, where he also quoted "Rule, Britannia!" in full at the beginning of the piece.
Siegfried August Mahlmann in the early 19th century wrote alternate lyrics to adapt the hymn for the Kingdom of Saxony, as "Gott segne Sachsenland" ("God Bless Saxony").
Heinrich Marschner used the anthem in his "Grande Ouverture solenne", op.78 (1842).
Gaetano Donizetti used this anthem in his opera "Roberto Devereux".
Joachim Raff used this anthem in his Jubelouverture, Opus 103 (1864) dedicated to Adolf, Herzog von Nassau, on the 25th anniversary of his reign.
Gioachino Rossini used this anthem in the last scene of his "Il viaggio a Reims", when all the characters, coming from many different European countries, sing a song which recalls their own homeland. Lord Sidney, bass, sings "Della real pianta" on the notes of "God Save the King". Samuel Ramey used to interpolate a spectacular virtuoso cadenza at the end of the song.
Fernando Sor used the anthem in his 12 Studies, Op. 6: No. 10 in C Major in the section marked 'Maestoso.'
Arthur Sullivan quotes the anthem at the end of his ballet "Victoria and Merrie England".
Claude Debussy opens with a brief introduction of "God Save the King" in one of his Preludes, "Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.". The piece draws its inspiration from the main character of the Charles Dickens novel "The Pickwick Papers".
Niccolò Paganini wrote a set of highly virtuosic variations on "God Save the King" as his Opus 9.
Max Reger wrote "Variations and Fugue on 'Heil dir im Siegerkranz' (God Save the King)" for organ in 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria. It does not have an opus number.
A week before the Coronation Ode was due to be premiered at the June 1902 "Coronation Gala Concert" at Covent Garden (it was cancelled, owing to the King's illness), Sir Edward Elgar introduced an arrangement of "Land of Hope and Glory" as a solo song performed by Clara Butt at a "Coronation Concert" at the Albert Hall. Novello seized upon the prevailing patriotism and requested that Elgar arrange the National Anthem as an appropriate opening for a concert performed in front of the Court and numerous British and foreign dignitaries. This version for orchestra and chorus, which is enlivened by use of "a cappella" and marcato effects, was also performed at the opening of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley on St. George's Day, 1924, and recorded under the composer's Baton in 1928, with the LSO and the Philharmonic Choir. Elgar also used the first verse of the Anthem as the climax of a short "Civic Procession and Anthem", written to accompany the mayoral procession at the opening of the Hereford Music Festival on 4 September 1927. This premiere performance was recorded, and is today available on CD; the score was lost following the festival, and Elgar resorted to reconstructing it by ear from the recording.
Carl Maria von Weber uses the "God Save the King" theme at the end of his "Jubel Overture".
Giuseppe Verdi included "God Save the Queen" in his "Inno delle nazioni" (Hymn of the Nations), composed for the London 1862 International Exhibition.
Benjamin Britten arranged "God Save the Queen" in 1961 for the Leeds Festival. This version has been programmed several times at the Last Night of the Proms.
Charles Ives wrote "Variations on "America"" for organ in 1891 at age seventeen. It included a polytonal section in three simultaneous keys, though this was omitted from performances at his father's request, because "it made the boys laugh out loud". Ives was fond of the rapid pedal line in the final variation, which he said was "almost as much fun as playing baseball". The piece was not published until 1949; the final version includes an introduction, seven variations and a polytonal interlude. The piece was adapted for orchestra in 1963 by William Schuman. This version became popular during the bicentennial celebrations, and is often heard at pops concerts.
Muthuswami Dikshitar (1776–1835), one of the musical trinity in South Indian classical (Carnatic) music composed some Sanskrit pieces set to Western tunes. These are in the raga Sankarabharanam and are referred to as "nottu swaras". Among these, the composition "Santatam Pahimam Sangita Shyamale" is set to the tune of "God Save the Queen".
Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871), Swiss composer and one of the most famous virtuoso pianists of the 19th century, wrote a fantasia on "God Save the Queen".
Johan Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) wrote the "Variations from God Save the King in D major", op. 10 and quoted the tune briefly in his "Freudenfest-Ouverture in D major" S 148
Adrien-François Servais (1807–66) and Joseph Ghys (1801–48) wrote "Variations brillantes et concertantes sur l'air "God Save the King"", op. 38, for violin and cello and performed it in London and St Petersburg.
Georges Onslow (1784-1853) used the tune in his String Quartet No. 7 in G Minor, op.9, second movement.
Ferdinando Carulli used the melody in Fantaisie sur un air national anglais, for recorder & guitar, Op. 102.
Louis Drouet composed "Variations on the air God save the King" for flute and piano.
Gordon Jacob wrote a choral arrangement of God Save the Queen with a trumpet fanfare introduction, for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
Jimi Hendrix played an impromptu version of "God Save the Queen" to open his set at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. Just before walking onto the stage, he asked "How does it [the anthem] go again?". He may have mimicked the vocal response, though the same melody is found in the popular "God Bless America". Hendrix gave the same sort of distortion and improvisation of "God Save the Queen", as he had done with "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Woodstock Festival, 1969.
The rock band Queen recorded an instrumental version of "God Save the Queen" for their 1975 album "A Night at the Opera". Guitarist Brian May adapted the melody using his distinctive layers of overdubbed electric guitars. This recorded version was played at the end of almost every Queen concert, while vocalist Freddie Mercury walked around the stage wearing a crown and a cloak on their Magic Tour in 1986. The song was played whilst all the Queen members would take their bows. On 3 June 2002, during the Queen's Golden Jubilee, Brian May performed the anthem on his Red Special electric guitar for Party at the Palace, performing from the roof of Buckingham Palace, and features on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of "A Night at the Opera".
In 1977, the Sex Pistols recorded a song titled "God Save the Queen" in open reference to the National Anthem and the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations that year, with the song intending to stand for sympathy for the working class and resentment of the monarchy. They were banned from many venues, censored by mainstream media, and reached number 2 on the official U.K. singles charts and number 1 on the NME chart.
A version of "God Save the Queen" by Madness features the melody of the song played on kazoos. It was included on the compilation album "The Business – the Definitive Singles Collection".
The anthem was the first piece of music played on a computer, and the first computer music to be recorded.
Musical notes were first generated by a computer programmed by Alan Turing at the Computing Machine Laboratory of the University of Manchester in 1948. The first music proper, a performance of the National Anthem was programmed by Christopher Strachey on the Mark II Manchester Electronic Computer at same venue, in 1951. Later that year, short extracts of three pieces, the first being the National Anthem, were recorded there by a BBC outside broadcasting unit: the other pieces being "Ba Ba Black Sheep", and "In the Mood". Researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch restored the acetate master disc in 2016 and the results may be heard on SoundCloud.
The philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham praised "God Save the King" in 1796: "the melody recommending itself by beauty to the most polished ears, and by its simplicity to the rudest ear. A song of this complexion, implanted by the habit of half a century in the mass of popular sentiment, can not be refused a place in the inventory of the national blessings." Ludwig van Beethoven wrote "I have to show the English a little of what a blessing 'God Save the King' is". Alex Marshall, the British author of "Republic or Death!: Travels in Search of National Anthems", called the anthem "ludicrous".
There have been calls within the UK for a new national anthem, whether it be for the United Kingdom itself, Britain and/or England (which all currently use "God Save the Queen"). There are many reasons people cite for wishing for a new national anthem, such as: from a non-religious standpoint (the majority of people in the UK today identify as not religious), claims of "God Save the Queen" being long outdated and irrelevant in the 21st century, rejection of odes to promoting war and rejection of praising the monarchy from a republican perspective. A further reason is that England has no anthem of its own for sporting contests and the like, whereas Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales do; "Flower of Scotland", "Londonderry Air", and "Land of My Fathers" fill this niche (the former two on an unofficial basis), while England tends to use "God Save the Queen" exclusively and also unofficially. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12334 |
Gladiator
A gladiator (, "swordsman", from , "sword") was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their lives and their legal and social standing by appearing in the arena. Most were despised as slaves, schooled under harsh conditions, socially marginalized, and segregated even in death.
Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome's martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim. They were celebrated in high and low art, and their value as entertainers was commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world.
The origin of gladiatorial combat is open to debate. There is evidence of it in funeral rites during the Punic Wars of the 3rd century BC, and thereafter it rapidly became an essential feature of politics and social life in the Roman world. Its popularity led to its use in ever more lavish and costly games.
The gladiator games lasted for nearly a thousand years, reaching their peak between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. The games finally declined during the early 5th century after the adoption of Christianity as state church of the Roman Empire in 380, although beast hunts ("venationes") continued into the 6th century.
Early literary sources seldom agree on the origins of gladiators and the gladiator games. In the late 1st century BC, Nicolaus of Damascus believed they were Etruscan. A generation later, Livy wrote that they were first held in 310 BC by the Campanians in celebration of their victory over the Samnites. Long after the games had ceased, the 7th century AD writer Isidore of Seville derived Latin "lanista" (manager of gladiators) from the Etruscan word for "executioner," and the title of Charon (an official who accompanied the dead from the Roman gladiatorial arena) from Charun, psychopomp of the Etruscan underworld. This was accepted and repeated in most early modern, standard histories of the games.
Reappraisal of pictorial evidence supports a Campanian origin, or at least a borrowing, for the games and gladiators. Campania hosted the earliest known gladiator schools ("ludi"). Tomb frescoes from the Campanian city of Paestum (4th century BC) show paired fighters, with helmets, spears and shields, in a propitiatory funeral blood-rite that anticipates early Roman gladiator games. Compared to these images, supporting evidence from Etruscan tomb-paintings is tentative and late. The Paestum frescoes may represent the continuation of a much older tradition, acquired or inherited from Greek colonists of the 8th century BC.
Livy places the first Roman gladiator games (264 BC) in the early stage of Rome's First Punic War against Carthage, when Decimus Junius Brutus Scaeva had three gladiator pairs fight to the death in Rome's "cattle market" Forum ("Forum Boarium") to honor his dead father, Brutus Pera. This is described as a "munus" (plural: "munera"), a commemorative duty owed the manes of a dead ancestor by his descendants. The development of the "munus" and its gladiator types was most strongly influenced by Samnium's support for Hannibal and the subsequent punitive expeditions against the Samnites by Rome and her Campanian allies; the earliest and most frequently mentioned type was the Samnite.
The war in Samnium, immediately afterwards, was attended with equal danger and an equally glorious conclusion. The enemy, besides their other warlike preparation, had made their battle-line to glitter with new and splendid arms. There were two corps: the shields of the one were inlaid with gold, of the other with silver ... The Romans had already heard of these splendid accoutrements, but their generals had taught them that a soldier should be rough to look on, not adorned with gold and silver but putting his trust in iron and in courage ... The Dictator, as decreed by the senate, celebrated a triumph, in which by far the finest show was afforded by the captured armour. So the Romans made use of the splendid armour of their enemies to do honour to their gods; while the Campanians, in consequence of their pride and in hatred of the Samnites, equipped after this fashion the gladiators who furnished them entertainment at their feasts, and bestowed on them the name Samnites.
Livy's account skirts the funereal, sacrificial function of early Roman gladiator combats and reflects the later theatrical ethos of the Roman gladiator show: splendidly, exotically armed and armoured barbarians, treacherous and degenerate, are dominated by Roman iron and native courage. His plain Romans virtuously dedicate the magnificent spoils of war to the Gods. Their Campanian allies stage a dinner entertainment using gladiators who may not be Samnites, but play the Samnite role. Other groups and tribes would join the cast list as Roman territories expanded. Most gladiators were armed and armoured in the manner of the enemies of Rome. The "munus" became a morally instructive form of historic enactment in which the only honourable option for the gladiator was to fight well, or else die well.
In 216 BC, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, late consul and augur, was honoured by his sons with three days of "gladiatora munera" in the Forum Romanum, using twenty-two pairs of gladiators. Ten years later, Scipio Africanus gave a commemorative "munus" in Iberia for his father and uncle, casualties in the Punic Wars. High status non-Romans, and possibly Romans too, volunteered as his gladiators. The context of the Punic Wars and Rome's near-disastrous defeat at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC) link these early games to munificence, the celebration of military victory and the religious expiation of military disaster; these "munera" appear to serve a morale-raising agenda in an era of military threat and expansion. The next recorded "munus", held for the funeral of Publius Licinius in 183 BC, was more extravagant. It involved three days of funeral games, 120 gladiators, and public distribution of meat ("visceratio data") – a practice that reflected the gladiatorial fights at Campanian banquets described by Livy and later deplored by Silius Italicus.
The enthusiastic adoption of "gladiatoria munera" by Rome's Iberian allies shows how easily, and how early, the culture of the gladiator "munus" permeated places far from Rome itself. By 174 BC, "small" Roman "munera" (private or public), provided by an "editor" of relatively low importance, may have been so commonplace and unremarkable they were not considered worth recording:
Many gladiatorial games were given in that year, some unimportant, one noteworthy beyond the rest — that of Titus Flamininus which he gave to commemorate the death of his father, which lasted four days, and was accompanied by a public distribution of meats, a banquet, and scenic performances. The climax of the show which was big for the time was that in three days seventy four gladiators fought.
In 105 BC, the ruling consuls offered Rome its first taste of state-sponsored "barbarian combat" demonstrated by gladiators from Capua, as part of a training program for the military. It proved immensely popular. Thereafter, the gladiator contests formerly restricted to private "munera" were often included in the state games ("ludi") that accompanied the major religious festivals. Where traditional "ludi" had been dedicated to a deity, such as Jupiter, the "munera" could be dedicated to an aristocratic sponsor's divine or heroic ancestor.
Gladiator games offered their sponsors extravagantly expensive but effective opportunities for self-promotion, and gave their clients and potential voters exciting entertainment at little or no cost to themselves. Gladiators became big business for trainers and owners, for politicians on the make and those who had reached the top and wished to stay there. A politically ambitious "privatus" (private citizen) might postpone his deceased father's "munus" to the election season, when a generous show might drum up votes; those in power and those seeking it needed the support of the plebeians and their tribunes, whose votes might be won with the mere promise of an exceptionally good show. Sulla, during his term as praetor, showed his usual acumen in breaking his own sumptuary laws to give the most lavish "munus" yet seen in Rome, on occasion of his wife's funeral.
In the closing years of the politically and socially unstable Late Republic, any aristocratic owner of gladiators had political muscle at his disposal. In 65 BC, newly elected curule aedile Julius Caesar held games that he justified as "munus" to his father, who had been dead for 20 years. Despite an already enormous personal debt, he used 320 gladiator pairs in silvered armour. He had more available in Capua but the Senate, mindful of the recent Spartacus revolt and fearful of Caesar's burgeoning private armies and rising popularity, imposed a limit of 320 pairs as the maximum number of gladiators any citizen could keep in Rome. Caesar's showmanship was unprecedented in scale and expense; he had staged a "munus" as memorial rather than funeral rite, eroding any practical or meaningful distinction between "munus" and "ludi".
Gladiatorial games, usually linked with beast shows, spread throughout the Republic and beyond. Anti-corruption laws of 65 and 63 BC attempted but failed to curb the political usefulness of the games to their sponsors. Following Caesar's assassination and the Roman Civil War, Augustus assumed Imperial authority over the games, including "munera", and formalised their provision as a civic and religious duty. His revision of sumptuary law capped private and public expenditure on "munera", claiming to save the Roman elite from the bankruptcies they would otherwise suffer, and restricted their performance to the festivals of Saturnalia and Quinquatria. Henceforth, the ceiling cost for a praetor's "economical" official "munus" employing a maximum 120 gladiators was to be 25,000 denarii; a "generous" Imperial "ludi" might cost no less than 180,000 denarii. Throughout the Empire, the greatest and most celebrated games would now be identified with the state-sponsored Imperial cult, which furthered public recognition, respect and approval for the Emperor's divine numen, his laws, and his agents. Between 108 and 109 AD, Trajan celebrated his Dacian victories using a reported 10,000 gladiators and 11,000 animals over 123 days. The cost of gladiators and "munera" continued to spiral out of control. Legislation of 177 AD by Marcus Aurelius did little to stop it, and was completely ignored by his son, Commodus.
The decline of the "munus" was a far from straightforward process. The crisis of the 3rd century imposed increasing military demands on the imperial purse, from which the Roman Empire never quite recovered, and lesser magistrates found the obligatory "munera" an increasingly unrewarding tax on the doubtful privileges of office. Still, emperors continued to subsidize the games as a matter of undiminished public interest. In the early 3rd century AD, the Christian writer Tertullian had acknowledged their power over the Christian flock, and was compelled to be blunt: the combats were murder, their witnessing spiritually and morally harmful and the gladiator an instrument of pagan human sacrifice. In the next century, Augustine of Hippo deplored the youthful fascination of his friend (and later fellow-convert and Bishop) Alypius of Thagaste, with the "munera" spectacle as inimical to a Christian life and salvation. Amphitheatres continued to host the spectacular administration of Imperial justice: in 315 Constantine the Great condemned child-snatchers "ad bestias" in the arena. Ten years later, he forbade criminals being forced to fight to the death as gladiators:
Bloody spectacles do not please us in civil ease and domestic quiet. For that reason we forbid those people to be gladiators who by reason of some criminal act were accustomed to deserve this condition and sentence. You shall rather sentence them to serve in the mines so that they may acknowledge the penalties of their crimes with blood
This has been interpreted as a ban on gladiatorial combat. Yet, in the last year of his life, Constantine wrote a letter to the citizens of Hispellum, granting its people the right to celebrate his rule with gladiatorial games.
In 365, Valentinian I (r. 364–375) threatened to fine a judge who sentenced Christians to the arena and in 384 attempted, like most of his predecessors, to limit the expenses of "munera".
In 393, Theodosius I (r. 379–395) adopted Nicene Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire and banned pagan festivals. The "ludi" continued, very gradually shorn of their stubbornly pagan "munera". Honorius (r. 395–423) legally ended "munera" in 399, and again in 404, at least in the Western Roman Empire. According to Theodoret, the ban was in consequence of Saint Telemachus' martyrdom by spectators at a "munus." Valentinian III (r. 425–455) repeated the ban in 438, perhaps effectively, though "venationes" continued beyond 536. By this time, interest in "munera" had waned throughout the Roman world. In the Byzantine Empire, theatrical shows and chariot races continued to attract the crowds, and drew a generous Imperial subsidy.
It is not known how many "gladiatoria munera" were given throughout the Roman period. Many, if not most, involved "venationes", and in the later Empire some may have been only that. In 165 BC, at least one "munus" was held during April's Megalesia. In the early Imperial era, "munera" in Pompeii and neighbouring towns were dispersed from March through November. They included a provincial magnate's five-day "munus" of thirty pairs, plus beast-hunts. A single late primary source, the "Calendar of Furius Dionysius Philocalus" for 354, shows how seldom gladiators featured among a multitude of official festivals. Of 176 days reserved for spectacles of various kinds, 102 were for theatrical shows, 64 for chariot races and just 10 in December for gladiator games and "venationes". A century before this, the emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222–235) may have intended a more even redistribution of "munera" throughout the year; but this would have broken with what had become the traditional positioning of the major gladiator games, at the year's ending. As Wiedemann points out, December was also the month for the Saturnalia, Saturn's festival, in which death was linked to renewal, and the lowest were honoured as the highest.
The earliest "munera" took place at or near the tomb of the deceased and these were organised by their "munerator" (who made the offering). Later games were held by an "editor", either identical with the "munerator" or an official employed by him. As time passed, these titles and meanings may have merged. In the Republican era, private citizens could own and train gladiators, or lease them from a "lanista" (owner of a gladiator training school). From the Principate onwards, private citizens could hold munera and own gladiators only under Imperial permission, and the role of "editor" was increasingly tied to state officialdom. Legislation by Claudius required that quaestors, the lowest rank of Roman magistrate, personally subsidise two-thirds of the costs of games for their small-town communities – in effect, both an advertisement of their personal generosity and a part-purchase of their office. Bigger games were put on by senior magistrates, who could better afford them. The largest and most lavish of all were paid for by the emperor himself.
The earliest types of gladiator were named after Rome's enemies of that time: the Samnite, Thracian and Gaul. The Samnite, heavily armed, elegantly helmed and probably the most popular type, was renamed secutor and the Gaul renamed murmillo, once these former enemies had been conquered then absorbed into Rome's Empire. In the mid-republican "munus", each type seems to have fought against a similar or identical type. In the later Republic and early Empire, various "fantasy" types were introduced, and were set against dissimilar but complementary types. For example, the bareheaded, nimble retiarius ("net-man"), armoured only at the left arm and shoulder, pitted his net, trident and dagger against the more heavily armoured, helmeted Secutor. Most depictions of gladiators show the most common and popular types. Passing literary references to others has allowed their tentative reconstruction. Other novelties introduced around this time included gladiators who fought from chariots or carts, or from horseback.
The trade in gladiators was empire-wide, and subjected to official supervision. Rome's military success produced a supply of soldier-prisoners who were redistributed for use in State mines or amphitheatres and for sale on the open market. For example, in the aftermath of the Jewish Revolt, the gladiator schools received an influx of Jews – those rejected for training would have been sent straight to the arenas as "noxii" (lit. "hurtful ones"). The best – the most robust – were sent to Rome. In Rome's military ethos, enemy soldiers who had surrendered or allowed their own capture and enslavement had been granted an unmerited gift of life. Their training as gladiators would give them opportunity to redeem their honour in the "munus".
Two other sources of gladiators, found increasingly during the Principate and the relatively low military activity of the Pax Romana, were slaves condemned to the arena ("damnati"), to gladiator schools or games ("ad ludum gladiatorium") as punishment for crimes, and the paid volunteers ("auctorati") who by the late Republic may have comprised approximately half – and possibly the most capable half – of all gladiators. The use of volunteers had a precedent in the Iberian "munus" of Scipio Africanus; but none of those had been paid.
For the poor, and for non-citizens, enrollment in a gladiator school offered a trade, regular food, housing of sorts and a fighting chance of fame and fortune. Mark Antony chose a troupe of gladiators to be his personal bodyguard. Gladiators customarily kept their prize money and any gifts they received, and these could be substantial. Tiberius offered several retired gladiators 100,000 "sesterces" each to return to the arena. Nero gave the gladiator Spiculus property and residence "equal to those of men who had celebrated triumphs."
From the 60s AD female gladiators appear as rare and "exotic markers of exceptionally lavish spectacle". In 66 AD, Nero had Ethiopian women, men and children fight at a "munus" to impress the King Tiridates I of Armenia. Romans seem to have found the idea of a female gladiator novel and entertaining, or downright absurd; Juvenal titillates his readers with a woman named "Mevia", hunting boars in the arena "with spear in hand and breasts exposed", and Petronius mocks the pretensions of a rich, low-class citizen, whose "munus" includes a woman fighting from a cart or chariot. A "munus" of 89 AD, during Domitian's reign, featured a battle between female gladiators, described as "Amazons". In Halicarnassus, a 2nd-century AD relief depicts two female combatants named "Amazon" and "Achillia"; their match ended in a draw. In the same century, an epigraph praises one of Ostia's local elite as the first to "arm women" in the history of its games. Female gladiators probably submitted to the same regulations and training as their male counterparts. Roman morality required that all gladiators be of the lowest social classes, and emperors who failed to respect this distinction earned the scorn of posterity. Cassius Dio takes pains to point out that when the much admired emperor Titus used female gladiators, they were of acceptably low class.
Some regarded female gladiators of any type or class as a symptom of corrupted Roman appetites, morals and womanhood. Before he became emperor, Septimius Severus may have attended the Antiochene Olympic Games, which had been revived by the emperor Commodus and included traditional Greek female athletics. His attempt to give Rome a similarly dignified display of female athletics was met by the crowd with ribald chants and cat-calls. Probably as a result, he banned the use of female gladiators in 200 AD.
Caligula, Titus, Hadrian, Lucius Verus, Caracalla, Geta and Didius Julianus were all said to have performed in the arena, either in public or private, but risks to themselves were minimal. Claudius, characterised by his historians as morbidly cruel and boorish, fought a whale trapped in the harbor in front of a group of spectators. Commentators invariably disapproved of such performances.
Commodus was a fanatical participant at the "ludi", and compelled Rome's elite to attend his performances as gladiator, "bestiarius" or "venator". Most of his performances as a gladiator were bloodless affairs, fought with wooden swords; he invariably won. He was said to have restyled Nero's colossal statue in his own image as "Hercules Reborn", dedicated to himself as "Champion of "secutores"; only left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men." He was said to have killed 100 lions in one day, almost certainly from an elevated platform surrounding the arena perimeter, which allowed him to safely demonstrate his marksmanship. On another occasion, he decapitated a running ostrich with a specially designed dart, carried the bloodied head and his sword over to the Senatorial seats and gesticulated as though they were next. As reward for these services, he drew a gigantic stipend from the public purse.
Gladiator games were advertised well beforehand, on billboards that gave the reason for the game, its editor, venue, date and the number of paired gladiators ("ordinarii") to be used. Other highlighted features could include details of "venationes", executions, music and any luxuries to be provided for the spectators, such as an awning against the sun, water sprinklers, food, drink, sweets and occasionally "door prizes". For enthusiasts and gamblers, a more detailed program ("libellus") was distributed on the day of the "munus", showing the names, types and match records of gladiator pairs, and their order of appearance. Left-handed gladiators were advertised as a rarity; they were trained to fight right-handers, which gave them an advantage over most opponents and produced an interestingly unorthodox combination.
The night before the "munus", the gladiators were given a banquet and opportunity to order their personal and private affairs; Futrell notes its similarity to a ritualistic or sacramental "last meal". These were probably both family and public events which included even the "noxii", sentenced to die in the arena the following day; and the "damnati", who would have at least a slender chance of survival. The event may also have been used to drum up more publicity for the imminent game.
Official "munera" of the early Imperial era seem to have followed a standard form ("munus legitimum"). A procession ("pompa") entered the arena, led by lictors who bore the fasces that signified the magistrate-"editor"'s power over life and death. They were followed by a small band of trumpeters ("tubicines") playing a fanfare. Images of the gods were carried in to "witness" the proceedings, followed by a scribe to record the outcome, and a man carrying the palm branch used to honour victors. The magistrate "editor" entered among a retinue who carried the arms and armour to be used; the gladiators presumably came in last.
The entertainments often began with "venationes" (beast hunts) and "bestiarii" (beast fighters). Next came the "ludi meridiani", which were of variable content but usually involved executions of "noxii", some of whom were condemned to be subjects of fatal re-enactments, based on Greek or Roman myths. Gladiators may have been involved in these as executioners, though most of the crowd, and the gladiators themselves, preferred the "dignity" of an even contest. There were also comedy fights; some may have been lethal. A crude Pompeian graffito suggests a burlesque of musicians, dressed as animals named "Ursus tibicen" (flute-playing bear) and "Pullus cornicen" (horn-blowing chicken), perhaps as accompaniment to clowning by "paegniarii" during a "mock" contest of the "ludi meridiani".
The gladiators may have held informal warm-up matches, using blunted or dummy weapons – some "munera", however, may have used blunted weapons throughout. The "editor," his representative or an honoured guest would check the weapons ("probatio armorum") for the scheduled matches. These were the highlight of the day, and were as inventive, varied and novel as the "editor" could afford. Armatures could be very costly – some were flamboyantly decorated with exotic feathers, jewels and precious metals. Increasingly the "munus" was the "editor"'s gift to spectators who had come to expect the best as their due.
Lightly armed and armoured fighters, such as the retiarius, would tire less rapidly than their heavily armed opponents; most bouts would have lasted 10 to 15 minutes, or 20 minutes at most. In late Republican "munera", between 10 and 13 matches could have been fought on one day; this assumes one match at a time in the course of an afternoon.
Spectators preferred to watch highly skilled, well matched "ordinarii" with complementary fighting styles; these were the most costly to train and to hire. A general "melee" of several, lower-skilled gladiators was far less costly, but also less popular. Even among the "ordinarii", match winners might have to fight a new, well-rested opponent, either a "tertiarius" ("third choice gladiator") by prearrangement; or a "substitute" gladiator ("suppositicius") who fought at the whim of the "editor" as an unadvertised, unexpected "extra". This yielded two combats for the cost of three gladiators, rather than four; such contests were prolonged, and in some cases, more bloody. Most were probably of poor quality, but the emperor Caracalla chose to test a notably skilled and successful fighter named Bato against first one "supposicitius", whom he beat, and then another, who killed him. At the opposite level of the profession, a gladiator reluctant to confront his opponent might be whipped, or goaded with hot irons, until he engaged through sheer desperation.
Combats between experienced, well trained gladiators demonstrated a considerable degree of stagecraft. Among the cognoscenti, bravado and skill in combat were esteemed over mere hacking and bloodshed; some gladiators made their careers and reputation from bloodless victories. Suetonius describes an exceptional "munus" by Nero, in which no-one was killed, "not even "noxii" (enemies of the state)."
Trained gladiators were expected to observe professional rules of combat. Most matches employed a senior referee ("summa rudis") and an assistant, shown in mosaics with long staffs ("rudes") to caution or separate opponents at some crucial point in the match. Referees were usually retired gladiators whose decisions, judgement and discretion were, for the most part, respected; they could stop bouts entirely, or pause them to allow the combatants rest, refreshment and a rub-down.
Ludi and "munera" were accompanied by music, played as interludes, or building to a "frenzied crescendo" during combats, perhaps to heighten the suspense during a gladiator's appeal; blows may have been accompanied by trumpet-blasts. The Zliten mosaic in Libya (circa 80–100 AD) shows musicians playing an accompaniment to provincial games (with gladiators, "bestiarii", or "venatores" and prisoners attacked by beasts). Their instruments are a long straight trumpet ("tubicen"), a large curved horn ("Cornu") and a water organ ("hydraulis"). Similar representations (musicians, gladiators and "bestiari") are found on a tomb relief in Pompeii.
A match was won by the gladiator who overcame his opponent, or killed him outright. Victors received the palm branch and an award from the "editor". An outstanding fighter might receive a laurel crown and money from an appreciative crowd but for anyone originally condemned "ad ludum" the greatest reward was manumission (emancipation), symbolised by the gift of a wooden training sword or staff ("rudis") from the "editor". Martial describes a match between Priscus and Verus, who fought so evenly and bravely for so long that when both acknowledged defeat at the same instant, Titus awarded victory and a "rudis" to each. Flamma was awarded the "rudis" four times, but chose to remain a gladiator. His gravestone in Sicily includes his record: "Flamma, "secutor", lived 30 years, fought 34 times, won 21 times, fought to a draw 9 times, defeated 4 times, a Syrian by nationality. Delicatus made this for his deserving comrade-in-arms."
A gladiator could acknowledge defeat by raising a finger ("ad digitum"), in appeal to the referee to stop the combat and refer to the "editor", whose decision would usually rest on the crowd's response. In the earliest "munera", death was considered a righteous penalty for defeat; later, those who fought well might be granted remission at the whim of the crowd or the "editor". During the Imperial era, matches advertised as "sine missione" (without remission from the sentence of death) suggest that "missio" (the sparing of a defeated gladiator's life) had become common practice. The contract between "editor" and his "lanista" could include compensation for unexpected deaths; this could be "some fifty times higher than the lease price" of the gladiator.
Under Augustus' rule, the demand for gladiators began to exceed supply, and matches "sine missione" were officially banned; an economical, pragmatic development that happened to match popular notions of "natural justice". When Caligula and Claudius refused to spare defeated but popular fighters, their own popularity suffered. In general, gladiators who fought well were likely to survive. At a Pompeian match between chariot-fighters, Publius Ostorius, with previous 51 wins to his credit, was granted missio after losing to Scylax, with 26 victories. By common custom, the spectators decided whether or not a losing gladiator should be spared, and chose the winner in the rare event of a standing tie. Even more rarely, perhaps uniquely, one stalemate ended in the killing of one gladiator by the "editor" himself. In any event, the final decision of death or life belonged to the "editor", who signalled his choice with a gesture described by Roman sources as "pollice verso" meaning "with a turned thumb"; a description too imprecise for reconstruction of the gesture or its symbolism. Whether victorious or defeated, a gladiator was bound by oath to accept or implement his editor's decision, "the victor being nothing but the instrument of his [editor's] will." Not all "editors" chose to go with the crowd, and not all those condemned to death for putting on a poor show chose to submit:
Once a band of five "retiarii" in tunics, matched against the same number of "secutores", yielded without a struggle; but when their death was ordered, one of them caught up his trident and slew all the victors. Caligula bewailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder.
A gladiator who was refused "missio" was despatched by his opponent. To die well, a gladiator should never ask for mercy, nor cry out. A "good death" redeemed the gladiator from the dishonourable weakness and passivity of defeat, and provided a noble example to those who watched:
For death, when it stands near us, gives even to inexperienced men the courage not to seek to avoid the inevitable. So the gladiator, no matter how faint-hearted he has been throughout the fight, offers his throat to his opponent and directs the wavering blade to the vital spot. (Seneca. "Epistles", 30.8)
Some mosaics show defeated gladiators kneeling in preparation for the moment of death. Seneca's "vital spot" seems to have meant the neck. Gladiator remains from Ephesus confirm this.
The body of a gladiator who had died well was placed on a couch of Libitina and removed with dignity to the arena morgue, where the corpse was stripped of armour, and probably had its throat cut to prove that dead was dead. The Christian author Tertullian, commenting on "ludi meridiani" in Roman Carthage during the peak era of the games, describes a more humiliating method of removal. One arena official, dressed as the "brother of Jove", Dis Pater (god of the underworld) strikes the corpse with a mallet. Another, dressed as Mercury, tests for life-signs with a heated "wand"; once confirmed as dead, the body is dragged from the arena.
Whether these victims were gladiators or "noxii" is unknown. Modern pathological examination confirms the probably fatal use of a mallet on some, but not all the gladiator skulls found in a gladiators' cemetery. Kyle (1998) proposes that gladiators who disgraced themselves might have been subjected to the same indignities as "noxii", denied the relative mercies of a quick death and dragged from the arena as carrion. Whether the corpse of such a gladiator could be redeemed from further ignominy by friends or "familia" is not known.
The bodies of "noxii", and possibly some "damnati", were thrown into rivers or dumped unburied; Denial of funeral rites and memorial condemned the shade ("manes") of the deceased to restless wandering upon the earth as a dreadful "larva" or "lemur". Ordinary citizens, slaves and freedmen were usually buried beyond the town or city limits, to avoid the ritual and physical pollution of the living; professional gladiators had their own, separate cemeteries. The taint of "infamia" was perpetual.
Gladiators could subscribe to a union ("collegia"), which ensured their proper burial, and sometimes a pension or compensation for wives and children. Otherwise, the gladiator's "familia", which included his "lanista", comrades and blood-kin, might fund his funeral and memorial costs, and use the memorial to assert their moral reputation as responsible, respectful colleagues or family members. Some monuments record the gladiator's career in some detail, including the number of appearances, victories — sometimes represented by an engraved crown or wreath — defeats, career duration, and age at death. Some include the gladiator's type, in words or direct representation: for example, the memorial of a retiarius at Verona included an engraved trident and sword. A wealthy editor might commission artwork to celebrate a particularly successful or memorable show, and include named portraits of winners and losers in action; the Borghese Gladiator Mosaic is a notable example. According to Cassius Dio, the emperor Caracalla gave the gladiator Bato a magnificent memorial and State funeral; more typical are the simple gladiator tombs of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose brief inscriptions include the following:
"The familia set this up in memory of Saturnilos."
"For Nikepharos, son of Synetos, Lakedaimonian, and for Narcissus the secutor. Titus Flavius Satyrus set up this monument in his memory from his own money."
"For Hermes. Paitraeites with his cell-mates set this up in memory".
Very little evidence survives of the religious beliefs of gladiators as a class, or their expectations of an afterlife. Modern scholarship offers little support for the once-prevalent notion that gladiators, "venatores" and "bestiarii" were personally or professionally dedicated to the cult of the Graeco-Roman goddess Nemesis. Rather, she seems to have represented a kind of "Imperial Fortuna" who dispensed Imperial retribution on the one hand, and Imperially subsidised gifts on the other – including the "munera". One gladiator's tomb dedication clearly states that her decisions are not to be trusted. Many gladiator epitaphs claim Nemesis, fate, deception or treachery as the instrument of their death, never the superior skills of the flesh-and-blood adversary who defeated and killed them. Having no personal responsibility for his own defeat and death, the losing gladiator remains the better man, worth avenging.
"I, Victor, left-handed, lie here, but my homeland was in Thessalonica. Doom killed me, not the liar Pinnas. No longer let him boast. I had a fellow gladiator, Polyneikes, who killed Pinnas and avenged me. Claudius Thallus set up this memorial from what I left behind as a legacy."
A gladiator might expect to fight in two or three munera annually, and an unknown number would have died in their first match. Few gladiators survived more than 10 contests, though one survived an extraordinary 150 bouts; and another died at 90 years of age, presumably long after retirement. A natural death following retirement is also likely for three individuals who died at 38, 45, and 48 years respectively. George Ville, using evidence from 1st century gladiator headstones, calculated an average age at death of 27, and mortality "among all who entered the arena" at 19/100. Marcus Junkelmann disputes Ville's calculation for average age at death; the majority would have received no headstone, and would have died early in their careers, at 18–25 years of age. Between the early and later Imperial periods the risk of death for defeated gladiators rose from 1/5 to 1/4, perhaps because "missio" was granted less often. Hopkins and Beard tentatively estimate a total of 400 arenas throughout the Roman Empire at its greatest extent, with a combined total of 8,000 deaths per annum from executions, combats and accidents.
The earliest named gladiator school (singular: "ludus"; plural: "ludi") is that of Aurelius Scaurus at Capua. He was "lanista" of the gladiators employed by the state circa 105 BC to instruct the legions and simultaneously entertain the public. Few other "lanistae" are known by name: they headed their "familia gladiatoria", and had lawful power over life and death of every family member, including "servi poenae", "auctorati" and ancillaries. Socially, they were "infames", on a footing with pimps and butchers and despised as price gougers. No such stigma was attached to a gladiator owner ("munerarius" or "editor") of good family, high status and independent means; Cicero congratulated his friend Atticus on buying a splendid troop – if he rented them out, he might recover their entire cost after two performances.
The Spartacus revolt had originated in a gladiator school privately owned by Lentulus Batiatus, and had been suppressed only after a protracted series of costly, sometimes disastrous campaigns by regular Roman troops. In the late Republican era, a fear of similar uprisings, the usefulness of gladiator schools in creating private armies, and the exploitation of "munera" for political gain led to increased restrictions on gladiator school ownership, siting and organisation. By Domitian's time, many had been more or less absorbed by the State, including those at Pergamum, Alexandria, Praeneste and Capua. The city of Rome itself had four; the "Ludus Magnus" (the largest and most important, housing up to about 2,000 gladiators), "Ludus Dacicus", "Ludus Gallicus", and the "Ludus Matutinus", which trained "bestiarii".
In the Imperial era, volunteers required a magistrate's permission to join a school as "auctorati". If this was granted, the school's physician assessed their suitability. Their contract ("auctoramentum") stipulated how often they were to perform, their fighting style and earnings. A condemned bankrupt or debtor accepted as novice ("novicius") could negotiate with his "lanista" or "editor" for the partial or complete payment of his debt. Faced with runaway re-enlistment fees for skilled "auctorati", Marcus Aurelius set their upper limit at 12,000 "sesterces".
All prospective gladiators, whether volunteer or condemned, were bound to service by a sacred oath ("sacramentum"). Novices ("novicii") trained under teachers of particular fighting styles, probably retired gladiators. They could ascend through a hierarchy of grades (singular: "palus") in which "primus palus" was the highest. Lethal weapons were prohibited in the schools – weighted, blunt wooden versions were probably used. Fighting styles were probably learned through constant rehearsal as choreographed "numbers". An elegant, economical style was preferred. Training included preparation for a stoical, unflinching death. Successful training required intense commitment.
Those condemned "ad ludum" were probably branded or marked with a tattoo ("stigma", plural "stigmata") on the face, legs and/or hands. These "stigmata" may have been text – slaves were sometimes thus marked on the forehead until Constantine banned the use of facial stigmata in 325 AD. Soldiers were routinely marked on the hand.
Gladiators were typically accommodated in cells, arranged in barrack formation around a central practice arena. Juvenal describes the segregation of gladiators according to type and status, suggestive of rigid hierarchies within the schools: "even the lowest scum of the arena observe this rule; even in prison they're separate". "Retiarii" were kept away from "damnati", and "fag targeteers" from "armoured heavies". As most "ordinarii" at games were from the same school, this kept potential opponents separate and safe from each other until the lawful "munus". Discipline could be extreme, even lethal. Remains of a Pompeian "ludus" site attest to developments in supply, demand and discipline; in its earliest phase, the building could accommodate 15–20 gladiators. Its replacement could have housed about 100 and included a very small cell, probably for lesser punishments and so low that standing was impossible.
Despite the harsh discipline, gladiators represented a substantial investment for their "lanista" and were otherwise well fed and cared for. Their daily, high-energy, vegetarian diet consisted of barley, boiled beans, oatmeal, ash and dried fruit. Gladiators were sometimes called "hordearii" (eaters of barley). Romans considered barley inferior to wheat — a punishment for legionaries replaced their wheat ration with it — but it was thought to strengthen the body. Regular massage and high quality medical care helped mitigate an otherwise very severe training regimen. Part of Galen's medical training was at a gladiator school in Pergamum where he saw (and would later criticise) the training, diet, and long-term health prospects of the gladiators.
"He vows to endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword." "The gladiator's oath as cited by Petronius (Satyricon, 117)."
Modern customs and institutions offer few useful parallels to the legal and social context of the "gladiatoria munera". In Roman law, anyone condemned to the arena or the gladiator schools ("damnati ad ludum") was a "servus poenae" (slave of the penalty), and was considered to be under sentence of death unless manumitted. A rescript of Hadrian reminded magistrates that "those sentenced to the sword" (execution) should be despatched immediately "or at least within the year", and those sentenced to the "ludi" should not be discharged before five years, or three years if granted manumission. Only slaves found guilty of specific offences could be sentenced to the arena; however, citizens found guilty of particular offenses could be stripped of citizenship, formally enslaved, then sentenced; and slaves, once freed, could be legally reverted to slavery for certain offences. Arena punishment could be given for banditry, theft and arson, and for treasons such as rebellion, census evasion to avoid paying due taxes and refusal to swear lawful oaths.
Offenders seen as particularly obnoxious to the state ("noxii") received the most humiliating punishments. By the 1st century BC, "noxii" were being condemned to the beasts ("damnati ad bestias") in the arena, with almost no chance of survival, or were made to kill each other. From the early Imperial era, some were forced to participate in humiliating and novel forms of mythological or historical enactment, culminating in their execution. Those judged less harshly might be condemned "ad ludum venatorium" or "ad gladiatorium" – combat with animals or gladiators – and armed as thought appropriate. These "damnati" at least might put on a good show and retrieve some respect, and very rarely, survive to fight another day. Some may even have become "proper" gladiators.
Among the most admired and skilled "auctorati" were those who, having been granted manumission, volunteered to fight in the arena. Some of these highly trained and experienced specialists may have had no other practical choice open to them. Their legal status – slave or free – is uncertain. Under Roman law, a freed gladiator could not "offer such services [as those of a gladiator] after manumission, because they cannot be performed without endangering [his] life." All contracted volunteers, including those of equestrian and senatorial class, were legally enslaved by their "auctoratio" because it involved their potentially lethal submission to a master. All "arenarii" (those who appeared in the arena) were ""infames" by reputation", a form of social dishonour which excluded them from most of the advantages and rights of citizenship. Payment for such appearances compounded their "infamia". The legal and social status of even the most popular and wealthy "auctorati" was thus marginal at best. They could not vote, plead in court nor leave a will; and unless they were manumitted, their lives and property belonged to their masters. Nevertheless, there is evidence of informal if not entirely lawful practices to the contrary. Some "unfree" gladiators bequeathed money and personal property to wives and children, possibly via a sympathetic owner or "familia"; some had their own slaves and gave them their freedom. One gladiator was even granted "citizenship" to several Greek cities of the Eastern Roman world.
Caesar's "munus" of 46 BC included at least one equestrian, son of a Praetor, and two volunteers of possible senatorial rank. Augustus, who enjoyed watching the games, forbade the participation of senators, equestrians and their descendants as fighters or "arenarii", but in 11 AD he bent his own rules and allowed equestrians to volunteer because "the prohibition was no use". Under Tiberius, the Larinum decree (19AD) reiterated Augustus' original prohibitions. Thereafter, Caligula flouted them and Claudius strengthened them. Nero and Commodus ignored them. Even after the adoption of Christianity as Rome's official religion, legislation forbade the involvement of Rome's upper social classes in the games, though not the games themselves. Throughout Rome's history, some volunteers were prepared to risk loss of status or reputation by appearing in the arena, whether for payment, glory or, as in one recorded case, to revenge an affront to their personal honour. In one extraordinary episode, an aristocratic descendant of the Gracchi, already infamous for his marriage, as a bride, to a male horn player, appeared in what may have been a non-lethal or farcical match. His motives are unknown, but his voluntary and "shameless" arena appearance combined the "womanly attire" of a lowly "retiarius tunicatus", adorned with golden ribbons, with the apex headdress that marked him out as a priest of Mars. In Juvenal's account, he seems to have relished the scandalous self-display, applause and the disgrace he inflicted on his more sturdy opponent by repeatedly skipping away from the confrontation.
As "munera" grew larger and more popular, open spaces such as the Forum Romanum were adapted (as the Forum Boarium had been) as venues in Rome and elsewhere, with temporary, elevated seating for the patron and high status spectators; they were popular but not truly public events:
A show of gladiators was to be exhibited before the people in the market-place, and most of the magistrates erected scaffolds round about, with an intention of letting them for advantage. Caius commanded them to take down their scaffolds, that the poor people might see the sport without paying anything. But nobody obeying these orders of his, he gathered together a body of labourers, who worked for him, and overthrew all the scaffolds the very night before the contest was to take place. So that by the next morning the market-place was cleared, and the common people had an opportunity of seeing the pastime. In this, the populace thought he had acted the part of a man; but he much disobliged the tribunes his colleagues, who regarded it as a piece of violent and presumptuous interference.
Towards the end of the Republic, Cicero ("Murena", 72–3) still describes gladiator shows as ticketed — their political usefulness was served by inviting the rural tribunes of the plebs, not the people of Rome "en masse" – but in Imperial times, poor citizens in receipt of the corn dole were allocated at least some free seating, possibly by lottery. Others had to pay. Ticket scalpers ("Locarii") sometimes sold or let out seats at inflated prices. Martial wrote that "Hermes [a gladiator who always drew the crowds] means riches for the ticket scalpers".
The earliest known Roman amphitheatre was built at Pompeii by Sullan colonists, around 70 BC. The first in the city of Rome was the extraordinary wooden amphitheatre of Gaius Scribonius Curio (built in 53 BC). The first part-stone amphitheatre in Rome was inaugurated in 29–30 BC, in time for the triple triumph of Octavian (later Augustus). Shortly after it burned down in 64 AD, Vespasian began its replacement, later known as the Amphitheatrum Flavium (Colosseum), which seated 50,000 spectators and would remain the largest in the Empire. It was inaugurated by Titus in 80 AD as the personal gift of the Emperor to the people of Rome, paid for by the imperial share of booty after the Jewish Revolt.
Amphitheatres were usually oval in plan. Their seating tiers surrounded the arena below, where the community's judgments were meted out, in full public view. From across the stands, crowd and "editor" could assess each other's character and temperament. For the crowd, amphitheatres afforded unique opportunities for free expression and free speech ("theatralis licentia"). Petitions could be submitted to the "editor" (as magistrate) in full view of the community. "Factiones" and claques could vent their spleen on each other, and occasionally on Emperors. The emperor Titus's dignified yet confident ease in his management of an amphitheatre crowd and its factions were taken as a measure of his enormous popularity and the rightness of his imperium. The amphitheatre "munus" thus served the Roman community as living theatre and a court in miniature, in which judgement could be served not only on those in the arena below, but on their judges. Amphitheatres also provided a means of social control. Their seating was "disorderly and indiscriminate" until Augustus prescribed its arrangement in his Social Reforms. To persuade the Senate, he expressed his distress on behalf of a Senator who could not find seating at a crowded games in Puteoli:
In consequence of this the senate decreed that, whenever any public show was given anywhere, the first row of seats should be reserved for senators; and at Rome he would not allow the envoys of the free and allied nations to sit in the orchestra, since he was informed that even freedmen were sometimes appointed. He separated the soldiery from the people. He assigned special seats to the married men of the commons, to boys under age their own section and the adjoining one to their preceptors; and he decreed that no one wearing a dark cloak should sit in the middle of the house. He would not allow women to view even the gladiators except from the upper seats, though it had been the custom for men and women to sit together at such shows. Only the Vestal virgins were assigned a place to themselves, opposite the praetor's tribunal.
These arrangements do not seem to have been strongly enforced.
Popular factions supported favourite gladiators and gladiator types. Under Augustan legislation, the Samnite type was renamed "Secutor" ("chaser", or "pursuer"). The secutor was equipped with a long, heavy "large" shield called a "scutum"; "Secutores", their supporters and any heavyweight "secutor"-based types such as the Murmillo were "secutarii". Lighter types, such as the Thraex, were equipped with a smaller, lighter shield called a "parma", from which they and their supporters were named "parmularii" ("small shields"). Titus and Trajan preferred the "parmularii" and Domitian the "secutarii"; Marcus Aurelius took neither side. Nero seems to have enjoyed the brawls between rowdy, enthusiastic and sometimes violent factions, but called in the troops if they went too far.
There were also local rivalries. At Pompeii's amphitheatre, during Nero's reign, the trading of insults between Pompeians and Nucerian spectators during public "ludi" led to stone throwing and riot. Many were killed or wounded. Nero banned gladiator "munera" (though not the games) at Pompeii for ten years as punishment. The story is told in Pompeian graffiti and high quality wall painting, with much boasting of Pompeii's "victory" over Nuceria.
A man who knows how to conquer in war is a man who knows how to arrange a banquet and put on a show.
Rome was essentially a landowning military aristocracy. From the early days of the Republic, ten years of military service were a citizen's duty and a prerequisite for election to public office. "Devotio" (willingness to sacrifice one's life to the greater good) was central to the Roman military ideal, and was the core of the Roman military oath. It applied from highest to lowest alike in the chain of command. As a soldier committed his life (voluntarily, at least in theory) to the greater cause of Rome's victory, he was not expected to survive defeat.
The Punic Wars of the late 3rd century BC – in particular the near-catastrophic defeat of Roman arms at Cannae – had long-lasting effects on the Republic, its citizen armies, and the development of the gladiatorial "munera". In the aftermath of Cannae, Scipio Africanus crucified Roman deserters and had non-Roman deserters thrown to the beasts. The Senate refused to ransom Hannibal's Roman captives: instead, they consulted the Sibylline books, then made drastic preparations:
In obedience to the Books of Destiny, some strange and unusual sacrifices were made, human sacrifices amongst them. A Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman and a Greek man and a Greek woman were buried alive under the Forum Boarium ... They were lowered into a stone vault, which had on a previous occasion also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings. When the gods were believed to be duly propitiated ... Armour, weapons, and other things of the kind were ordered to be in readiness, and the ancient spoils gathered from the enemy were taken down from the temples and colonnades. The dearth of freemen necessitated a new kind of enlistment; 8,000 sturdy youths from amongst the slaves were armed at the public cost, after they had each been asked whether they were willing to serve or no. These soldiers were preferred, as there would be an opportunity of ransoming them when taken prisoners at a lower price.
The account notes, uncomfortably, the bloodless human sacrifices performed to help turn the tide of the war in Rome's favour. While the Senate mustered their willing slaves, Hannibal offered his dishonoured Roman captives a chance for honourable death, in what Livy describes as something very like the Roman "munus". The "munus" thus represented an essentially military, self-sacrificial ideal, taken to extreme fulfillment in the gladiator's oath. By the "devotio" of a voluntary oath, a slave might achieve the quality of a Roman ("Romanitas"), become the embodiment of true "virtus" (manliness, or manly virtue), and paradoxically, be granted "missio" while remaining a slave. The gladiator as a specialist fighter, and the ethos and organization of the gladiator schools, would inform the development of the Roman military as the most effective force of its time. In 107 BC, the Marian Reforms established the Roman army as a professional body. Two years later, following its defeat at the Battle of Arausio:
...weapons training was given to soldiers by P. Rutilius, consul with C. Mallis. For he, following the example of no previous general, with teachers summoned from the gladiatorial training school of C. Aurelus Scaurus, implanted in the legions a more sophisticated method of avoiding and dealing a blow and mixed bravery with skill and skill back again with virtue so that skill became stronger by bravery's passion and passion became more wary with the knowledge of this art.
The military were great aficionados of the games, and supervised the schools. Many schools and amphitheatres were sited at or near military barracks, and some provincial army units owned gladiator troupes. As the Republic wore on, the term of military service increased from ten to the sixteen years formalised by Augustus in the Principate. It would rise to twenty, and later, to twenty-five years. Roman military discipline was ferocious; severe enough to provoke mutiny, despite the consequences. A career as a volunteer gladiator may have seemed an attractive option for some.
In AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, Otho's troops at Bedriacum included 2000 gladiators. Opposite him on the field, Vitellius's army was swollen by levies of slaves, plebs and gladiators. In 167 AD, troop depletions by plague and desertion may have prompted Marcus Aurelius to draft gladiators at his own expense. During the Civil Wars that led to the Principate, Octavian (later Augustus) acquired the personal gladiator troop of his erstwhile opponent, Mark Antony. They had served their late master with exemplary loyalty but thereafter, they disappear from the record.
Roman writing as a whole demonstrates a deep ambivalence towards the "gladiatoria munera". Even the most complex and sophisticated "munera" of the Imperial era evoked the ancient, ancestral "dii manes" of the underworld and were framed by the protective, lawful rites of "sacrificium". Their popularity made their co-option by the state inevitable; Cicero acknowledged their sponsorship as a political imperative. Despite the popular adulation of gladiators, they were set apart, despised; and despite Cicero's contempt for the mob, he shared their admiration: "Even when [gladiators] have been felled, let alone when they are standing and fighting, they never disgrace themselves. And suppose a gladiator has been brought to the ground, when do you ever see one twist his neck away after he has been ordered to extend it for the death blow?" His own death would later emulate this example. Yet, Cicero could also refer to his popularist opponent Clodius, publicly and scathingly, as a "bustuarius" – literally, a "funeral-man", implying that Clodius has shown the moral temperament of the lowest sort of gladiator. "Gladiator" could be (and was) used as an insult throughout the Roman period, and "Samnite" doubled the insult, despite the popularity of the Samnite type. Silius Italicus wrote, as the games approached their peak, that the degenerate Campanians had devised the very worst of precedents, which now threatened the moral fabric of Rome: "It was their custom to enliven their banquets with bloodshed and to combine with their feasting the horrid sight of armed men [(Samnites)] fighting; often the combatants fell dead above the very cups of the revelers, and the tables were stained with streams of blood. Thus demoralised was Capua." Death could be rightly meted out as punishment, or met with equanimity in peace or war, as a gift of fate; but when inflicted as entertainment, with no underlying moral or religious purpose, it could only pollute and demean those who witnessed it.
The "munus" itself could be interpreted as pious necessity, but its increasing luxury corroded Roman virtue, and created an un-Roman appetite for profligacy and self-indulgence. Caesar's 46 BC "ludi" were mere entertainment for political gain, a waste of lives and of money that would have been better doled out to his legionary veterans. Yet for Seneca, and for Marcus Aurelius – both professed Stoics – the degradation of gladiators in the "munus" highlighted their Stoic virtues: their unconditional obedience to their master and to fate, and equanimity in the face of death. Having "neither hope nor illusions", the gladiator could transcend his own debased nature, and disempower death itself by meeting it face to face. Courage, dignity, altruism and loyalty were morally redemptive; Lucian idealised this principle in his story of Sisinnes, who voluntarily fought as a gladiator, earned 10,000 drachmas and used it to buy freedom for his friend, Toxaris. Seneca had a lower opinion of the mob's un-Stoical appetite for "ludi meridiani": "Man [is]...now slaughtered for jest and sport; and those whom it used to be unholy to train for the purpose of inflicting and enduring wounds are thrust forth exposed and defenceless."
These accounts seek a higher moral meaning from the "munus", but Ovid's very detailed (though satirical) instructions for seduction in the amphitheatre suggest that the spectacles could generate a potent and dangerously sexual atmosphere. Augustan seating prescriptions placed women – excepting the Vestals, who were legally inviolate – as far as possible from the action of the arena floor; or tried to. There remained the thrilling possibility of clandestine sexual transgression by high-caste spectators and their heroes of the arena. Such assignations were a source for gossip and satire but some became unforgivably public:
What was the youthful charm that so fired Eppia? What hooked her? What did she see in him to make her put up with being called "the gladiator's moll"? Her poppet, her Sergius, was no chicken, with a dud arm that prompted hope of early retirement. Besides his face looked a proper mess, helmet-scarred, a great wart on his nose, an unpleasant discharge always trickling from one eye. But he was a gladiator. That word makes the whole breed seem handsome, and made her prefer him to her children and country, her sister, her husband. Steel is what they fall in love with.
Eppia – a senator's wife – and her Sergius eloped to Egypt, where he deserted her. Most gladiators would have aimed lower. Two wall "graffiti" in Pompeii describe Celadus the Thraex as "the sigh of the girls" and "the glory of the girls" – which may or may not have been Celadus' own wishful thinking.
In the later Imperial era, Servius Maurus Honoratus uses the same disparaging term as Cicero – "bustuarius" – for gladiators. Tertullian used it somewhat differently – all victims of the arena were sacrificial in his eyes – and expressed the paradox of the "arenarii" as a class, from a Christian viewpoint:
On the one and the same account they glorify them and they degrade and diminish them; yes, further, they openly condemn them to disgrace and civil degradation; they keep them religiously excluded from council chamber, rostrum, senate, knighthood, and every other kind of office and a good many distinctions. The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve; the art they glorify, the artist they disgrace.
In this new Play, I attempted to follow the old custom of mine, of making a fresh trial; I brought it on again. In the first Act I pleased; when in the meantime a rumor spread that gladiators were about to be exhibited; the populace flock together, make a tumult, clamor aloud, and fight for their places: meantime, I was unable to maintain my place.
Images of gladiators could be found throughout the Republic and Empire, among all classes. Walls in the 2nd century BC "Italian Agora" at Delos were decorated with paintings of gladiators. Mosaics dating from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD have been invaluable in the reconstruction of combat and its rules, gladiator types and the development of the "munus". Throughout the Roman world, ceramics, lamps, gems and jewellery, mosaics, reliefs, wall paintings and statuary offer evidence, sometimes the best evidence, of the clothing, props, equipment, names, events, prevalence and rules of gladiatorial combat. Earlier periods provide only occasional, perhaps exceptional examples. The Gladiator Mosaic in the Galleria Borghese displays several gladiator types, and the Bignor Roman Villa mosaic from Provincial Britain shows Cupids as gladiators. Souvenir ceramics were produced depicting named gladiators in combat; similar images of higher quality, were available on more expensive articles in high quality ceramic, glass or silver.
Pliny the Elder gives vivid examples of the popularity of gladiator portraiture in Antium and an artistic treat laid on by an adoptive aristocrat for the solidly plebeian citizens of the Roman Aventine:
When a freedman of Nero was giving a gladiatorial show at Antium, the public porticoes were covered with paintings, so we are told, containing life-like portraits of all the gladiators and assistants. This portraiture of gladiators has been the highest interest in art for many centuries now, but it was Gaius Terentius who began the practice of having pictures made of gladiatorial shows and exhibited in public; in honour of his grandfather who had adopted him he provided thirty pairs of Gladiators in the Forum for three consecutive days, and exhibited a picture of the matches in the Grove of Diana.
Some Roman reenactors attempt to recreate Roman gladiator troupes. Some of these groups are part of larger Roman reenactment groups, and others are wholly independent, though they might participate in larger demonstrations of Roman reenacting or historical reenacting in general. These groups usually focus on portraying mock gladiatorial combat in as accurate a manner as possible.
Books of fiction in which Roman gladiators play the main or an important supporting role.
Gladiator fights have been depicted in a number of peplum films (also known as "sword-and-sandal" movies). This is a genre of largely Italian-made historical epics (costume dramas) that dominated the Italian film industry from 1958 to 1965. They can be immediately differentiated from the competing Hollywood product by their use of dubbing. The pepla attempted to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics of the time, such as "Spartacus". Inspired by the success of "Spartacus", there were a number of Italian peplums that emphasized the gladiatorial arena fights in their plots, with it becoming almost a peplum subgenre in itself; One group of supermen known as "The Ten Gladiators" appeared in a trilogy, all three films starring Dan Vadis in the lead role.
"The Arena" (also known as the "Naked Warriors") is a 1974 gladiator exploitation film, starring Margaret Markov and Pam Grier, and directed by Steve Carver and an uncredited Joe D'Amato. Grier and Markov portray female gladiators in ancient Rome, who have been enslaved and must fight for their freedom. "Gladiator" is a 2000 British-American epic historical drama film directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. Crowe portrays a fictional Roman general who is reduced to slavery and then rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family. "Amazons and Gladiators" is a 2001 drama action adventure film directed and written by Zachary Weintraub starring Patrick Bergin and Jennifer Rubin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12336 |
Genetically modified organism
A genetically modified organism (GMO) is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. The exact definition of a genetically modified organism and what constitutes genetic engineering varies, with the most common being an organism altered in a way that "does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination". A wide variety of organisms have been genetically modified (GM), from animals to plants and microorganisms. Genes have been transferred within the same species, across species (creating transgenic organisms) and even across kingdoms. New genes can be introduced, or endogenous genes can be enhanced, altered or knocked out.
Creating a genetically modified organism is a multi-step process. Genetic engineers must isolate the gene they wish to insert into the host organism and combine it with other genetic elements, including a promoter and terminator region and often a selectable marker. A number of techniques are available for inserting the isolated gene into the host genome. Recent advancements using genome editing techniques, notably CRISPR, have made the production of GMO's much simpler. Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen made the first genetically modified organism in 1973, a bacteria resistant to the antibiotic kanamycin. The first genetically modified animal, a mouse, was created in 1974 by Rudolf Jaenisch, and the first plant was produced in 1983. In 1994 the Flavr Savr tomato was released, the first commercialized genetically modified food. The first genetically modified animal to be commercialized was the GloFish (2003) and the first genetically modified animal to be approved for food use was the AquAdvantage salmon in 2015.
Bacteria are the easiest organisms to engineer and have been used for research, food production, industrial protein purification (including drugs), agriculture, and art. There is potential to use them for environmental, purposes or as medicine. Fungi have been engineered with much the same goals. Viruses play an important role as vectors for inserting genetic information into other organisms. This use is especially relevant to human gene therapy. There are proposals to remove the virulent genes from viruses to create vaccines. Plants have been engineered for scientific research, to create new colors in plants, deliver vaccines and to create enhanced crops. Genetically modified crops are publicly the most controversial GMOs. The majority are engineered for herbicide tolerance or insect resistance. Golden rice has been engineered with three genes that increase its nutritional value. Other prospects for GM crops are as bioreactors for the production of biopharmaceuticals, biofuels or medicines.
Animals are generally much harder to transform and the vast majority are still at the research stage. Mammals are the best model organisms for humans, making ones genetically engineered to resemble serious human diseases important to the discovery and development of treatments. Human proteins expressed in mammals are more likely to be similar to their natural counterparts than those expressed in plants or microorganisms. Livestock are modified with the intention of improving economically important traits such as growth-rate, quality of meat, milk composition, disease resistance and survival. Genetically modified fish are used for scientific research, as pets and as a food source. Genetic engineering has been proposed as a way to control mosquitos, a vector for many deadly diseases. Although human gene therapy is still relatively new, it has been used to treat genetic disorders such as severe combined immunodeficiency, and Leber's congenital amaurosis.
Many objections have been raised over the development of GMO's, particularly their commercialization. Many of these involve GM crops and whether food produced from them is safe and what impact growing them will have on the environment. Other concerns are the objectivity and rigor of regulatory authorities, contamination of non-genetically modified food, control of the food supply, patenting of life and the use of intellectual property rights. Although there is a scientific consensus that currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food, GM food safety is a leading issue with critics. Gene flow, impact on non-target organisms and escape are the major environmental concerns. Countries have adopted regulatory measures to deal with these concerns. There are differences in the regulation for the release of GMOs between countries, with some of the most marked differences occurring between the US and Europe. Key issues concerning regulators include whether GM food should be labeled and the status of gene edited organisms.
What constitutes a genetically modified organism (GMO) is not always clear and can vary widely. At its broadest it can include anything that has had its genes altered, including by nature. Taking a less broad view it can encompass every organism that has had its genes altered by humans, which would include all crops and livestock. In 1993 the "Encyclopedia Britannica" defined genetic engineering as "any of a wide range of techniques ... among them artificial insemination, "in vitro" fertilization ("e.g.", "test-tube" babies), sperm banks, cloning, and gene manipulation." The European Union (EU) included a similarly broad definition in early reviews, specifically mentioning GMOs being produced by "selective breeding and other means of artificial selection." They later excluded traditional breeding, in vitro fertilization, induction of polyploidy, mutagenesis and cell fusion techniques that do not use recombinant nucleic acids or a genetically modified organism in the process.
A narrower definition provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization and the European Commission says that the organisms must be altered in a way that does "not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination". There are examples of crops that fit this definition, but are not normally considered GMOs. For example, the grain crop triticale was fully developed in a laboratory in 1930 using various techniques to alter its genome. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in 2000 used the synonym "living modified organism" ("LMO") and defined it as "any living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology." Modern biotechnology is further defined as "In vitro nucleic acid techniques, including recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and direct injection of nucleic acid into cells or organelles, or fusion of cells beyond the taxonomic family."
Genetically engineered organism (GEO) can be considered a more precise term compared to GMO when describing organisms' genomes that have been directly manipulated with biotechnology. The term GMO originally was not typically used by scientists to describe genetically engineered organisms until after usage of GMO became common in popular media. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers GMOs to be plants or animals with heritable changes introduced by genetic engineering or traditional methods, while GEO specifically refers to organisms with genes introduced, eliminated, or rearranged using molecular biology, particularly recombinant DNA techniques, such as transgenesis.
The definitions focus on the process more than the product, which means there could be GMOS and non-GMOs with very similar genotypes and phenotypes. This has led scientists to label it as a scientifically meaningless category, saying that it is impossible to group all the different types of GMOs under one common definition. It has also caused issues for organic institutions and groups looking to ban GMOs. It also poses problems as new processes are developed. The current definitions came in before genome editing became popular and there is some confusion as to whether they are GMOs. The EU has adjudged that they are changing their GMO definition to include "organisms obtained by mutagenesis". In contrast the USDA has ruled that gene edited organisms are not considered GMOs.
Creating a genetically modified organism (GMO) is a multi-step process. Genetic engineers must isolate the gene they wish to insert into the host organism. This gene can be taken from a cell or artificially synthesized. If the chosen gene or the donor organism's genome has been well studied it may already be accessible from a genetic library. The gene is then combined with other genetic elements, including a promoter and terminator region and a selectable marker.
A number of techniques are available for inserting the isolated gene into the host genome. Bacteria can be induced to take up foreign DNA, usually by exposed heat shock or electroporation. DNA is generally inserted into animal cells using microinjection, where it can be injected through the cell's nuclear envelope directly into the nucleus, or through the use of viral vectors. In plants the DNA is often inserted using "Agrobacterium"-mediated recombination, biolistics or electroporation.
As only a single cell is transformed with genetic material, the organism must be regenerated from that single cell. In plants this is accomplished through tissue culture. In animals it is necessary to ensure that the inserted DNA is present in the embryonic stem cells. Further testing using PCR, Southern hybridization, and DNA sequencing is conducted to confirm that an organism contains the new gene.
Traditionally the new genetic material was inserted randomly within the host genome. Gene targeting techniques, which creates double-stranded breaks and takes advantage on the cells natural homologous recombination repair systems, have been developed to target insertion to exact locations. Genome editing uses artificially engineered nucleases that create breaks at specific points. There are four families of engineered nucleases: meganucleases, zinc finger nucleases, transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and the Cas9-guideRNA system (adapted from CRISPR). TALEN and CRISPR are the two most commonly used and each has its own advantages. TALENs have greater target specificity, while CRISPR is easier to design and more efficient.
Humans have domesticated plants and animals since around 12,000 BCE, using selective breeding or artificial selection (as contrasted with natural selection). The process of selective breeding, in which organisms with desired traits (and thus with the desired genes) are used to breed the next generation and organisms lacking the trait are not bred, is a precursor to the modern concept of genetic modification. Various advancements in genetics allowed humans to directly alter the DNA and therefore genes of organisms. In 1972 Paul Berg created the first recombinant DNA molecule when he combined DNA from a monkey virus with that of the lambda virus.
Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen made the first genetically modified organism in 1973. They took a gene from a bacterium that provided resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin, inserted it into a plasmid and then induced other bacteria to incorporate the plasmid. The bacteria that had successfully incorporated the plasmid was then able to survive in the presence of kanamycin. Boyer and Cohen expressed other genes in bacteria. This included genes from the toad "Xenopus laevis" in 1974, creating the first GMO expressing a gene from an organism of a different kingdom.
In 1974 Rudolf Jaenisch created a transgenic mouse by introducing foreign DNA into its embryo, making it the world's first transgenic animal. However it took another eight years before transgenic mice were developed that passed the transgene to their offspring. Genetically modified mice were created in 1984 that carried cloned oncogenes, predisposing them to developing cancer. Mice with genes removed (termed a knockout mouse) were created in 1989. The first transgenic livestock were produced in 1985 and the first animal to synthesize transgenic proteins in their milk were mice in 1987. The mice were engineered to produce human tissue plasminogen activator, a protein involved in breaking down blood clots.
In 1983 the first genetically engineered plant was developed by Michael W. Bevan, Richard B. Flavell and Mary-Dell Chilton. They infected tobacco with "Agrobacterium" transformed with an antibiotic resistance gene and through tissue culture techniques were able to grow a new plant containing the resistance gene. The gene gun was invented in 1987, allowing transformation of plants not susceptible to "Agrobacterium" infection. In 2000, Vitamin A-enriched golden rice was the first plant developed with increased nutrient value.
In 1976 Genentech, the first genetic engineering company was founded by Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson; a year later, the company produced a human protein (somatostatin) in "E.coli". Genentech announced the production of genetically engineered human insulin in 1978. The insulin produced by bacteria, branded humulin, was approved for release by the Food and Drug Administration in 1982. In 1988 the first human antibodies were produced in plants. In 1987, a strain of "Pseudomonas syringae" became the first genetically modified organism to be released into the environment when a strawberry and potato field in California were sprayed with it.
The first genetically modified crop, an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant, was produced in 1982. China was the first country to commercialize transgenic plants, introducing a virus-resistant tobacco in 1992. In 1994 Calgene attained approval to commercially release the Flavr Savr tomato, the first genetically modified food. Also in 1994, the European Union approved tobacco engineered to be resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil, making it the first genetically engineered crop commercialized in Europe. An insect resistant Potato was approved for release in the US in 1995, and by 1996 approval had been granted to commercially grow 8 transgenic crops and one flower crop (carnation) in 6 countries plus the EU.
In 2010, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had created the first synthetic bacterial genome. They named it Synthia and it was the world's first synthetic life form.
The first genetically modified animal to be commercialized was the GloFish, a Zebra fish with a fluorescent gene added that allows it to glow in the dark under ultraviolet light. It was released to the US market in 2003. In 2015 AquAdvantage salmon became the first genetically modified animal to be approved for food use. Approval is for fish raised in Panama and sold in the US. The salmon were transformed with a growth hormone-regulating gene from a Pacific Chinook salmon and a promoter from an ocean pout enabling it to grow year-round instead of only during spring and summer.
Bacteria were the first organisms to be genetically modified in the laboratory, due to the relative ease of modifying their chromosomes. This ease made them important tools for the creation of other GMOs. Genes and other genetic information from a wide range of organisms can be added to a plasmid and inserted into bacteria for storage and modification. Bacteria are cheap, easy to grow, clonal, multiply quickly and can be stored at −80 °C almost indefinitely. Once a gene is isolated it can be stored inside the bacteria, providing an unlimited supply for research. A large number of custom plasmids make manipulating DNA extracted from bacteria relatively easy.
Their ease of use has made them great tools for scientists looking to study gene function and evolution. The simplest model organisms come from bacteria, with most of our early understanding of molecular biology coming from studying "Escherichia coli". Scientists can easily manipulate and combine genes within the bacteria to create novel or disrupted proteins and observe the effect this has on various molecular systems. Researchers have combined the genes from bacteria and archaea, leading to insights on how these two diverged in the past. In the field of synthetic biology, they have been used to test various synthetic approaches, from synthesising genomes to creating novel nucleotides.
Bacteria have been used in the production of food for a long time, and specific strains have been developed and selected for that work on an industrial scale. They can be used to produce enzymes, amino acids, flavourings, and other compounds used in food production. With the advent of genetic engineering, new genetic changes can easily be introduced into these bacteria. Most food-producing bacteria are lactic acid bacteria, and this is where the majority of research into genetically engineering food-producing bacteria has gone. The bacteria can be modified to operate more efficiently, reduce toxic byproduct production, increase output, create improved compounds, and remove unnecessary pathways. Food products from genetically modified bacteria include alpha-amylase, which converts starch to simple sugars, chymosin, which clots milk protein for cheese making, and pectinesterase, which improves fruit juice clarity. The majority are produced in the US and even though regulations are in place to allow production in Europe, as of 2015 no food products derived from bacteria are currently available there.
Genetically modified bacteria are used to produce large amounts of proteins for industrial use. Generally the bacteria are grown to a large volume before the gene encoding the protein is activated. The bacteria are then harvested and the desired protein purified from them. The high cost of extraction and purification has meant that only high value products have been produced at an industrial scale. The majority of these products are human proteins for use in medicine. Many of these proteins are impossible or difficult to obtain via natural methods and they are less likely to be contaminated with pathogens, making them safer. The first medicinal use of GM bacteria was to produce the protein insulin to treat diabetes. Other medicines produced include clotting factors to treat haemophilia, human growth hormone to treat various forms of dwarfism, interferon to treat some cancers, erythropoietin for anemic patients, and tissue plasminogen activator which dissolves blood clots. Outside of medicine they have been used to produce biofuels. There is interest in developing an extracellular expression system within the bacteria to reduce costs and make the production of more products economical.
With greater understanding of the role that the microbiome plays in human health, there is the potential to treat diseases by genetically altering the bacteria to, themselves, be therapeutic agents. Ideas include altering gut bacteria so they destroy harmful bacteria, or using bacteria to replace or increase deficient enzymes or proteins. One research focus is to modify "Lactobacillus", bacteria that naturally provide some protection against HIV, with genes that will further enhance this protection. If the bacteria do not form colonies inside the patient, the person must repeatedly ingest the modified bacteria in order to get the required doses. Enabling the bacteria to form a colony could provide a more long-term solution, but could also raise safety concerns as interactions between bacteria and the human body are less well understood than with traditional drugs. There are concerns that horizontal gene transfer to other bacteria could have unknown effects. As of 2018 there are clinical trials underway testing the efficacy and safety of these treatments.
For over a century bacteria have been used in agriculture. Crops have been inoculated with Rhizobia (and more recently "Azospirillum") to increase their production or to allow them to be grown outside their original habitat. Application of "Bacillus thuringiensis" (Bt) and other bacteria can help protect crops from insect infestation and plant diseases. With advances in genetic engineering, these bacteria have been manipulated for increased efficiency and expanded host range. Markers have also been added to aid in tracing the spread of the bacteria. The bacteria that naturally colonize certain crops have also been modified, in some cases to express the Bt genes responsible for pest resistance. "Pseudomonas" strains of bacteria cause frost damage by nucleating water into ice crystals around themselves. This led to the development of ice-minus bacteria, that have the ice-forming genes removed. When applied to crops they can compete with the non-modified bacteria and confer some frost resistance.
Other uses for genetically modified bacteria include bioremediation, where the bacteria are used to convert pollutants into a less toxic form. Genetic engineering can increase the levels of the enzymes used to degrade a toxin or to make the bacteria more stable under environmental conditions. Bioart has also been created using genetically modified bacteria. In the 1980s artist Jon Davis and geneticist Dana Boyd converted the Germanic symbol for femininity (ᛉ) into binary code and then into a DNA sequence, which was then expressed in "Escherichia coli". This was taken a step further in 2012, when a whole book was encoded onto DNA. Paintings have also been produced using bacteria transformed with fluorescent proteins.
Viruses are often modified so they can be used as vectors for inserting genetic information into other organisms. This process is called transduction and if successful the recipient of the introduced DNA becomes a GMO. Different viruses have different efficiencies and capabilities. Researchers can use this to control for various factors; including the target location, insert size and duration of gene expression. Any dangerous sequences inherent in the virus must be removed, while those that allow the gene to be delivered effectively are retained.
While viral vectors can be used to insert DNA into almost any organism it is especially relevant for its potential in treating human disease. Although primarily still at trial stages, there has been some successes using gene therapy to replace defective genes. This is most evident in curing patients with severe combined immunodeficiency rising from adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID), although the development of leukemia in some ADA-SCID patients along with the death of Jesse Gelsinger in a 1999 trial set back the development of this approach for many years. In 2009 another breakthrough was achieved when an eight-year-old boy with Leber's congenital amaurosis regained normal eyesight and in 2016 GlaxoSmithKline gained approval to commercialize a gene therapy treatment for ADA-SCID. As of 2018, there are a substantial number of clinical trials underway, including treatments for hemophilia, glioblastoma, chronic granulomatous disease, cystic fibrosis and various cancers.
The most common virus used for gene delivery come from adenoviruses as they can carry up to 7.5 kb of foreign DNA and infect a relatively broad range of host cells, although they have been know to elicit immune responses in the host and only provide short term expression. Other common vectors are adeno-associated viruses, which have lower toxicity and longer term expression, but can only carry about 4kb of DNA. Herpes simplex viruses make promising vectors, having a carrying capacity of over 30kb and providing long term expression, although they are less efficient at gene delivery than other vectors. The best vectors for long term integration of the gene into the host genome are retroviruses, but their propensity for random integration is problematic. Lentiviruses are a part of the same family as retroviruses with the advantage of infecting both dividing and non-dividing cells, whereas retroviruses only target dividing cells. Other viruses that have been used as vectors include alphaviruses, flaviviruses, measles viruses, rhabdoviruses, Newcastle disease virus, poxviruses, and picornaviruses.
Most vaccines consist of viruses that have been attenuated, disabled, weakened or killed in some way so that their virulent properties are no longer effective. Genetic engineering could theoretically be used to create viruses with the virulent genes removed. This does not affect the viruses infectivity, invokes a natural immune response and there is no chance that they will regain their virulence function, which can occur with some other vaccines. As such they are generally considered safer and more efficient than conventional vaccines, although concerns remain over non-target infection, potential side effects and horizontal gene transfer to other viruses. Another potential approach is to use vectors to create novel vaccines for diseases that have no vaccines available or the vaccines that do not work effectively, such as AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The most effective vaccine against Tuberculosis, the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine, only provides partial protection. A modified vaccine expressing "a M tuberculosis" antigen is able to enhance BCG protection. It has been shown to be safe to use at phase II trials, although not as effective as initially hoped. Other vector-based vaccines have already been approved and many more are being developed.
Another potential use of genetically modified viruses is to alter them so they can directly treat diseases. This can be through expression of protective proteins or by directly targeting infected cells. In 2004, researchers reported that a genetically modified virus that exploits the selfish behaviour of cancer cells might offer an alternative way of killing tumours. Since then, several researchers have developed genetically modified oncolytic viruses that show promise as treatments for various types of cancer. In 2017 researchers genetically modified a virus to express spinach defensin proteins. The virus was injected into orange trees to combat citrus greening disease that had reduced orange production by 70% since 2005.
Natural viral diseases, such as myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease, have been used to help control pest populations. Over time the surviving pests become resistant, leading researchers to look at alternative methods. Genetically modified viruses that make the target animals infertile through immunocontraception have been created in the laboratory as well as others that target the developmental stage of the animal. There are concerns with using this approach regarding virus containment and cross species infection. Sometimes the same virus can be modified for contrasting purposes. Genetic modification of the myxoma virus has been proposed to conserve European wild rabbits in the Iberian peninsula and to help regulate them in Australia. To protect the Iberian species from viral diseases, the myxoma virus was genetically modified to immunize the rabbits, while in Australia the same myxoma virus was genetically modified to lower fertility in the Australian rabbit population.
Outside of biology scientists have used a genetically modified virus to construct a lithium-ion battery and other nanostructured materials. It is possible to engineer bacteriophages to express modified proteins on their surface and join them up in specific patterns (a technique called phage display). These structures have potential uses for energy storage and generation, biosensing and tissue regeneration with some new materials currently produced including quantum dots, liquid crystals, nanorings and nanofibres. The battery was made by engineering M13 bacteriaophages so they would coat themselves in iron phosphate and then assemble themselves along a carbon nanotube. This created a highly conductive medium for use in a cathode, allowing energy to be transferred quickly. They could be constructed at lower temperatures with non-toxic chemicals, making them more environmentally friendly.
Fungi can be used for many of the same processes as bacteria. For industrial applications, yeasts combines the bacterial advantages of being a single celled organism that is easy to manipulate and grow with the advanced protein modifications found in eukaryotes. They can be used to produce large complex molecules for use in food, pharmaceuticals, hormones and steroids. Yeast is important for wine production and as of 2016 two genetically modified yeasts involved in the fermentation of wine have been commercialized in the United States and Canada. One has increased malolactic fermentation efficiency, while the other prevents the production of dangerous ethyl carbamate compounds during fermentation. There have also been advances in the production of biofuel from genetically modified fungi.
Fungi, being the most common pathogens of insects, make attractive biopesticides. Unlike bacteria and viruses they have the advantage of infecting the insects by contact alone, although they are out competed in efficiency by chemical pesticides. Genetic engineering can improve virulence, usually by adding more virulent proteins, increasing infection rate or enhancing spore persistence. Many of the disease carrying vectors are susceptible to entomopathogenic fungi. An attractive target for biological control are mosquitos, vectors for a range of deadly diseases, including malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever. Mosquitos can evolve quickly so it becomes a balancing act of killing them before the "Plasmodium" they carry becomes the infectious disease, but not so fast that they become resistant to the fungi. By genetically engineering fungi like "Metarhizium anisopliae" and "Beauveria bassiana" to delay the development of mosquito infectiousness the selection pressure to evolve resistance is reduced. Another strategy is to add proteins to the fungi that block transmission of malaria or remove the "Plasmodium" altogether.
A mushroom has been gene edited to resist browning, giving it a longer shelf life. The process used CRISPR to knock out a gene that encodes polyphenol oxidase. As it didn't introduce any foreign DNA into the organism it was not deemed to be regulated under existing GMO frameworks and as such is the first CRISPR-edited organism to be approved for release. This has intensified debates as to whether gene-edited organisms should be considered genetically modified organisms and how they should be regulated.
Plants have been engineered for scientific research, to display new flower colors, deliver vaccines and to create enhanced crops. Many plants are pluripotent, meaning that a single cell from a mature plant can be harvested and under the right conditions can develop into a new plant. This ability can be taken advantage of by genetic engineers; by selecting for cells that have been successfully transformed in an adult plant a new plant can then be grown that contains the transgene in every cell through a process known as tissue culture.
Much of the advances in the field of genetic engineering has come from experimentation with tobacco. Major advances in tissue culture and plant cellular mechanisms for a wide range of plants has originated from systems developed in tobacco. It was the first plant to be altered using genetic engineering and is considered a model organism for not only genetic engineering, but a range of other fields. As such the transgenic tools and procedures are well established making tobacco one of the easiest plants to transform. Another major model organism relevant to genetic engineering is "Arabidopsis thaliana." Its small genome and short life cycle makes it easy to manipulate and it contains many homologues to important crop species. It was the first plant sequenced, has a host of online resources available and can be transformed by simply dipping a flower in a transformed "Agrobacterium" solution.
In research, plants are engineered to help discover the functions of certain genes. The simplest way to do this is to remove the gene and see what phenotype develops compared to the wild type form. Any differences are possibly the result of the missing gene. Unlike mutagenisis, genetic engineering allows targeted removal without disrupting other genes in the organism. Some genes are only expressed in certain tissue, so reporter genes, like GUS, can be attached to the gene of interest allowing visualization of the location. Other ways to test a gene is to alter it slightly and then return it to the plant and see if it still has the same effect on phenotype. Other strategies include attaching the gene to a strong promoter and see what happens when it is over expressed, forcing a gene to be expressed in a different location or at different developmental stages.
Some genetically modified plants are purely ornamental. They are modified for flower color, fragrance, flower shape and plant architecture. The first genetically modified ornamentals commercialized altered color. Carnations were released in 1997, with the most popular genetically modified organism, a blue rose (actually lavender or mauve) created in 2004. The roses are sold in Japan, the United States, and Canada. Other genetically modified ornamentals include "Chrysanthemum" and "Petunia". As well as increasing aesthetic value there are plans to develop ornamentals that use less water or are resistant to the cold, which would allow them to be grown outside their natural environments.
It has been proposed to genetically modify some plant species threatened by extinction to be resistant to invasive plants and diseases, such as the emerald ash borer in North American and the fungal disease, "Ceratocystis platani", in European plane trees. The papaya ringspot virus devastated papaya trees in Hawaii in the twentieth century until transgenic papaya plants were given pathogen-derived resistance. However, genetic modification for conservation in plants remains mainly speculative. A unique concern is that a transgenic species may no longer bear enough resemblance to the original species to truly claim that the original species is being conserved. Instead, the transgenic species may be genetically different enough to be considered a new species, thus diminishing the conservation worth of genetic modification.
Genetically modified crops are genetically modified plants that are used in agriculture. The first crops developed were used for animal or human food and provide resistance to certain pests, diseases, environmental conditions, spoilage or chemical treatments (e.g. resistance to a herbicide). The second generation of crops aimed to improve the quality, often by altering the nutrient profile. Third generation genetically modified crops could be used for non-food purposes, including the production of pharmaceutical agents, biofuels, and other industrially useful goods, as well as for bioremediation.
There are three main aims to agricultural advancement; increased production, improved conditions for agricultural workers and sustainability. GM crops contribute by improving harvests through reducing insect pressure, increasing nutrient value and tolerating different abiotic stresses. Despite this potential, as of 2018, the commercialized crops are limited mostly to cash crops like cotton, soybean, maize and canola and the vast majority of the introduced traits provide either herbicide tolerance or insect resistance. Soybeans accounted for half of all genetically modified crops planted in 2014. Adoption by farmers has been rapid, between 1996 and 2013, the total surface area of land cultivated with GM crops increased by a factor of 100. Geographically though the spread has been uneven, with strong growth in the Americas and parts of Asia and little in Europe and Africa. Its socioeconomic spread has been more even, with approximately 54% of worldwide GM crops grown in developing countries in 2013. Although doubts have been raised, most studies have found growing GM crops to be beneficial to farmers through decreased pesticide use as well as increased crop yield and farm profit.
The majority of GM crops have been modified to be resistant to selected herbicides, usually a glyphosate or glufosinate based one. Genetically modified crops engineered to resist herbicides are now more available than conventionally bred resistant varieties; in the USA 93% of soybeans and most of the GM maize grown is glyphosate tolerant. Most currently available genes used to engineer insect resistance come from the "Bacillus thuringiensis" bacterium and code for delta endotoxins. A few use the genes that encode for vegetative insecticidal proteins. The only gene commercially used to provide insect protection that does not originate from "B. thuringiensis" is the Cowpea trypsin inhibitor (CpTI). CpTI was first approved for use cotton in 1999 and is currently undergoing trials in rice. Less than one percent of GM crops contained other traits, which include providing virus resistance, delaying senescence and altering the plants composition.
Golden rice is the most well known GM crop that is aimed at increasing nutrient value. It has been engineered with three genes that biosynthesise beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, in the edible parts of rice. It is intended to produce a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with a shortage of dietary vitamin A, a deficiency which each year is estimated to kill 670,000 children under the age of 5 and cause an additional 500,000 cases of irreversible childhood blindness. The original golden rice produced 1.6μg/g of the carotenoids, with further development increasing this 23 times. In 2018 it gained its first approvals for use as food.
Plants and plant cells have been genetically engineered for production of biopharmaceuticals in bioreactors, a process known as pharming. Work has been done with duckweed "Lemna minor", the algae "Chlamydomonas reinhardtii" and the moss "Physcomitrella patens". Biopharmaceuticals produced include cytokines, hormones, antibodies, enzymes and vaccines, most of which are accumulated in the plant seeds. Many drugs also contain natural plant ingredients and the pathways that lead to their production have been genetically altered or transferred to other plant species to produce greater volume. Other options for bioreactors are biopolymers and biofuels. Unlike bacteria, plants can modify the proteins post-translationally, allowing them to make more complex molecules. They also pose less risk of being contaminated. Therapeutics have been cultured in transgenic carrot and tobacco cells, including a drug treatment for Gaucher's disease.
Vaccine production and storage has great potential in transgenic plants. Vaccines are expensive to produce, transport and administer, so having a system that could produce them locally would allow greater access to poorer and developing areas. As well as purifying vaccines expressed in plants it is also possible to produce edible vaccines in plants. Edible vaccines stimulate the immune system when ingested to protect against certain diseases. Being stored in plants reduces the long-term cost as they can be disseminated without the need for cold storage, don't need to be purified and have long term stability. Also being housed within plant cells provides some protection from the gut acids upon digestion. However the cost of developing, regulating and containing transgenic plants is high, leading to most current plant-based vaccine development being applied to veterinary medicine, where the controls are not as strict.
The vast majority of genetically modified animals are at the research stage with the number close to entering the market remaining small. As of 2018 only three genetically modified animals have been approved, all in the USA. A goat and a chicken have been engineered to produce medicines and a salmon that has increased growth. Despite the differences and difficulties in modifying them, the end aims are much the same as for plants. GM animals are created for research purposes, production of industrial or therapeutic products, agricultural uses or improving their health. There is also a market for creating genetically modified pets.
The process of genetically engineering mammals is slow, tedious, and expensive. However, new technologies are making genetic modifications easier and more precise. The first transgenic mammals were produced by injecting viral DNA into embryos and then implanting the embryos in females. The embryo would develop and it would be hoped that some of the genetic material would be incorporated into the reproductive cells. Then researchers would have to wait until the animal reached breeding age and then offspring would be screened for presence of the gene in every cell. The development of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system as a cheap and fast way of directly modifying germ cells, effectively halving the amount of time needed to develop genetically modified mammals.
Mammals are the best models for human disease, making genetic engineered ones vital to the discovery and development of cures and treatments for many serious diseases. Knocking out genes responsible for human genetic disorders allows researchers to study the mechanism of the disease and to test possible cures. Genetically modified mice have been the most common mammals used in biomedical research, as they are cheap and easy to manipulate. Pigs are also a good target as they have a similar body size and anatomical features, physiology, pathophysiological response and diet. Nonhuman primates are the most similar model organisms to humans, but there is less public acceptance towards using them as research animals. In 2009, scientists announced that they had successfully transferred a gene into a primate species (marmosets) for the first time. Their first research target for these marmosets was Parkinson's disease, but they were also considering amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Huntington's disease.
Human proteins expressed in mammals are more likely to be similar to their natural counterparts than those expressed in plants or microorganisms. Stable expression has been accomplished in sheep, pigs, rats and other animals. In 2009 the first human biological drug produced from such an animal, a goat, was approved. The drug, ATryn, is an anticoagulant which reduces the probability of blood clots during surgery or childbirth and is extracted from the goat's milk. Human alpha-1-antitrypsin is another protein that has been produced from goats and is used in treating humans with this deficiency. Another medicinal area is in creating pigs with greater capacity for human organ transplants (xenotransplantation). Pigs have been genetically modified so that their organs can no longer carry retroviruses or have modifications to reduce the chance of rejection. Pig lungs from genetically modified pigs are being considered for transplantation into humans. There is even potential to create chimeric pigs that can carry human organs.
Livestock are modified with the intention of improving economically important traits such as growth-rate, quality of meat, milk composition, disease resistance and survival. Animals have been engineered to grow faster, be healthier and resist diseases. Modifications have also improved the wool production of sheep and udder health of cows. Goats have been genetically engineered to produce milk with strong spiderweb-like silk proteins in their milk. A GM pig called Enviropig was created with the capability of digesting plant phosphorus more efficiently than conventional pigs. They could reduce water pollution since they excrete 30 to 70% less phosphorus in manure. Dairy cows have been genetically engineered to produce milk that would be the same as human breast milk. This could potentially benefit mothers who cannot produce breast milk but want their children to have breast milk rather than formula. Researchers have also developed a genetically engineered cow that produces allergy-free milk.
Scientists have genetically engineered several organisms, including some mammals, to include green fluorescent protein (GFP), for research purposes. GFP and other similar reporting genes allow easy visualization and localization of the products of the genetic modification. Fluorescent pigs have been bred to study human organ transplants, regenerating ocular photoreceptor cells, and other topics. In 2011 green-fluorescent cats were created to help find therapies for HIV/AIDS and other diseases as feline immunodeficiency virus is related to HIV.
There have been suggestions that genetic engineering could be used to bring animals back from extinction. It involves changing the genome of a close living relative to resemble the extinct one and is currently being attempted with the passenger pigeon. Genes associated with the woolly mammoth have been added to the genome of an African Elephant, although the lead researcher says he has no intention of creating live elephants and transferring all the genes and reversing years of genetic evolution is a long way from being feasible. It is more likely that scientists could use this technology to conserve endangered animals by bringing back lost diversity or transferring evolved genetic advantages from adapted organisms to those that are struggling.
Gene therapy uses genetically modified viruses to deliver genes which can cure disease in humans. Although gene therapy is still relatively new, it has had some successes. It has been used to treat genetic disorders such as severe combined immunodeficiency, and Leber's congenital amaurosis. Treatments are also being developed for a range of other currently incurable diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Parkinson's disease, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and muscular dystrophy. These treatments only effect somatic cells, meaning any changes would not be inheritable. Germline gene therapy results in any change being inheritable, which has raised concerns within the scientific community.
In 2015, CRISPR was used to edit the DNA of non-viable human embryos. In November 2018, He Jiankui announced that he had edited the genomes of two human embryos, in an attempt to disable the "CCR5" gene, which codes for a receptor that HIV uses to enter cells. He said that twin girls, Lulu and Nana, had been born a few weeks earlier and that they carried functional copies of CCR5 along with disabled CCR5 (mosaicism) and were still vulnerable to HIV. The work was widely condemned as unethical, dangerous, and premature.
Genetically modified fish are used for scientific research, as pets and as a food source. Aquaculture is a growing industry, currently providing over half the consumed fish worldwide. Through genetic engineering it is possible to increase growth rates, reduce food intake, remove allergenic properties, increase cold tolerance and provide disease resistance. Fish can also be used to detect aquatic pollution or function as bioreactors.
Several groups have been developing zebrafish to detect pollution by attaching fluorescent proteins to genes activated by the presence of pollutants. The fish will then glow and can be used as environmental sensors. The GloFish is a brand of genetically modified fluorescent zebrafish with bright red, green, and orange fluorescent color. It was originally developed by one of the groups to detect pollution, but is now part of the ornamental fish trade, becoming the first genetically modified animal to become publicly available as a pet when in 2003 it was introduced for sale in the USA.
GM fish are widely used in basic research in genetics and development. Two species of fish, zebrafish and medaka, are most commonly modified because they have optically clear chorions (membranes in the egg), rapidly develop, and the one-cell embryo is easy to see and microinject with transgenic DNA. Zebrafish are model organisms for developmental processes, regeneration, genetics, behaviour, disease mechanisms and toxicity testing. Their transparency allows researchers to observe developmental stages, intestinal functions and tumour growth. The generation of transgenic protocols (whole organism, cell or tissue specific, tagged with reporter genes) has increased the level of information gained by studying these fish.
GM fish have been developed with promoters driving an over-production of growth hormone for use in the aquaculture industry to increase the speed of development and potentially reduce fishing pressure on wild stocks. This has resulted in dramatic growth enhancement in several species, including salmon, trout and tilapia. AquaBounty Technologies, a biotechnology company, have produced a salmon (called AquAdvantage salmon) that can mature in half the time as wild salmon. It obtained regulatory approval in 2015, the first non-plant GMO food to be commercialized. As of August 2017, GMO salmon is being sold in Canada. Sales in the US are expected to start in the second half of 2019.
In biological research, transgenic fruit flies ("Drosophila melanogaster") are model organisms used to study the effects of genetic changes on development. Fruit flies are often preferred over other animals due to their short life cycle and low maintenance requirements. They also have a relatively simple genome compared to many vertebrates, with typically only one copy of each gene, making phenotypic analysis easy. "Drosophila" have been used to study genetics and inheritance, embryonic development, learning, behavior, and aging. The discovery of transposons, in particular the p-element, in "Drosophila" provided an early method to add transgenes to their genome, although this has been taken over by more modern gene-editing techniques.
Due to their significance to human health, scientists are looking at ways to control mosquitoes through genetic engineering. Malaria-resistant mosquitoes have been developed in the laboratory by inserting a gene that reduces the development of the malaria parasite and then use homing endonucleases to rapidly spread that gene throughout the male population (known as a gene drive). This approach has been taken further by using the gene drive to spread a lethal gene. In trials the populations of "Aedes aegypti" mosquitoes, the single most important carrier of dengue fever and Zika virus, were reduced by between 80% and by 90%. Another approach is to use a sterile insect technique, whereby males genetically engineered to be sterile out compete viable males, to reduce population numbers.
Other insect pests that make attractive targets are moths. Diamondback moths cause US$4 to $5 billion of damage each year worldwide. The approach is similar to the sterile technique tested on mosquitoes, where males are transformed with a gene that prevents any females born from reaching maturity. They underwent field trials in 2017. Genetically modified moths have previously been released in field trials. In this case a strain of pink bollworm that were sterilized with radiation were genetically engineered to express a red fluorescent protein making it easier for researchers to monitor them.
Silkworm, the larvae stage of "Bombyx mori," is an economically important insect in sericulture. Scientists are developing strategies to enhance silk quality and quantity. There is also potential to use the silk producing machinery to make other valuable proteins. Proteins currently developed to be expressed by silkworms include; human serum albumin, human collagen α-chain, mouse monoclonal antibody and N-glycanase. Silkworms have been created that produce spider silk, a stronger but extremely difficult to harvest silk, and even novel silks.
Systems have been developed to create transgenic organisms in a wide variety of other animals. Chickens have been genetically modified for a variety of purposes. This includes studying embryo development, preventing the transmission of bird flu and providing evolutionary insights using reverse engineering to recreate dinosaur-like phenotypes. A GM chicken that produces the drug Kanuma, an enzyme that treats a rare condition, in its egg passed US regulatory approval in 2015. Genetically modified frogs, in particular "Xenopus laevis" and "Xenopus tropicalis", are used in developmental biology research. GM frogs can also be used as pollution sensors, especially for endocrine disrupting chemicals. There are proposals to use genetic engineering to control cane toads in Australia.
The nematode "Caenorhabditis elegans" is one of the major model organisms for researching molecular biology. RNA interference (RNAi) was discovered in "C. elegans" and could be induced by simply feeding them bacteria modified to express double stranded RNA. It is also relatively easy to produce stable transgenic nematodes and this along with RNAi are the major tools used in studying their genes. The most common use of transgenic nematodes has been studying gene expression and localization by attaching reporter genes. Transgenes can also be combined with RNAi techniques to rescue phenotypes, study gene function, image cell development in real time or control expression for different tissues or developmental stages. Transgenic nematodes have been used to study viruses, toxicology, diseases, and to detect environmental pollutants.
The gene responsible for albinism in sea cucumbers has been found and used to engineer white sea cucumbers, a rare delicacy. The technology also opens the way to investigate the genes responsible for some of the cucumbers more unusual traits, including hibernating in summer, eviscerating their intestines, and dissolving their bodies upon death. Flatworms have the ability to regenerate themselves from a single cell. Until 2017 there was no effective way to transform them, which hampered research. By using microinjection and radiation scientists have now created the first genetically modified flatworms. The bristle worm, a marine annelid, has been modified. It is of interest due to its reproductive cycle being synchronized with lunar phases, regeneration capacity and slow evolution rate. Cnidaria such as "Hydra" and the sea anemone "Nematostella vectensis" are attractive model organisms to study the evolution of immunity and certain developmental processes. Other animals that have been genetically modified include snails, geckos, turtles, crayfish, oysters, shrimp, clams, abalone and sponges.
Genetically modified organisms are regulated by government agencies. This applies to research as well as the release of genetically modified organisms, including crops and food. The development of a regulatory framework concerning genetic engineering began in 1975, at Asilomar, California. The Asilomar meeting recommended a set of guidelines regarding the cautious use of recombinant technology and any products resulting from that technology. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety was adopted on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003. It is an international treaty that governs the transfer, handling, and use of genetically modified organisms. One hundred and fifty-seven countries are members of the Protocol and many use it as a reference point for their own regulations.
Universities and research institutes generally have a special committee that is responsible for approving any experiments that involve genetic engineering. Many experiments also need permission from a national regulatory group or legislation. All staff must be trained in the use of GMOs and all laboratories must gain approval from their regulatory agency to work with GMOs. The legislation covering GMOs are often derived from regulations and guidelines in place for the non-GMO version of the organism, although they are more severe. There is a near universal system for assessing the relative risks associated with GMOs and other agents to laboratory staff and the community. They are assigned to one of four risk categories based on their virulence, the severity of disease, the mode of transmission, and the availability of preventive measures or treatments. There are four biosafety levels that a laboratory can fall into, ranging from level 1 (which is suitable for working with agents not associated with disease) to level 4 (working with life-threatening agents). Different countries use different nomenclature to describe the levels and can have different requirements for what can be done at each level.
There are differences in the regulation for the release of GMOs between countries, with some of the most marked differences occurring between the US and Europe. Regulation varies in a given country depending on the intended use of the products of the genetic engineering. For example, a crop not intended for food use is generally not reviewed by authorities responsible for food safety. Some nations have banned the release of GMOs or restricted their use, and others permit them with widely differing degrees of regulation. In 2016 thirty eight countries officially ban or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs and nine (Algeria, Bhutan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Peru, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe) ban their importation. Most countries that do not allow GMO cultivation do permit research using GMOs.
The European Union (EU) differentiates between approval for cultivation within the EU and approval for import and processing. While only a few GMOs have been approved for cultivation in the EU a number of GMOs have been approved for import and processing. The cultivation of GMOs has triggered a debate about the market for GMOs in Europe. Depending on the coexistence regulations, incentives for cultivation of GM crops differ. The US policy does not focus on the process as much as other countries, looks at verifiable scientific risks and uses the concept of substantial equivalence. Whether gene edited organisms should be regulated the same as genetically modified organism is debated. USA regulations sees them as separate and does not regulate them under the same conditions, while in Europe a GMO is any organism created using genetic engineering techniques.
One of the key issues concerning regulators is whether GM products should be labeled. The European Commission says that mandatory labeling and traceability are needed to allow for informed choice, avoid potential false advertising and facilitate the withdrawal of products if adverse effects on health or the environment are discovered. The American Medical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science say that absent scientific evidence of harm even voluntary labeling is misleading and will falsely alarm consumers. Labeling of GMO products in the marketplace is required in 64 countries. Labeling can be mandatory up to a threshold GM content level (which varies between countries) or voluntary. In Canada and the US labeling of GM food is voluntary, while in Europe all food (including processed food) or feed which contains greater than 0.9% of approved GMOs must be labelled. In 2014, sales of products that had been labeled as non-GMO grew 30 percent to $1.1 billion.
There is controversy over GMOs, especially with regard to their release outside laboratory environments. The dispute involves consumers, producers, biotechnology companies, governmental regulators, nongovernmental organizations, and scientists. Many of these concerns involve GM crops and whether food produced from them is safe and what impact growing them will have on the environment. These controversies have led to litigation, international trade disputes, and protests, and to restrictive regulation of commercial products in some countries. Most concerns are around the health and environmental effects of GMOs. These include whether they may provoke an allergic reaction, whether the transgenes could transfer to human cells and whether genes not approved for human consumption could outcross into the food supply.
There is a scientific consensus that currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food, but that each GM food needs to be tested on a case-by-case basis before introduction. Nonetheless, members of the public are much less likely than scientists to perceive GM foods as safe. The legal and regulatory status of GM foods varies by country, with some nations banning or restricting them, and others permitting them with widely differing degrees of regulation.
Gene flow between GM crops and compatible plants, along with increased use of broad-spectrum herbicides, can increase the risk of herbicide resistant weed populations. Debate over the extent and consequences of gene flow intensified in 2001 when a paper was published showing transgenes had been found in landrace maize in Mexico, the crops center of diversity. Gene flow from GM crops to other organisms has been found to generally be lower than what would occur naturally. In order to address some of these concerns some GMOs have been developed with traits to help control their spread. To prevent the genetically modified salmon inadvertently breeding with wild salmon, all the fish raised for food are females, triploid, 99% are reproductively sterile, and raised in areas where escaped salmon could not survive. Bacteria have also been modified to depend on nutrients that cannot be found in nature, and genetic use restriction technology has been developed, though not yet marketed, that causes the second generation of GM plants to be sterile.
Other environmental and agronomic concerns include a decrease in biodiversity, an increase in secondary pests (non-targeted pests) and evolution of resistant insect pests. In the areas of China and the US with Bt crops the overall biodiversity of insects has increased and the impact of secondary pests has been minimal. Resistance was found to be slow to evolve when best practice strategies were followed. The impact of Bt crops on beneficial non-target organisms became a public issue after a 1999 paper suggested they could be toxic to monarch butterflies. Follow up studies have since shown that the toxicity levels encountered in the field were not high enough to harm the larvae.
Accusations that scientists are "playing God" and other religious issues have been ascribed to the technology from the beginning. With the ability to genetically engineer humans now possible there are ethical concerns over how far this technology should go, or if it should be used at all. Much debate revolves around where the line between treatment and enhancement is and whether the modifications should be inheritable. Other concerns include contamination of the non-genetically modified food supply, the rigor of the regulatory process, consolidation of control of the food supply in companies that make and sell GMOs, exaggeration of the benefits of genetic modification, or concerns over the use of herbicides with glyphosate. Other issues raised include the patenting of life and the use of intellectual property rights.
There are large differences in consumer acceptance of GMOs, with Europeans more likely to view GM food negatively than North Americans. GMOs arrived on the scene as the public confidence in food safety, attributed to recent food scares such as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy and other scandals involving government regulation of products in Europe, was low. This along with campaigns run by various non-governmental organizations (NGO) have been very successful in blocking or limiting the use of GM crops. NGOs like the Organic Consumers Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and other groups have said that risks have not been adequately identified and managed and that there are unanswered questions regarding the potential long-term impact on human health from food derived from GMOs. They propose mandatory labeling or a moratorium on such products. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12339 |
Ghent
Ghent (; , ; , ; traditional English Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in size by Brussels and Antwerp.
The city originally started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Leie and in the Late Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of northern Europe, with some 50,000 people in 1300. It is a port and university city.
The municipality comprises the city of Ghent proper and the surrounding suburbs of Afsnee, Desteldonk, Drongen, Gentbrugge, Ledeberg, Mariakerke, Mendonk, Oostakker, Sint-Amandsberg, Sint-Denijs-Westrem, Sint-Kruis-Winkel, Wondelgem and Zwijnaarde. With 262,219 inhabitants at the beginning of 2019, Ghent is Belgium's second largest municipality by number of inhabitants. The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of and has a total population of 560,522 as of 1 January 2018, which ranks it as the fourth most populous in Belgium. The current mayor of Ghent, Mathias De Clercq is from the liberal & democratic party Open VLD.
The ten-day-long Ghent Festival ("Gentse Feesten" in Dutch) is held every year and attended by about 1–1.5 million visitors.
Archaeological evidence shows human presence in the region of the confluence of Scheldt and Leie going back as far as the Stone Age and the Iron Age.
Most historians believe that the older name for Ghent, 'Ganda', is derived from the Celtic word "ganda" which means confluence. Other sources connect its name with an obscure deity named Gontia.
There are no written records of the Roman period, but archaeological research confirms that the region of Ghent was further inhabited.
When the Franks invaded the Roman territories from the end of the 4th century and well into the 5th century, they brought their language with them and Celtic and Latin were replaced by Old Dutch.
Around 650, Saint Amand founded two abbeys in Ghent: St. Peter's (Blandinium) and Saint Bavo's Abbey. Around 800, Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, appointed Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, as abbot of both abbeys. The city grew from several nuclei, the abbeys and a commercial centre. However, both in 851 and 879, the city was plundered by the Vikings.
Within the protection of the County of Flanders, the city recovered and flourished from the 11th century, growing to become a small city-state. By the 13th century, Ghent was the biggest city in Europe north of the Alps after Paris; it was bigger than Cologne or Moscow. Within the city walls lived up to 65,000 people. The belfry and the towers of the Saint Bavo Cathedral and Saint Nicholas' Church are just a few examples of the skyline of the period.
The rivers flowed in an area where much land was periodically flooded. These rich grass 'meersen' ("water-meadows": a word related to the English 'marsh') were ideally suited for herding sheep, the wool of which was used for making cloth. During the Middle Ages Ghent was the leading city for cloth.
The wool industry, originally established at Bruges, created the first European industrialized zone in Ghent in the High Middle Ages. The mercantile zone was so highly developed that wool had to be imported from Scotland and England. This was one of the reasons for Flanders' good relationship with Scotland and England. Ghent was the birthplace of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Trade with England (but not Scotland) suffered significantly during the Hundred Years' War.
The city recovered in the 15th century, when Flanders was united with neighbouring provinces under the Dukes of Burgundy. High taxes led to a rebellion and eventually the Battle of Gavere in 1453, in which Ghent suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of Philip the Good. Around this time the centre of political and social importance in the Low Countries started to shift from Flanders (Bruges–Ghent) to Brabant (Antwerp–Brussels), although Ghent continued to play an important role. With Bruges, the city led two revolts against Maximilian of Austria, the first monarch of the House of Habsburg to rule Flanders.
In 1500, Juana of Castile gave birth to Charles V, who became Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Although native to Ghent, he punished the city after the 1539 Revolt of Ghent and obliged the city's nobles to walk in front of the Emperor barefoot with a noose (Dutch: ""strop"") around the neck; since this incident, the people of Ghent have been called ""Stroppendragers"" (noose bearers). Saint Bavo Abbey (not to be confused with the nearby Saint Bavo Cathedral) was abolished, torn down, and replaced with a fortress for Royal Spanish troops. Only a small portion of the abbey was spared demolition.
The late 16th and the 17th centuries brought devastation because of the Eighty Years' War. The war ended the role of Ghent as a centre of international importance. In 1745, the city was captured by French forces during the War of the Austrian Succession before being returned to the Empire of Austria under the House of Habsburg following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, when this part of Flanders became known as the Austrian Netherlands until 1815, the exile of the French Emperor Napoleon I, the end of the French Revolutionary and later Napoleonic Wars and the peace treaties arrived at by the Congress of Vienna.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the textile industry flourished again in Ghent. Lieven Bauwens, having smuggled the industrial and factory machine plans out of England, introduced the first mechanical weaving machine on the European continent in 1800.
The Treaty of Ghent, negotiated here and adopted on Christmas Eve 1814, formally ended the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States (the North American phase of the Napoleonic Wars). After the Battle of Waterloo, Ghent and Flanders, previously ruled from the House of Habsburg in Vienna as the Austrian Netherlands, became a part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands with the northern Dutch for 15 years. In this period, Ghent established its own university (1816) and a new connection to the sea (1824–27).
After the Belgian Revolution, with the loss of port access to the sea for more than a decade, the local economy collapsed and the first Belgian trade union originated in Ghent. In 1913 there was a world exhibition in Ghent. As a preparation for these festivities, the Sint-Pieters railway station was completed in 1912.
Ghent was occupied by the Germans in both World Wars but escaped severe destruction. The life of the people and the German invaders in Ghent during World War I is described by H. Wandt in "etappenleven te Gent". In World War II the city was liberated by the British 7th "Desert Rats" Armoured Division and local Belgian fighters on 6 September 1944.
After the fusions of municipalities in 1965 and 1977, the city is made up of:
The climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Ghent has a marine west coast climate, abbreviated "Cfb" on climate maps.
Ghent is home to a large number of people of foreign origin and immigrants. From the 2019 census, it was concluded that 34.3% of the inhabitants have roots outside of Belgium and 14.5% have a non-Belgian nationality.
Much of the city's medieval architecture remains intact and is remarkably well preserved and restored. Its centre is a carfree area. Highlights are the Saint Bavo Cathedral with the "Ghent Altarpiece", the belfry, the Gravensteen castle, and the splendid architecture along the old Graslei harbour. Ghent has established a blend between comfort of living and history; it is not a city-museum. The city of Ghent also houses three béguinages and numerous churches including Saint-Jacob's church, Saint-Nicolas' church, Saint Michael's church and St. Stefanus.
In the 19th century Ghent's most famous architect, Louis Roelandt, built the university hall Aula, the opera house and the main courthouse. Highlights of modern architecture are the university buildings (the "Boekentoren" or Book Tower) by Henry Van de Velde. There are also a few theatres from diverse periods.
The beguinages, as well as the belfry and adjacent cloth hall, were recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites in 1998 and 1999.
The Zebrastraat, a social experiment in which an entirely renovated site unites living, economy and culture, can also be found in Ghent.
Campo Santo is a famous Catholic burial site of the nobility and artists.
Important museums in Ghent are the Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Museum of Fine Arts), with paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, and many Flemish masters; the SMAK or Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (City Museum for Contemporary Art), with works of the 20th century, including Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol; and the Design Museum Gent with masterpieces of Victor Horta and Le Corbusier. The Huis van Alijn (House of the Alijn family) was originally a beguinage and is now a museum for folk art where theatre and puppet shows for children are presented. The "Museum voor Industriële Archeologie en Textiel" or MIAT displays the industrial strength of Ghent with recreations of workshops and stores from the 1800s and original spinning and weaving machines that remain from the time when the building was a weaving mill. The Ghent City Museum (Stadsmuseum, abbreviated STAM), is committed to recording and explaining the city's past and its inhabitants, and to preserving the present for future generations.
In Ghent and other regions of East-Flanders, bakeries sell a donut-shaped bun called a "mastel" (plural "mastellen"), which is basically a bagel. "Mastellen" are also called "Saint Hubert bread", because on the Saint's feast day, which is 3 November, the bakers bring their batches to the early Mass to be blessed. Traditionally, it was thought that blessed mastellen immunized against rabies.
Other local delicacies are the praline chocolates from local producers such as Leonidas, the cuberdons or 'neuzekes' ('noses'), cone-shaped purple jelly-filled candies, 'babelutten' ('babblers'), hard butterscotch-like candy, and of course, on the more fiery side, the famous 'Tierenteyn', a hot but refined mustard that has some affinity to French 'Dijon' mustard.
Stoverij is a classic Flemish meat stew, preferably made with a generous addition of brown 'Trappist' (strong abbey beer) and served with French fries. 'Waterzooi' is a local stew originally made from freshwater fish caught in the rivers and creeks of Ghent, but nowadays often made with chicken instead of fish. It is usually served nouvelle-cuisine-style, and will be supplemented by a large pot on the side.
The city promotes a meat-free day on Thursdays called "Donderdag Veggiedag" with vegetarian food being promoted in public canteens for civil servants and elected councillors, in all city funded schools, and promotion of vegetarian eating options in town (through the distribution of "veggie street maps"). This campaign is linked to the recognition of the detrimental environmental effects of meat production, which the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has established to represent nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The traditional confectionery is the cuberdon (also known as neuzekes or little noses). These are conical sweets with a soft centre, usually raspberry but other flavours can be found on the many street stalls around the city. Between 2011 and 2015 a feud between two local vendors made international news.
The city is host to some big cultural events such as the Gentse Feesten, I Love Techno in Flanders Expo, the "10 Days Off" musical festival, the International Film Festival of Ghent (with the World Soundtrack Awards) and the . Also, every five years, an extensive botanical exhibition ("Gentse Floraliën") takes place in Flanders Expo in Ghent, attracting numerous visitors to the city.
The Festival of Flanders had its 50th celebration in 2008. In Ghent it opens with the OdeGand City festivities that takes place on the second Saturday of September. Some 50 concerts take place in diverse locations throughout the medieval inner city and some 250 international artists perform. Other major Flemish cities hold similar events, all of which form part of the Festival of Flanders (Antwerp with "Laus Polyphoniae"; Bruges with "MAfestival"; Brussels with "KlaraFestival"; Limburg with "Basilica", Mechelen and Brabant with "Novecento" and "Transit").
The city of Ghent will co-host the 2020 World Choir Games together with the city of Antwerp. Organised by the Interkultur Foundation, the World Choir Games is the biggest choral competition and festival in the world.
The numerous parks in the city can also be considered tourist attractions. Most notably, Ghent boasts a nature reserve (Bourgoyen-Ossemeersen, 230 hectare) and a recreation park (Blaarmeersen, 87 hectares).
The port of Ghent, in the north of the city, is the third largest port of Belgium. It is accessed by the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal, which ends near the Dutch port of Terneuzen on the Western Scheldt. The port houses, among others, large companies like ArcelorMittal, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Parts, Honda, and Stora Enso.
The Ghent University and a number of research oriented companies, such as Ablynx, Innogenetics, Cropdesign and Bayer Cropscience, are situated in the central and southern part of the city.
As the largest city in East Flanders, Ghent has many hospitals, schools and shopping streets. Flanders Expo, the biggest event hall in Flanders and the second biggest in Belgium, is also located in Ghent. Tourism is becoming a major employer in the local area.
As one of the largest cities in Belgium, Ghent has a highly developed transport system.
By car the city is accessible via two motorways:
In addition Ghent also has two ringways:
The municipality of Ghent comprises five railway stations:
Ghent has an extensive network of public transport lines, operated by "De Lijn".
Apart from the city buses mentioned above, Ghent also has numerous regional bus lines connecting it to towns and villages across the province of East Flanders. All of these buses stop in at least one of the city's regional bus hubs at either Sint-Pieters Station, Dampoort Station, Zuid or Rabot.
International buses connecting Ghent to other European destinations are usually found at the Dampoort Station. A couple of private bus companies such as Eurolines, Megabus and Flixbus operate from the Dampoort bus hub.
Buses to and from Belgium's second airport – Brussels South Airport Charleroi – are operated by Flibco, and can be found at the rear exit of the Sint-Pieters Station.
Ghent has the largest designated cyclist area in Europe, with nearly of cycle paths and more than 700 one-way streets, where bikes are allowed to go against the traffic. It also boasts Belgium's first cycle street, where cars are considered ‘guests’ and must stay behind cyclists. In 2017 the city restricted car traffic circulation which boosts cycling. More cyclists means a higher demand for bicycle parking stations. In 2010, the plans to renovate Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station, included 10,000 bicycle parking spots. In 2020 several sections of the underground parking facilities have been build, and the targets have been adjusted to a total of 17,000 parking spots.
In the Belgian first football division Ghent is represented by K.A.A. Gent, who became Belgian football champions for the first time in its history in 2015. Another Ghent football club is KRC Gent-Zeehaven, playing in the Belgian fourth division. A football match at the 1920 Summer Olympics was held in Ghent.
The Six Days of Ghent, a six-day track cycling race, is held annually, taking place in the Kuipke velodrome in Ghent. In road cycling, the city hosts the start and finish of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the traditional opening race of the cobbled classics season. It also lends its name to another cobbled classic, Gent–Wevelgem, although the race now starts in the nearby city of Deinze.
The city hosts an annual athletics IAAF event in the Flanders Sports Arena: the Indoor Flanders meeting where two-time Olympic champion Hicham El Guerrouj set an indoor world world record of 3:48.45 in the mile run in 1997.
The Flanders Sports Arena was host to the 2015 Davis Cup Final between Belgium and Great Britain.
Ghent is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12341 |
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe (, ; Antillean Creole: ) is an archipelago forming an overseas region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the Îles des Saintes, as well as many uninhabited islands and outcroppings. It lies south of Antigua and Barbuda and Montserrat, and north of Dominica. Its capital is Basse-Terre on the southern west coast; however, the largest city is Les Abymes and the main city is Pointe-à-Pitre.
Like the other overseas departments, it is an integral part of France. As a constituent territory of the European Union and the Eurozone, the euro is its official currency and any European Union citizen is free to settle and work there indefinitely. As an overseas department, however, it is not part of the Schengen Area. The region formerly included Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin, which were detached from Guadeloupe in 2007 following a 2003 referendum.
The official language is French; Antillean Creole is also spoken.
The archipelago was called (or "The Island of Beautiful Waters") by the native Arawak people.
Christopher Columbus named the island in 1493 after the Our Lady of Guadalupe, a shrine to the Virgin Mary venerated in the Spanish town of Guadalupe, Extremadura. Upon becoming a French colony, the Spanish name was retained though altered to French orthography and phonology. The islands are locally known as .
The islands were first populated by indigenous peoples of the Americas, possibly as far back as 3000 BC. The Arawak people are the first identifiable group; however, they were later displaced circa 1400 AD by Kalina-Carib peoples.
Christopher Columbus was the first European to see Guadeloupe, landing in November 1493 and giving it its current name. Several attempts at colonisation by the Spanish in the 16th century failed due to attacks from the native Caribs peoples. In 1626 the French under Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc began to take an interest in Guadeloupe, expelling Spanish settlers. The Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique settled in Guadeloupe in 1635, under the direction of Charles Liénard de L'Olive and Jean du Plessis d'Ossonville; they formally took possession of the island for France and brought in French farmers to colonise the land. This led to the death of many Caribs by disease and violence. By 1640, however, the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique had gone bankrupt, and they thus sold Guadeloupe to Charles Houël du Petit Pré who began plantation agriculture, with the first African slaves arriving in 1650. Ownership of the island then passed to the French West India Company before it was annexed to France in 1674 under the tutelage of their Martinique colony. Institutionalised slavery, enforced by the Code Noir from 1685, led to a booming sugar plantation economy.
During the Seven Years' War the British occupied Guadeloupe from the time of 1759 British Invasion of Guadeloupe until the 1763 Treaty of Paris. During this time Pointe-à-Pitre became a major harbour, and markets in Britain's North American colonies were opened to Guadeloupean sugar which was traded for cheap food and lumber. The economy expanded quickly, creating vast wealth for the European colonists. During this time about 18,000 slaves were imported to Guadeloupe. So prosperous was Guadeloupe at the time that under the 1763 Treaty of Paris France forfeited its Canadian colonies in exchange for Guadeloupe. Coffee planting began in the late 1720s, also worked by slaves, and by 1775 cocoa had also become a major export product.
The 1789 French Revolution brought chaos to Guadeloupe. Under new revolutionary law free people of colour were entitled to equal rights. Taking advantage of the anarchic political situation, Britain invaded Guadeloupe in 1794, to which the French responded by sending in soldiers led by Victor Hugues, who retook the lands and abolished slavery. In the Reign of Terror that followed more than 1,000 colonists were killed.
In 1802 the First French Empire reinstated the pre-revolutionary government and slavery, prompting a slave rebellion led by Louis Delgrès. The French authorities responded quickly, culminating in the Battle of Matouba on 28 May 1802. Realising they had no chance of success, Delgrès and his followers committed mass suicide by deliberately exploding their gunpowder stores. In 1810 the British again seized the island, handing it over to Sweden in 1813.
In the Treaty of Paris of 1814, Sweden ceded Guadeloupe to France, giving rise to the Guadeloupe Fund. In 1815 the Treaty of Vienna definitively acknowledged French control of Guadeloupe.
Slavery was abolished in the French Empire in 1848. From 1854 indentured labourers from the French colony of Pondicherry in India were brought in. Emancipated slaves had the vote from 1849, but French nationality and the vote was not granted to Indian citizens until 1923, thanks largely to the efforts of Henry Sidambarom.
In 1936 Félix Éboué became the first black governor of Guadeloupe. During the Second World War Guadeloupe initially came under the control of the Vichy government, later joining Free France in 1943. In 1946, the colony of Guadeloupe became an overseas department of France.
Tensions arose in the post-war era over the social structure of Guadeloupe and its relationship with mainland France. The 'Massacre of St Valentine' occurred in 1952, when striking factory workers in Le Moule were shot at by the Compagnies républicaines de sécurité, resulting in four deaths. In May 1967 racial tensions exploded into rioting following a racist attack on a black Guadeloupean, resulting in eight deaths.
An independence movement grew in the 1970s, prompting France to declare Guadeloupe a French region in 1974. The Union populaire pour la libération de la Guadeloupe (UPLG) campaigned for complete independence, and by the 1980s the situation had turned violent with the actions of groups such as Groupe de libération armée (GLA) and Alliance révolutionnaire caraïbe (ARC).
Greater autonomy was granted to Guadeloupe in 2000. Through a referendum in 2003, Saint-Martin and Saint Barthélemy voted to separate from the administrative jurisdiction of Guadeloupe, this being fully enacted by 2007.
In January 2009, labour unions and others known as the Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon went on strike for more pay. Strikers were angry with low wages, the high cost of living, high levels of poverty relative to mainland France and levels of unemployment that are amongst the worst in the European Union. The situation quickly escalated, exacerbated by what was seen as an ineffectual response by the French government, turning violent and prompting the deployment of extra police after a union leader (Jacques Bino) was shot and killed. The strike lasted 44 days and had also inspired similar actions on nearby Martinique. President Nicolas Sarkozy later visited the island, promising reform. Tourism suffered greatly during this time and affected the 2010 tourist season as well.
Guadeloupe is an archipelago of more than 12 islands, as well as islets and rocks situated where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean. It is located in the Leeward Islands in the northern part of the Lesser Antilles, a partly volcanic island arc. To the north lies Antigua and Barbuda and the British Oversea Territory of Montserrat, with Dominica lying to the south.
The main two islands are Basse-Terre (west) and Grande-Terre (east), which form a butterfly shape as viewed from above, the two 'wings' of which are separated by the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin, Rivière Salée and Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin. More than half of Guadeloupe's land surface consists of the 847.8 km2 Basse-Terre. The island is mountainous, containing such peaks as Mount Sans Toucher (4,442 feet; 1,354 metres) and Grande Découverte (4,143 feet; 1,263 metres), culminating in the active volcano La Grande Soufrière, the highest mountain peak in the Lesser Antilles with an elevation of . In contrast Grande-Terre is mostly flat, with rocky coasts to the north, irregular hills at the centre, mangrove at the southwest, and white sand beaches sheltered by coral reefs along the southern shore. This is where the main tourist resorts are found.
Marie-Galante is the third-largest island, followed by La Désirade, a north-east slanted limestone plateau, the highest point of which is . To the south lies the Îles de Petite-Terre, which are two islands (Terre de Haut and Terre de Bas) totalling 2 km2.
Les Saintes is an archipelago of eight islands of which two, Terre-de-Bas and Terre-de-Haut are inhabited. The landscape is similar to that of Basse-Terre, with volcanic hills and irregular shoreline with deep bays.
There are numerous other smaller islands, most notably Tête à l'Anglais, Îlet à Kahouanne, Îlet à Fajou, Îlet Macou, Îlet aux Foux, Îlets de Carénage, La Biche, Îlet Crabière, Îlets à Goyaves, Îlet à Cochons, Îlet à Boissard, Îlet à Chasse and Îlet du Gosier.
Basse-Terre is a volcanic island. The Lesser Antilles are at the outer edge of the Caribbean Plate, and Guadeloupe is part of the outer arc of the Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc. Many of the islands were formed as a result of the subduction of oceanic crust of the Atlantic Plate under the Caribbean Plate in the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. This process is ongoing and is responsible for volcanic and earthquake activity in the region. Guadeloupe was formed from multiple volcanoes, of which only la Soufriere is not extinct. Its last eruption was in 1976, and led to the evacuation of the southern part of Basse-Terre. 73,600 people were displaced over a course of three and a half months following the eruption.
K–Ar dating indicates that the three northern massifs on Basse-Terre Island are 2.79 million years old. Sections of volcanoes collapsed and eroded within the last 650,000 years, after which the Sans Toucher volcano grew in the collapsed area. Volcanoes in the north of Basse-Terre Island mainly produced andesite and basaltic andesite. There are several beaches of dark or "black" sand.
La Désirade, east of the main islands has a basement from the Mesozoic, overlaid with thick limestones from the Pliocene to Quaternary periods.
Grande-Terre and Marie-Galante have basements probably composed of volcanic units of Eocene to Oligocene, but there are no visible outcrops. On Grande-Terre, the overlying carbonate platform is 120 metres thick.
The islands are part of the Leeward Islands, so called because they are downwind of the prevailing trade winds, which blow out of the northeast. This was significant in the days of sailing ships. Haute-Terre is so named because it is on the eastern, or windward side, exposed to the Atlantic winds. Basse-Terre is so named because it is on the leeward south-west side and sheltered from the winds. Guadeloupe has a tropical climate tempered by maritime influences and the Trade Winds. There are two seasons, the dry season called "Lent" from January to June, and the wet season called "winter", from July to December.
The island is vulnerable to hurricanes - among the storms to make landfall on the islands are: Hurricane Cleo in 1964, Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and Hurricane Maria in 2017.
With fertile volcanic soils, heavy rainfall and a warm climate, vegetation on Basse-Terre is lush. Most of the islands' forests are on Basse-Terre, containing such species as mahogany, ironwood and chestnut trees. Mangrove swamps line the Salée River. Much of the forest on Grande-Terre has been cleared, with only a few small patches remaining.
Numerous mammal species live on the islands, notably raccoons, agouti and mongoose. Bird species include the Guadeloupe woodpecker, Antillean nighthawk and monk parakeets. The waters of the islands support a rich variety of marine life.
Guadeloupe recorded a population of 402,119 in the 2013 census. The population is mainly of Afro-Caribbean or mixed Creole, white European, Indian (Tamil, Telugu, and other South Indians), Lebanese, Syrians, and Chinese. Being wealthier than many other islands in the region, Guadeloupe is a destination for migrants. Basse-Terre is the political capital; however, the largest city and economic hub is Pointe-à-Pitre.
The population of Guadeloupe has been stable recently, with a net increase of only 335 people between the 2008 and 2013 censuses. In 2012 the average population density in Guadeloupe was 247.7 inhabitants for every square kilometre, which is very high in comparison to the whole France's 116.5 inhabitants for every square kilometre. One third of the land is devoted to agriculture and all mountains are uninhabitable; this lack of space and shelter makes the population density even higher.
In 2011, life expectancy at birth was recorded at 77.0 years for males and 83.5 for females.
Medical centers in Guadeloupe include: University Hospital Center (CHU) in Pointe-à-Pitre, Regional Hospital Center (CHR) in Basse-Terre, and four hospitals located in Capesterre-Belle-Eau, Pointe-Noire, Bouillante and Saint-Claude.
The "Institut Pasteur de la Guadeloupe", is located in Pointe-à-Pitre and is responsible for researching environmental hygiene, vaccinations, and the spread of tuberculosis and mycobacteria
Together with Martinique, La Réunion, Mayotte and French Guiana, Guadeloupe is one of the overseas departments, being both a region and a department combined into one entity. It is also an outermost region of the European Union. The inhabitants of are French citizens with full political and legal rights.
Legislative powers are centred on the separate departmental and regional councils. The elected president of the Departmental Council of Guadeloupe is currently Josette Borel-Lincertin; its main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school (collège) buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses. The Regional Council of Guadeloupe is a body, elected every six years, consisting of a president (currently Ary Chalus) and eight vice-presidents. The regional council oversees secondary education, regional transportation, economic development, the environment, and some infrastructure, among other things.
Guadeloupe elects one deputy from one of each of the first, second, third, and fourth constituencies to the National Assembly of France. Three senators are chosen for the Senate of France by indirect election. For electoral purposes, Guadeloupe is divided into two arrondissements (Basse-Terre and Pointe-à-Pitre), and 21 cantons.
Most of the French political parties are active in Guadeloupe. In addition there are also regional parties such as the Guadeloupe Communist Party, the Progressive Democratic Party of Guadeloupe, the Guadeloupean Objective, the Pluralist Left, and United Guadaloupe, Socialism and Realities.
The prefecture (regional capital) of Guadeloupe is Basse-Terre. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government.
For the purposes of local government, Guadeloupe is divided into 32 communes. Each commune has a municipal council and a mayor. Revenues for the communes come from transfers from the French government, and local taxes. Administrative responsibilities at this level include water management, acts of birth, marriage, etc., and municipal police.
As a part of France, Guadeloupe uses the French tricolour as its flag and "La Marseillaise" as its anthem. However, a variety of other flags are also used in an unofficial or informal context, most notably the sun-based flag. Independentists also have their own flag.
The economy of Guadeloupe depends on tourism, agriculture, light industry and services. It is reliant upon mainland France for large subsidies and imports and public administration is the largest single employer on the islands. Unemployment is especially high among the youth population.
In 2006, the GDP per capita of Guadeloupe at market exchange rates, not at PPP, was €17,338 (US$21,780).
GDP: real exchange rate - US$9.74 billion (in 2006)
GDP - real growth rate: NA%
GDP - per capita: real exchange rate - US$21,780 (in 2006)
Exports: US$676 million (in 2005)
Exports - commodities: bananas, sugar, rum
Imports: US$3.102 billion (in 2005)
Tourism is the one of the most prominent sources of income, with most visitors coming from France and North America. An increasingly large number of cruise ships visit Guadeloupe, the cruise terminal of which is in Pointe-à-Pitre.
The traditional sugar cane crop is slowly being replaced by other crops, such as bananas (which now supply about 50% of export earnings), eggplant, guinnep, noni, sapotilla, giraumon squash, yam, gourd, plantain, christophine, cocoa, jackfruit, pomegranate, and many varieties of flowers. Other vegetables and root crops are cultivated for local consumption, although Guadeloupe is dependent upon imported food, mainly from the rest of France.
Of the various light industries, sugar and rum production, solar energy, cement, furniture and clothing are the most prominent. Most manufactured goods and fuel are imported.
Guadeloupe's official language is French, which is spoken by nearly all of the population. In addition, most of the population can also speak Guadeloupean Creole, a variety of Antillean Creole. Traditionally stigmatised as the language of the Creole majority, attitudes have changed in recent decades. In the early 1970s to the mid 1980s Guadeloupe saw the rise and fall of an at-times violent movement for (greater) political independence from France, and Creole was claimed as key to local cultural pride and unity. In the 1990s, in the wake of the independence movement's demise, Creole retained its de-stigmatized status as a symbol of local culture, albeit without de jure support from the state and without being practiced with equal competence in all strata and age groups of society. However, the language has since gained greater acceptance on the part of France, such that it was introduced as an elective in public schools. Today, the question as to whether French and Creole are stable in Guadeloupe, i.e. whether both languages are practised widely and competently throughout society, remains a subject of active research.
About 80% of the population are Roman Catholic. Guadeloupe is in the diocese of Basse-Terre (et Pointe-à-Pitre). Other major religions include various Protestant denominations.
Guadeloupe has always had a rich literary output, with Guadeloupean author Saint-John Perse winning the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature. Other prominent writers from Guadeloupe or of Guadeloupean descent include Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Oruno Lara, Daniel Maximin, Paul Niger, Guy Tirolien and Nicolas-Germain Léonard.
Music and dance are also very popular, and the interaction of African, French and Indian cultures has given birth to some original new forms specific to the archipelago, most notably zouk music. Since the 1970s, Guadeloupean music has increasingly claimed the local language, Guadeloupean Creole as the preferred language of popular music. Islanders enjoy many local dance styles including zouk, zouk-love, compas, as well as the modern international genres such as hip hop, etc.
Traditional Guadeloupean music includes biguine, kadans, cadence-lypso, and gwo ka. Popular music artists and bands such as Experience 7, Francky Vincent, Kassav' (which included Patrick St-Eloi, and Gilles Floro) embody the more traditional music styles of the island, whilst other musical artists such as the punk band The Bolokos (1) or Tom Frager focus on more international genres such as rock or reggae. Many international festivals take place in Guadeloupe, such as the Creole Blues Festival on Marie-Galante. All the Euro-French forms of art are also ubiquitous, enriched by other communities from Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, India, Lebanon, Syria) who have migrated to the islands.
Classical music has seen a resurgent interest in Guadeloupe. One of the first known composers of African origin was born in Guadeloupe, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a contemporary of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a celebrated figure in Guadeloupe. Several monuments and cites are dedicated to Saint-Georges in Guadeloupe, and there is an annual music festival, Festival International de Musique Saint-Georges, dedicated in his honour. The festival attracts classical musicians from all over the world and is one of the largest classical music festivals in the Caribbean.
Another element of Guadeloupean culture is its dress. A few women (particularly of the older generation) wear a unique style of traditional dress, with many layers of colourful fabric, now only worn on special occasions. On festive occasions they also wore a madras (originally a "kerchief" from South India) headscarf tied in many different symbolic ways, each with a different name. The headdress could be tied in the "bat" style, or the "firefighter" style, as well as the "Guadeloupean woman". Jewellery, mainly gold, is also important in the Guadeloupean lady's dress, a product of European, African and Indian inspiration.
Football (soccer) is popular in Guadeloupe, and several notable footballers are of Guadeloupean origin, including Stéphane Auvray, Ronald Zubar and his younger brother Stéphane, Miguel Comminges, Dimitri Foulquier, Bernard Lambourde, Anthony Martial, Alexandre Lacazette, Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, William Gallas, Layvin Kurzawa Thomas Lemar and Kingsley Coman.
The national football team were 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-finalists, defeated by Mexico.
Basketball is also popular. Best known players are the NBA players Rudy Gobert, Mickaël Piétrus, Johan Petro, Rodrigue Beaubois, and Mickael Gelabale (now playing in Russia), who were born on the island.
Several track and field athletes, such as Marie-José Pérec, Patricia Girard-Léno, Christine Arron, and Wilhem Belocian, are also Guadeloupe natives. Triple Olympic champion Marie-José Pérec, and fourth-fastest runner Christine Arron.
The island has produced many world-class fencers. Yannick Borel, Daniel Jérent, Ysaora Thibus, Anita Blaze, Enzo Lefort and Laura Flessel were all born and raised in Guadeloupe. According to olympic gold medalist and world champion Yannick Borel, there is a good fencing school and a culture of fencing in Guadeloupe.
Even though Guadeloupe is part of France, it has its own sports teams. Rugby union is a small but rapidly growing sport in Guadeloupe.
The island is also internationally known for hosting the Karujet Race – Jet Ski World Championship since 1998. This nine-stage, four-day event attracts competitors from around the world (mostly Caribbeans, Americans, and Europeans). The Karujet, generally made up of seven races around the island, has an established reputation as one of the most difficult championships in which to compete.
The Route du Rhum is one of the most prominent nautical French sporting events, occurring every four years.
Bodybuilder Serge Nubret was born in Anse-Bertrand, Grande-Terre, representing the French state in various bodybuilding competitions throughout the 1960s and 1970s including the IFBB's Mr. Olympia contest, taking 3rd place every year from 1972 to 1974, and 2nd place in 1975. Bodybuilder Marie-Laure Mahabir also hails from Guadeloupe.
The country has also a passion for cycling. It hosted the French Cycling Championships in 2009 and continues to host the Tour de Guadeloupe every year.
Guadeloupe also continues to host the Orange Open de Guadeloupe tennis tournament (since 2011).
The Tour of Guadeloupe sailing, which was founded in 1981.
In boxing, the following athletes come from the island of Guadeloupe: Ludovic Proto (amateur; competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics in the men's light welterweight division), Gilbert Delé (professional; held the European light-middleweight title from 1989 to 1990, then won the WBA light-middleweight title in 1991, by defeating Carlos Elliott via TKO), and Jean-Marc Mormeck (professional; former two-time unified cruiserweight champion—held the WBA, WBC, and "The Ring" world titles twice between 2005 and 2007).
Guadeloupe is served by a number of airports; most international flights use Pointe-à-Pitre International Airport. Boats and cruise ships frequent the islands, using the ports at Pointe-à-Pitre and Basse-Terre.
On 9 September 2013 the county government voted in favour of constructing a tramway in Pointe-à-Pitre. The first phase will link northern Abymes to downtown Pointe-à-Pitre by 2019. The second phase, scheduled for completion in 2023, will extend the line to serve the university.
Guadeloupe is one of the safest islands in the Caribbean; nevertheless, it was the most violent overseas French department in 2016. The murder rate is slightly more than that of Paris, at 8.2 per 100,000. The high level of unemployment caused violence and crime to rise especially in 2009 and 2010, the years following a great worldwide recession. While the residents of Guadeloupe describe the island as a place with little everyday crime, most violence is caused by the drug trade or domestic disputes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12343 |
Demographics of Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe has a population of 403,977 (2012).
According to INSEE Guadeloupe has an estimated population of 403,977 on January 1, 2012. Life expectancy at birth is 77.0 years for males, and 83.5 for females (figures for 2011).
French is the official language, taught in the school system. Antillean Creole French is spoken by a large part of the population, understood by nearly all, and taught in some schools. A 2007 document issued by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimated the population to be 80.2% "francophone" and 14.9% "partially francophone".
The following vital statistics include Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy.
Structure of the population (01.01.2010) (Provisional estimates) (Excluding data for Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin) : | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12345 |
Telecommunications in Guadeloupe
Telephones - main lines in use:
159,000 (1995)
Telephones - mobile cellular:
814 (1990)
Telephone system:
domestic facilities inadequate
"domestic:"
NA
"international:"
satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); microwave radio relay to Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Martinique
Radio broadcast stations:
AM 1, FM 17, shortwave 0 (1998)
Radios:
113,000 (1997)
Television broadcast stations:
5 (plus several low-power repeaters) (1997)
Televisions:
118,000 (1997)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs): France Telecom (Orange)
Country code (Top-level domain): GP | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12349 |
Glagolitic script
The Glagolitic script (, "Glagolitsa") is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a Byzantine monk from Thessaloniki. He and his brother, Saint Methodius, were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area. The brothers decided to translate liturgical books into the contemporary Slavic language understandable to the general population (now known as Old Church Slavonic). As the words of that language could not be easily written by using either the Greek or Latin alphabets, Cyril decided to invent a new script, Glagolitic, which he based on the local dialect of the Slavic tribes from the Byzantine theme of Thessalonica.
After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, the Glagolitic alphabet ceased to be used in Moravia, but their students continued to propagate it in the First Bulgarian Empire, where it was subsequently also displaced by the Cyrillic alphabet (which augmented some letters from the Glagolitic alphabet) developed at the Preslav Literary School. The Glagolitic alphabet was preserved only by the clergy of Croatia to write Church Slavonic until the early 19th century.
The name was not created until many centuries after the script's creation, and comes from the Old Church Slavonic глаголъ "glagolŭ" "utterance". The verb "glagolati" means "to speak". It has been conjectured that the name "Glagolica" developed in Croatia around the 14th century and was derived from the word "glagolity", applied to adherents of the liturgy in Slavonic.
The creation of the characters is popularly attributed to Saints Cyril and Methodius, who may have created them to facilitate the introduction of Christianity. It is believed that the original letters were fitted to Macedonian dialects specifically.
The number of letters in the original Glagolitic alphabet is not known, but it may have been close to its presumed Greek model. The 41 letters known today include letters for non-Greek sounds, which may have been added by Saint Cyril, as well as ligatures added in the 12th century under the influence of Cyrillic, as Glagolitic lost its dominance. In later centuries, the number of letters dropped dramatically, to fewer than 30 in modern Croatian and Czech recensions of the Church Slavic language. Twenty-four of the 41 original Glagolitic letters (see table below) probably derive from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet but have been given an ornamental design.
The source of the other consonantal letters is unknown. If they were added by Cyril, it is likely that they were taken from an alphabet used for Christian scripture. It is frequently proposed that the letters "sha" , "tsi" , and "cherv" were taken from the letters "shin" ש and "tsadi" צ of the Hebrew alphabet, and that Ⰶ "zhivete" derives from Coptic "janja" Ϫ. However, Cubberley (1996) suggests that if a single prototype were presumed, the most likely source would be Armenian. Other proposals include the Samaritan alphabet, which Cyril learned during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson.
For writing numbers, the Glagolitic numerals uses letters with a numerical value assigned to each based on their native alphabetic order. This differs from Cyrillic numerals, which inherited their numeric value from the corresponding Greek letter (see Greek numerals).
The two monks later canonized as Saints Cyril and Methodius, brothers from Thessaloniki, were sent to Great Moravia in 862 by the Byzantine emperor at the request of Prince Rastislav, who wanted to weaken the dependence of his country on East Frankish priests. The Glagolitic alphabet, however it originated, was used between 863 and 885 for government and religious documents and books and at the Great Moravian Academy ("Veľkomoravské učilište") founded by the missionaries, where their followers were educated. The Kiev Missal, found in the 19th century in Jerusalem, was dated to the 10th century.
In 886 an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the script and jailed 200 followers of Methodius, mostly students of the original academy. They were then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves by the Franks. Many of them (including Naum, Clement, Angelarious, Sava and Gorazd), however, reached Bulgaria and were commissioned by Boris I of Bulgaria to teach and instruct the future clergy of the state in the Slavic language. After the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 865, religious ceremonies and Divine Liturgy were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire, using the Byzantine rite. Fearing growing Byzantine influence and weakening of the state, Boris viewed the introduction of the Slavic alphabet and language into church use as a way to preserve the independence of the Bulgarian Empire from Byzantine Constantinople. As a result of Boris' measures, two academies, one in Ohrid and one in Preslav, were founded.
From there, the students travelled to other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Students of the two apostles who were expelled from Great Moravia in 886, notorious being Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum, brought the Glagolitic alphabet to the First Bulgarian Empire on Balkans and were received and accepted officially by Boris I of Bulgaria. This led to the establishment of the two literary schools: the Preslav Literary School and the Ohrid Literary School. Some went to Croatia (Dalmatia), where the squared variant arose and where Glagolitic remained in use for a long time. In 1248, Pope Innocent IV granted the Croatians of southern Dalmatia the unique privilege of using their own language and this script in the Roman Rite liturgy. Formally granted to bishop Philip of Senj, permission to use the Glagolitic liturgy (the Roman Rite conducted in the Slavic language instead of Latin, not the Byzantine rite), actually extended to all Croatian lands, mostly along the Adriatic coast. The Holy See had several Glagolitic missals published in Rome. Authorization for the use of this language was extended to some other Slavic regions between 1886 and 1935. In missals, the Glagolitic script was eventually replaced with the Latin alphabet, but the use of the Slavic language in the Mass continued, until replaced by modern vernacular languages.
At the end of the 9th century, one of these students of Methodius – Naum, who had settled in Preslav, Bulgaria – created the Cyrillic script, which almost entirely replaced Glagolitic during the Middle Ages. The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, with some letters (like ⟨ш⟩, ⟨ц⟩, ⟨ч⟩, ⟨ъ⟩, ⟨ь⟩, ⟨ѣ⟩) peculiar to Slavic languages being derived from the Glagolitic alphabet. The decision in favor of Cyrillic created an alphabetical difference between the two literary centres of the Bulgarian state in Pliska and Ohrid. In the western part the Glagolitic alphabet remained dominant at first. However, subsequently in the next two centuries, mostly after the fall of the First Bulgarian Empire to the Byzantines, Glagolitic gradually ceased to be used there at all. Nevertheless, particular passages or words written with the Glagolitic alphabet appeared in Bulgarian Cyrillic manuscripts till the end of the 14th century. Some students of the Ohrid academy went to Bohemia where the alphabet was used in the 10th and 11th centuries, along with other scripts. It is not clear whether the Glagolitic alphabet was used in the Duchy of Kopnik before the Wendish Crusade, but it was certainly used in Kievan Rus'.
In Croatia, from the 12th century, Glagolitic inscriptions appeared mostly in littoral areas: Istria, Primorje, Kvarner, and Kvarner islands, notably Krk, Cres, and Lošinj; in Dalmatia, on the islands of Zadar, but there were also findings in inner Lika and Krbava, reaching to Kupa river, and even as far as Međimurje and Slovenia.
The "Hrvoje's Missal" () from 1404 was written in Split, and it is considered one of the most beautiful Croatian Glagolitic books. The 1483 "Missale Romanum Glagolitice" was the first printed Croatian Glagolitic book.
It was believed that Glagolitsa in Croatia was present only in those areas. But, in 1992, the discovery of Glagolitic inscriptions in churches along the Orljava river in Slavonia totally changed the picture (churches in Brodski Drenovac, Lovčić, and some others), showing that use of the Glagolitic alphabet was spread from Slavonia also.
Sporadic instances aside, Glagolitic survived beyond the 12th century as a primary script in Croatia alone, although from there a brief attempt at reintroduction was made in the West Slavic area in the 14th century. The centre of influence appears to have been in the Kvarner Gulf, though the nature and extent of this influence remain subjects of debate. The early development of the Glagolitic minuscule script alongside the increasingly square majuscule is poorly documented, but before the advent of printing, a mutual relationship evolved between the two varieties; the majuscule being used primarily for inscriptions and higher liturgical uses, and the minuscule being applied to both religious and secular documents. Ignoring the problematic early Slavonian inscriptions, the use of the Glagolitic script at its peak before the Croatian-Ottoman wars corresponded roughly to the area that spoke the Chakavian dialect at the time, in addition to, to varying extents, the adjacent Kajkavian regions within the Zagreb bishopric. As a result, vernacular impact on the liturgical language and script largely stems from Chakavian sub-dialects.
The first major threat to Croatian Glagolitic since it attained stability was from the Ottoman excursions, though the extent of cultural damage varied locally depending on the course of war. In the 17th century, though, the first successful direct attack on the script since the 12th century was headed by the Bishop of Zagreb, and after the Magnate conspiracy left the script without secular protectors, its use was limited to the littoral region. In the meantime, printing gradually overtook handwriting for liturgical manuscripts, resulting in a decline of the majuscule script, which was absorbed for titular and sometimes initial use within for minuscule documents. It was not until the late 18th century and the onset of modernity that Glagolitic received significant further threats, and through western influence, especially secular, Glagolitic culture collapsed, so that by the mid 19th century, the script was purely liturgical, relying mostly on printed materials. By the time of the devastating Italianization movements under Fascist Italy in the early 20th century, numerous independent events had already greatly reduced the area of the liturgical use of Glagolitic.
The tradition that the alphabet was designed by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius has not been universally accepted. A less common belief, contradicting allochthonic Slovene origin, was that the Glagolitic was created or used in the 4th century by St. Jerome (Latin: "Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus"), hence the alphabet is sometimes named Hieronymian.
It is also acrophonically called azbuki from the names of its first two letters in Bulgaria, on the same model as "alpha" + "beta". The Slavs of Great Moravia (present-day Slovakia and Moravia), Hungary, Slovenia and Slavonia were called "Slověne" at that time, which gives rise to the name Slovenish for the alphabet. Some other, rarer, names for this alphabet are Bukvitsa (from common Slavic word "bukva" meaning "letter", and a suffix "-itsa") and Illyrian.
In the Middle Ages, Glagolica was also known as "St. Jerome's script" due to popular mediaeval legend (created by Croatian scribes in the 13th century) ascribing its invention to St. Jerome (342–429). That claim, however, has been resolutely disproven.
The epoch of traditional attribution of the script to Jerome ended probably in 1812. In modern times, only certain marginal authors share this view, usually "re-discovering" one of the already-known mediaeval sources.
A hypothetical pre-Glagolitic writing system is typically referred to as "cherty i rezy" (strokes and incisions) – but no material evidence of the existence of any pre-Glagolitic Slavic writing system has been found, except for a few brief and vague references in old chronicles and "lives of the saints". All artifacts presented as evidence of pre-Glagolitic Slavic inscriptions have later been identified as texts in known scripts and in known non-Slavic languages, or as fakes. The well-known Chernorizets Hrabar's "strokes and incisions" are usually considered to be a reference to a kind of property mark or alternatively fortune-telling signs. Some "Ruthenian letters" found in one version of St. Cyril's life are explainable as misspelled "Syrian letters" (in Slavic, the roots are very similar: "rus-" vs. "sur-" or "syr-"), etc.
The values of many of the letters are thought to have been displaced under Cyrillic influence or to have become confused through the early spread to different dialects so the original values are not always clear. For instance, the letter "yu" Ⱓ is thought to have perhaps originally had the sound /u/ but was displaced by the adoption of an "oѵ" ligature Ⱆ under the influence of later Cyrillic. Other letters were late creations after a Cyrillic model.
The following table lists each letter in its modern order, showing an image of the letter (round variant), the corresponding modern Cyrillic letter, the approximate sound transcribed with the , the name, and suggestions for its origin. Several letters have no modern counterpart.
Note that "yery" () is a digraph of either "yer" () or "yerь" (), followed by either "izhe" () or "i" (Ⰻ).
In older texts, "uk" () and three out of four "yus"es () also can be written as digraphs, in two separate parts.
The order of "izhe" () and "i" () varies from source to source, as does the order of the various forms of "yus" (). Correspondence between Glagolitic "izhe" () and "i" () with Cyrillic "И" and "І" is unknown.
The Proto-Slavic language did not have the phoneme /f/, and the letters Fert () and Fita () were used for transcribing words of Greek origin, and so was Izhitsa () for the Greek upsilon.
The Glagolitic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005 with the release of version 4.1.
The Unicode block for Glagolitic is U+2C00–U+2C5F.
The Glagolitic combining letters for Glagolitic Supplement block (U+1E000–U+1E02F) was added to the Unicode Standard in June, 2016 with the release of version 9.0:
Glagolitic script is the writing system used in the world of "The Witcher" books and video game series. It is also featured, in various uses, in several of the point and click adventure games made by Cateia Games, a Croatian game studio. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12353 |
Greatest common divisor
In mathematics, the greatest common divisor (gcd) of two or more integers, which are not all zero, is the largest positive integer that divides each of the integers. For example, the gcd of 8 and 12 is 4.
In the name "greatest common divisor", the adjective "greatest" may be replaced by "highest", and the word "divisor" may be replaced by "factor", so that other names include greatest common factor (gcf), etc. Historically, other names for the same concept have included greatest common measure.
This notion can be extended to polynomials (see Polynomial greatest common divisor) and other commutative rings (see below).
In this article we will denote the greatest common divisor of two integers "a" and "b" as gcd("a","b"). Some authors use ("a","b").
What is the greatest common divisor of 54 and 24?
The number 54 can be expressed as a product of two integers in several different ways:
Thus the divisors of 54 are: formula_2
Similarly, the divisors of 24 are: formula_3
The numbers that these two lists share in common are the common divisors of 54 and 24:
The greatest of these is 6. That is, the greatest common divisor of 54 and 24. One writes:
Two numbers are called relatively prime, or coprime, if their greatest common divisor equals 1. For example, 9 and 28 are relatively prime.
For example, a 24-by-60 rectangular area can be divided into a grid of: 1-by-1 squares, 2-by-2 squares, 3-by-3 squares, 4-by-4 squares, 6-by-6 squares or 12-by-12 squares. Therefore, 12 is the greatest common divisor of 24 and 60. A 24-by-60 rectangular area can be divided into a grid of 12-by-12 squares, with two squares along one edge (24/12 = 2) and five squares along the other (60/12 = 5).
The greatest common divisor is useful for reducing fractions to be in lowest terms. For example, gcd(42, 56) = 14, therefore,
The greatest common divisor can be used to find the least common multiple of two numbers when the greatest common divisor is known, using the relation,
Greatest common divisors can in principle be computed by determining the prime factorizations of the two numbers and comparing factors, as in the following example: to compute gcd(18, 84), we find the prime factorizations 18 = 2 · 32 and 84 = 22 · 3 · 7 and the "overlap" of the two expressions is 2 · 3; so gcd(18, 84) = 6. In practice, this method is only feasible for small numbers; computing prime factorizations in general takes far too long.
Here is another concrete example, illustrated by a Venn diagram. Suppose it is desired to find the greatest common divisor of 48 and 180. First, find the prime factorizations of the two numbers:
What they share in common is two "2"s and a "3":
A much more efficient method is the Euclidean algorithm, which uses a division algorithm such as long division in combination with the observation that the gcd of two numbers also divides their difference. To compute gcd(48,18), divide 48 by 18 to get a quotient of 2 and a remainder of 12. Then divide 18 by 12 to get a quotient of 1 and a remainder of 6. Then divide 12 by 6 to get a remainder of 0, which means that 6 is the gcd. We ignored the quotient in each step except to notice when the remainder reached 0, signalling that we had arrived at the answer. Formally the algorithm can be described as:
where
If the arguments are both greater than zero then the algorithm can be written in more elementary terms as follows:
Lehmer's algorithm is based on the observation that the initial quotients produced by Euclid's algorithm can be determined based on only the first few digits; this is useful for numbers that are larger than a computer word. In essence, one extracts initial digits, typically forming one or two computer words, and runs Euclid's algorithms on these smaller numbers, as long as it is guaranteed that the quotients are the same with those that would be obtained with the original numbers. Those quotients are collected into a small 2-by-2 transformation matrix (that is a matrix of single-word integers), for using them all at once for reducing the original numbers. This process is repeated until numbers have a size for which the binary algorithm (see below) is more efficient.
This algorithm improves speed, because it reduces the number of operations on very large numbers and can use the speed of hardware arithmetic for most operations. In fact, most of the quotients are very small, so a fair number of steps of the Euclidean algorithm can be collected in a 2-by-2 matrix of single-word integers. When Lehmer's algorithm encounters a too large quotient, it must fall back to one iteration of Euclidean algorithm, with a Euclidean division of large numbers.
The binary GCD algorithm uses only subtraction and division by 2.
The method is as follows: Let "a" and "b" be the two non-negative integers. Let the integer "d" be 0. There are five possibilities:
As gcd("a", "a") = "a", the desired gcd is "a" × 2"d" (as "a" and "b" are changed in the other cases, and "d" records the number of times that "a" and "b" have been both divided by 2 in the next step, the gcd of the initial pair is the product of "a" and 2"d").
Then 2 is a common divisor. Divide both "a" and "b" by 2, increment "d" by 1 to record the number of times 2 is a common divisor and continue.
Then 2 is not a common divisor. Divide "a" by 2 and continue.
Then 2 is not a common divisor. Divide "b" by 2 and continue.
As gcd("a","b") = gcd("b","a"), if "a" < "b" then exchange "a" and "b". The number "c" = "a" − "b" is positive and smaller than "a". Any number that divides "a" and "b" must also divide "c" so every common divisor of "a" and "b" is also a common divisor of "b" and "c". Similarly, "a" = "b" + "c" and every common divisor of "b" and "c" is also a common divisor of "a" and "b". So the two pairs ("a", "b") and ("b", "c") have the same common divisors, and thus gcd("a","b") = gcd("b","c"). Moreover, as "a" and "b" are both odd, "c" is even, the process can be continued with the pair ("a", "b") replaced by the smaller numbers ("c"/2, "b") without changing the gcd.
Each of the above steps reduces at least one of "a" and "b" while leaving them non-negative and so can only be repeated a finite number of times. Thus eventually the process results in "a" = "b", the stopping case. Then the gcd is "a" × 2"d".
Example: ("a", "b", "d") = (48, 18, 0) → (24, 9, 1) → (12, 9, 1) → (6, 9, 1) → (3, 9, 1) → (3, 3, 1) ; the original gcd is thus the product 6 of 2"d" = 21 and "a"= "b"= 3.
The binary GCD algorithm is particularly easy to implement on binary computers. Its computational complexity is
The computational complexity is usually given in terms of the length of the input. Here, this length is formula_15 and the complexity is thus
If "a" and "b" are both nonzero, the greatest common divisor of "a" and "b" can be computed by using least common multiple (lcm) of "a" and "b":
but more commonly the lcm is computed from the gcd.
Using Thomae's function "f",
which generalizes to "a" and "b" rational numbers or commensurable real numbers.
Keith Slavin has shown that for odd "a" ≥ 1:
which is a function that can be evaluated for complex "b". Wolfgang Schramm has shown that
is an entire function in the variable "b" for all positive integers "a" where "c""d"("k") is Ramanujan's sum.
The computational complexity of the computation of greatest common divisors has been widely studied. If one uses the Euclidean algorithm and the elementary algorithms for multiplication and division, the computation of the greatest common divisor of two integers of at most bits is formula_21 This means that the computation of greatest common divisor has, up to a constant factor, the same complexity as the multiplication.
However, if a fast multiplication algorithm is used, one may modify the Euclidean algorithm for improving the complexity, but the computation of a greatest common divisor becomes slower than the multiplication. More precisely, if the multiplication of two integers of bits takes a time of , then the fastest known algorithm for greatest common divisor has a complexity formula_22 This implies that the fastest known algorithm has a complexity of formula_23
Previous complexities are valid for the usual models of computation, specifically multitape Turing machines and random-access machines.
The computation of the greatest common divisors belongs thus to the class of problems solvable in quasilinear time. "A fortiori", the corresponding decision problem belongs to the class P of problems solvable in polynomial time. The GCD problem is not known to be in NC, and so there is no known way to parallelize it efficiently; nor is it known to be P-complete, which would imply that it is unlikely to be possible to efficiently parallelize GCD computation. Shallcross et al. showed that a related problem (EUGCD, determining the remainder sequence arising during the Euclidean algorithm) is NC-equivalent to the problem of integer linear programming with two variables; if either problem is in NC or is P-complete, the other is as well. Since NC contains NL, it is also unknown whether a space-efficient algorithm for computing the GCD exists, even for nondeterministic Turing machines.
Although the problem is not known to be in NC, parallel algorithms asymptotically faster than the Euclidean algorithm exist; the fastest known deterministic algorithm is by Chor and Goldreich, which (in the CRCW-PRAM model) can solve the problem in time with processors. Randomized algorithms can solve the problem in time on formula_24 processors (this is superpolynomial).
In 1972, James E. Nymann showed that "k" integers, chosen independently and uniformly from {1, ..., "n"}, are coprime with probability 1/"ζ"("k") as "n" goes to infinity, where "ζ" refers to the Riemann zeta function. (See coprime for a derivation.) This result was extended in 1987 to show that the probability that "k" random integers have greatest common divisor "d" is "d""−k"/ζ("k").
Using this information, the expected value of the greatest common divisor function can be seen (informally) to not exist when "k" = 2. In this case the probability that the gcd equals "d" is "d"−2/ζ(2), and since ζ(2) = π2/6 we have
This last summation is the harmonic series, which diverges. However, when "k" ≥ 3, the expected value is well-defined, and by the above argument, it is
For "k" = 3, this is approximately equal to 1.3684. For "k" = 4, it is approximately 1.1106.
The notion of greatest common divisor can more generally be defined for elements of an arbitrary commutative ring, although in general there need not exist one for every pair of elements.
If is a commutative ring, and and are in , then an element of is called a "common divisor" of and if it divides both and (that is, if there are elements and in such that "d"·"x" = "a" and "d"·"y" = "b").
If is a common divisor of and , and every common divisor of and divides , then is called a "greatest common divisor" of and "b".
With this definition, two elements and may very well have several greatest common divisors, or none at all. If is an integral domain then any two gcd's of and must be associate elements, since by definition either one must divide the other; indeed if a gcd exists, any one of its associates is a gcd as well. Existence of a gcd is not assured in arbitrary integral domains. However, if is a unique factorization domain, then any two elements have a gcd, and more generally this is true in gcd domains.
If is a Euclidean domain in which euclidean division is given algorithmically (as is the case for instance when "R" = "F"["X"] where is a field, or when is the ring of Gaussian integers), then greatest common divisors can be computed using a form of the Euclidean algorithm based on the division procedure.
The following is an example of an integral domain with two elements that do not have a gcd:
The elements 2 and 1 + are two maximal common divisors (that is, any common divisor which is a multiple of 2 is associated to 2, the same holds for 1 + , but they are not associated, so there is no greatest common divisor of and "b".
Corresponding to the Bézout property we may, in any commutative ring, consider the collection of elements of the form "pa" + "qb", where and range over the ring. This is the ideal generated by and , and is denoted simply ("a", "b"). In a ring all of whose ideals are principal (a principal ideal domain or PID), this ideal will be identical with the set of multiples of some ring element "d"; then this is a greatest common divisor of and "b". But the ideal ("a", "b") can be useful even when there is no greatest common divisor of and "b". (Indeed, Ernst Kummer used this ideal as a replacement for a gcd in his treatment of Fermat's Last Theorem, although he envisioned it as the set of multiples of some hypothetical, or "ideal", ring element , whence the ring-theoretic term.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12354 |
Gazpacho
Gazpacho (; ), or also called Andalusian gazpacho is a cold soup made of raw, blended vegetables. A classic of Spanish and a regional southern Portuguese cuisine, it originated in the southern regions of the Iberian peninsula specifically Andalusia and spread into the Algarve regions. Gazpacho is widely eaten in Spain particularly during hot summers, as it is refreshing and cool.
While there are other recipes called "gazpacho", such as "gazpacho manchego", the standard usage implies Andalusian gazpacho. There are also a number of dishes that are closely related to Andalusian gazpacho and often considered variants thereof, such as ajoblanco, salmorejo, pipirrana, porra antequerana (closer to a bread soup), and cojondongo.
There are many theories as to the origin of gazpacho, including one that says it is a soup of bread, olive oil, water, vinegar and garlic that arrived in Spain with the Romans. Once in Spain, it became a part of Andalusian cuisine, particularly in Córdoba, Seville, and Granada, the Moorish Al-Andalus regions; using stale bread, garlic, olive oil, salt, and vinegar, similar to ajoblanco. During the 19th century, red gazpacho was created when tomatoes were added to the ingredients. This version spread internationally, and remains commonly known.
There are many modern variations of gazpacho with avocados, cucumbers, parsley, strawberries, watermelon, grapes, meat stock, seafood, and other ingredients instead of tomatoes and bread.
In Andalusia, most gazpacho recipes include stale bread, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, onion, garlic, olive oil, wine vinegar, water, and salt. Northern recipes often include cumin and/or "pimentón" (smoked sweet paprika).
The following is a typical modern method of preparing gazpacho:
Traditionally, gazpacho was made by pounding the vegetables in a mortar with a pestle; this more laborious method is still sometimes used as it helps keep the gazpacho cool and avoids the foam and completely smooth consistency created by blenders or food processors. A traditional way of preparation is to pound garlic cloves in a mortar, add a little soaked stale bread, then olive oil and salt, to make a paste. Next, very ripe tomatoes and vinegar are added to this paste. In the days before refrigeration the gazpacho was left in an unglazed earthenware pot to cool by evaporation, with the addition of some water.
Gazpacho may be served alone or with garnishes, such as hard-boiled eggs, chopped ham (in the salmorejo variety from Córdoba), chopped almonds, cumin crushed with mint, orange segments, finely chopped green pepper, onion, tomato or cucumber. In Extremadura, local ham was added to the gazpacho itself rather than as a garnish, this is called "gazpacho extremeño". Andalusian sources say that gazpacho should be slightly chilled, but not iced.
The ingredients, texture, and thickness of gazpacho vary regionally and between families.
Similar cold raw soups such as arjamolho in Portugal, porra antequerana and ajoblanco, are also popular in Andalusia, although not as widespread as gazpacho. Gazpacho and salmorejo are especially similar, since they are both tomato-based cold soups that are widely popular in Spain; the main difference between gazpacho and salmorejo is the culinary technique used since gazpacho is a soup whereas salmorejo is an emulsion. In addition, while both dishes share the main ingredients of tomato, olive oil, bread, and garlic, gazpacho can also be prepared with cucumber, peppers, and vinegar, whereas salmorejo cannot.
"Gazpacho manchego", despite its name, is a meat stew, served hot, not a variation on the cold vegetable soup.
The original recipe using bread, water, vinegar, oil and salt is traditional in the Iberian Peninsula, perhaps going back to Roman times. Every Andalusian region has its own variety. The humble gazpacho became a very deeply rooted food for peasants and shepherds in the south of Spain. The basic gazpacho gave rise to many variants, some also called gazpacho, others not; some authors have tried to classify all these variations. Gazpachos may be classified by colour: the most usual red ones (which contain tomato), white ones (which contain no tomato, but include dried fruits), and green ones (which are white but contain some spices that make them green). These variants have their basic ingredients in common, including garlic paste which works as an emulsifier, bread, olive oil, vinegar and salt. In addition to the traditional ingredients, red fruits such as strawberries, muskmelon, etc., may be added, making the gazpacho a bit sweeter. Gazpacho may be served as a starter, main dish, or tapa.
A popular variation comes from the town of Rota in the province of Cadiz. During times of drought there was not enough water to make gazpacho; thus, arranque has the same ingredients as gazpacho, but requires less water and bread, making it a sort of cream. Some people add more bread until it takes on the consistency of a dip.
In Extremadura, gazpachos are a kind of purée or thick gazpacho known as "cojondongo", or "cojondongo del gañán", made of breadcrumbs, garlic, oil, and vinegar, then topped with chopped onions, tomato and peppers.
Gazpacho manchego, as its name implies, is made in the east region of La Mancha, in Albacete and nearby areas, and is popular in other areas in the center and southwest of the country.
It is a meat stew, whose main ingredients are small game animals or birds such as rabbit, hare, quail, or pigeon, and flat bread, and may include garlic, tomatoes, and mushrooms. It is cooked in a cauldron and served hot. Another well-known variant in La Mancha is gazpacho de pastor or galiano.
Some other hot meat or fish dishes from other regions are called gazpacho (gazpacho jumillano, gazpacho de Yecla, gazpacho de Requena, etc.)
Gazpacho is often eaten during the very hot and dry summers in Castilla y León. The gazpacho made in La Moraña in the province of Ávila has large pieces of vegetables floating in a watery soup. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12357 |
Googolplex
A googolplex is the number 10, or equivalently, 10. Written out in ordinary decimal notation, it is 1 followed by 10100 zeroes, that is, a 1 followed by a googol zeroes.
In 1920, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term "googol", which is 10, then proposed the further term "googolplex" to be "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired". Kasner decided to adopt a more formal definition because "different people get tired at different times and it would never do to have Carnera a better mathematician than Dr. Einstein, simply because he had more endurance and could write for longer". It thus became standardized to 10.
A typical book can be printed with 10 zeros (around 400 pages with 50 lines per page and 50 zeros per line). Therefore, it requires 10 such books to print all the zeros of a googolplex (that is, printing a googol zeros). If each book had a mass of 100 grams, all of them would have a total mass of 10 kilograms. In comparison, Earth's mass is 5.972 x 10 kilograms, the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is estimated at 2.5 x 10 kilograms, and the mass of matter in the observable universe is estimated at 1.5 x 1053 kg.
To put this in perspective, the mass of all such books required to write out a googolplex would be vastly greater than the masses of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies combined (by a factor of roughly 2.0 x 10), and greater than the mass of the observable universe by a factor of roughly 7 x 1039.
In pure mathematics, there are several notational methods for representing large numbers by which the magnitude of a googolplex could be represented, such as tetration, hyperoperation, Knuth's up-arrow notation, Steinhaus–Moser notation, or Conway chained arrow notation.
In the PBS science program "", , astronomer and television personality Carl Sagan estimated that writing a googolplex in full decimal form (i.e., "10,000,000,000...") would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than is available in the known universe.
One googol is presumed to be greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, which has been estimated to be approximately 1078. Thus, in the physical world, it is difficult to give examples of numbers that compare to the vastly greater googolplex. However, in analyzing quantum states and black holes, physicist Don Page writes that "determining experimentally whether or not information is lost down black holes of solar mass ... would require more than 10 measurements to give a rough determination of the final density matrix after a black hole evaporates". The end of the universe via Big Freeze without proton decay is expected to be around 10 years into the future.
In a separate article, Page shows that the number of states in a black hole with a mass roughly equivalent to the Andromeda Galaxy is in the range of a googolplex.
Writing the number would take an immense amount of time: if a person can write two digits per second, then writing a googolplex would take about 1.51 years, which is about 1.1 times the accepted age of the universe.
The residues (mod "n") of a googolplex, starting with mod 1, are:
This sequence is the same as the sequence of residues (mod "n") of a googol up until the 17th position. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12365 |
Freeman Dyson
Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. He was professor emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Dyson originated several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson's transform, a fundamental technique in additive number theory, which he developed as part of his proof of Mann's theorem; the Dyson tree, a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant capable of growing in a comet; the Dyson series, a perturbative series where each term is represented by Feynman diagrams; the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a space-faring civilization would meet its energy requirements with a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output; and Dyson's eternal intelligence, a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe could escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy.
Dyson disagreed with the establishment scientific position that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a material driver of planetary temperature increases. He believed that some of the effects of increased CO2 levels are favourable and not taken into account by climate scientists, such as increased agricultural yield and further that the positive benefits of CO2 likely outweigh the negative effects. He was skeptical about the simulation models used to predict climate change, arguing that political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority. He also signed the World Climate Declaration titled "There is no Climate Emergency".
Born on 15 December 1923, at Crowthorne in Berkshire, England, Dyson was the son of Mildred Lucy (Atkey) and George Dyson. His father, a prominent composer, was later knighted. His mother had a law degree, and after Dyson was born she worked as a social worker. Dyson had one sibling, his older sister, Alice, who remembered him as a boy surrounded by encyclopedias and always calculating on sheets of paper. At the age of four he tried to calculate the number of atoms in the Sun. As a child, he showed an interest in large numbers and in the solar system, and was strongly influenced by the book "Men of Mathematics" by Eric Temple Bell. Politically, Dyson said he was "brought up as a socialist".
From 1936 to 1941 Dyson was a scholar at Winchester College, where his father was Director of Music. At age 17 he studied pure mathematics with A. S. Besicovitch as his tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge (where he won a scholarship at age 15), and at age 19 he was assigned to war work in the Operational Research Section (ORS) of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command, where he developed analytical methods for calculating the ideal density for bomber formations to help the Royal Air Force bomb German targets during World War II. After the war, Dyson was readmitted to Trinity College, where he obtained a BA degree in mathematics. From 1946 to 1949 he was a fellow of his college, occupying rooms just below those of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who resigned his professorship in 1947.
In 1947 Dyson published two papers in number theory. Friends and colleagues described him as shy and self-effacing, with a contrarian streak that his friends find refreshing but his intellectual opponents find exasperating. "I have the sense that when consensus is forming like ice hardening on a lake, Dyson will do his best to chip at the ice", Steven Weinberg said of him. His friend the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks said: "A favourite word of Freeman's about doing science and being creative is the word 'subversive'. He feels it's rather important not only to be not orthodox, but to be subversive, and he's done that all his life."
On G. I. Taylor's advice and recommendation, Dyson moved to the United States in 1947 as a Commonwealth Fellow to earn a physics doctorate with Hans Bethe at Cornell University (1947–1948). There he made the acquaintance of Richard Feynman. The budding English physicist recognized the brilliance of the flamboyant American and worked with him. He then moved to the Institute for Advanced Study (1948–1949), before returning to England (1949–51), where he was a research fellow at the University of Birmingham.
In 1949, Dyson demonstrated the equivalence of two formulations of quantum electrodynamics (QED): Richard Feynman's diagrams and the operator method developed by Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga. He was the first person after their creator to appreciate the power of Feynman diagrams and his paper written in 1948 and published in 1949 was the first to make use of them. He said in that paper that Feynman diagrams were not just a computational tool but a physical theory and developed rules for the diagrams that completely solved the renormalization problem. Dyson's paper and also his lectures presented Feynman's theories of QED in a form that other physicists could understand, facilitating the physics community's acceptance of Feynman's work. J. Robert Oppenheimer, in particular, was persuaded by Dyson that Feynman's new theory was as valid as Schwinger's and Tomonaga's. Also in 1949, in related work, Dyson invented the Dyson series. It was this paper that inspired John Ward to derive his celebrated Ward–Takahashi identity.
Dyson joined the faculty at Cornell as a physics professor in 1951, though he still had no doctorate. In December 1952 Oppenheimer, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, offered Dyson a lifetime appointment at the Institute, "for proving me wrong", in Oppenheimer's words. Dyson remained at the Institute until the end of his career. In 1957 he became a US citizen.
From 1957 to 1961 Dyson worked on Project Orion, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion. A prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, in which Dyson was involved and which he supported, permitted only underground nuclear weapons testing, and the project was abandoned in 1965.
In 1958 Dyson was a member of the design team under Edward Teller for TRIGA, a small, inherently safe nuclear reactor used throughout the world in hospitals and universities for the production of medical isotopes.
In 1966, independently of Elliott H. Lieb and Walter Thirring, Dyson and Andrew Lenard published a paper proving that the Pauli exclusion principle plays the main role in the stability of bulk matter. Hence it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between outer-shell orbital electrons that prevents two stacked wood blocks from coalescing into a single piece, but the exclusion principle applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical macroscopic normal force. In condensed matter physics, Dyson also analysed the phase transition of the Ising model in one dimension and spin waves.
Dyson also did work in a variety of topics in mathematics, such as topology, analysis, number theory and random matrices. In 1973 the number theorist Hugh Lowell Montgomery was visiting the Institute for Advanced Study and had just made his pair correlation conjecture concerning the distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function. He showed his formula to the mathematician Atle Selberg, who said that it looked like something in mathematical physics and that Montgomery should show it to Dyson, which he did. Dyson recognized the formula as the pair correlation function of the Gaussian unitary ensemble, which physicists have studied extensively. This suggested that there might be an unexpected connection between the distribution of primes (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, ...) and the energy levels in the nuclei of heavy elements such as uranium.
Around 1979 Dyson worked with the Institute for Energy Analysis on climate studies. This group, under Alvin Weinberg's direction, pioneered multidisciplinary climate studies, including a strong biology group. Also during the 1970s, Dyson worked on climate studies conducted by the JASON defense advisory group.
Dyson retired from the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994. In 1998 he joined the board of the Solar Electric Light Fund. he was president of the Space Studies Institute, the space research organization founded by Gerard K. O'Neill; as of 2013 he was on its board of trustees. Dyson was a longtime member of the JASON group.
Dyson won numerous scientific awards, but never a Nobel Prize. Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg said that the Nobel committee "fleeced" Dyson, but Dyson remarked in 2009, "I think it's almost true without exception if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get hold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for ten years. That wasn't my style." Dyson was a regular contributor to "The New York Review of Books", and published a memoir, "Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters" in 2018.
In 2012 Dyson published (with William H. Press) a fundamental new result about the prisoner's dilemma in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. He wrote a foreword to a treatise on psychic phenomena in which he concluded that "ESP is real... but cannot be tested with the clumsy tools of science".
With his first wife, the Swiss mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, Dyson had two children, Esther and George. In 1958 he married Imme Jung (born 1936) and they had four more children: Dorothy, Mia, Rebecca, and Emily Dyson.
Dyson's eldest daughter, Esther, is a digital technology consultant and investor; she has been called "the most influential woman in all the computer world". His son George is a historian of science, one of whose books is "Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957–1965".
On 28 February 2020 Dyson died at a hospital near Princeton, New Jersey, from complications following a fall. He was 96.
Dyson admitted his record as a prophet was mixed, but thought it is better to be wrong than vague, and that in meeting the world's material needs, technology must be beautiful and cheap.
Dyson coined the term "green technologies", based on biology instead of physics or chemistry, to describe new species of microorganisms and plants designed to meet human needs. He argued that such technologies would be based on solar power rather than the fossil fuels whose use he saw as part of what he calls "gray technologies" of industry. He believed that genetically engineered crops, which he described as green, can help end rural poverty, with a movement based in ethics to end the inequitable distribution of wealth on the planet.
Dyson favored the dual origin theory: that life first formed as cells, then enzymes, and finally, much later, genes. This was first propounded by the Russian Alexander Oparin. J. B. S. Haldane developed the same theory independently. In Dyson's version of the theory life evolved in two stages, widely separated in time. Because of the biochemistry he regards it as too unlikely that genes could have developed fully blown in one process. Current cells contain adenosine triphosphate or ATP and adenosine 5'-monophosphate or AMP, which greatly resemble each other but have completely different functions. ATP transports energy around the cell, and AMP is part of RNA and the genetic apparatus. Dyson proposed that in a primitive early cell containing ATP and AMP, RNA and replication came into existence only because of the similarity between AMP and RNA. He suggested that AMP was produced when ATP molecules lost two of their phosphate radicals, and then one cell somewhere performed Eigen's experiment and produced RNA.
There is no direct evidence for the dual origin theory, because once genes developed, they took over, obliterating all traces of the earlier forms of life. In the first origin, the cells were probably just drops of water held together by surface tension, teeming with enzymes and chemical reactions, and having a primitive kind of growth or replication. When the liquid drop became too big, it split into two drops. Many complex molecules formed in these "little city economies" and the probability that genes would eventually develop in them was much greater than in the prebiotic environment.
In 1960 Dyson wrote a short paper for the journal "Science" titled "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". In it he speculated that a technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization might surround its native star with artificial structures to maximize the capture of the star's energy. Eventually the civilization would enclose the star, intercepting electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from visible light downward and radiating waste heat outward as infrared radiation. One method of searching for extraterrestrial civilizations would be to look for large objects radiating in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Dyson conceived that such structures would be clouds of asteroid-sized space habitats, though science fiction writers have preferred a solid structure: either way, such an artifact is often called a Dyson sphere, although Dyson used the term "shell". Dyson said that he used the term "artificial biosphere" in the article to mean a habitat, not a shape. The general concept of such an energy-transferring shell had been advanced decades earlier by author Olaf Stapledon in his 1937 novel "Star Maker", a source Dyson credited publicly.
Dyson also proposed the creation of a "Dyson tree", a genetically engineered plant capable of growing on a comet. He suggested that comets could be engineered to contain hollow spaces filled with a breathable atmosphere, thus providing self-sustaining habitats for humanity in the outer Solar System.
Dyson was interested in space travel since he was a child, reading such science fiction classics as Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker". As a young man, he worked for General Atomics on the nuclear-powered Orion spacecraft. He hoped Project Orion would put men on Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970. For a quarter-century Dyson was unhappy about how the government conducts space travel:
Dyson still hoped for cheap space travel, but was resigned to waiting for private entrepreneurs to develop something new and inexpensive.
Dyson proposed that an immortal group of intelligent beings could escape the prospect of heat death by extending time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy. This is also known as the Dyson scenario.
His concept "Dyson's transform" led to one of the most important lemmas of Olivier Ramaré's theorem: that every even integer can be written as a sum of no more than six primes.
The Dyson series, the formal solution of an explicitly time-dependent Schrödinger equation by iteration, and the corresponding Dyson time-ordering operator formula_1 an entity of basic importance in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, are also named after Dyson.
Dyson and Hugh Montgomery discovered an intriguing connection between quantum physics and Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture about the zeros of the zeta function. The primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, ... are described by the Riemann zeta function, and Dyson had previously developed a description of quantum physics based on m by m arrays of totally random numbers. Montgomery and Dyson discovered that the "eigenvalues" of these matrices are spaced apart in exactly the same manner as Montgomery conjectured for the nontrivial zeros of the zeta function. Andrew Odlyzko has verified the conjecture on a computer, using his Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm to calculate many zeros.
There are in nature one, two, and three dimensional quasicrystals. Mathematicians define a quasicrystal as a set of discrete points whose Fourier transform is also a set of discrete points. Odlyzko has done extensive computations of the Fourier transform of the nontrivial zeros of the zeta function, and they seem to form a one-dimensional quasicrystal. This would in fact follow from the Riemann hypothesis.
In number theory and combinatorics rank of a partition of a positive integer is a certain integer associated with the partition. Dyson introduced the concept in a paper published in the journal "Eureka". It was presented in the context of a study of certain congruence properties of the partition function discovered by the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.
In number theory, the crank of a partition is a certain integer associated with the partition in number theory. Dyson first introduced the term without a definition in a 1944 paper in a journal published by the Mathematics Society of Cambridge University. He then gave a list of properties this yet-to-be-defined quantity should have. In 1988, George E. Andrews and Frank Garvan discovered a definition for the crank satisfying the properties Dyson had hypothesized.
Astrochicken is the name given to a thought experiment Dyson expounded in his book "Disturbing the Universe" (1979). He contemplated how humanity could build a small, self-replicating automaton that could explore space more efficiently than a manned craft could. He attributed the general idea to John von Neumann, based on a lecture von Neumann gave in 1948 titled "The General and Logical Theory of Automata". Dyson expanded on von Neumann's automata theories and added a biological component.
Dyson suggested that philosophers can be broadly, if simplistically, divided into lumpers and splitters. These roughly correspond to Platonists, who regard the world as made up of ideas, and materialists, who imagine it divided into atoms.
Dyson agreed that technically humans and additional CO emissions contribute to warming, however, he felt that any such contribution was minor relative to natural effects and that the benefits of additional CO outweighed any associated negative effects.
He said that in many ways increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial, and that it is increasing biological growth, agricultural yields and forests. He believed that existing simulation models of climate change fail to account for some important factors, and that the results thus contain too great a margin of error to reliably predict future trends.
Dyson's views on global warming were criticized. Climate scientist James Hansen said that Dyson "doesn't know what he's talking about ... If he's going to wander into something with major consequences for humanity and other life on the planet, then he should first do his homework – which he obviously has not done on global warming." Dyson replied that "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it's rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have."
Dyson argued that political efforts to reduce the causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority.
Since originally taking interest in climate studies in the 1970s, Dyson suggested that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be controlled by planting fast-growing trees. He calculated that it would take a trillion trees to remove all carbon from the atmosphere. In a 2014 interview he said, "What I'm convinced of is that we don't understand climate ... It will take a lot of very hard work before that question is settled."
Dyson was a member of the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic think tank chaired by Nigel Lawson. He compared belief in climate change to religion.
At the British Bomber Command, Dyson and colleagues proposed removing two gun turrets from the RAF Lancaster bombers, to cut the catastrophic losses due to German fighters in the Battle of Berlin. A Lancaster without turrets could fly faster and be much more maneuverable.
On hearing the news of the bombing of Hiroshima:
In 1967, in his capacity as a military adviser, Dyson wrote an influential paper on the issue of possible US use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. When a general said in a meeting, "I think it might be a good idea to throw in a nuke now and then, just to keep the other side guessing ..." Dyson became alarmed and obtained permission to write a report on the pros and cons of using such weapons from a purely military point of view. (This report, "Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia", published by the Institute for Defense Analyses, was obtained, with some redactions, by the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability under the Freedom of Information act in 2002.) It was sufficiently objective that both sides in the debate based their arguments on it. Dyson says that the report showed that, even from a narrow military point of view, the US was better off not using nuclear weapons.
Dyson opposed the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq. He supported Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election and "The New York Times" described him as a political liberal. He was one of 29 leading US scientists who wrote Obama a strongly supportive letter about his administration's 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
Dyson was raised in what he described as a "watered-down Church of England Christianity". He was a nondenominational Christian and attended various churches, from Presbyterian to Roman Catholic. Regarding doctrinal or Christological issues, he said, "I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology."
Dyson partially disagreed with the famous remark by his fellow physicist Steven Weinberg that "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion."
While Dyson called himself a Christian, he identified himself as agnostic about some of the specifics of his faith. For example, in reviewing "The God of Hope and the End of the World" by John Polkinghorne, Dyson wrote:
In "The God Delusion" (2006), evolutionary biologist and atheist activist Richard Dawkins singled out Dyson for accepting the Templeton Prize in 2000: "It would be taken as an endorsement of religion by one of the world's most distinguished physicists." In 2000, Dyson declared that he was a (non-denominational) Christian, and he disagreed with Dawkins on several occasions, as when he criticized Dawkins' understanding of evolution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11397 |
Fourth Council of the Lateran
The Fourth Council of the Lateran was convoked by Pope Innocent III with the papal bull "Vineam domini Sabaoth" of 19 April 1213, and the Council gathered at Rome's Lateran Palace beginning 11 November 1215. Due to the great length of time between the Council's convocation and meeting, many bishops had the opportunity to attend. It is considered by the Catholic Church to have been the twelfth ecumenical council and is sometimes called the "Great Council" or "General Council of Lateran" due to the presence of 71 patriarchs and metropolitan bishops, 412 bishops, 900 abbots and priors together with representatives of several monarchs.
During this council, the teaching on transubstantiation—a doctrine of the Catholic Church which describes the method by which the bread and wine offered in the sacrament of the Eucharist becomes the actual blood and body of Christ—was defined.
Lateran IV stands as the high-water mark of the medieval papacy. Its political and ecclesiastical decisions endured down to the Council of Trent while modern historiography has deemed it the most significant papal assembly of the Later Middle Ages. The Fourth Lateran Council was the largest and most representative of the medieval councils to that date.
In summoning the bishops to a general council, Innocent III emphasized that reforms must be made in the Church and that a new crusade to the Holy Land must be launched. He also reminded them that it was not appropriate that episcopal retinue include birds and hunting dogs.
The agenda laid out in "Vineam domini Sabaoth" included reform of the Church, the stamping out of heresy, establishing peace and liberty, and calling for a new crusade. During this council, the doctrine of transubstantiation—a doctrine which describes the method by which the bread and wine offered in the sacrament of the Eucharist becomes the actual blood and body of Christ—was infallibly defined. The scholarly consensus is that the constitutions were drafted by Innocent III himself.
In secular matters, the Council confirmed the elevation of Frederick II as Holy Roman Emperor.
There were violent scenes between the partisans of Simon de Montfort among the French bishops and those of the Count of Toulouse. Raymond VI of Toulouse, his son (afterwards Raymond VII), and Raymond-Roger of Foix attended the Council to dispute the threatened confiscation of their territories; Bishop Foulques and Guy de Montfort (brother of Simon de Montfort) argued in favour of the confiscation. All of Raymond VI's lands were confiscated, save Provence, which was kept in trust to be restored to his son, Raymond VII. Pierre-Bermond of Sauve's claim to Toulouse was rejected, and Toulouse was awarded to de Montfort; the lordship of Melgueil was separated from Toulouse and entrusted to the bishops of Maguelonne.
Canons presented to the Council included:
In addition, it threatened excommunication to those who supplied ships, arms, and other war materials to the Saracens.
Effective application of the decrees varied according to local conditions and customs.
James Carroll has described the clothing regulations as "the precursor of the infamous yellow badge". He emphasises the key role of the Council in effecting major changes in Jewish-Catholic relations, and quotes the Swiss priest Hans Küng who wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11399 |
Franconia
Franconia (; ) is a region in Germany, characterised by its culture and language, and may be roughly associated with the areas in which the East Franconian dialect group, colloquially referred to as "Franconian" (German: ""Fränkisch""), is spoken. There are several other Franconian dialects, but only the East Franconian ones are colloquially referred to as "Franconian".
"Core Franconia" is constituted by the three administrative regions of Lower, Middle, and Upper Franconia (largest cities: Würzburg, Nuremberg, and Bamberg, respectively) of the state of Bavaria. Also part of the cultural region of Franconia are the adjacent Franconian-speaking regions of the otherwise Thuringian and Upper Saxon-speaking state of Thuringia (South Thuringia, south of the Rennsteig ridge; largest city: Suhl), the Franconian-speaking parts of Heilbronn-Franconia (largest city: Schwäbisch Hall) in the state of Baden-Württemberg, and small parts of the state of Hesse.
Those parts of the region of Vogtland lying in the state of Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as "Franconian". On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart mountains (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as "Franconian". Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas being South Franconian-speaking, those are only sometimes regarded as Franconian.
Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms a large conurbation, with around 1.3 million inhabitants.
The German word "Franken"—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic tribe of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia ("Francia Orientalis"). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. In the course of the restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, most of Franconia was awarded to Bavaria.
The German name for Franconia, "Franken", comes from the dative plural form of "Franke," a member of the Germanic tribe known as the Franks.
The name of the Franks in turn derives from a word meaning "daring, bold", cognate with old Norwegian "frakkr", "quick, bold". Franks from the Middle and Lower Rhine gradually gained control of (and so gave their name to) what is now Franconia during the 6th to 8th centuries.
English distinguishes between "Franks" (the early medieval Germanic people) and "Franconians" in reference to the high medieval stem duchy, following Middle Latin use of "Francia" for France vs. "Franconia" for the German duchy. In German the name "Franken" is equally used for both, while the French are called "Franzosen", after Old French "françois", from Latin "franciscus", from Late Latin "Francus", from "Frank", the Germanic tribe.
The Franconian lands lie principally in Bavaria, north and south of the sinuous River Main which, together with the left (southern) Regnitz tributary, including its Rednitz and Pegnitz headstreams, drains most of Franconia. Other large rivers include the upper Werra in Thuringia and the Tauber, as well as the upper Jagst and Kocher streams in the west, both right tributaries of the Neckar. In southern Middle Franconia, the Altmühl flows towards the Danube; the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal crosses the European Watershed. The man-made Franconian Lake District has become a popular destination for day-trippers and tourists.
The landscape is characterized by numerous "Mittelgebirge" ranges of the German Central Uplands. The Western natural border of Franconia is formed by the Spessart and Rhön Mountains, separating it from the former Rhenish Franconian lands around Aschaffenburg (officially part of Lower Franconia), whose inhabitants speak Hessian dialects. To the north rise the Rennsteig ridge of the Thuringian Forest, the Thuringian Highland and the Franconian Forest, the border with the Upper Saxon lands of Thuringia. The Franconian lands include the present-day South Thuringian districts of Schmalkalden-Meiningen, Hildburghausen and Sonneberg, the historical "Gau" of Grabfeld, held by the House of Henneberg from the 11th century and later part of the Wettin duchy of Saxe-Meiningen.
In the east, the Fichtel Mountains lead to Vogtland, Bohemian Egerland ("Chebsko") in the Czech Republic, and the Bavarian Upper Palatinate. The hills of the Franconian Jura in the south mark the border with the Upper Bavarian region ("Altbayern"), historical Swabia, and the Danube basin. The northern parts of the Upper Bavarian Eichstätt District, territory of the historical Bishopric of Eichstätt, are also counted as part of Franconia.
In the west, Franconia proper comprises the Tauber Franconia region along the Tauber river, which is largely part of the Main-Tauber-Kreis in Baden-Württemberg. The state's larger Heilbronn-Franken region also includes the adjacent Hohenlohe and Schwäbisch Hall districts. In the city of Heilbronn, beyond the Haller Ebene plateau, South Franconian dialects are spoken. Furthermore, in those easternmost parts of the Neckar-Odenwald-Kreis which had formerly belonged to the Bishopric of Würzburg, the inhabitants have preserved their Franconian identity. Franconian areas in East Hesse along Spessart and Rhön comprise Gersfeld and Ehrenberg.
The two largest cities of Franconia are Nuremberg and Würzburg. Though located on the southeastern periphery of the area, the Nuremberg metropolitan area is often identified as the economic and cultural centre of Franconia. Further cities in Bavarian Franconia include Fürth, Erlangen, Bayreuth, Bamberg, Aschaffenburg, Schweinfurt, Hof, Coburg, Ansbach and Schwabach. The major (East) Franconian towns in Baden-Württemberg are Schwäbisch Hall on the Kocher — the imperial city declared itself "Swabian" in 1442 — and Crailsheim on the Jagst river. The main towns in Thuringia are Suhl and Meiningen.
Franconia may be distinguished from the regions that surround it by its peculiar historical factors and its cultural and especially linguistic characteristics, but it is not a political entity with a fixed or tightly defined area. As a result, it is debated whether some areas belong to Franconia or not. Pointers to a more precise definition of Franconia's boundaries include: the territories covered by the former Duchy of Franconia and former Franconian Circle, the range of the East Franconian dialect group, the common culture and history of the region and the use of the Franconian Rake on coats of arms, flags and seals. However, a sense of popular consciousness of being Franconian is only detectable from the 19th century onwards, which is why the circumstances of the emergence of a Frankish identity are disputed. Franconia has many cultural peculiarities which have been adopted from other regions and further developed.
The following regions are counted as part of Franconia today: the Bavarian provinces of Lower Franconia, Upper Franconia and Middle Franconia, the municipality of Pyrbaum in the county of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, the northwestern part of the Upper Bavarian county of Eichstätt (covering the same area as the old county of Alt-Eichstätt), the East Franconian counties of South Thuringia, parts of Fulda and the Odenwaldkreis in Hesse, the Baden-Württemberg regions of Tauber Franconia and Hohenlohe as well as the region around the Badenian Buchen.
In individual cases the membership of some areas is disputed. These include the Bavarian language area of Alt-Eichstätt and the Hessian-speaking region around Aschaffenburg, which was never part of the Franconian Imperial Circle. The affiliation of the city of Heilbronn, whose inhabitants do not call themselves Franks, is also controversial. Moreover, the sense of belonging to Franconia in the Frankish-speaking areas of Upper Palatinate, South Thuringia and Hesse is sometimes less marked.
The region of Franconia is divided among the states of Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. The largest part of Franconia, both by population and area, belongs to the Free State of Bavaria and is divided into the three provinces ("Regierungsbezirke") of Middle Franconia (capital: Ansbach), Upper Franconia (capital: Bayreuth) and Lower Franconia (capital: Würzburg). The name of these provinces, as in the case of Upper and Lower Bavaria, refers to their situation with respect to the River Main. Thus Upper Franconia lies on the upper reaches of the river, Lower Franconia on its lower reaches and Middle Franconia lies in between, although the Main itself does not flow through Middle Franconia. Where the boundaries of these three provinces meet (the 'tripoint') is the "Dreifrankenstein" ("Three Franconias Rock").
Small parts of Franconia also belong to the Bavarian provinces of Upper Palatinate and Upper Bavaria.
The Franconian territories of Baden-Württemberg are the regions of Tauber Franconia and Hohenlohe (which belong to the Heilbronn-Franconia Region with its office in Heilbronn and form part of the Stuttgart Region) and the area around the Badenian Buchen in the Rhein-Neckar Region.
The Franconian parts of Thuringia (Henneberg Franconia) lie within the Southwest Thuringia Planning Region.
The Franconian regions in Hesse form the smaller parts of the counties of Fulda (Kassel province) and the Odenwaldkreis (Darmstadt province), or lie on the borders with Bavaria or Thuringia.
The two most important rivers of the region are the Main and its primary tributary, the Regnitz. The tributaries of these two rivers in Franconia are the Tauber, Pegnitz, Rednitz and Franconian Saale. Other major rivers in the region are the Jagst and Kocher in Hohenlohe-Franconia, which empty into the Neckar north of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg, the Altmühl and the Wörnitz in Middle Franconia, both tributaries of the Danube, and the upper and middle reaches of the Werra, the right-hand headstream of the Weser. In the northeast of Upper Franconia rise two left-hand tributaries of the Elbe: the Saxon Saale and the Eger.
The Main-Danube Canal connects the Main and Danube across Franconia, running from Bamberg via Nuremberg to Kelheim. It thus complements the Rhine, Main and Danube, helping to ensure a continuous navigable waterway between the North Sea and the Black Sea. In Franconia, there are only a few, often very small, natural lakes. This is due to fact that most natural lakes in Germany are glacial or volcanic in origin, and Franconia escaped both influences in recent earth history. Among the largest waterbodies are reservoirs, which are mostly used as water reserves for the relatively dry landscapes of Franconia. These includes the waters of the Franconian Lake District, which was established in the 1970s and is also a tourist attraction. The heart of these lakes is the Großer Brombachsee, which has an area of 8.7 km² and is thus the largest waterbody in Franconia by surface area.
Several Central Upland ranges dominate the Franconian countryside. In the southeast, Franconia is shielded from the rest of Bavaria by the Franconian Jura. In the east, the Fichtel Mountains form the border; in the north are Franconian Forest, the Thuringian Forest, the Rhön Mountains and the Spessart form a kind of natural barrier. To the west are the Franconian Heights and the Swabian-Franconian Forest. In the Franconian part of South Hesse is the Odenwald. Parts of the southern Thuringian Forest border on Franconia. The most important hill ranges in the interior of the region are the Steigerwald and the Franconian Jura with their sub-ranges of Hahnenkamm and Franconian Switzerland. The highest mountain in Franconia is the Schneeberg in the Fichtel Mountains which is . Other well-known mountains include the Ochsenkopf (1,024m), the Kreuzberg (927.8m) and the Hesselberg (689.4m). The outliers of the region include the Hesselberg and the Gleichberge. The lowest point in Franconia is the water level of the River Main in Kahl which lies at a height of 100 metres above sea level.
In addition to the hill and mountain ranges, there are also several very level areas, including the Middle Franconian Basin and the Hohenlohe Plain. In the south of Franconia are smaller parts of the flat Nördlinger Ries, one of the best preserved impact craters on earth.
Franconia's flora is dominated by deciduous and coniferous forests. Natural forests in Franconia occur mainly in the ranges of the Spessart, Franconian Forest, Odenwald and Steigerwald. The Nuremberg "Reichswald" is another great forest, located within the metropolitan region of Nuremberg. Other large areas of forest in the region are the Mönchswald, the Reichsforst in the Fichtel Mountains and the Selb Forest. In the river valleys along the Main and Tauber, the countryside was developed for viticulture. In Spessart there are great oak forests. Also widespread are calcareous grasslands, extensively used pastures on very oligotrophic, poor sites. In particular, the southern Franconian Jura, with the Altmühl Valley, is characterized by poor grassland of this type. Many of these places have been designated as a protected areas.
Franconia has several regions with sandy habitats that are unique for south Germany and are protected as the so-called Sand Belt of Franconia or "Sandachse Franken". When the Altmühlsee reservoir was built, a bird island was created and designated as a nature reserve where a variety of birds nest. Another important reserve is the Black Moor in the Rhön, which is one of the most important bog areas in Central Europe. A well known reserve is the Luisenburg Rock Labyrinth at Wunsiedel, a felsenmeer of granite blocks up to several metres across. The establishment of the first Franconian national park in the Steigerwald caused controversy and its designation was rejected in July 2011 by the Bavarian government. The reason was the negative attitude of local population. Conservationists are now demanding protection for parts of the Steigerwald by nominating it for a World Heritage Site. There are several nature parks in Franconia, including the Altmühl Valley Nature Park, which, since 1969, has been one of the largest in Germany.
Other nature parks are the Swabian-Franconian Forest Nature Park in Baden-Württemberg, and the nature parks of Bavarian Rhön, Fichtel Mountains, Franconian Heights, Franconian Forest, Franconian Switzerland-Veldenstein Forest, Haßberge, Spessart and Steigerwald in Bavaria, as well as the Bergstraße-Odenwald Nature Park which straddles Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse. Nature parks cover almost half the area of Franconia.
In 1991 UNESCO recognised the Rhön as a biosphere reserve. Among the most picturesque geotopes in Bavaria, are the Franconian sites of "Fossa Carolina", the Twelve Apostle Rocks ("Zwölf-Apostel-Felsen"), the Ehrenbürg, the cave ruins of Riesenburg and the lake of Frickenhäuser See. The European Bird Reserves in Franconia are found mainly in uplands like the Steigerwald, in large forests like Nuremberg's Imperial Forest or along rivers like the Altmühl. There are also numerous Special Areas of Conservation and protected landscapes. In Franconia there are very many tufas, raised stream beds near river sources within the karst landscape that are known as 'stone runnels' ("Steinerne Rinnen"). There are protected examples at Heidenheim and Wolfsbronn.
Like large parts of Germany, Franconia only has a few large species of wild animal. Forest dwellers include various species of marten, fallow deer, red deer, roe deer, wild boar and fox. In natural areas such as the Fichtel mountains there are populations of lynx and capercaillie, and beaver and otter have grown in numbers. There are occasional sightings of animals that had long been extinct in Central Europe, for example, the wolf.
Only in the extreme northeast of Franconia and in the Spessart are there Variscan outcrops of the crystalline basement, which were uplifted from below the surface when the Alps exerted a northwards-oriented pressure. These are rocks of pre-Permian vintage, which were folded during various stages of Variscan orogeny in the Late Palaeozoic - before about 380 to 300 million years ago - and, in places, were metamorphosed under high pressure and temperature or were crystallized by ascending magma in the Earth's crust. Rocks which were unchanged or only lightly metamorphosed, because they had been deformed at shallow crustal depths, include the Lower Carboniferous shale and greywacke of Franconian Forest. The Fichtel mountains, the Münchberg Plateau and the Spessart, by contrast, have more metamorphic rocks (phyllite, schist, amphibolite, gneiss). The Fichtel mountains are also characterized by large granite bodies, called post-kinematic plutons which, in the late phase of Variscan orogeny, intruded into the metamorphic rocks. In most cases these are S-type granites whose melting was caused by heated-up sedimentary rocks sunk deep into the Earth's crust. While the Fichtel and Franconian Forest can be assigned to the Saxo-Thuringian Zone of Central European Variscan orogeny, the Spessart belongs to the Central German Crystalline Zone. The Münchberg mass is variously attributed to the Saxo-Thuringian or Moldanubian Zones.
A substantially larger part of the shallow subsurface in Franconia comprises Mesozoic, unmetamorphosed, unfolded rocks of the South German Scarplands. The regional geological element of the South German Scarplands is the Franconian Platform ("Süddeutsche Großscholle"). At the so-called Franconian Line, a significant fault line, the Saxo-Thuringian-Moldanubian basement was uplifted in places up to 2000 m above the Franconian Platform. The western two-thirds of Franconia is dominated by the Triassic with its sandstones, siltstones and claystones (so-called siliciclastics) of the bunter sandstone; the limestones and marls of the Muschelkalk and the mixed, but predominantly siliciclastic, sedimentary rocks of the Keuper. In the Rhön, the Triassic rocks are overlain and intruded by volcanic rock (basalts, basanites, phonolites and trachytes) of the Tertiary. The eastern third of Franconia is dominated by the Jurassic rocks of the Franconian Jura, with the dark shales of the Black Jura, the shales and ferruginous sandstones of the Brown Jura and, the weathering-resistant limestones and dolomitic rocks of the White Jura, which stand out from the landscape and form the actual ridge of the Franconian Jura itself. In the Jura, mostly siliciclastic sedimentary rocks formed in the Cretaceous have survived.
The Mesozoic sediments have been deposited in largescale basin areas. During the Triassic, the Franconian part of these depressions was often part of the mainland, in the Jurassic it was covered for most of the time by a marginal sea of the western Tethys Ocean. At the time when the limestones and dolomites of the White Jura were being deposited, this sea was divided into sponge reefs and intervening lagoons. The reef bodies and the fine-grained lagoon limestones and marls are the material from which the majority of the Franconian Jura is composed today. Following a drop in the sea level towards the end of the Upper Jurassic, larger areas also became part of the mainland at the beginning of the subsequent Cretaceous period. During the Upper Cretaceous, the sea advanced again up to the area of the Franconian Jura. At the end of the Cretaceous, the sea then retreated again from the region. In addition, large parts of South and Central Germany experienced a general uplift -or in areas where the basement had broken through a substantial uplift - the course of formation of the Alps during the Tertiary. Since then, Franconia has been mainly influenced by erosion and weathering (especially in the Jura in the form of karst), which has ultimately led to formation of today's landscapes.
The oldest macrofossils in Franconia, which are also the oldest in Bavaria, are archaeocyatha, sponge-like, goblet-shaped marine organisms, which were discovered in 2013 in a limestone block of Late Lower Cambrian age, about 520 million years old. The block comes from the vicinity Schwarzenbach am Wald from the so-called Heinersreuth Block Conglomerate ("Heinersreuther Blockkonglomerat"), a Lower Carboniferous wildflysch. However, the aforementioned archaeocyathids are not three-dimensional fossils, but two-dimensional thin sections. These thin sections had already been prepared and investigated in the 1970s but the archaeocyathids among them were apparently overlooked at that time.
Better known and more highly respected fossil finds in Franconia come from the unfolded sedimentary rocks of the Triassic and Jurassic. The bunter sandstone, however, only has a relatively small number of preserved whole fossils. Much more commonly, it contains trace fossils, especially the tetrapod footprints of "Chirotherium". The type locality for these animal tracks is Hildburghausen in the Thuringian part of Franconia, where it occurs in the so-called Thuringian Chirotherium Sandstone ("Thüringer Chirotheriensandstein", main Middle Bunter Sandstone). "Chirotherium" is also found in the Bavarian and Württemberg parts of Franconia. Sites include Aura near Bad Kissingen, Karbach, Gambach and Külsheim. There the deposits are somewhat younger (Upper Bunter Sandstone), and the corresponding stratigraphic interval is called the Franconian Chirotherium Beds ("Fränkische Chirotherienschichten"). Among the less significant body fossil records of vertebrates are the procolophonid "Anomoiodon liliensterni" from Reurieth in the Thuringian part of Franconia and "Koiloskiosaurus coburgiensis" from Mittelberg near Coburg, both from the Thuringian Chirotherium Sandstone, and the Temnospondyle "Mastodonsaurus ingens" (possibly identical with the mastodonsaurus, "Heptasaurus cappelensis") from the Upper Bunter at Gambach.
As early as the first decade of the 19th century George, Count of Münster began systematic fossil gathering and digs and in the Upper Muschelkalk at Bayreuth. For example, the Oschenberg hill near Laineck became the type locality of two relatively well-known marine reptiles of the Triassic period, later found in other parts of Central Europe: the "flat tooth lizard", "Placodus" and the "false lizard", "Nothosaurus".
In Franconia's middle Keuper (the Feuerletten) is one of the best known and most common species of dinosaurs of Central Europe: "Plateosaurus engelhardti", an early representative of the sauropodomorpha. Its type locality is located at Heroldsberg south of Nuremberg. When the remains of "Plateosaurus" were first discovered there in 1834, it was the first discovery of a dinosaur on German soil, and this occurred even before the name "dinosauria" was coined. Another important "Plateosaurus" find in Franconia was made at Ellingen.
Far more famous than "Plateosaurus", "Placodus" and "Nothosaurus" is the "Archaeopteryx", probably the first bird geologically. It was discovered in the southern Franconian Jura, "inter alia" at the famous fossil site of Solnhofen in the Solnhofen Platform Limestone ("Solnhofener Plattenkalk", (Solnhofen-Formation, early Tithonian, Upper Jurassic). In addition to "Archaeopteryx", in the very fine-grained, laminated lagoon limestones are the pterosaur "Pterodactylus" and various bony fishes as well as numerous extremely detailed examples of invertebrates e.g. feather stars and dragonflies. Eichstätt is the other "big" and similarly famous fossil locality in the Solnhofen Formation, situated on the southern edge of the Jura in Upper Bavaria. Here, as well as "Archaeopteryx", the theropod dinosaurs, "Compsognathus" and "Juravenator," were found.
An inglorious episode in the history of paleontology took place in Franconia: fake fossils, known as Beringer's Lying Stones, were acquired in the 1720s by Würzburg doctor and naturalist, Johann Beringer, for a lot of money and then described in a monograph, along with genuine fossils from the Würzburg area. However, it is not entirely clear whether the Beringer forgeries were actually planted or whether he himself was responsible for the fraud.
Franconia has a humid cool temperate transitional climate, which is neither very continental nor very maritime. The average monthly temperatures vary depending on the area between about -1 to -2 °C in January and 17 to 19 °C in August, but may reach a peak of about 35 °C for a few days in the summer, especially in the large cities. The climate of Franconia is sunny and relatively warm. For part of the summer, for example, Lower Franconia is one the sunniest areas in Germany. Daily temperatures in the Bavarian part of Franconia are an average of 0.1 °C higher than the average for Bavaria as a whole. Relatively less rain falls in Franconia, and likewise in the rest of North Bavaria rain than is usual for its geographic location; even summer storms are often less powerful than in other areas of South Germany. In southern Bavaria about 2,000 mm of precipitation falls annually and almost three times as much as in parts of Franconia (about 500–900 mm) in the rain shadow of the Spessart, Rhön and Odenwald.
Franconia, as part of Germany, has a high quality of life. In the "Worldwide Quality of Living Survey" by Mercer in 2010, the city of Nuremberg was one of the top 25 cities in the world in terms of quality of life and came sixth in Germany. In environmental ranking Nuremberg came thirteenth in the world and was the best German city In a survey by the German magazine, "Focus," on quality of life in 2014, the districts of Eichstätt and Fürth were among the top positions in the table. In the "Glücksatlas" by Deutsche Post Franconia achieved some of the highest scores, but the region slipped in 2013 to 13th place out of 19.
Franconia is named after the Franks, a Germanic tribe who conquered most of Western Europe by the middle of the 8th century. Despite its name, Franconia is not the homeland of the Franks, but rather owes its name to being partially settled by Franks from the Rhineland during the 7th century following the defeat of the Alamanni and Thuringians who had dominated the region earlier.
At the beginning of the 10th century a "Duchy of Franconia" () was established within East Francia, which comprised modern Hesse, Palatinate, parts of Baden-Württemberg and most of today's Franconia. After the dissolution of the so-called Stem duchy of Franconia, the Holy Roman Emperors created the Franconian Circle (German "Fränkischer Reichskreis") in 1500 to embrace the principalities that grew out of the eastern half of the former duchy. The territory of the Franconian Circle roughly corresponds with modern Franconia. The title of a "Duke of Franconia" was claimed by the Würzburg bishops until 1803 and by the kings of Bavaria until 1918. Examples of Franconian cities founded by Frankish noblemen are Würzburg, first mentioned in the 7th century, Ansbach, first mentioned in 748, and Weissenburg, founded in the 7th century.
Fossil finds show that the region was already settled by primitive man, "Homo erectus", in the middle Ice Age about 600,000 years ago. Probably the oldest human remains in the Bavarian part of Franconia were found in the cave ruins of Hunas at Pommelsbrunn in the county of Nuremberg Land. In the late Bronze Age, the region was probably only sparsely inhabited, as few noble metals occur here and the soils are only moderately fertile. In the subsequent Iron Age (from about 800 B.C.) the Celts become the first nation to be discernible in the region. In northern Franconia they built a chain of hill forts as a line of defence against the Germanii advancing from the north. On the Staffelberg they built a powerful settlement, to which Ptolemy the name "oppidum Menosgada", and on the Gleichberge is the largest surviving "oppidum" in Central Germany, the Steinsburg. With the increased expansion of Rome in the first century B.C. and the simultaneous advance of the Elbe Germanic tribes from the north, the Celtic culture began to fall into decline. The southern parts of present-day Franconia soon fell under Roman control; however, most of the region remained in Free Germania. Initially Rome tried extend its direct influence far to the northeast; in the longer term, however, the Germanic-Roman frontier formed further southwest.
Under the emperors, Domitian (81-96), Trajan (98-117) and Hadrian (117-138), the Rhaetian Limes was built as a border facing the Germanic tribes to the north. This defensive line ran through the south of Franconia and described an arc across the region whose northernmost point lay at present-day Gunzenhausen. To protect it, the Romans built several forts like Biriciana at Weißenburg, but by the mid-third century, the border could no longer be maintained and by 250 A.D. the Alemanni occupied the areas up to the Danube. Fortified settlements such as the Gelbe Bürg at Dittenheim controlled the new areas. More such Gau forts have been detected north of the former Limes as well. To which tribe their occupants belonged is unknown in most cases. However, it is likely that it was mainly Alemanni and Juthungi in especially in the south. By contrast, it was the Burgundians who settled on the Lower and Middle Main. Many of these hill forts appear to have been destroyed, however, no later than 500 A.D. The reasons are not entirely clear, but it could have been as a result of invasions by the Huns which thus triggered the Great Migration. In many cases, however, it was probably conquest by the Franks that spelt the end of these hilltop settlements.
With their victories over the heartlands of the Alamanni and Thuringians in the 6th century, the present region of Franconia also fell to the Franks. After the division of the Frankish Empire, East Francia ("Francia orientialis") was formed from the territories of the dioceses of Mainz, Worms, Würzburg and Speyer. Later, the diocese of Bamberg was added. In the 7th century, the Slavs started to populate the northeastern parts of the region from the east, because the area of today's Upper Franconia was very sparsely populated (Bavaria Slavica). However, in the 10th and 11th centuries, they largely gave up their own language and cultural tradition. The majority of the population of Franconia was pagan well into the Early Middle Ages, The first people to spread the Christian faith strongly were wandering Irish Anglo-Saxon monks in the early 7th century. Saint Kilian, who together with his companions, Saint Colman and Saint Totnan are considered to be the apostles to the Franks, suffering martyrdom in Würzburg in the late 7th century, probably did not encounter any pagans in the ducal court. It was probably Saint Boniface who carried the Christian mission deep into the heart of the ordinary population of Franconia.
In the mid-9th century the tribal Duchy of Franconia emerged, one of the five tribal or stem duchies of East Francia. The territory of the stem duchy was far bigger than modern Franconia and covered the whole of present-day Hesse, northern Baden-Württemberg, southern Thuringia, large parts of Rhineland-Palatinate and parts of the Franconian provinces in Bavaria. It extended as far west as Speyer, Mainz, and Worms (west of the Rhine) and even included Frankfurt ("ford of the Franks"). In the early 10th century, the Babenbergs and Conradines fought for power in Franconia. Ultimately this discord led to the Babenberg Feud which was fuelled and controlled by the crown. The outcome of this feud meant the loss of power for the Babenbergs, but indirectly resulted in the Conradines winning the crown of East Francia. Sometime around 906, Conrad succeeded in establishing his ducal hegemony over Franconia, but when the direct Carolingian male line failed in 911, Conrad was acclaimed King of the Germans, largely because of his weak position in his own duchy. Franconia, like Alamannia was fairly fragmented and the duke's position was often disputed between the chief families. Conrad had granted Franconia to his brother Eberhard on his succession, but when Eberhard rebelled against Otto I in 938, he was deposed from his duchy, which disintegrated in 939 on Eberhard's death into West or Rhenish Franconia (), and East Franconia ("") and was directly subordinated to the Reich. Only after that was the former considered to be under the sphere of the bishops of Würzburg as the true Franconia, its territory gradually shrinking to its present area.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of parts of present-day Upper and Middle Franconia, who were not under the control of Würzburg, probably also considered themselves to be Franks at that time, and certainly their dialect distinguished them from the inhabitants of Bavaria and Swabia.
Unlike the other stem duchies, Franconia became the homeland and power base of East Frankish and German kings after the Ottonians died out in 1024. As a result, in the High Middle Ages, the region did not become a strong regional force such as those which formed in Saxony, Bavaria and Swabia. In 1007, the later canonized Henry II founded the Bishopric of Bamberg and endowed it with rich estates. Bamberg became a favoured "Pfalz" and an important centre of the Empire. Because parts of the Bishopric of Würzburg also fell to Bamberg, Würzburg was enfeoffed several royal estates by King Henry II by way of compensation.
From the 12th century Nuremberg Castle was the seat of the Burgraviate of Nuremberg. The burgraviate was ruled from about 1190 by the Zollerns, the Franconian line of the later House of Hohenzollern, which provided the German emperors of the 19th and 20th century. Under the Hohenstaufen kings, Conrad III and Frederick Barbarossa, Franconia became the centre of power in the Empire. During the time when there was no emperor, the Interregnum (1254–1273), some territorial princes became ever more powerful. After the Interregnum, however, the rulers succeeded in re-establishing a stronger royal lordship in Franconia. Franconia soon played an important role again for the monarchy at the time of Rudolf of Habsburg; the itineraries of his successors showing their preference for the Rhine-Main region. In 1376 the Swabian League of Cities was founded and was joined later by several Franconian imperial cities. During the 13th century the Teutonic Order was formed, taking over its first possession in Franconia in 1209, the Bailiwick of Franconia. The foundation of many schools and hospitals and the construction of numerous churches and castles in this area goes back to the work of this Roman Catholic military order. The residence place of the bailiwick was at Ellingen until 1789 when it was transferred to today's Bad Mergentheim. Other orders such as the Knights Templar could not gain a foothold in Franconia; the Order of St. John worked in the Bishopric of Würzburg and had short term commands.
As of the 13th century, the following states, among others, had formed in the territory of the former Duchy:
On 2 July 1500 during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I, as part of the Imperial Reform Movement, the Empire was divided into Imperial Circles. This led in 1512 to the formation of the Franconian Circle. Seen from a modern perspective, the Franconian Circle may be viewed as an important basis for the sense of a common Franconian identity that exists today. The Franconian Circle also shaped the geographical limits of the present-day Franconia. In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, the Imperial Circle was severely affected by "Kleinstaaterei", the patchwork of tiny states in this region of Germany. As during the late Middle Ages, the bishops of Würzburg used the nominal title of Duke of Franconia during the time of the Imperial Circle. In 1559, the Franconian Circle was given jurisdiction over coinage ("Münzaufsicht") and, in 1572, was the only Circle to issue its own police ordinance.
Members of the Franconian Circle included the imperial cities, the prince-bishoprics, the Bailiwick of Franconia of the Teutonic Order and several counties. The Imperial Knights with their tiny territories, of which there was a particularly large number in Franconia, were outside the Circle assembly and, until 1806, formed the Franconian Knights Circle ("Fränkischer Ritterkreis") consisting of six Knights' Cantons. Because the extent of Franconia, already referred to above, is disputed, there were many areas that might be counted as part of Franconia today, that lay outside the Franconian Circle. For example, the area of Aschaffenburg belonged to Electoral Mainz and was a part of the Electoral Rhenish Circle, the area of Coburg belonged to the Upper Saxon Circle and the Heilbronn area to the Swabian Circle. In the 16th century, the College of Franconian Counts was founded to represent the interests of the counts in Franconia.
Franconia played an important role in the spread of the Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, Nuremberg being one of the places where the Luther Bible was printed. The majority of other Franconian imperial cities and imperial knights embraced the new confession. In the course of the counter-reformation several regions of Franconia returned to Catholicism, however, and there was also an increase in witch trials. In addition to Lutheranism, the radical reformatory baptist movement spread early on across the Franconian area. Important Baptist centres were Königsberg and Nuremberg.
In 1525, the burden of heavy taxation and socage combined with new, liberal ideas that chimed with the Reformation movement, unleashed the German Peasants' War. The Würzburg area was particularly hard hit with numerous castles and monasteries being burned down. In the end, however, the uprisings were suppressed and for centuries the lowest strata of society were excluded from all political activity.
From 1552, Margrave Albert Alcibiades attempted to break the supremacy of the mighty imperial city of Nuremberg and to secularise the ecclesial estates in the Second Margrave War, to create a duchy over which he would rule. Large areas of Franconia were eventually devastated in the fighting until King Ferdinand I together with several dukes and princes decided to overthrow Albert.
In 1608, the reformed princes merged into a so-called Union within the Empire. In Franconia, the margraves of Ansbach and Bayreuth as well as the imperial cities were part of this alliance. The Catholic side responded in 1609 with a counter-alliance, the League. The conflicts between the two camps ultimately resulted in the Thirty Years' War, which was the greatest strain on the cohesion of the Franconian Circle Initially, Franconia was not a theatre of war, although marauding armies repeatedly crossed its territory. However, in 1631, Swedish troops under Gustavus Adolphus advanced into Franconia and established a large encampment in summer 1632 around Nuremberg. However, the Swedes lost the Battle of the Alte Veste against Wallenstein's troops and eventually withdrew. Franconia was one of the poorest regions in the Empire and lost its imperial political significance. During the course of the war, about half the local population lost their lives. To compensate for these losses about 150,000 displaced Protestants settled in Protestant areas, including Austrian exiles.
Franconia never developed into a unified territorial state, because the patchwork quilt of small states ("Kleinstaaterei") survived the Middle Ages and lasted until the 18th century. As a result, the Franconian Circle had the important task of preserving peace, preventing abuses and to repairing war damage and had a regulatory role in the region until the end of the Holy Roman Empire. Until the War of the Spanish Succession, the Circle had become an almost independent organization and joined the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV as an almost sovereign state. The Circle also developed early forms of a welfare state. It also played a major role in the control of disease during the 16th and 17th centuries. After Charles Alexander abdicated in 1792, the former margraviates of Ansbach and Bayreuth were annexed by Prussia. Karl August Freiherr von Hardenberg was appointed as governor of these areas by Prussia.
Most of modern-day Franconia became part of Bavaria in 1803 thanks to Bavaria's alliance with Napoleon. Culturally it is in many ways different from Bavaria proper ("Altbayern", Old Bavaria), however. The ancient name was resurrected in 1837 by Ludwig I of Bavaria. During the Nazi period, Bavaria was broken up into several different Gaue, including Franconia and Main-Franconia.
In 1803, what was to become the Kingdom of Bavaria was given large parts of Franconia through the enactment of the "Reichsdeputationshauptschluss" under pressure from Napoleon for secularization and mediatisation. In 1806, the Act of Confederation led to stronger ties between Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and other areas with France, whereupon the Holy Roman Empire including the Franconian Circle fell apart. As a reward Bavaria was promised other estates, including the city of Nuremberg. In the so-called "Rittersturm" of 1803, Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden seized the territories of the Imperial Knights and Franconian nobility, whose estates were often no bigger than a few parishes, even though the "Reichsdeputationshauptschluss" had not authorised this. In 1806 and 1810, Prussia had to release the territories of Ansbach and Bayreuth, which it had annexed in 1792, to Bavaria, whereby Prussia lost its supremacy in the region.
In 1814, as a result of the Congress of Vienna, the territories of the Principality of Aschaffenburg and Grand Duchy of Würzburg went to the Kingdom of Bavaria. In order to merge the patchwork quilt of small states in Franconia and Swabia into a greater Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph Montgelas reformed the political structure. Out of this in January 1838 emerged the Franconian provinces with their present names of Middle, Upper and Lower Franconia. . Considerable resentment arose in parts of the Franconian territories over their new membership of Bavaria. There were liberal demands for republican structures which erupted in the revolts of 1848 and 1849 and the Gaibach Festival in 1832. On the one hand the reconciliation policy of the Wittelsbachs and Montgelas' aforementioned policy of unification, and, on the other hand, the inclusion of Bavaria in the German Empire in 1871, which weakened her power Bavaria slightly, the conflict between Franconia and Bavaria eased considerably.
From 1836 to 1846, the Kingdom of Bavaria built the Ludwig Canal from Bamberg to Kelheim, which was only abandoned in 1950. However, the canal lost much of its importance shortly after the arrival of the railways. Between 1843 and 1854, the Ludwig South-North Railway was established within Franconia, which ran from Lindau on Lake Constance via Nuremberg, Bamberg and Kulmbach to Hof. The first locomotive to run on German soil steamed 1835 from Nuremberg to Fürth on 7 December 1835.
After the First World War the monarchy in Bavaria was abolished, but the state could not agree on a compromise between a Soviet system and parliamentarianism. This caused fighting between the opposing camps and the then prime minister was shot. As a result, the government fled to Bamberg in 1919, where the Bamberg Constitution was adopted while, in Munich, the Bavarian Soviet Republic reigned briefly. In 1919 the Free State of Coburg voted in a referendum against joining Thuringia and was instead united with Bavaria on 1 July 1920.
During the Nazi era Nuremberg played a prominent role in the self-expression of the National Socialists as the permanent seat of the Nazi Party. Gunzenhausen made its mark as one of the first towns in the Reich itself to exercise discrimination against the Jewish population. The first Hitler Monument in Germany was established there in April 1933. On 25 March 1934 the first anti-Jewish pogrom in Bavaria took place in Gunzenhausen. The attack brought the town negative press coverage worldwide. On 15 September, a Reichstag was specially convened in Nuremberg for the purpose of passing the Nuremberg Laws, under which the antisemitic ideology of the Nazis became a legal basis for such actions.
Like all parts of the German Reich, Franconia was badly affected by Allied air raids. Nuremberg, as a major industrial centre and transportation hub, was hit particularly hard. Between 1940 and 1945 the city was the target of dozens of air raids. Many other places were also affected by air raids. For example, the air raid on 4 December 1944 on Heilbronn and the bombing of Würzburg on 16 March 1945, in which both old towns were almost completely destroyed, was a disaster for both cities. By contrast, the old town of Bamberg was almost completely spared. In order to protect cultural artefacts, the historic art bunker was built below Nuremberg Castle. In the closing stages of the Second World War, at the end of March and April 1945, Franconian towns and cities were captured by formations of the US Army who advanced from the west after the failure of the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Nordwind. The Battle of Nuremberg lasted five days and resulted in at least 901 deaths. The Battle of Crailsheim lasted 16 days, the Battle of Würzburg seven and the Battle of Merkendorf three days.
Following the unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, Bavarian Franconia became part of the American zone of occupation; whilst South Thuringia, with the exception of smaller enclaves like Ostheim, became part of the Soviet zone and the Franconian parts of today's Baden-Württemberg also went to the American zone The most important part of the Allied prosecution programme against leaders of the Nazi regime were the Nuremberg Trials against leaders of the German Empire during the Nazi era, held from 20 November 1945 to 14 April 1949. The Nuremberg Trials are considered a breakthrough for the principle that, for a core set of crimes, there is no immunity from prosecution. For the first time, the representatives of a sovereign state were held accountable for their actions. In autumn 1946, the Free State of Bavaria was reconstituted with the enactment of the Bavarian Constitution.
The state of Württemberg-Baden was founded on 19 September 1945. On 25 April 1952 this state merged with Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern (both from the former French occupation zone) to create the present state of Baden-Württemberg. On 1 December 1945 the state of Hesse was founded. Beginning in 1945, refugees and displaced persons from Eastern Europe were settled particularly in rural areas. After 1945, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg managed the transition from economies that were predominantly agriculture to become leading industrial states in the so-called "Wirtschaftswunder". In Lower and Upper Franconia, there was still the problem, however, of the zone along the Inner German Border which was a long way from the markets for its agricultural produce, and was affected by migration and relatively high unemployment, which is why these areas received special support from federal and state governments.
By contrast, the state of Thuringia was restored by the Soviets in 1945. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany, was founded. In 1952 in the course of the 1952 administrative reform in East Germany, the state of Thuringia was relieved of its function. The Soviet occupying forces exacted a high level of reparations (especially the dismantling of industrial facilities) which made the initial economic conditions in East Germany very difficult. Along with the failed economic policies of the GDR, this led to a general frustration that fuelled the uprising of 17 June. There were protests in the Franconian territories too, for example in Schmalkalden. The village of Mödlareuth became famous because, for 41 years, it was divided by the Inner German Border and was nicknamed 'Little Berlin. After "Die Wende", the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and reunification on 3 October 1990, made possible mainly by mass demonstrations in East Germany and local exodus of East Germans, the state of Thuringia was reformed with effect from 14 October 1990.
In the years from 1971 to 1980 an administrative reform was carried out in Bavaria with the aim of creating more efficient municipalities ("Gemeinden") and counties ("Landkreise"). Against sometimes great protests by the population, the number of municipalities was reduced by a third and the number of counties by about a half. Among the changes was the transfer of the Middle Franconian county of Eichstätt to Upper Bavaria. On 18 May 2006, the Bavarian Landtag approved the introduction of Franconia Day ("Tag der Franken") in the Franconian territories of the free state.
Since "Die Wende", new markets have opened up for the Franconian region of Bavaria in the new (formerly East German) federal states and the Czech Republic, enabling the economy to recover. Today, Franconia is in the centre of the EU (at Oberwestern near Westerngrund; )
While Old Bavaria is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, Franconia is a mixed area. Lower Franconia and the western half of Upper Franconia (Bamberg, Lichtenfels, Kronach) is predominantly Catholic, while most of Middle and the eastern half of Upper Franconia (Bayreuth, Hof, Kulmbach) are predominantly Protestant (Evangelical Church in Germany). The city of Fürth in Middle Franconia historically (before the Nazi era) had a large Jewish population; Henry Kissinger was born there.
A large part of the population of Franconia, which has a population of five million, consider themselves Franconians ("Franken", in German homonymous with the name of the historical Franks), a sub-ethnic group of the German people alongside Alemanni, Swabians, Bavarians, Thuringians and Saxons.
Such an ethnic identity is generally not shared by other parts of the Franconian-speaking area (members of which may identify as Rhine Franconians ("Rheinfranken") or Moselle Franconians ("Moselfranken").
The Free State of Bavaria counts Franconians as one of the "four tribes of Bavaria" ("vier Stämme Bayerns"), alongside Bavarians, Swabians and Sudeten Germans.
With the exception of Heilbronn, all cities in Franconia and all towns with a population of over 50,000 are within the Free State of Bavaria. The five cities of Franconia are Nuremberg, Würzburg, Fürth, Heilbronn and Erlangen. In Middle Franconia, in the metropolitan region of Nuremberg there is a densely populated urban area consisting of Nuremberg, Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach. Nuremberg is the fourteenth largest city in Germany and the second largest in Bavaria.
The largest settlements in Baden-Württemberg's Franconian region are Heilbronn (pop: 117,531), Schwäbisch Hall (37,096) and Crailsheim (32,417). The largest places in the Thuringian part are Suhl (35,665), Sonneberg (23,796) and Meiningen (20,966). The largest place in the Hessian part of Franconia is Gersfeld with just 5,512 inhabitants. The largest cities within Bavaria are Nuremberg (495,121), Würzburg (124,577), Fürth (118,358) and Erlangen (105,412).
In the Middle Ages Franconia, with its numerous towns, was separate and not part of other territories such as the Duchy of Bavaria. In the late medieval period it was dominated by mainly smaller towns with a few hundred to a thousand inhabitants, whose size barely distinguished them from the villages. Many towns grew up along large rivers or were founded by the prince-bishops and nobility. Even the Hohenstaufens operated in many towns, most of which later became Imperial Cities with a strong orientation towards Nuremberg. The smallest town in Franconia is Thuringia's Ummerstadt with 487 inhabitants.
German is the official language and also the "lingua franca". Numerous other languages are spoken that come from other language regions or the native countries of immigrants.
East Franconian German, the dialect spoken in Franconia, is very different from the Austro-Bavarian dialect. Most Franconians do not call themselves Bavarians. Even though there is no Franconian state, red and white are regarded as the state colours ("Landesfarben") of Franconia.
The proportion of Roman Catholics and Protestants among the population of Franconia is roughly the same, but varies from region to region. Large areas of Middle and Upper Franconia are mainly Protestant. The denominational orientation today still reflects the territorial structure of Franconia at the time of the Franconian Circle. For example, regions, that used to be under the care of the bishoprics of Bamberg, Würzburg and Eichstätt, are mainly Catholic today. On the other hand, all former territories of the imperial cities and the margraviates of Ansbach and Bayreuth have remained mainly Lutheran. The region around the city of Erlangen, which belonged to the Margraviate of Bayreuth, was a refuge for the Huguenots who fled there after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in France. Following the success of the Reformation in Nuremberg under Andreas Osiander, it had been an exclusively Protestant imperial city and belonged to the Protestant league of imperial states, the Corpus Evangelicorum, within the "Reichstag". Subsequent historical events such as the stream of refugees after the Second World War and the increasing mobility of the population has since blurred denominational geographical boundaries, however.
The influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe has also seen the establishment of an Orthodox community in Franconia. The Romanian Orthodox Metropolis of Germany, Central and Northern Europe has its headquarters in Nuremberg.
Before the Nazi era Franconia was as a region with significant Jewish communities, most of whom were Ashkenazi Jews. The first Jewish communities appeared in Franconia in the 12th and 13th centuries and thus later than, for example, in Regensburg. In the Middle Ages, Franconia was a stronghold of Torah studies. But Franconia also began to exclude the Jewish populations particularly early on. For example, there were two Jewish massacres - the Rintfleisch massacres of 1298 and the Armleder Uprising of 1336-1338 - and in the 15th and 16th centuries many cities exiled their Jewish populations, which is why many Jews settled in rural communities. Franconia also rose to early prominence in the discrimination of Jews during the Nazi era. One of the first casualties of the organized Nazi persecution of Jews took place on 21 March in Künzelsau and on 25/26 March 1933 in Creglingen, where police and SA troops under the leadership of "Standartenführer" Fritz Klein led a so-called "weapons search operations".
Whilst, in 1818, about 65 per cent of Bavarian Jews lived in the Bavarian part of Franconia, today there are only Jewish communities in Bamberg, Bayreuth, Erlangen, Fürth, Hof, Nuremberg and Würzburg and in Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg.
Adherents of Islam continue to grow, especially in the larger cities, due to the influx of "gastarbeiters" and other immigrants from Muslim countries. As a result, many 'backyard mosques' ("Hinterhofmoscheen") have sprung up, which are gradually being replaced by purpose-built mosques.
Franconia has almost 300 small breweries. The northwestern parts, the areas around river Main called Franconian wine region also produce a lot of wine. Food typical for the region includes Bratwurst (especially the famous small Nuremberger Bratwurst), "Schäuferla" (roast pork shoulder), Sauerbraten, dumplings, potato salad (typically made with broth), fried carp, Grupfder (seasoned cheese spread), "Presssack" (a type of Head cheese: pressed or jellied pork trimmings, like tongue, cheeks, etc.). Lebkuchen are a traditional type of biscuit, and Küchla is a sort of sweet fried dough.
The tourism industry stresses the romantic character of Franconia. Arguments for this include the picturesque countryside and the many historic buildings that present the long history and culture of the region., In addition, the relatively few industrial towns outside of the main industrial cities is underlined. Franconian wine, the rich tradition of beer brewing and local culinary specialities, such as "Lebküchnerei" or gingerbread baking, are also seen as a draw that is worth marketing, and which make Franconia a popular tourist destination in Germany. The Romantic Road, the best known German theme route, links several of the tourist high points in western Franconia. The Castle Road runs through the whole Franconian region with its numerous castles and other medieval structures.
The Franconian countryside is suitable for many sporting activities. For example, the Franconian Way, Celtic Way and the hiking trail network of the Altmühl Valley and the Central Uplands offer a lot of hiking options.
Cycling along the large rivers is very popular, for example along the Main Cycleway, which was the first German long distance cycleway to be awarded five starts by the Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club (ADFC). The Tauber Valley Cycleway, a 101 kilometre-long cycle trail in Tauber Franconia, was the second German long distance cycleway to receive five stars.
In the Fichtel Mountains and the Franconian Forest, many tourists come for making hiking tours. In winter people can do skiing f. e. on the Ochsenkopf. Very popular are raftings on the Wild Rodach in Wallenfels in the Franconian Forest. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11401 |
FileMan
FileMan is a set of utilities written by George Timson in the late 1970s and early 1980s, using MUMPS, which provide a meta-data function for MUMPS applications. The FileMan utilities allow the definition of data structures, menus and security, reports, and forms, allowing someone to set up applications without tremendous experience in the MUMPS programming language.
FileMan was designed to support the complex information storage and processing needs of hospitals. It was based on an active data dictionary that was able to invoke the full interpretive power of the MUMPS language from within a data reference. For example, a field called "Length of Stay" could invoke a MUMPS expression that would process the various dates, transfers, and discharges that would then be returned as if it were stored as a fixed data element.
MUMPS differs from many languages in its handling of the null string. A large percentage of the FileMan internal data structures are null strings, in which the information is located in the name of the "nothing" being referenced. This approach does not fit the traditional Relational Data Model.
Its first use was in the development of medical applications for the Veterans Administration, now called the Department of Veterans Affairs, a branch of the United States Government.
Since it was a work created by the US federal government, a copyright cannot be placed on the source code, making the source code in the public domain. Because of this, it has been used for rapid development of applications across a number of organizations, including commercial products.
FileMan may be used standalone, or may be used with the VA Kernel, which provides an operating system neutral environment for applications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11402 |
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Such requests are made most often by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Congress created FISA and its court as a result of the recommendations by the U.S. Senate's Church Committee.
From its opening in 1978 until 2009, the court was housed on the sixth floor of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building. Since 2009, the court has been relocated to the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C.
In 2013, a top-secret order issued by the court, which was later leaked to the media from documents culled by Edward Snowden, required a subsidiary of Verizon to provide a daily, on-going feed of all call detail recordsincluding those for domestic callsto the NSA.
Each application for one of these surveillance warrants (called a FISA warrant) is made before an individual judge of the court. The court may allow third parties to submit briefs as "amici curiae". When the U.S. Attorney General determines that an emergency exists, the Attorney General may authorize the emergency employment of electronic surveillance before obtaining the necessary authorization from the FISC, if the Attorney General or their designee notifies a judge of the court at the time of authorization and applies for a warrant as soon as practicable but not more than seven days after authorization of such surveillance, as required by .
If an application is denied by one judge of the court, the federal government is not allowed to make the same application to a different judge of the court, but may appeal to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Such appeals are rare: the first appeal from the FISC to the Court of Review was made in 2002 ("In re Sealed Case No. 02-001"), 24 years after the founding of the court.
Also rare is for FISA warrant requests to be turned down. During the 25 years from 1979 to 2004, 18,742 warrants were granted, while only four were rejected. Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being submitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few were before the year 2000. During the next eight years, from 2004 to 2012, there were over 15,100 additional warrants granted, and another seven being rejected. Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests. This does not include the number of warrants that were modified by the FISA court.
Notes:
On May 17, 2002, the court rebuffed Attorney General John Ashcroft, releasing an opinion that alleged that the FBI and Justice Department officials had "supplied erroneous information to the court" in more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. Whether this rejection was related to the court starting to require modification of significantly more requests in 2003 is unknown.
On December 16, 2005, "The New York Times" reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002. On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the court, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance, and later, in the wake of the Snowden leaks of 2013, criticized the court-sanctioned expansion of the scope of government surveillance and its being allowed to craft a secret body of law. The government's apparent circumvention of the court started prior to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests.
In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases. The searches take place under a surveillance program Congress authorized in 2008 under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under that law, the target must be a foreigner "reasonably believed" to be outside the United States, and the court must approve the targeting procedures in an order good for one year. But a warrant for each target would thus no longer be required. That means that communications with Americans could be picked up without a court first determining that there is probable cause that the people they were talking to were terrorists, spies or "foreign powers". The FISC also extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years with an extension possible for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purposes. Both measures were done without public debate or any specific authority from Congress.
Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the court is a "secret court" – its hearings are closed to the public. While records of the proceedings are kept, they also are unavailable to the public, although copies of some records with classified information redacted have been made public. Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, usually only attorneys licensed to practice in front of the US government are permitted to appear before the court. Because of the nature of the matters heard before it, court hearings may need to take place at any time of day or night, weekdays or weekends; thus, at least one judge must be "on call" at all times to hear evidence and decide whether or not to issue a warrant.
A heavily redacted version of a 2008 appeal by Yahoo! of an order issued with respect to NSA's PRISM program had been published for the edification of other potential appellants. The identity of the appellant was declassified in June 2013.
There has been growing criticism of the court since the September 11, 2001 attacks. This is partly because the court sits "ex parte" – in other words, in the absence of anyone but the judge and the government present at the hearings. This, combined with the minimal number of requests that are rejected by the court has led experts to characterize it as a rubber stamp (former National Security Agency analyst Russ Tice called it a "kangaroo court with a rubber stamp"). The accusation of being a "rubber stamp" was rejected by FISA Court president Reggie B. Walton who wrote in a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy: "The annual statistics provided to Congress by the Attorney General ... – frequently cited to in press reports as a suggestion that the Court's approval rate of application is over 99% – reflect only the number of "final" applications submitted to and acted on by the Court. These statistics do not reflect the fact that many applications are altered to prior or final submission or even withheld from final submission entirely, often after an indication that a judge would not approve them." He added: "There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize." In a following letter Walton stated that the government had revamped 24.4% of its requests in the face of court questions and demands in time from July 1, 2013 to September 30, 2013. This figure became available after Walton decided in the summer of 2013 that the FISC would begin keeping its own tally of how Justice Department warrant applications for electronic surveillance fared – and would track for the first time when the government withdrew or resubmitted those applications with changes. Some requests are modified by the court but ultimately granted, while the percentage of denied requests is statistically negligible (11 denied requests out of around 34,000 granted in 35 years – equivalent to 0.03%). The accusation that the FISC is a "rubber stamp" court was also rejected by Robert S. Litt (General Counsel of Office of the Director of National Intelligence): "When [the Government] prepares an application for [a section 215 order, it] first submit[s] to the [FISC] what's called a "read copy", which the court staff will review and comment on. [A]nd they will almost invariably come back with questions, concerns, problems that they see. And there is an iterative process back and forth between the Government and the [FISC] to take care of those concerns so that at the end of the day, we're confident that we're presenting something that the [FISC] will approve. That is hardly a rubber stamp. It's rather extensive and serious judicial oversight of this process."
A 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee "Interim Report on FBI Oversight in the 107th Congress by the Senate Judiciary Committee: FISA Implementation Failures" cited the "unnecessary secrecy" of the court among its "most important conclusions":
In a July 2013 interview, Senator and privacy advocate Ron Wyden described the FISC warrant process as "the most one-sided legal process in the United States". "I don't know of any other legal system or court that really doesn't highlight anything except one point of view", he said. Later in the interview he said Congress should seek to "diversify some of the thinking on the court".
Elizabeth Gotein, a co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, has criticized the court as being too compromised to be an impartial tribunal that oversees the work of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence activities. Since the court meets in secret, hears only the arguments of the government prior to deciding a case, and its rulings cannot be appealed or even reviewed by the public, she has argued that: "Like any other group that meets in secret behind closed doors with only one constituency appearing before them, they're subject to capture and bias."
A related bias of the court results from what critics such as Julian Sanchez, a scholar at the Cato Institute, have described as the near certainty of the polarization or groupthink of the judges of the court. Since all of the judges are appointed by the same person (the Chief Justice of the United States), hear no opposing testimony and feel no pressure from colleagues or the public to moderate their rulings, Sanchez claims that "group polarization is almost a certainty", adding that "there's the real possibility that these judges become more extreme over time, even when they had only a mild bias to begin with".
The court's judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States without confirmation or oversight by the U.S. Congress. This gives the chief justice the ability to appoint like-minded judges and create a court without diversity. "The judges are hand-picked by someone who, through his votes on the Supreme Court, we have come to learn has a particular view on civil liberties and law enforcement", Theodore Ruger, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said with respect to Chief Justice John Roberts. "The way the FISA is set up, it gives him unchecked authority to put judges on the court who feel the same way he does." And Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, added, "Since FISA was enacted in 1978, we've had three chief justices, and they have all been conservative Republicans, so I think one can worry that there is insufficient diversity." Since May 2014, however, four of the five judges appointed by Chief Justice Roberts to the FISA Court were appointed to their prior federal court positions by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
There are some reform proposals. Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut proposed that each of the chief judges of the 12 major appeals courts select a district judge for the surveillance court; the chief justice would still pick the review panel that hears rare appeals of the court's decisions, but six other Supreme Court justices would have to sign off. Another proposal authored by Representative Adam Schiff of California would give the president the power to nominate judges for the court, subject to Senate approval, while Representative Steve Cohen proposed that Congressional leaders pick eight of the court's members.
Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, has argued that, without having to seek the approval of the court (which he has said merely reviews certifications to ensure that they and not the surveillance itself comply with the various statutory requirements), the U.S. Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence can engage in sweeping programmatic surveillance for one year at a time. There are procedures used by the NSA to target non-U.S. persons and procedures used by the NSA to minimize data collection from U.S. persons. These court-approved policies allow the NSA to do the following:
Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU's deputy legal director, said in light of revelations that the government secured telephone records from Verizon and Internet data from some of the largest providers that safeguards that are supposed to be protecting individual privacy are not working. Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that when courts make mistakes, the losing party has the right to appeal and the erroneous decision is reversed. "That process cannot happen when a secret court considers a case with only one party before it."
According to "The Guardian", "The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or email information without warrants". Glenn Greenwald, who published details of the PRISM surveillance program, explained:
Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole and NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis cited the court's oversight in defending the constitutionality of the NSA's surveillance activities before during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2013. Representative Jerrold Nadler, challenged Cole's defense of the program's constitutionality, and he said the secrecy in which the court functioned negated the validity of its review. "The fact that a secret court unaccountable to public knowledge of what it's doing ... may join you in misusing or abusing the statutes is of no comfort whatsoever", Nadler said. Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, said the secrecy that comes along with national security makes it difficult to evaluate how the administration carries out the wide authority Congress has given it. "FISA court judges hear all of this and they think it's legal," Kerr said. "What we really don't know, though, are what the FISA court's opinions say."
In July 2013, "The New York Times" published disclosures from anonymous government whistleblowers of secret law written by the court holding that vast collections of data on all Americans (even those not connected in any way to foreign enemies) amassed by the NSA do not violate the warrant requirements of Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It reported that anyone suspected of being involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage or cyber-attacks, according to the court, may be considered a legitimate target for warrantless surveillance. Acting like a parallel U.S. Supreme Court, the court greatly broadened the "special-needs" exception to do so.
The newspaper reported that in "more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans". It also wrote, with respect to the court:
The "special-needs" doctrine is an exemption to the Fourth Amendment's Warrants Clause which commands that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be and seized". The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized an exemption to the Warrants Clause "outside the foreign intelligence context, in so-called 'special-needs' cases. In those cases, the Court excused compliance with the Warrant Clause when the purpose behind the governmental action went beyond routine law enforcement and insisting upon a warrant would materially interfere with the accomplishment of that purpose. See, "Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton", 515 U.S. 646, 653 (1995) (upholding drug testing of highschool athletes and explaining that the exception to the warrant requirement applied "when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement[s] impracticable (quoting "Griffin v. Wisconsin", 483 U.S. 868, 873 (1987))); "Skinner v. Ry. Labor Execs. Ass'n", 489 U.S. 602, 620 (1989) (upholding regulations instituting drug and alcohol testing of railroad workers for safety reasons); cf. "Terry v. Ohio", 392 U.S. 1, 23-24 (1968) (upholding pat-frisk for weapons to protect officer safety during investigatory stop)". The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review concluded on August 22, 2008, in the case "In re Directives [redacted text] Pursuant to Section 105B of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act", that the "special-needs" doctrine applied by analogy to justify a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement for surveillance undertaken for national security purposes and directed at a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.
James Robertson a former judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who, in 2004, ruled against the Bush administration in the "Hamdan v. Rumsfeld" case, and also served on the FISC for three years between 2002 and 2005 said he was "frankly stunned" by the newspaper's report that court rulings had created a new body of law broadening the ability of the NSA to use its surveillance programs to target not only terrorists but suspects in cases involving espionage, cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction. Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, said he was troubled by the idea that the court is creating a significant body of law without hearing from anyone outside the government, forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the American justice system. He said, "That whole notion is missing in this process".
The court concluded that mass collection of telephone metadata (including the time of phone calls and numbers dialed) does not violate the Fourth Amendment as long as the government establishes a valid reason under national security regulations before taking the next step of actually examining the contents of an American's communications. This concept is rooted partly in the special needs doctrine. "The basic idea is that it's O.K. to create this huge pond of data", an unnamed U.S. official said, "but you have to establish a reason to stick your pole in the water and start fishing". Under the new procedures passed by the U.S. Congress in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, even the collection of metadata must be considered "relevant" to a terrorism investigation or other intelligence activities. The court has indicated that while individual pieces of data may not appear "relevant" to a terrorism investigation, the total picture that the bits of data create may in fact be relevant, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the decisions.
A secret ruling made by the court that redefined the single word "relevant" enabled the NSA to gather phone data on millions of Americans. In classified orders starting in the mid-2000s, the court accepted that "relevant" could be broadened to permit an entire database of records on millions of people, in contrast to a more conservative interpretation widely applied in criminal cases, in which only some of those records would likely be allowed. Under the Patriot Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can require businesses to hand over "tangible things", including "records", as long as the FBI shows it is reasonable to believe the things are "relevant to an authorized investigation" into international terrorism or foreign intelligence activities. The history of the word "relevant" is key to understanding that passage. The Supreme Court in 1991 said things are "relevant" if there is a "reasonable possibility" that they will produce information related to the subject of the investigation. In criminal cases, courts previously have found that very large sets of information did not meet the relevance standard because significant portions innocent people's information would not be pertinent. But the court has developed separate precedents, centered on the idea that investigations to prevent national-security threats are different from ordinary criminal cases. The court's rulings on such matters are classified and almost impossible to challenge because of the secret nature of the proceedings. According to the court, the special nature of national-security and terrorism-prevention cases means "relevant" can have a broader meaning for those investigations, say people familiar with the rulings.
People familiar with the system that uses phone records in investigations have said that the court's novel legal theories allow the system to include bulk phone records, as long as there are privacy safeguards to limit searches. NSA analysts may query the database only "when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization", according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The NSA database includes data about people's phone calls numbers dialed, how long a call lasted but not the actual conversations. According to Supreme Court rulings, a phone call's content is covered by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which restricts unreasonable searches, but the other types of data are not.
"Relevant" has long been a broad standard, but the way the court is interpreting it, to mean, in effect, "everything", is new, said Mark Eckenwiler, a lawyer who until December 2012 was the Justice Department's primary authority on federal criminal surveillance law. "I think it's a stretch" of previous federal legal interpretations, said Eckenwiler. If a federal attorney "served a grand-jury subpoena for such a broad class of records in a criminal investigation, he or she would be laughed out of court". Given the traditional legal definition of relevant, Timothy Edgar, a former top privacy lawyer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council in the Bush and Obama administrations, noted it is "a fair point" to say that someone reading the law might believe it refers to "individualized requests" or "requests in small batches, rather than in bulk database form". From that standpoint, Edgar said, the reinterpretation of relevant amounts to "secret law".
In June 2013, a copy of a top-secret warrant, issued by the court on April 25, 2013, was leaked to London's "The Guardian" newspaper by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. That warrant orders Verizon Business Network Services to provide a daily feed to the NSA containing "telephony metadata" – comprehensive call detail records, including location data – about all calls in its system, including those that occur "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls". The Obama administration published on July 31, 2013 a FISA Court ruling supporting an earlier order requiring a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all of its customers' phone logs for a three-month period, with rules that must be followed when accessing the data.
The document leaked to "The Guardian" acted as a "smoking gun" and sparked a public outcry of criticism and complaints that the court exceeded its authority and violated the Fourth Amendment by issuing general warrants. "The Washington Post" then reported that it knew of other orders, and that the court had been issuing such orders, to all telecommunication companies, every three months since May 24, 2006.
Since the telephone metadata program was revealed, the intelligence community, some members of Congress, and the Obama administration have defended its legality and use. Most of these defenses involve the 1979 Supreme Court decision "Smith v. Maryland" which established that people do not have a "reasonable expectation" of privacy for electronic metadata held by third parties like a cellphone provider. That data is not considered "content", theoretically giving law enforcement more flexibility in collecting it.
On July 19, 2013, the court renewed the permission for the NSA to collect Verizon customer records en masse. The U.S. government was relying on a part of American case law known as the "third-party doctrine". This notion said that when a person has voluntarily disclosed information to a third party — in this case, the telephony metadata — the customer no longer has a reasonable expectation of privacy over the numbers dialed nor their duration. Therefore, this doctrine argued, such metadata can be accessed by law enforcement with essentially no problem. The content of communications are, however, subject to the Fourth Amendment. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held in October 2011, citing multiple Supreme Court precedents, that the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to the contents of all communications, whatever the means, because "a person's private communications are akin to personal papers".
Former FISC judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who provided the legal foundation for the NSA amassing a database of all Americans' phone records, told associates in the summer of 2013 that she wanted her legal argument out. Rulings for the plaintiff in cases brought by the ACLU on September 10 and 12, 2013, prompted James Clapper to concede that the government had overreached in its covert surveillance under part 215 of FISA and that the Act would likely be amended to reflect Congressional concern.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a customer of Verizon, asked on November 22, 2013 a federal district court in Lower Manhattan, New York to end the NSA phone call data collection program. The ACLU argued that the program violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of privacy and information as well as exceeding the scope of its authorizing legislation, Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The U.S. government countered that the program is constitutional and that Congress was fully informed when it authorized and reauthorized Section 215. Moreover, a government lawyer said, the ACLU has no standing to bring the case because it cannot prove that its members have been harmed by the NSA's use of the data.
In November 2016, Louise Mensch reported on the news website "Heat Street" that, after an initial June 2016 FBI request was denied, the FISA court had granted a more narrowly-focused October request from the FBI "to examine the activities of 'U.S. persons' in Donald Trump's campaign with ties to Russia". On 12 January 2017, BBC journalist Paul Wood reported that, in response to an April 2016 tip from a foreign intelligence agency to the CIA about "money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign", a joint taskforce had been established including representatives of the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency. In June 2016, lawyers from the Department of Justice applied to the FISA court for "permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks". According to Wood, this application was rejected, as was a more narrowly focused request in July, and the order was finally granted by a different FISA judge on 15 October, three weeks before the presidential election. On January 19, "The New York Times" reported that one of its sources had claimed "intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House".
On 13 March, the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded that the Trump administration provide evidence to support the President Trump's claim that former President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. On 16 March, the Committee reported that they had seen no evidence to support Trump's accusation that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign.
On Fox News on 14 March, commentator Andrew Napolitano said, "Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. ... He used GCHQ. What is that? It's the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. Simply by saying to them, 'The president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump's conversations' he's able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this." Two days later, on 16 March, White House press spokesperson, Sean Spicer, read this claim to the press. A GCHQ spokesman responded: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored." On 17 March, the U.S. issued a formal apology to the United Kingdom for the accusation.
On April 11, "The Washington Post" reported that the FBI had been granted a FISA warrant in the summer of 2016 to monitor then-Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page. According to the report, "The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page's communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials." The report also states that the warrant has been renewed multiple times since its first issue. These warrants were criticized in the controversial Nunes memo for allegedly being issued on the basis of evidence gathered by politically motivated sources.
When the court was founded, it was composed of seven federal district judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States, each serving a seven-year term, with one judge being appointed each year. In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act expanded the court from seven to eleven judges, and required that at least three of the Court's judges live within of the District of Columbia. No judge may be appointed to this court more than once, and no judge may be appointed to both the Court of Review and the FISA court.
Chief Justice John Roberts has appointed all of the current judges.
Notes
References | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11404 |
FC Den Bosch
FC Den Bosch () is a football club from 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.
They were founded 18 August 1965, as FC Den Bosch/BVV. They are the successor of BVV (1906) and Wilhelmina (1890). Their stadium is called 'De Vliert', an 8,500 all-seater. Ruud van Nistelrooy started his professional career at this club. In 2005 they finished bottom of the Eredivisie and were relegated and currently compete in the Eerste Divisie.
The club were founded on 18 August 1965 as the successor to BVV, who were formed in 1906 and Dutch champions in 1948. They were champions of the 1965–66 Tweede Divisie B., They merged with Wilhelmina (1890) on 10 May 1967 to form F.C. Den Bosch '67, before being crowned champions of 1970–71 Eerste Divisie to secure promotion to the Eredivise for the first time in their history. Their first season in the Eredivisie, the 1971–72 season saw Den Bosch struggle with relegation all season, but they would eventually finish 16th, three points above the relegation zone, following a late-season upturn in form. Despite this the club lasted just two seasons in the Eredivise as they finished bottom of the 1972–73 Eredivisie and were relegated back to the Eerste Divisie.
Den Bosch struggled following their return to the Eerste Divisie, failing to finish in the top half until the 1977–78 season. However, come the turn of the decade, Den Bosch were consistently challenging for promotion, with the club competing in the promotion play-off for the 1980–81 season, only to lose out to De Graafschap. However, they would win the promotion play-offs for the 1982–83 season, marking their return to the Eredivisie. The clubs first season back in the Eredivisie saw them finish 10th in the Eredivisie, before the next two seasons saw 6th place finishes for the club, with the latter seeing Den Bosch finish just 3 points off the UEFA Cup qualification places. This success did not last though as they were relegated back to the Eerste Divisie in the 1989–90 season, shortly after the club was renamed B.V.V. Den Bosch in 1988.
The club saw promotions to the Eredivisie in the 1991–92, 1998–99, 2000–01 and the 2003–04 seasons (the latter three as champions), only to be relegated back to the Eerste Divisie each time. The club also changed its name back to FC Den Bosch in 1992.
In the ten years following their relegation back to the Eerste Divisie, they competed in the promotion play-offs on six occasions bit failed to get promoted on any of them.
In the summer of 2018, after years of financial problems and bad performances in Eerste Divisie a Georgian businessman Kakhi Jordania, decided to invest in the club with intent to purchase. His ownership group was allowed to start making changes in the management, while they were awaiting the approval of KNVB. The club had a best season in years. The team finished as winter champions in Eerste Divisie, but could not continue their good form after the winter break. Den Bosch still managed to qualify for the promotion playoffs, where they lost to Go Ahead Eagles. After a year of due diligence, KNVB decided not to grant the new ownership group the right to purchase the club.
In November 2019, Den Bosch supporters racially abused SBV Excelsior player Ahmad Mendes Moreira in a match against the club, with Moreira having allegedly been called a 'negro and cotton-picker' prior to the match being halted after 30 minutes. Following the match, Moreira was labelled as a "pathetic little man" by Den Bosch's manager and the club originally stated that Moreira mistook 'crow sounds' for racist abuse, before later apologising for that statement. A few days after the match Den Bosch's manager apoligezed to Moreira. The "pathetic little man" label was about the way Moreira celebrated his goal and had nothing to do with racism. Moreira accepted these words. Following the incident and criticism from Netherlands internationals Memphis Depay and Georginio Wijnaldum, it was announced that players in the Dutch top two divisions would not play during the first minute of the following weekend's games in protest against racism in Dutch football as a result of the incident. In response to the incident, Den Bosch banned a number of supporters from attending games in January 2020. It was the first time a professional match in the Netherlands had to be halted as a result of racism.
Below is a table with FC Den Bosch's domestic results since the introduction of professional football in 1956. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11407 |
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